Matthew Monday: Our First Professional Basketball Game

I had never attended a pro basketball game in my life.  I was never really a fan.  I might watch a few minutes on TV but I never had any allegiance to a team.  Then you have a son who likes basketball, and for some reason he becomes a fan of the Brooklyn Nets.  So for the past couple of years we followed the Nets through the newspapers.  It doesn’t hurt that I grew up in Brooklyn.  It’s a thrill to have a home team I can root for.  I never considered the other New York teams home teams for me!  

So in the last few years the Nets made some big trades to get some star players and they competed for the division. Today their two big superstars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving remain on the team and they have added some quality depth to help them out.  This year they started off losing, replaced their head coach, and then won something like 20 out of 21 games.  A super streak.  Unfortunately Kevin Durant got hurt recently and they have struggle to win as many as they lose with him out.  So they have fallen back a bit, but hopefully he’ll be returning soon.

We went last Sunday on January 15^th, and they were playing a below .500 team, the Oklahoma City Thunder.  Why did we pick that game?  Well, the prices of the big name teams were a lot more expensive, and so for a seat in my price range ($100/seat) we got better seats for the Thunder.  When we bought the tickets, we didn’t know Kevin Durant would be out.  That would have altered our choice, but what can you do?  Them’s the breaks.

The Barclay Center, the Nets’ arena, is in downtown Brooklyn, which has limited free street parking and very expensive pay parking.  So I gave Matthew the entire Brooklyn experience.  We drove into Brooklyn into my old neighborhood and took the subway to downtown to the arena.  I tried to take a picture of Matthew on the elevated subway platform, but he refused to cooperate.

I also took a picture of the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower.  This was iconic for me growing up in Brooklyn.  For the longest time, this was the tallest building in Brooklyn.  According to Wikipedia it was the tallest from 1929 to 2009 and spans 41 floors.  Brooklyn has gotten a few skyscrapers since then, but we don’t have the same fetish for heights that they do in Manhattan.

 

The Barclay Center isn’t all that picturesque, but its short height does make for an interesting contrast with its surrounding environment.

Here’s the view from our seats.  It looked closer than the camera makes it seem.

 

The little snot finally let me take his picture inside.  He’s proudly wearing his Nets jersey.

One of the ushers took our picture.

So we got to go down to court level during warm ups.  I think this is Day'Ron Sharpe, a backup forward.  But I’m not entirely sure.  Here’s a photo and a video clip.

 

 

Here’s the one video clip we got of game play.  The red are the Thunder and white Brooklyn.

 

 

The score was close most of the game, but unfortunately Nets lost 112-102.  But it was still a lot of fun.