{"id":271,"date":"2007-12-03T21:54:54","date_gmt":"2007-12-04T05:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2007\/12\/03\/basketball-musings\/"},"modified":"2007-12-03T21:54:54","modified_gmt":"2007-12-04T05:54:54","slug":"basketball-musings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2007\/12\/basketball-musings\/","title":{"rendered":"Basketball Musings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim and I went to Port\u00adland for a couple of days. Apart from the oblig\u00adat\u00adory vis\u00adit to Pow\u00adell\u2019s<\/a> and a couple of micro\u00adbrew\u00ader\u00adies, we also went to an NBA<\/span><\/abbrev> game. Tim likes live sports, and there isn\u2019t a pro\u00adfes\u00adsion\u00adal bas\u00adket\u00adball team in Van\u00adcouver, so it seemed like a chance to do some\u00adthing we would\u00adn\u2019t nor\u00admally do. No, we did\u00adn\u2019t go to Port\u00adland to go to the game, it was a last-minute decision. The team isn\u2019t doing very well, so we could eas\u00adily buy last-minute tick\u00adets. Pro\u00adfes\u00adsion\u00adal games in North Amer\u00adica are run quite dif\u00adfer\u00adently to the rugby games etc. that I went to grow\u00ading up; here are some of the things that struck me.<\/p>\n

First off, kudos to the city of Port\u00adland for mak\u00ading the game really easy to get to from down\u00adtown hotels. You hop on the light rail, the Rose Garden sta\u00addi\u00adum where the game took place is with\u00adin the \u201cfree\u201d zone, you get off the train at the obvi\u00adous stop and walk a couple of minutes to the box office. Get\u00adting back to the hotel was equally easy.<\/p>\n

We had seats a little high\u00ader up than was optim\u00adal, but they were cent\u00adral, so it was easy to see everything that was going on. The main emphas\u00adis seemed to be on con\u00adtinu\u00adal fren\u00adet\u00adic activ\u00adity to enter\u00adtain the crowd; in fact the actu\u00adal game often seemed flat in com\u00adpar\u00adis\u00adon to the enter\u00adtain\u00adment in between the peri\u00adods or in the timeouts. I was some\u00adwhat bemused by the enter\u00adtain\u00adment at the first break being a duck mas\u00adcot and a beaver mas\u00adcot play\u00ading foot\u00adball (at a bas\u00adket\u00adball game, isn\u2019t that a little insult\u00ading?) until Tim told me they were the mas\u00adcots of the loc\u00adal uni\u00adver\u00adsity foot\u00adball teams. There seemed to be more interest in people show\u00ading which foot\u00adball team they were fans of than in sup\u00adport\u00ading their loc\u00adal bas\u00adket\u00adball team whose game they were actu\u00adally at; I gath\u00ader there was a game com\u00ading up. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t get cheer\u00adlead\u00aders; I guess I\u2019m not the tar\u00adget audi\u00adence. The ones at the game seemed to be divided into two groups. There was the acro\u00adbat\u00adic group, with women and men, where the women did acro\u00adbat\u00adics and obvi\u00adously had a fair amount of gym\u00adnast\u00adic tal\u00adent, while the men were good at catch\u00ading them as they came down from the vari\u00adous flips and turns. Then there was the dan\u00adcing group, all women, with much skim\u00adpi\u00ader cos\u00adtumes than the first group. For this group the require\u00adment on tal\u00adent and dan\u00adcing abil\u00adity seemed to be less than the require\u00adment to be skinny with long hair. At half-time there was a ridicu\u00adlous show that involved the dan\u00adcing girls throw\u00ading balls at each oth\u00ader in a dodge\u00adball game rep\u00adres\u00adent\u00ading the two uni\u00adver\u00adsity foot\u00adball teams. I got a fair bit of knit\u00adting done dur\u00ading that time.<\/p>\n

The game itself was shown in close-up on a big screen hanging over the court. Which meant that for some of the time the game was con\u00adtinu\u00ading while they showed the replay on the big screen; most people were obvi\u00adously watch\u00ading the screen rather than the game giv\u00aden their reac\u00adtions. And there was the seem\u00adingly oblig\u00adat\u00adory loud music on at all times to add to the feel\u00ading of fren\u00adet\u00adic activ\u00adity. Towards the end it was coupled with a few appar\u00adently sev\u00aden-year-olds in the seats dir\u00adectly behind us scream\u00ading their heads off to egg on the loc\u00adal team. <\/p>\n

Over\u00adall, it was inter\u00adest\u00ading to go to an NBA<\/span> game once, but I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s some\u00adthing I\u2019d repeat often. It cer\u00adtainly isn\u2019t cheap entertainment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim and I went to Port\u00adland for a couple of days. Apart from the oblig\u00adat\u00adory vis\u00adit to Pow\u00adell\u2019s and a couple of micro\u00adbrew\u00ader\u00adies, we also went to an NBA<\/span> game. Tim likes live sports, and there isn\u2019t a pro\u00adfes\u00adsion\u00adal bas\u00adket\u00adball team in Van\u00adcouver, so it seemed like a chance to do some\u00adthing we would\u00adn\u2019t nor\u00admally \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cBas\u00adket\u00adball Musings\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}