LOS ANGELES -- The phrase "outdoor basketball in California" brings to mind heat emanating from the blacktop courts of Venice Beach, the jingle-jangle of chain-link nets bunching against a rubber ball and the jibber-jabber of Woody and Wesley's verbal spars as they attempt their next hustle in White Men Can't Jump.


 

This Saturday just outside Palm Springs, Calif. the phrase will take on an entirely different meaning as two teams from out of state -- the Phoenix Suns and the Denver Nuggets -- go head to head on a wooden court with a leather ball at the 16,000 seat, open-air Indian Wells Tennis Garden.

Dubbed the Autotrader.com Open, this isn't your typical preseason game. For starters, it will be aired live on TNT at 10 p.m. ET and the network's top broadcasting team -- play-by-play from Marv Albert with analysis by Charles Barkley and Reggie Miller -- will be on hand.

A preseason game doesn't normally draw a national broadcast team to come out. Heck, a preseason game doesn't always draw a team's head coach to show up on the sidelines -- the Lakers' Phil Jackson and the Celtics' Doc Rivers didn't bother making it to their teams' first preseason games this week.

Add in the caveat of Melo and STAT doing their thing in the same place that tennis great Roger Federer played in a tournament in March and you realize the game is truly a spectacle in the same way that everybody and their mother would tune in to see if Tiger Woods ever teed off from the 50-yard line at Lambeau Field.

The main draw for the game for me is the off chance I'll see a player throw down a dunk on one end and come back down the court throwing up the "raise the roof" celebration when there's only open sky above him. That would be an ironic gesture worthy of an Alanis Morissette lyric.

Plus, it will be entertaining to see towel boys holding a cup of Gatorade in one hand and a tube of Coppertone in the other to pass out when players come out of the game and head to the bench.

Having a game outdoors seems like a no-brainer marketing ploy, but there were some hoops to jump through before it could happen.

In 2003, NBA Deputy Commissioner Russ Granik told ESPN.com's Marc Stein, "I don't really think that we would look at [playing an NBA game outdoors] seriously," and cited weather conditions having an impact on the game as being a major concern.

A lot can change in five years.

The WNBA's New York Liberty and Indiana Fever played an outdoor game at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing Meadows, New York this past July and put 19,393 fans in the seats.

Not only was the Liberty Outdoor Classic a rousing success and a landmark event in bringing exposure to the league, but it also served as a dry run for NBA event operation officials to prepare for the Suns-Nuggets contest in October.

The Suns will serve as the host team, which is appropriate because Phoenix participated in the last NBA game played outdoors. On Sept. 24, 1972, Connie Hawkins, Dick Van Arsdale and the Suns downed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson and the Bucks, 116-103, in a preseason game tipped off at a baseball stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico.