I first learned to appreciate warm-ups because of Michigan hoops. The football culture at that school was intense to the point where I had multiple panic attacks in that gigantic stadium, but the basketball arena felt something like home. If you got there early enough, on the one or two times a week that the men's team would play, you could sit right behind the bench, practically on the floor. I liked it so much more than football, not only because of the decreased BAC and ambient hysteria but also for the way you could see the athletes as real people—your peers, really—and not just maize and blue gladiators. With the pep band playing familiar tunes—"I Want You Back" and "You Can Call Me Al" and so on—I could get lost in their preparations: the careful stretching-out of recent injuries, the slightly forbidden thrill of attempting a showy dunk or an ultra-long-range shot, the choreography of staff members each with their own small role to play, even if it was just fetching rebounds. It was an almost meditative way to settle in before the emotional stress to come.
I still make a point of arriving early enough to catch warm-ups—especially when I'm watching hockey, where the beauty of the skate-around a half-hour before the advertised start time carries the warmth of a religious ritual. On Tuesday, as the New York Islanders hosted the Winnipeg Jets, I was one of a very few in position to enjoy this routine—the lack of fans symbolic of an uninspiring season. But the empty seats did not portend a desolate night.
In fact, I had a lovely time taking a friend to her first-ever hockey experience, as the Isles held on for a 3-2 upset that saw their captain Anders Lee get into a fight (well, he got punched a lot) before earning the primary assist on the game-winning goal. The 60 minutes of the actual game made for worthy entertainment, but to me, the experience starts in that time before the Zambonis roll out to prep the ice for puck drop. The warm-ups are the moment when I reacquaint myself with guys I almost exclusively know as two-dimensional television sprites, like when Jets star Kyle Connor zoomed by the blue line with his helmet off and then zig-zagged his way toward the net for a shot. It's a soothing mix of structure and low-stakes improvisation, watching, say Maxim Tsyplakov and then Anthony Duclair take turns approaching goal and putting pucks off Ilya Sorokin's pads. And it's a time when the spotlight doesn't particularly favor any one player; if you're a Casey Cizikas fan, like I am, it's a rare chance to see him on a breakaway, of sorts.
It's an uncommon privilege, witnessing unfiltered the work that goes into the real show. You can't go watch a massive rock band rehearse in a studio. You don't get to see actors test out their voices before a play, or the raw footage of a movie before the lights dim. You don't see a writer's fragments and outlines before reading the finished product, nor a painter's first tries before her canvas arrives in a museum. The closest example I can call to mind is the cacophony of sound that precedes an orchestra performance, and while I do like that as a sort of aural appetizer, those disparate, individualized scales bear little connection to the tightly constructed pieces that follow.
I've been on the other side of it, down there on the floor, and what I think was especially nice about pregame layup lines when I played basketball is that it was the only time in the whole night when every one of your teammates was out there together, with no separation by skill. The warm-ups contain all the joy of collaborative movement and exercise with none of the stress of competition, and absent those pressures, they're a ripe time for connection. I still have a vivid image of the warm-ups for an MLS All-Star Game I went to in Philly, where David Luiz would playfully flick the ear of the young kids on Chelsea when they couldn't manage to keep the dribbling drill going. My earliest memory of live hockey is Darren McCarty tossing pucks over the glass to eager fans. And I think about how Stef Dolson solidified her spot as my favorite then–Liberty player when she remained engaged and encouraging during warm-ups, even as she was forced out of action by injury. All of these things matter as much as any play that officially counts.
