• We bought our tickets on StubHub. If you’ve never used it before (I hadn’t), it’s totally legit. You buy your tickets online, and I think they’d mail them to you if there was time, but in our case we picked them up at a conference room in the Oxford Hotel downtown. All in all a pretty painless experience, except to the wallet.
• Niketown sucks. After I picked up David V at the airport, we had some time to kill, and he needed to get a Nuggets shirt. The last time I was there, which was a few years ago, I could have sworn one of the front rooms had a bunch of Nuggets or at least Carmelo stuff in it. There was none to be found anywhere in the store yesterday, even though Melo is the biggest star of the Jordan brand. But what really got me was that on the walls outside of the room where the basketball stuff is, they had a huge picture of LeBron James on one wall, and on the other…a big Kobe Bryant. You’ve got to be kidding me. Couldn’t they have paid some kid six cents to find a good picture of Carmelo?
• I remember reading about playoff games at the old Boston Garden. One characteristic of the place was that it would get really hot. The Pepsi Center wasn’t sweltering last night or anything but it was definitely a few degrees warmer than the first two playoff games I went to. It is later in the year, I guess, though yesterday wasn’t particularly hot. I really only noticed because I was amazed how comfortable it had been the first two games.
• What is was, though, was loud. The amount of artificial noise in the building was staggering. I don’t mean artificial cheering; I just mean things like the beat that goes with a “De-Fense!” chant. It never let up in the second half. I can’t imagine trying to play with that going on, and it wasn’t like it got quiet when the Nuggets had the ball. (Playing with a loud crowd would be friggin’ awesome; it’s all the fake noise that would be annoying.) If anything we overdid it and ended up favoring the more experienced team. Personally if I was, say, J.R. Smith, I would have liked a couple seconds to gather my thoughts when on the bench; the building was just annoyingly loud to the point that it got kind of uncomfortable sitting there.
The only reasonable explanation I can think of is that there were enough Lakers fans there cheering pretty loud in the first half when they’d score, so the Pepsi Center team decided to try to drown them out. I guess that’s cool, but the Nuggets were up most of the time, so I don’t think their fans would have had the edge. Besides, it’s way more fun trying to outcheer some obnoxious jerk than it is screaming when you can barely hear yourself. The tension in the air was pretty bad, though, and the Lakers fans were way more optimistic.
By the way, if you’re a Lakers fan at the Western Conference Finals, you probably should have found time to update that No. 8 Bryant jersey. Just saying. (Then again I thought the guy we passed in an old dark blue No. 4 Billups jersey was the man. Looking back those old uniforms were hideous, though.) I also saw two guys in Wilt Chamberlain jerseys. One was a lanky teenager, which I don’t get at all. The other was in his 20s or 30s and also definitely never saw Wilt play. I saw a Magic jersey, which is cool. Personally if I was a Lakers fan going for a retro look I think I’d lean more towards an Elgin Baylor or a Big Game James; what about you?
So back to the noise. There were a bunch of drummers going at halftime that were crazy loud and not my particular cup of tea anyway. The sound just lingered. Again, I’m down if the Nuggets’ locker room is soundproofed and L.A.’s isn’t, but who knows. I tried calling a friend at halftime and that was a miserable experience; fortunately the Can has these soundproofed rooms off to the side of the corridors you can hang out in.
• I had always wanted to sit in the seats where they give you the big balloons to wave at the free throw shooters, and yesterday, I did it. The Lakers shot free throws really poorly on our end, but Kobe was sinking them, so it was a pretty crappy feeling. Another cool thing was that a guy down the row had the Xerox of the NBA’s official stats for the first half, even though the story the numbers told was frightening. (I know we were up at halftime, but the shooting percentages scared me.)
• It’s funny how the fans react to the players live. After watching a few rounds we all know what the Nuggets do, and no one wants Kenyon Martin to try to do anything. J.R.’s tough to watch when he’s cold. Most guys would lose confidence in their rapid-fire threes, but not Smith. Guess that’s sort of a good thing. It reminds me of when a cornerback says he has to have a short memory, but it’s someone like Terrell Buckley who gets burned all the time and you’re like, maybe you should try to remember a little. When he drove for that shot with like a minute left, I said, “J.R., what are you doing?” and when it went in, the guy next to me screamed, “He’s scoring! He’s scoring!” then admitted he didn’t like the shot, either.
• If anyone’s going to Game Four, they did let us in more than an hour early now, not that there’s anything to do inside.
Comments
That game was difficult to watch because it reminded me of the first game. If the Nuggs could've just hit a couple of their 3s in the second half we would've won. It really sucks that both Billups and J.R. went cold in the same game.
Yesterday's Nuggets looked like the Nuggets in the playoffs the last couple of years. The were releying way too much on Melo and when he got into foul trouble we didn't have a chance. It's amazing to think that the Nuggets needed Melo's D almost as much as they needed his offense. Melo was the only one who could really slow down Kobe. Anthony has come a long way.
I don't know if you were able to see Karl's interview after the game, but I thought it was pretty discouraging. He was asked if he thought the tough loss in game one would help the Nuggs have confidence going into game four, and he basically avoided the question. I hope the players have more confidence in themselves that Karl does.
The loss obviously was huge, but given how poorly we played, we have to take heart that we were even in it. Game 4 is a must-win, and we need to get hot again to take the series.