On Aug. 26, the night that the NBA shut down after the Milwaukee Bucks’ protest, laughter and singing echoed across Lago Dorado, the lake in the middle of Disney’s Coronado Springs resort.

Amid the uncertainty of the season’s resumption following a tense players-led meeting, a group of players — the Balkan Boys, as they later called themselves — went to dinner on the outdoor patio at the Three Bridges Bar & Grill at Villa del Lago around 8 p.m.

“It was a crazy night full of emotions,” the Heat’s Goran Dragić told The Athletic. “We didn’t know how it was gonna turn the next day.”

The dinner featured players from several Balkan countries: Serbia (Nikola Jokić and Boban Marjanović), Slovenia (Luka Dončić, Dragić and Vlatko Čančar) and Montenegro (Nikola Vučević).

Ivica Zubac and Mario Hezonja (Croatia) and Jusuf Nurkić (Bosnia and Herzegovina) weren’t there the first night, but they joined the group the next day for brunch and then two days later for a dinner

On that first night, the group longed for familiarity and comfort — and a little bit of fun.

Dinner turned into drinks. Drinks turned into playing music from their phones while locking arms and belting Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian songs, including “Slavija” by Džej and “Ne Moze Nam Niko Nista” by Mitar Miric, seemingly every few minutes.

They weren’t the only players unwinding by going out and eating and drinking in the bubble that night, but they were certainly the loudest.

“We transformed the restaurant to a club,” Dragić said.

With no ćevapi (a popular Balkan dish of grilled minced meat, often made with beef or lamb) or rakija shots available, the group settled for sliders and rounds of Stellas.

The natives of the former Yugoslavia, clad in T-shirts, basketball shorts and sneakers and slides, conversed in Serbian and Croatian, discussing life in the bubble, family updates amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the state of the basketball teams and leagues from their respective countries.

Most of all, though, there was playful shouting and jokes.

The quick-witted banter was led by Jokić and Marjanović, the two entertainers of the rowdy bunch.

“Jokić is a jokester,” Zubac told The Athletic. “He’s the one always making jokes. Boban is always making jokes, too. Pretty much everyone is like that, but they’re the most. They’re always trying to make some jokes about other guys.”

The ribbing included Jokić and Marjanović roasting each other.

The Serbian centers, who grew up roughly 250 miles apart and spend months in the offseason back home, have developed a buddy-cop-like chemistry through their years of friendship.

“Jokić and Bobi, they are the two funniest dudes,” Dragić said. “Especially because they basically tease each other most of the time. They go back and forth. We were just laughing all night.

“I even told (Marjanović), ‘Bobi, I know what you’re gonna do after the career. You’re gonna work on TV, for sure.’”

Luka Dončić and Nikola Jokić have a chat before a game in March 2019.  (David Zalubowski/ AP Photo)

Meanwhile, Dončić, the youngest member of the group at just 21 years old, is on the other end of the personality spectrum.

The Mavericks star is reserved in nature. But with a group he’s more familiar with, he eventually opens up. Like his game, Dončić’s barbs are efficient.

“Luka is calm,” Dragić said. “He’s calm. He’s a little bit quiet. But he would listen and then he would just shoot one, and then everybody would laugh.”

The group stayed out until 2 a.m., singing and drinking for nearly six hours.

“I heard they were out pretty late,” Zubac said.

The next morning, the players attended the meeting to vote on the fate of the season. After it was determined that the playoffs would resume, the group coordinated a brunch in its group text, adding Zubac, Nurkić and Hezonja to the mix.

At brunch, they picked up where they left off from the previous night with loud conversations and music, though the scene was tamed down given the daytime setting.

At a nearby table sat Portland Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts, who was game-planning for Game 5 against the Los Angeles Lakers. Nurkić, spotting his coach, asked him to take a group photo.

With a photo tweet and a creative caption from Nurkić, the Balkan Boys nickname was born.