{"id":401331,"date":"2026-01-09T05:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T05:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/401331\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T05:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T05:35:14","slug":"heat-bulls-game-postponed-due-to-condensation-on-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/401331\/","title":{"rendered":"Heat-Bulls game postponed due to condensation on court"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Zach KramJan 9, 2026, 02:28 PM<\/p>\n

Close<\/a>Zach Kram is a national NBA writer for ESPN.com, specializing in short- and long-term trends across the league’s analytics landscape. He previously worked at The Ringer covering the NBA and MLB. You can follow Zach on X via @zachkram<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The scheduled game between the Miami Heat<\/a> and Chicago Bulls<\/a> was postponed on Thursday because of condensation on the court in Chicago.<\/p>\n

The United Center hosted a Chicago Blackhawks<\/a> game on ice Wednesday, and after an unseasonably warm, rainy day in Chicago, the basketball court wasn’t in playable condition.<\/p>\n

Players from both teams went through their standard pregame warmup routines but didn’t consider the court safe for a game.<\/p>\n

Following more than 90 minutes of futile attempts to fix the issue — including turning up the arena’s air conditioning and sweeping the court with mops and large towels — the NBA league office, game officials and both teams’ coaches decided on the postponement.<\/p>\n

United Center employees clean the court during a delay before Thursday’s scheduled game between the Miami Heat and Chicago Bulls. The game was later postponed.\u00a0AP Photo\/Nam Y. Huh<\/p>\n

“The players were complaining about it on both sides,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We all went out there and pretty much immediately, we felt that it wasn’t playable.”<\/p>\n

A makeup date was not immediately announced Thursday night. The Heat aren’t currently scheduled to return to Chicago this season.<\/p>\n

During the 2016-17 season, games in Minnesota and Philadelphia were postponed by condensation under similar circumstances: a warm day in a cold-weather city, following an event on ice in the arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zach KramJan 9, 2026, 02:28 PM CloseZach Kram is a national NBA writer for ESPN.com, specializing in short-…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-401331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}