Hoops At The Garden

The first NBA game I ever attended in person was in December of 1995 in Madison Square Garden in New York City: the New York Knicks hosting the then very young (as a franchise) Toronto Raptors. Over the next 28 months, my dad and I would attend four additional games in the Garden watching the hometown Knicks take on the Clippers, Kings, 76ers and Jazz and see the Knickerbockers go 4-1 over that stretch, with the only loss being an overtime affair with the Jazz.

The season after that Jazz game was the 1998-1999 lockout shortened season and in a show of disgust with millionaires and multi-multi-millionaires arguing over how to split billions, my dad and I decided we would not even attempt to attend a game that season. The next year, I moved to Washington, switched basketball teams and started one of my obsessions of a lifetime by scheduling my life around the Wizards and ultimately deciding to go all in and do something really crazy by starting this blog.

Until last week, it had been 19 years since I'd been to a home Knicks game. My cousin visiting from England and the Wizards happening to be in New York for a Thursday afternoon game provided the perfect opportunity to break that streak.

Now, last week's game in New York wasn't the first time I'd seen a hoops game in the Garden in all that time. I managed to get some tickets to the NBA All-Star Game two years ago when it was in the City and saw the West defeat the East in front of a star-studded crowd on a Sunday night. But other than John Wall and Carmelo Anthony being in attendance, that game bore little resemblance to a home Knicks game in the greatest arena in basketball. Seeing a Knick game in person is an experience all hoops fans need to go through. Even if they are the most dysfunctional franchise in the league right now.

I know what you are thinking. Did you read what I wrote right? The "greatest arena in basketball"? Yes. Look I love Verizon Center as much as the next person and I'm dying for that place to be a raucous home court advantage for the Wizards the way some buildings are for other teams, but there's no way VC is the Garden.

I spent about half a blog post a couple of years ago talking about how special it is to make your way from the New York City streets to the inside of the Mecca of Basketball so I won't repeat all that save to say there is nothing like the interior of the Garden. It's all about that wooden ceiling. There is no other place in the league where looking up means so much. So of course I had to include one shot of the court during the game. First one to 100 wins. Again.

When my dad and I took in those five games at the Garden 20 years or so ago, we never got good seats. We always sat in the upper deck in the end zone so the experience we got was pretty one dimensional. Our court view was pretty much always the same game after game after game after game after game. We even had to sit behind each other one game because we couldn't get two seats together. But with the advent of secure, convenient and reliable secondary market ticket sales outlets; the decline of the Knicks as any sort of serious playoff threat; and maybe me having a little more disposable income, it was time for me to experience a Knick game on a different level. And by that I mean the lowest level of the building.

In addition to my seat location, there are some other changes that have taken place over the last 20 or so years. One of the things I appreciated all those years ago about games in New York was the lack of theater surrounding the team introductions. Maybe I'm remembering this wrong but I believe in the early '90s Patrick Ewing's Knick teams were introduced with the lights on after the classic "Go New York! Go New York! Go!" introductory video. I didn't really expect that level of simplicity this time around but I did expect something less over the top than what I saw at a Lakers game a couple of weeks prior.

 

I was wrong. If I thought the curtain with the jumbo sized graphic projection in Los Angeles was out of place for a below .350 Lakers team, I really question the wisdom of the Knicks City Dancers' lengthy light and costume show (complete with lighted uniforms) for the below .400 Knicks. It was more deluxe than almost any halftime show the Wizards have put on this year. It was so long that I almost couldn't remember who was introduced in the Wizards' starting lineup. I know I sound like an old fogey here complaining about the show that the kids love these days but it just seemed grandiose for a team that has had no shot at the playoffs in years.

The Knicks City Dancers in the midst of their most elaborate team introduction ceremony.

Once we got through the opening act, it was on to the game. With the Wizards on a 50 win quest and (at that time) still hoping for a shot at the East's three seed, I hoped for a quick killing of the Knicks and some rest for our starters so we'd be extra prepared to face the Miami Heat at home just two days later. Of course, I've been watching the Wizards play week after week since the All-Star break so I don't know what I was thinking with that expectation. There was no quick killing, no extra rest and no win at home vs. the Heat.

 

The first half looked great. A 12 point lead in the first quarter and a 10 point lead in the second quarter had dwindled to eight by halftime but the Knicks were never really a threat to take the lead despite some play from Brandon Jennings that drove me crazy. That eight point bulge swelled to 15 in the third before the Wizards decided it was probably all they needed to do and eased off the gas pedal a little. Or a lot. The Knicks ended up winning the third by a point and with less than three minutes to go in the fourth behind some poor free throw shooting from the visitors, the game was knotted up.

 

I gotta say there's no other city like New York and no other people like New Yorkers. There I was sitting in the lower level of MSG watching the Wizards struggle to beat a team that has won just one playoff series in the last 15 years (behind a grand total of four appearances) and the place starts going nuts. I guess there are enough people in New York that the building is pretty much always full but everyone seemed to be behind this team all of a sudden. I can't say I've heard Verizon Center get much louder at any point this season during the best season the Wizards (not Bullets) have ever posted. I find it astonishing how continually embarrassed about our crowd noise I am on the road. And it wasn't even caused in New York by a t-shirt toss (of which there were very very many) or something like that. No free chicken required; just love of a team. Imagine that.

While I was watching the Wizards struggle to contain the Knicks (with no Kristaps Porzingis by the way) I have to say that I was impressed with how helpful the scoreboard at the arena was. There's all sorts of cool information on this thing and it displays each team's stats in team colors, which I think is awesome. Check out the scoreboard at Verizon Center and you'll be well informed about how many points each team has; the points and fouls for each player whether or not their name fits on the scoreboard in full; and how many time outs remain for each team in full and 20 second versions. Yep there's also a big screen on each of the four sides showing replays and live action but as far as stats, that's all you get.

 

Now check out the Garden's display. Game score? Check. Points and fouls by player with full names on the board? Check. Timeouts in full and 20 second versions? Check. How about assists and rebounds in addition to points and fouls? Kind of cool; Verizon Center has corner of the arena displays for these stats on a rotating basis by team but they are not visible when looking at the scoreboard. Even cooler than that? The shooting percentages from the field, the free throw line and three point range. It's pretty easy to start to correlate why the Wizards have a 10 point lead in the picture above when they are outshooting the Knicks from the field and beyond the arc by 19 and 17 percent respectively.

 

At the end of the night last Thursday, my teams were 5-1 in games I've attended at Madison Square Garden. 4-1 as a Knicks fan; 1-0 as a Wizards fan. I'm not jealous of the Knicks team but I have a serious crush on their building. When I was here 20 years ago it was before the team embarked on a multi-year renovation and modernization of the place. Today it's even better than I remember all those years ago. There really is no better place to watch pro hoops. I got other places to go to watch the Wizards play in this country, but I'd go back to the Garden every year if I could make the time. It's that good there.

Name me one other NBA arena where you can get a knish. I don't think you can do it.

 

What About Portland?

I used to hate the NBA All-Star Game. Maybe hate's a strong word. But in years past I really had no use whatsoever for the mid-season exhibition basketball game where most of the players that I love to hate showboat while nobody (and I mean nobody) plays defense. Even when Gilbert Arenas, Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler were making appearances in the game over a four year span about a decade ago, I never really tuned in for very long.

Then last year everything changed. I snagged some tickets to the big events on All-Star Weekend in New York City and saw the true value of the experience. From the game itself on Sunday to All-Star Saturday night to practices to press conferences to autograph hunting all over the city, it was a non-stop weekend of NBA superstar immersion. And it was quite honestly pretty fantastic. I never could have imagined such a transformation in my attitude about something based on a frigid long weekend in America's best city (sorry, D.C. but it's true!).

Washington last hosted the All-Star Game in 2001, my first year as a Wizards season ticket holder. I didn't do much at all that weekend basketball-wise except attend the Rising Stars Challenge on Saturday afternoon. I bought a $10 (yes, you read that right) ticket at the box office and spent a couple of hours watching the rooks and sophs go back and forth while sitting one row closer to the court than now-majority owner Ted Leonsis (Ted was in his box; I was in the last row in the 100 level at what was then MCI Center in front of his box).

That year I was actually offered tickets to the All-Star Game. I think the deal from the Wizards was that if I bought 100 upper deck tickets for a regular season game and donated them to charity, they'd get me some 400 level seats for the All-Star Game. I passed, not having a spare $1,000 or more kicking around for such an indulgence at that time in my life. But after last year's All-Star experience, I started to wonder if D.C. was due for another All-Star weekend. I mean in the past 16 years since I've been a season ticket holder, both Houston and New Orleans have had the game twice. Why can't Washington get another shot? Aren't we due?

Me and Earl Monroe hanging out at All-Star Weekend 2015.

So logically, the answer to that question is NO! There are 30 teams in the league now so theoretically every team should get to host the All-Star Game once every three decades. But that's clearly not the way it works for Houston or New Orleans, so why can't Washington be an exception too? The Wizards / Bullets have hosted All-Star Weekend a total of three times in the 65 (including this year) year history of the event: 1969 (in Baltimore), 1980 (at the Caps Center in Landover, MD) and 2001 at our current arena on F Street. Maybe if the NBA waits the same 21 years between games like they did last time, maybe we get the game back here in 2022. Maybe.

Probably not. As it turns out, there are far more cities that are "due" than Washington is. In fact, it ain't even close. Boston holds the longest current All-Star Game-less streak at 52 years, including this year; 53 if you consider they aren't hosting it next year (Charlotte, NC is). Boston was home to the first and second ever NBA All-Star Games and hosted the event four of the first 14 years it was played (remember the league was a lot smaller back then). But they haven't played it in beantown again since 1964 when the league had a total of nine teams. That's a long time.

Other cities have never hosted the game at all. Oklahoma City which has been the home of the Thunder for nine years (including this one) has not yet been granted an All-Star Game. Nor has Sacramento, which has been the home of the Kings since 1985. But while the game may never have been played in those two cities before, the franchises that became the Oklahoma City Thunder and Sacramento Kings have hosted. The Thunder had the event in 1974 and 1987 as the Seattle SuperSonics and the Kings hosted All-Star Weekend in 1956 and 1966 as the Rochester and Cincinnati Royals respectively. Neither franchise has waited as long as the Celtics in Boston, although Sacto comes close.

Besides OKC and Sacramento, there are two other cities that have also never had the All-Star Game. One of these, Memphis, is a relative newcomer to the NBA, moving from Vancouver in 2001, although it seems like the Grizzlies, whose name worked way better in Vancouver, have been in that city forever. So while I feel for the Memphians who crave this event at the FedEx Forum, if I were running the show I'd put both Boston and Sacramento ahead of them. Yes, I'd put OKC at the back of the line here.

And then there's Portland. The Trail Blazers entered the NBA in 1970, 45 seasons ago, at a time when there were only 17 teams in the league. They've been in the same city under the same name for their entire history and as yet have never been awarded an All-Star Game. Since Portland entered the league, and including this year, the All-Star Game has been held in 28 different cities or metropolitan areas. Seven cities have had the game twice; three have been hosts three times; and Los Angeles (if you include Inglewood as Los Angeles) has had it four times. The game has been played in five football stadiums over that period, one city that no longer has a franchise (San Diego) and what that has never had a team located there (Las Vegas). But Portland's never had it. Not even once.

Apparently the city has put in an application to host the game in 2017 or 2018 but the NBA is concerned about the number of hotel rooms in town. It seems to me that the league could find it in it's heart to let a franchise which has been in the same place for almost 50 years have the event once, even if it means a lot of staying in the suburbs or elsewhere. There's one thing for sure: Portland's due!

Large scale graphics of jerseys at Barclays Center 2015: John Wall (woo hoo!!!) and LeBron James (BOOO!!!!!!)

Saturday Afternoon Fever

It's been almost two weeks since I posted my last blog entry, a doom and gloom affair about the Wizards' postseason chances. Since that post, the Wizards are 5-0 and things look a lot rosier. Hopefully this post won't screw up that mojo. Not superstitious. Just saying.

I've been traveling for the primary purpose of watching professional basketball games for a little over eight years now. The first trip I ever took was a planned day trip to Minneapolis to see the Wizards beat the Minnesota Timberwolves in January 2007. Unfortunately for me, the weather in D.C. made it an overnight trip and the Wizards made it a loss rather than a win. But if that unplanned day off that Monday taught me anything, it was that there was value in staying at least an extra day wherever I traveled to see something unique about the place I had visited rather than just watching hoops and drinking beer in a local bar after the game.

So given the lesson of Minnesota in '07, I couldn't visit New York or Brooklyn on NBA All-Star Weekend last month without doing something that I couldn't do anywhere else. I've been to New York City a bunch of times in the last decade or so but I haven't spent a whole lot of time across the East River in Brooklyn. My first thoughts here were to either walk across the Brooklyn Bridge or go to the Brooklyn Brewery. But I'd done both of those before and the temperatures in New York over the Valentine's Day weekend this year never cracked freezing, so the last thing I wanted to do was walk over a bridge. So instead I did something different and totally Brooklyn. I'm thinking late 1970s. I'm thinking disco.

One of my favorite movies of all time is Saturday Night Fever. The movie tells the story of Tony Manero (played by John Travolta), a kid living and working in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn. During the day, Tony works at a hardware store selling paint and whatever else his customers come in for. At night, though, Tony practices his dance moves at a local dance studio. Tony manages to get time at the studio for free because he sends women to the studio so they can work on their moves, but also so the owner of the studio can work on his moves, if you know what I mean.

The highlight of Tony's week comes every Friday and Saturday night when he and his friends head over to 2001 Oddyssey, a nightclub where Tony can do what he does best out on the dance floor. This all sounds so pedestrian and dated, right? What I love about the movie is that Tony is a guy who knows he wants to do something more with his life and can't seem to figure out how to get it done. He knows he loves dancing and is good at it but can't see a way to parlay that into a way to improve his life. So in the meantime, he works at a low paying job, does the same thing week after week and lives with his parents and the crushing weight of their disapproval over what he's doing with his life.

Enter Stephanie, Tony's unwitting way out. Stephanie's a fellow Brooklynite who has managed to escape Bay Ridge by working in a Manhattan office and shacking up with an older guy who works with her. While she comes off as confident and sophisticated (well, late 1970s sophisticated anyway), she has no more idea about where her life is headed than Tony. While she's made the first step, she's equally lost and confused as to what to do next. The movie is their story of making the next move in each of their lives. The film ends with no definitive conclusion to their life journey which I love. Life rarely has a neatly packaged happy ending.

Saturday Night Fever was filmed in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst and a lot of the sites used to shoot the film are still there today. So Saturday afternoon before All-Star Saturday Night at Barclays Center, I hopped on the R from midtown Manhattan and toured the remaining notable locations from the movie. The 2001 nightclub is unfortunately long gone, but there's some good stuff to see nonetheless. Here goes.

Saturday Night Fever...

Saturday afternoon fever.

Pearson Bay Ridge Home Center, 7305 5th Avenue

Yep, that's right, almost four decades on, the hardware store where Tony Manero earned his paycheck and where Mr. Fusco uttered those famous words "no, Tony, you can't fuck the future, the future fucks you!" is still a hardware store. I'm sure it's under different management than it was when the movie was filmed but I love that it's still selling paint and paint brushes, just like John Travolta's character all those years ago.

Walking through Bay Ridge today is like taking a trip back in time. The streetscape in the neighborhood seems to be decades removed from today. There are no big box stores or chain establishments. 80 percent of the businesses you pass walking from the Subway station to Pearson's today are locally owned and operated, just like they have been since they started selling anything in Brooklyn.

The store today looks a little different than it did when Mr. Fusco and Tony Manero closed up the store at 6 pm towards the beginning of the movie.  The main entrance is in the same general location within the storefront but there's a whole lot less glass and window space than there was in 1977, probably to decrease heat loss and increase security. It almost makes me miss the good old days when we could blissfully waste cheap fossil fuels. Not really but I did love the amount of window space in the original store.

Saturday Night Fever...

Saturday afternoon fever.

"The Manero House," 221 79th Street

The house where Tony lived with his parents, sister and grandmother in Saturday Night Fever is located a few blocks from the Pearson Bay Ridge Home Center, and it's also still standing. The first time he enters the house in the movie, Tony finds himself on the wrong end of a tongue lashing from his mother and out of work father about being late for a dinner which isn't ready anyway. The ensuing dinner conversation makes it plainly obvious to the audience that Tony is falling far short of his brother, Frank, Jr., who has entered the clergy.

If you didn't look closely, you might miss the house. It looks nothing like the house in the movie. The fake stone siding is gone and the whole house has been remade as some sort of English Tudor fantasy. The fenestration on the front of the house has been re-worked and the entrance now features a mini-dormer on a pair of added columns to divert the rain that I'm sure the current residents appreciate in a heavy storm. But the steps up to the front door are instantly recognizable and the bay window on the right side of the house is intact, complete with the exact same leaded or faux-leaded glass.

I imagine the interior layout is pretty much the same, with the stair on the right side of the house and the living room and dining room on the left with the kitchen in back of the dining room. Once you get upstairs, I bet the bedrooms are still in the same spot, but I'm doubting the Farrah Fawcett poster is still on the room that was Tony's in the movie.

Saturday Night Fever...

Saturday afternoon fever.

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge connects Brooklyn to Staten Island and at the time of its construction in 1964 was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Today, it ranks 11th but still first in the United States. On the Brooklyn side of the water, the bridge terminates right in Bay Ridge about a couple of miles from where the Maneros lived. As far as suspension bridges in New York go, it's definitely a distant third to the Brooklyn Bridge and George Washington Bridge but it's longer than those two so there you have it.

The scene in the movie where Tony and Stephanie sit on a bench at the foot of the bridge  is pictured above. Tony tells her all about what the bridge means to him and that dialog shows the audience that Tony is connected to his neighborhood and knows something more than working at a hardware store and dancing. Later on in the film the bridge plays a more ominous role when Tony's friend Bobby C takes an unintended dive into the East River, too distraught about how the Catholic church might view him getting his girlfriend, Pauline, pregnant to understand how to go on.

The bridge today look exactly the same as it did when the movie was filmed, although I'm sure if I got close enough, I would see a whole lot more rust on the steel than it had when it was built. My intent in walking down 4th Avenue was to get to the same bench that Stephanie and Tony sat on during their talk in the movie. But honestly, after about a mile of walking, the significantly below freezing temperatures got to me and I had to settle for taking a picture through the leafless trees from much further away. What can I say, I'm getting soft in my old age.

Saturday Night Fever...

Saturday afternoon fever.

Lenny's Pizza, 1969 86th Street

The last stop on my afternoon tour was a late lunch at Lenny's Pizza, the same exact pizza store that Tony Manero grabbed a couple of slices and strolled down 86th Street eating them sandwich style at the beginning of the movie. If there was a place that I was looking forward to more than anywhere else on this tour, it was Lenny's. Not just because Travolta's character ate at the same place under the same ownership, but any place that's been in business serving pizza in a pizza famous place like Brooklyn has to be good, right?

Lenny's is located right next to the 20th Avenue stop on the D line, which runs on an elevated track right down the center of 86th Street. When you walk in to the restaurant, there's a counter on the left displaying some amazing looking pizzas, strombolis and garlic knots that all New York pizzerias seem to offer. The margherita pizza looked amazing with gorgeous red sauce and a thin coating of what looked like delicious mozzarella cheese. I ordered two slices just like Tony Manero and sat down and waited for a couple of pieces of pizza heaven to come out of the oven, piping hot and delicious.

If I've ever been more disappointed in a pizza lunch, I can't remember the time. The sauce at Lenny's had some awesome flavor but that was pretty much all I could taste. The cheese added nothing and the crust had the consistency of stiff cardboard. It was honestly a little uncomfortable to eat. Maybe it was the time of day or the fact that it was so cold outside, but based on my visit, I can't believe this place has been in business so long. I should have taken two to go for the ultimate SNF experience, although I'm sure it wouldn't have improved the taste. Maybe I need to come back in the summer or something.

Lenny's was my last authentic Saturday Night Fever stop but there was one more thing I had to do before splitting New York and heading for home. I've eaten my fair share of fast food in my day and I'm still a total sucker for Taco Bell but I'd never ever stopped by a White Castle. In the movie, Tony and his friends Double J, Bobby C and Joey take Stephanie out to White Castle in Brooklyn. That store is long gone but there are still White Castles in New York, including one between our hotel and Madison Square Garden. How could I resist this opportunity to complete my Saturday Night Fever experience! Far out!

I Love Ebay

Last weekend's All-Star Game in New York was absolutely one of the best experiences I have ever had as an NBA fan. I can't imagine a better city more steeped in hoops history, whether it be amateur or professional ball, than New York. It was absolutely the dream matchup in terms of aligning a city with an All-Star experience. The funny thing was, though, it was never supposed to happen that way. Here's why.

A couple of years ago, I decided it was about time I attended an NBA All-Star Game. While I've never been a huge All-Star guy, I figured after becoming a slightly more than moderately NBA obsessed fan I owed it to myself and to the league to do it once. I decided I would bite the bullet, plunk down a couple of thousand bucks through the NBA Events website and go sit in the upper deck of some NBA arena somewhere in the United States or Canada and watch the All-Star Game and All-Star Saturday Night in person. Once. Definitely only once. Probably.

When I made the decision to make it to an All-Star Game, I decided I wanted to go to one that featured the participation of at least one Washington Wizards player. Last year, the Wizards' John Wall made it to the All-Star Game as a reserve and also won the Slam Dunk Contest and Bradley Beal finished second in the Three Point Shooting Contest. It seemed to me that I better get a little more serious about making All-Star plans before the window closed on these Wizards being good. Aren't I ever the optimist about my team's chances long term?

Since I was pretty high on the Wizards after last year's All-Star Game, I started checking into options for future contests. As of last February, the only venues selected for All-Star Weekend were New York this year and Toronto in 2016. My initial thought was there's no way that I was going to spend the kind of money required to go to the New York version but instead I should set my sights on Toronto the next year. I started squirreling away money right away, knowing that this would be the most expensive basketball game I would ever attend in my life. That was that.

Then ebay happened. I first began using ebay in the fall of 2012, when I started on the slippery slope of collecting basketball cards. Ebay, in my opinion, is the absolute best place to shop for basketball cards to assemble a team specific collection. It's also a great place to buy iPod covers, shoehorns and Blackberry batteries (yes, I still have one) but that's sort of beside the point. During the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 NBA seasons, I collected a lot of basketball cards. So I was on the site a lot.

Then in April of last year, I noticed an announcement on ebay for an auction sponsored by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame to raise funds for the museum. Ever being a sucker for signed collectibles, I thought I should take a look to see what they were selling off. Maybe there would be some Wizards items. There weren't. But one of the items in the auction really caught my eye: two tickets to the 2015 NBA All-Star Weekend, which included accommodations for four nights plus two tickets to the Rising Stars Challenge, All-Star Saturday Night and the All-Star Game itself. Estimated value $7,500; minimum bid $3,250. Pre-qualification required.

Seriously? I wasn't up for paying over seven grand for a long weekend in New York but I was budgeting a couple of thousand bucks to go to Toronto in 2016 for my ticket alone without hotel. I preregistered for the auction and waited and watched. Maybe if the bidding stayed low enough, I had a shot at picking this up. Probably a pipe dream but it was probably worth watching.

Then something funny happened. Or didn't happen. Nobody was bidding on the item. Like nobody. Not a single person. It got to two days before the bidding was scheduled to end and I thought I should start considering the possibility of me winning this thing. So I asked a question about where the seats were located. I was told the exact locations were not known but that "our seats are always located in the lower level sidelines between the baskets." OK, good to know.

April 12, 2014. Bid day. Still no bids. My experience on ebay buying basketball cards is that the way to win an auction on the site is to wait until the last minute and then outbid whomever is leading the bidding with about five seconds left in the auction period. That was going to be my approach to winning this auction except that I had to be at a Wizards game that night when the bidding was scheduled to end. And I'm not missing a home game for an auction I'm not likely to win. I placed my bid at an upper limit of $4,250 and hopped on the Metro bound for Verizon Center. Whatever happens, happens.

So it turned out that I was the only one who bid on this item and I ended up with it for the low, low price of $3,250. I still can't believe it even now. I'm thinking three things got me this win. First, there was a prequalification required (which honestly involved filling out a form with no substantive information) that prevented last minute impulse buyers from getting involved. Second, the item being auctioned was an experience that wouldn't happen for ten months and most people have difficulty planning that far out. And third, it was pretty expensive if you ignored the actual value. Whatever the reason, nobody but me took a shot here.

I'm not sure how the folks at the Basketball Hall of Fame got a value of $7,500 here by the way. Packages similar to the one I won on the NBA-Events.com site were about $4,500 per person for tickets only. In my books that makes what I won at auction worth $9,000 without hotel (which is probably another $1,000). Whatever. I wouldn't have had this experience without seeing this item on ebay, at least not in New York, because I wasn't prepared to pay for it in New York. And it truly was the best place to see the NBA All-Star Game.  It was a weekend I'll never forget.

Hello Brooklyn!

The NBA All-Star Game is the marquee attraction of the NBA's All-Star weekend, but it's not the only event that generates some buzz during the mid-season break. Before the main attraction on Sunday night, there are two more nights of excitement in the Rising Stars Challenge (Friday night) and the All-Star Saturday Night. I suppose I could have headed to New York last weekend and just taken in Sunday night's game but what's the point of that? All-Star Weekend for me had to include all three nights. Plus I sort of had little option. More on that later.

On a typical All-Star Weekend, the Rising Stars Challenge, All-Star Saturday Night and All-Star Game all take place on successive nights in the same arena. After all, most cities only have the luxury of having one NBA team. But New York not only has two teams (as does Los Angeles) but the two teams play in totally different arenas. So instead of having one team host all three nights, the NBA elected to put the All-Star Game at the New York Knicks' Madison Square Garden and have the Brooklyn Nets' Barclays Center host the Friday and Saturday night affairs. That not only got me three nights of basketball, it also got me a look at the almost brand new Nets arena.

Barclays Center from the west.

The main lobby of Barclays Center.

Of all the arenas opened in the last ten years or so, Brooklyn's Barclays Center has to be the most expensive and most deluxe so I was excited about getting an up close and personal look at the place on both Friday and Saturday nights. There's an iconic image of the place with a giant hole in the roof with video displays within the hole which alone seemed worth experiencing. I really couldn't wait to get to Brooklyn to see it for myself.

 

After a couple of nights there, it's a nice place. I mean it's clearly newer than Verizon Center and the block (as with most arenas in the NBA) is not as restricting as the city grid at 601 F Street in D.C. so the concourses are nice and wide. The food choices are amazing and completely New York with a strong emphasis on Brooklyn. We ate pizza with a black and white cookie before the All-Star Saturday Night got started which I'd probably eat again, although Saturday I elected to wash all that down with a Budweiser instead of another $9.75 12 oz can of Brooklyn Lager like I had the previous night. I love Brooklyn Lager, but one per weekend at that price point is enough for me.

 

The hole in the roof disappointed me. I guess I hadn't looked closely enough at the pictures of the arena before visiting but the hole is in what is basically a canopy over the main front entrance. It looks like so much more than that in the pictures I guess. I can argue with the logic of having a canopy with a large hole in it but I guess I won't here. I'm probably being a little harsh about the outside appearance of the place considering I was only there at night and didn't feel inclined in the far-less-than-freezing temperatures to spend some time looking around the outside of the building.

 

If there's an impressive part of the building, it's the front lobby, which serves as a monumental arrival space and also allows crowds to filter onto the main concourse before the game and back out of the building after the final whistle without causing a horrendous backup at the exits. The space itself is more modern both in the way space is defined and the way it is lit than any other arena I have visited. I was truly happy to see the entry space. I hope the security tent we passed through on the way to the main lobby on Friday and Saturday nights was an All-Star only fixture. Otherwise, it significantly negatively affects the entrance sequence.

Friday night's Rising Stars Challenge.

First up at the Barclays Center: the Rising Stars Challenge. This was not my first time at this event. During the 2001 All-Star Weekend in D.C., which also happened to be my first as a Wizards season ticket holder, I managed to get a seat to this event on Saturday afternoon at Verizon Center. I paid $10 to sit in the last row of Section 119 in the lower bowl to see both this event and the All-Star Team practice. This year those two events were split, with the cost of each event far exceeding the ten spot I paid 14 years ago. I see that as a measure of how much the revenue stream for the NBA has changed in the last decade and a half. My seats this year were $55 each and they were not as good as my seats in '01. Assuming the cost of practice tickets were similar, that's at least a ten-fold increase in price over 14 years.

 

When I took in this event at Verizon Center, it was a contest between ten rookies and ten second year players, a true rooks vs. sophomores event. Since 2001, the game's format has undergone two changes: first to two teams drafted by two celebrity / former player coaches and then this year to a USA vs. the world format. Call me a traditionalist, but I loved the old old format. For me, the idea of taking a class of guys and pitting them against the draft that followed them is far more appealing. There seems to be a common rallying point for each group to show that their draft class is superior. I don't see it in the new formats. I am also not convinced there's enough talent in the world group to equal the American group. Sure the world won this year's inaugural battle in this format, but I think you will generally end up with something lower in quality by doing it this way than by taking 20 first and second year players regardless of national origin.

 

If I were buying these events a la carte (I was not), I'd likely skip this event. Maybe it was the players involved or that I've seen way more hoops than I had in '01 but I didn't find this game particularly spirited. I don't remember much from the game I saw in Verizon Center all those years ago, but I do remember the Chicago Bulls' Khalid El-Amin playing defense hard enough to draw blood and get some folks on the sophomore squad upset. Maybe he set my bar too high. On the other hand, maybe the complete lack of Wizards players in the game affected my enjoyment. Whatever the case, I was less enthusiastic about this game than I was the last time I attended.

Trey Burke and Brandon Knight ready to start their first round heat of the Skills Competition.

At the end of the Rising Stars Challenge, I was honestly worried that All-Star Weekend's hype and expectations would exceed the actual action on court. But any chance of that disappointment dissipated as soon as All-Star Saturday Night started. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this was the best event of the weekend. Even better than the All-Star Game. And it probably wasn't even close.

 

I had a couple of concerns about All-Star Saturday Night. First, the lack of Wizards players' involvement. John Wall was initially announced as a contestant in the Skills Challenge but then withdrew to get a little more (or just a little maybe) rest than he would have without participating that night. Second, I was concerned the event would end quickly and that it wouldn't be particularly exciting. No chance of that as I soon found out.

I think what makes All-Star Saturday Night so entertaining is that it's a real competition. Yes, I know they keep score in the All-Star Game but it's not really competitive. The margin of victory in no way reflects the amount of desire to win that is put out there on the court. But the events held on Saturday night are different. Guys are really looking to show that they are the best in the league at shooting three pointers or dunking or running rings around their counterparts in the dribbling/passing/shooting competition that is the Skills Competition. And believe it or not, the challenge that these guys put up for each other translates into the crowd. Team affiliation aside (although let's face it, I was rooting as hard as possible against Kyrie Irving), it was really easy to get absorbed into what was happening on the court.

 

This was pure entertainment all the way. And Barclays was probably the right place to host this event. I wrote earlier that I thought Barclays was a nice place. For this event, with its lighting and projection capabilities, it was incredible. The arena looked like it was hosting a rock concert, especially during the Slam Dunk contest, which was the last event of the night. If I were picking just one event in All-Star Weekend to attend, it would definitely be the Saturday night event. This, not the All-Star Game, is absolutely the best part of the three day weekend.

 

And it wasn't short either. It easily went three hours and while it's difficult to claim anything costing $500 was money well spent, it was worth every penny to do it once. I'm now one arena closer to visiting every building in the NBA. Now I need to get back to Barclays to watch the Wizards play sometime.

The light show before Zach LaVine's final dunk of the Slam Dunk competition.

2015 All-Star Break

If there's a team in the NBA in desperate need of a break for a week or so this season right at this moment, it's the Washington Wizards. The Wizards opened the 2014-2015 NBA season pretty hot, going 10-5 in October / November and besting that with a 12-4 December. But 2015 has not been kind to our local five. The team has posted an 11-12 record this year and has lost six of the last eight, including five in a row to start that stretch. Not encouraging for a squad that looked like it might contend for the Conference this season.

 

Looking at the team's 2015 woes in more detail only makes things worse. The six recent losses include two to division rivals the Charlotte Hornets and three to the Atlanta Hawks and Toronto Raptors combined, who sit one-two in the Eastern Conference. A couple of weeks ago, the Wizards were in second place in the East, somehow managing to withstand the Raptors hotter-than-the-Wizards start and a challenge from the Chicago Bulls in the last couple of months. Now the Wizards are barely clinging to fourth. To make matters even more dire, the team is waiting to find out how bad a stress fracture in Bradley Beal's leg is, the third such injury in just three years in the league for Bradley.

 

Fortunately for the Wizards, they haven't had to play in the last seven days (including today) and won't tomorrow either as the League stopped play for the last week or so for the 2015 All-Star break. Our players aren't the only ones who needed a few days off; so did I. I'm usually not one to get caught up in the hype of a winning team so early in the season but I guess I've been kept down as a Wiz fan for so long that I needed a glimmer of hope and let our second place start get the best of me. Fortunately, this year's All-Star break for the Wizards was also an All-Star break for me. I managed to get a hold of some seats to the All-Star Game on Sunday night (well, tickets for the whole weekend really) and headed up to New York with John Wall to experience the mid-season break in person.

 

Now I admit, I'm not really much of an All-Star guy, probably because there are usually no Wizards involved. But I wanted to go at least once in my life and the opportunity to get to New York at a reasonable price presented itself. So last Thursday, I hopped on Amtrak and made the trip three and a half or so hours north for a long weekend in America's greatest city with the anticipation of having a weekend I would likely never forget.

The NBA's 2015 All-Star weekend was a shared affair between two teams in two of New York's boroughs: the Brooklyn Nets hosted Friday night's Rising Stars Challenge and All-Star Saturday Night at Barclays Center over on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and the New York Knicks hosted the All-Star Game on Sunday night at the Mecca of basketball, Madison Square Garden. There were way more events than just those three in New York this past weekend but the Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights are the signature events of All-Star Weekend. I'm sure I'll talk about some of the other events in future posts.

My first pro basketball experience took place in Madison Square Garden a little less than 20 years ago. My dad and I headed down to New York from my parents' house in Connecticut and watched our then favorite team Knicks take on the Toronto Raptors just a couple of days before Christmas in 1995. Over the next two and a half years, my dad and I would travel down to the Garden four more times to watch the Knicks, seeing Patrick Ewing, John Starks, Charles Oakley and the rest of that great late '90s team lose only once (in double overtime to the Utah Jazz no less) in our five games. Since my last trip to the Garden way back in 1998, I've traveled all over this country to watch pro basketball so I was excited to return a little more seasoned and see how the experience compared.

Madison Square Garden can be found between Seventh and Eighth Avenues and 31st and 33rd Streets in downtown Manhattan. It is located right above Penn Station, which is a hub for Amtrak, the Long Island Railroad, New Jersey Transit rail system and the Subway, on one of the busiest blocks in the city. It is truly one of the most urban sitings for sport in the United States today. The main marquee of the arena is on Seventh Street but you would have a difficult time seeing the building from that side because there's an office building between Seventh and MSG. Thus begins the paradox of everyone's Madison Square Garden experience.

The approach and entrance to the Garden has to be one of the worst in professional sports. The initial pedestrian sequence takes you from Seventh Avenue, up a series of steps, through one of a couple of multi story openings in the office building and into the lobby of the arena. Throughout this whole promenade, you never really see the cylindrical form of the building itself because the views are constrained and restricted by the rest of the stuff in your way.

The lobby of the building is no better. In fact, it might be worse. Upon entering the building, you are faced with a series of ticket windows and a wide corridor proceeding left and right of the windows to what appears to be a dead end. Welcome to the lobby of the World's Most Famous Arena! When the gates are opened, which are at the end of the dead end corridors, all fans are admitted to an escalator lobby not much larger than would be required to make the space fully functional and you ride the escalators up to your designated level and step out into the concourse. Sounds very thrilling and ceremonial, right? Just wait until the end of the game when you have to walk down a fire stair to get out. Not kidding.

When you go to see a game in the Garden, be patient with all of the above because it's totally worth it when you get inside the arena. The first thing you see when you walk into the arena is that gorgeous steel cable suspension roof with the wood panels inlaid between the bicycle spokes of the exposed structure. It's the only basketball arena I've been in where there is anything to look at above the scoreboard. The ceiling alone makes the Garden different than any other pro basketball hall; the images of the court below that roof structure, like the one above towards the end of Sunday's All-Star Game, are timeless. The place is instantly recognizable.

Once you get to your seat and start looking around, you see the championship banners and retired numbers hanging in the rafters. The Knicks only have one more NBA Championship banner than the Bullets and Wizards but they have an historic collection of Division Championships hanging from the roof. And the retired numbers hail back to the two great Knicks teams that won it all in 1970 and 1973: Walt Frazier, Dick Barnett, Earl Monroe, Willis Reed, Dave DeBusschere and Bill Bradley. It's impossible not to be impressed in the Garden even though the Knicks have been just awful for about the last 15 years.

Finally when the game starts, the Garden focuses all the attention on the court. When you sit in Verizon Center's upper deck during a game, they turn out the lights but they keep them on in the lower level. Not so at MSG. It's all dark everywhere except the most important place in the building: the hardwood. This allows the attention of the audience to be focused exactly where it should be. The reason we are there is to see basketball being played at it's highest level.

I feel like a little kid describing this place. I guess I understood all this from my trips to the Garden in the 1990s with my dad but I never really appreciated the importance of the building until I experienced some other arenas around the U.S. And admittedly, the view from the lower level corner is way different than the upper level end zone. I'm not knocking the tickets my dad and I bought way back in the last century; they were the best we could find, after all, in the pre-internet, pre-legal-secondary market days. It's just way better taking it all in from Section 114.

Ariana Grande and Nicky Minaj are somewhere towards the center of this pic during the halftime show.

So the All-Star Game isn't exactly basketball at it's highest level. Sure some of the greatest players in the world are there and the game ends up being close in score but it's a far cry from a playoff game or a critical regular season contest. Nobody plays any defense, there are no plays being run, you can generally count the total number of fouls committed by each team on two hands and the referees call traveling less than they do in the regular season. But it is a great show and it's way better in person than it is on TV. And it's way better in New York than any other city in the world.

How great a show was it? How about Queen Latifah singing the national anthem? How about former president Bill Clinton sitting courtside? Yes, there were other stars there like Rihanna, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Spike Lee and countless NBA legends but nobody ever tops Bill. Ever! How about a halftime show with Ariana Grande and Nicky Minaj? How about Christina Aguilera and the Rockettes kicking off the evening with a tribute to New York? How about timeouts with performances by the casts of Chicago, Mamma Mia and Jersey Boys? Yep, the All-Star Game on Sunday night had all of that. I don't think we are getting all that in any other city and lucky for us our seats were about 30 feet from the stage.

But back to the game. As a contest between two teams it was fairly non-interesting. I found myself remembering why I don't watch the All-Star Game all the way through on a regular basis during the times in the game when the Garden was absolutely silent because nothing interesting was going on. Yes, the whole crowd sometimes made pretty much no noise. At all. Oklahoma City's Russell Westbrook came off the bench for the Western Conference and lit it up during the first half, scoring 27 of the West's 93 (!!!!) halftime points en route to a 41 point total output (one shy of the All-Star Game record held by Wilt Chamberlain) and the game's Most Valuable Player award.

 

I thought John Wall represented the Wizards fairly well, scoring 19 points, good for third on the East squad, on 9 of 16 shooting, although he did all that with a -10 plus/minus rating which was last on the Eastern Conference team. Before the game he declared he was going to chase Magic Johnson's All-Star Game record of 22 assists and seemed to have the East coaching staff in his corner. He failed. And pretty miserably, handing out only seven dimes in almost 30 minutes of play. I'm always amazed at how guys set these targets publicly before games. Just go out and play. Yes, LeBron missed some shots (including a wide open dunk) and passed the ball to others to kill a number of John's assist chances, but even I can't blame the difference between seven and 22 on LeBron and I don't like LeBron at all.

 

This game was truly different than any other NBA game I have ever attended, and not just because I actually applauded for LeBron James and Chris Bosh. There's an old adage that in pro basketball the first one to 100 wins. I think with the All-Star Game, it's the first one to 150 that wins. The score ended up being historically high, with 321 points total in the West's 163-158 victory and the West did, in fact, reach 150 first. But just like a regular season NBA game, there were folks who didn't stick around to see the outcome. I'm always amazed when people leave Verizon Center towards the end of a tight game just to beat the traffic. I was honestly astonished when I saw people leave the All-Star Game early. The list price on my ticket was $750. No way am I leaving before I get the maximum entertainment value with that sort of price tag.

I don't imagine I'll be showing up for an All-Star Game again any time soon. I don't think anything could top my experience in New York. I'd put Washington as a definite if it ever comes back here and I'm still a Wizards season ticket holder and I'd be tempted by Los Angeles but it won't ever be the same as the event this past weekend in the Garden. I picked a good game for my first All-Star experience.

About 2:30 to go in the fourth quarter: empty seats all around me.