LAS VEGAS — The NBA said that two independent structural engineers completed a thorough inspection of the Thomas & Mack Center and Cox Pavilion and deemed both facilities safe to open following Friday night’s earthquake that rattled the arenas and caused some summer league games to be postponed.
The epicenter of the 7.1-magnitude quake was about 200 miles away in southern California, but it was felt strongly here in Las Vegas.
Celtics summer league coach Scott Morrison said he was in his room on the 62nd floor of the team hotel when he noticed the shaking.
“There’s a hotel in Chicago we stay at that kind of moves back and forth with the wind naturally,” Morrison said. “At first I thought it was that, and then I looked up and saw all the lights and stuff shaking. So I’m not going to lie, I was a little bit shook.”
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Rookie Carsen Edwards said he was in his hotel room at the time of the earthquake, too. He said it made a lamp in his room fall to the ground.
“Oh, my gosh,” Edwards said. “That was the scariest thing of my life, for real. Not to be dramatic, but I thought I was about to die. That was really scary.”
Edwards said he and his teammates ran out of their rooms and went down to the hotel lobby for about an hour.
The earthquake occurred in the fourth quarter of the summer league game between the Pelicans and the Knicks at Thomas & Mack, the main arena where UNLV plays its home games. The massive video board and neighboring speakers that hang from the ceiling of the building could be seen swaying for several minutes afterward.
The game was ultimately postponed, and the following game between the Suns and Nuggets was called off, too. Games in Cox Pavilion resumed after a delay on Friday. Saturday’s full slate of games was cleared and played as scheduled.
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Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at adam.himmelsbach@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @adamhimmelsbach.