As the NBA restart approaches next week, the thought of watching an NBA game without fans still lingers.

How will this go? Will it be awkward without fan noise or faces in the crowd? No momentum or advantage for the home team?

Well, Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle gave some insight on how the NBA has planned to address having no fans in the stands on Monday after practice after touring one of the game sites.

“I’ve had a tour. Two days ago, myself, Chris Paul, Dwight Powell got a tour with Mark Tatum, the Deputy Commissioner of the league. We got a tour of one of the game sites; the biggest one,” Carlisle said. “We saw the digital boards in their full operation mode. There’s going to be pictures of actual fans on the digital boards so it will look in affect like there are people in the arena. Those faces, in actuality, are people sitting in front of their computers at home who are watching the game being streamed on the computer.”

“Their faces are on the digital board and my understanding is that they have the ability to affect the amount of noise made in terms of cheering and stuff like that from their computers so this is like next level, unbelievable stuff,” Carlisle told the media.

It’s hard to imagine what these digital boards will look like in the crowd with the faces of actual fans. Certainly an intriguing plot to not actually having live fans in the stands. How effective will the fan enabled ‘crowd noise’ be? We shall see. But, as Rick said, this is “next level, unbelievable stuff” so it should be pretty fascinating, as this whole bubble structure has come to be.

“I expect the environment to be quite different because you don’t have actual fans and the actual home court simulation of the environment will be different but the intensity will be there. With so much at stake, it’s important that our players feel what that next level intensity is all about. NBA playoff basketball is really the most amazing experiences in sport.

For the Mavericks top players, this will be the first playoff experience for Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis. Though they lack playoff experience in the NBA, Doncic, Porzingis, as well as Maxi Kleber, have postseason experience playing overseas.

“Very important that we get this experience and that we approach it from the standpoint that we’re here to win.”