You know those nights where you lay in bed at 2:30am and can’t sleep? The ones where your body is aching, you’ve been awake for approaching eighteen hours, but instead of switching off for some much needed shut eye, you simply just can’t? You just lay there in bed, wired, thoughts hurtling through your head faster than one of Allen Iverson’s crossovers.
KRS-One once said; ‘Vroom, vroom, vroom, my mind is racing’ –that line pretty much nails, head on, how I felt two hours after getting into bed following an evening at The o2 arena, watching the Toronto Raptors and New Jersey Nets play the first European based regular season game in NBA history.
I hope those of you who attend games at the ACC regularly realise just how lucky you are. Several times a month, you get to meet up with friends at a bar or diner, enjoy some laughs and talk basketball with fellow fans over food and drink pre-game. You then get to enter a grand arena, where the voices of vendors inviting you to part with cash for merchandise, or a program, infiltrate your ear drums. The smells of hot dogs, pizza, and popcorn whiff through the air, drifting up inside your nasal passage - All adding to the excitement mounting up inside and creating a sort of ‘buzz’, indicating that something is awry. You get to walk into a spectacular theatre, find your seat, take a sip of your over-priced soda or beer, then sit back and enjoy having some of the greatest basketball players on the planet entertain you for two hours.
Last night, instead of following the game on twitter while watching on some pixelated stream with Arabic commentary, I got to experience what you experience on a frequent basis. And I LOVED it.
Upon arriving at The o2, a little around four hours before game time, there were only a few people around, but you could still sense the anticipation on walking out of the tube station. That special 'big event' tingling sensation began lingering as soon as you looked up and saw the cloud-piercing arena complex towering over you. Being further roused by getting up close to the over-sized posters of various NBA players which plastered the approach path from North Greenwich station to The o2’s front doors.
As I walked past the video screens (showing an out-dated episode of NBA Action, if you were wondering) and entered into the canopy covered area, I began to sense something wasn’t quite right. On I ploughed, wandering through the various restaurants and bars on Entertainment Avenue, through the vast complex, before doubling back on myself and ending up back in the main lobby, where a giant cut-out of Derrick Rose sat next to the merchandise stand. That’s when it struck me.
Where was the fan park, video games stations and basketball hoops of ‘NBA Fan Jam’ which were present outside the building when I attended NBA Europe Live at the same venue three seasons previous? How comes there were plenty of Miami Heat, Boston Celtics, New Orleans Hornets and Orlando Magic jerseys available at the official merchandise stand, but no Raptors or Nets ones? And why were there not any NBA themed exhibitions or basketball courts set up in the two, hockey-rink-sized, areas in The o2 complex which were ultimately large redundant spaces of nothingness?
When High School Musical on Ice came to town (bear with me, it’s relevant), the entire building, inside and out, was HSM themed. Cheerleaders, video pods, an even a HSM themed ice rink were all present, with merchandise stands dotted all over the place before passing through the ticket holder’s entrance. If the people behind Zac Effron and Vanessa Hudgens could manage this, why couldn’t the world’s biggest basketball league’s marketing people do the same? There were big empty spaces which could have built revenue, or enabled young fan participation, but instead were left idle. Many of the fans I spoke with pre-game had mentioned an interested in going to the fan zone, but not to travelling to an upmarket shopping centre miles from the arena to attend it. Could the NBA have moved it to The o2? Could they have set up information booths so fans could learn a little more about the rules of the game, learn when to cheer and when to get excited? And wouldn’t it have been cool for the three national anthems of USA, Canada & Great Britain to of rung out prior to this ‘historic event’ tipping off?
The NBA definitely missed a trick or two this week, and I hope in the future (if they come back) that things are planned a little differently.
It was nice to see many Raptors fans from the continent travel across via ferries, planes, trains and automobiles to see their heroes Jose Calderon and Andrea Bargnani in action. Both received the loudest receptions during pre-game introductions, and there were several Italian and Spanish flags being waved in the stands.
During the game, aside from the few attempts by myself and a few others to get some ‘Let’s Go Raptors’ chants going which didn’t result in a total failure (most did), the building was pretty quiet. Unless, of course, you include when the dreaded wave rippled through the bowl or when fans got excited at the time out entertainment. The Raptor was quite a success with fans in the lower regions, getting a bit of co-ordinated claps going, but for the most part; even from my position two rows from the back of the upper tier, you could hear the ball bouncing on hardwood and plays being called by point guards for most of the night.
A few video board graphics of ‘Let’s Go Net’s’ or ‘Let’s Go Raptors’ would of helped raise the decibel level in the building, as would of having the chimes which promote chants of ‘DEE-FENSE’ when a team was on the attack. But no, aside from exploding during DeMar DeRozan’s show-stopping dunks, and politely clapping after drained buckets, the building was generally quieter than your local public library.
Ok, that may be slightly unfair, but when you have better atmospheres at British Basketball League games played in front of eight hundred people, you do wonder If the ‘real fans’ were kept away by the staggering ticket prices, or if too little people in attendance simply didn’t care about the fortunes of the two teams on display.
Whatever, that’s for the league executives to worry about. The Raps and Nets fans (5:1 ratio in favour of Toronto, I’d say) in attendance got behind their team, and enjoyed the game experience thoroughly. Even if the choice of half time entertainers (British violinist quartet, Escala) was bizarre at best, and nobody had a clue of the player's stat lines due to them missing from the arena's video wall during breaks in play. The game was a joy to watch, and I am envious of all of you reading this who get the chance to attend forty one regular season games, in your home city, each year.
Tonight, for one more night, we get to do it all over again. One more night of meeting up with fellow fans, one more night of vendor’s voices, one more night of concession stand aromas; one more night of sitting in a spectacular arena being entertained by a collection of the most talented basketball players in the solar system.
Tomorrow morning the NBA road show packs up and flies back to New Jersey and Toronto, but for now, it’s basketball night in London, and I, for one, cannot wait.
You can follow my experiences of the game on twitter @TomHurley and I’ll be heading to the arena early this afternoon to meet with those of you who are also heading to game two of NBA London 2011. You can catch those of us tweeters heading to the arena on the #RTZ and #rtzUK hash tags, where @Nat77 , @RaptorJones , @Euro4Raps and myself will be posting photos and tweets throughout (signal permitting). Hopefully we can encourage some more pro-raps chants and send the Dino’s back to T-dot with a W under their belt.
Altogether, now…. LET’S GO RAPTORS.
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