I won tickets to last Friday’s Blazers v. Sonics game. Michelle and I went figuring “how bad can it be? It’s free!” Well, it was pretty bad. It was my first NBA game and I admit that seeing the Globetrotters back in middle school set the bar pretty high. I’ll also admit that I went in to it hoping the Sonics would win. I’m not sure why, but I felt a greater sense of loyalty to them. Needless to say, when we left at the end of the third period $40 poorer, I had picked the winning team.
Here’s a couple things I noticed.
- The rose garden was empty. We sat 10 rows down from the top which gave us a pretty good view of the arena. The entire crowd could have fit into the 100s section.
- The event and it’s immense chaos is meant for TV viewers. The ultra-bright LCD scoreboard/pep-machine that encircles the arena will burn the retinas of anyone actually sitting above the 200 level. Luckily those people are poor anyway so it doesn’t matter.
- Did the court get smaller? It only takes the players like 10 strides to cross the court!
- I finally get the jokes about traveling in the NBA
- How does Portland support an NBA team? The place was empty and most of the crowd looked to be under 16.