The fan experience – Euroleague LIVE

January 29, 2008

Remember when we were giving away Euroleague tickets? Steve (shown below on some pictures) won the tickets. We really did not expect a lot from those guys who won the tickets, but Steve really surprised us. Why? Just read his article! Thanks Steve!

Lithuanians specialize in 2 things; Drinking beer and Playing basketball.

I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Wednesday evening.

Beers, fried bread and pizza for an hour at a restaurant, beers on the bus to the game (wrapped in a hat, as pictured for civilized appearances), and a very convenient draft cup 4-pack (forgot to take picture) at the game made it that much better.

I only saw a few minutes of the warm ups, but I have never seen such lack or seriousness/attempt to have fun as this. The whole Rytas team took turns doing (lets change that to attempting) silly 180 reverse dunks with only about 33% success rate. I have never seen a guy get stuffed by the rim in front of 10, 000 people twice in a row! Very refreshing to see the players have fun like that, only seconds before tip off.

 

The arena was packed. The introductions weren’t as spine-chilling as the 96 Bulls, but about as good as the current Wizards intros. Within 5 mins of tip off every single seat was filled, and sometimes with more then one person. Bull horns and pesky plastic clap sticks were out and about in full effect. The megascreen on top showed a decimal meter during one point and it was peaking at about 112 Decibals of sound! I couldn’t hear my self think. The crowd was full of energy and ready to explode! A quick lead was immediately built. After the Rytas knocked down the first 5 shots (maybe 5/6 first shots) we all knew who would be controlling the game. Energy and noise engulfed the team and gave them a HUGE 6^th man advantage.

This was no regular game. This was a big step forward to winning the division, late in the season. The excitement scale was way above a regular season NBA game, but not quite as high as a student packed arena like the dean dome, going wild for beating Duke. About 80% percent that level would be a fair summary.

Hollis Price is a dangerous offensive weapon when he has the ball. His midrange jumper looks like a lay-up. Unicaja had no answer for him on defense. He looked like he was in complete control and doing things in slow motion because he wasn’t really challenged on offense or defense. There were several drives (3) in the 1^st quarter when he broke down the D and dished out perfect passes to teammates down low to finish them off. I was surprised he didn’t drive and dish much after that, because it made him look like a true Nba player toying with some tall high school team. I would have ran the drive and dish with him into the ground.

 

Speaking of true Nba forwards, Marcus Haislip looked unstoppable. Unlike Rytas, Unicaja kept feeding him the ball, sometimes on 5 straight possessions. He got fouled or scored every time! During one impressive stretch they scored on 2 consecutive alley oops (one to Haislip, one to Ndong).

Overall this was an excellent experience! The guards let us sit courtside for the whole second half!

I pretended to have semi media credentials by scribbling in a notebook and taking an excessive amount of pictures, but I think the consistently refilling beer in my left hand severely diminished the seriousness.

Here is what the view from our seats looked like:

As a Bill Simmons fan, seeing Jiri Welsh, formerly of Boston Celtic fame made me smile. He did nothing notable for his team (here or there). I remembered how Danny Ainge was excited about him and ridiculed by the press and poor Jiri bounced around a bit before his contract expired. Also, Daniel Santiago is HUGE but he is 32 and does more standing around and watching then scoring or rebounding.

To sum it all up, this was a great game

• Gracious fans
• Loud crowd
• The wave was in FULL effect
• Nice Arena—Easy to get in AND to get out
• Good beer
• Friendly Security
• Good visibility on both levels
• Dance team filled with eye candy

I celebrated all night and got home only at 8am, but that is a whole other story to be told another time.

 

 

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This post was published on January 29, 2008