I am a Filipino… and I love basketball. If one reads the book Rafe Bartholomew’s “Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' UnlikelyLove Affair with Basketball”, (see my BLOG post) you could maybe begin to understand why a country located halfway across the world, whose population’s average height is around 5’6 – 5’8, could be so obsessed with a sport where height is seen as a premium. But I digress.
I am a Los Angeles Lakers fan (I could already hear the people snickering at that statement... but I don’t care, hehe). Due to the time difference between the US and the Philippines, NBA games would be playing in the morning, while most of us were at the office. I remembered how nerve wrecking the play-offs and eventually the finals were for me in 2010 despite the fact that I was only able to follow the game via the scores on NBA.com. I remembered watching that crazy roller-coaster Game 7 vs the Celtics via a cell phone on a Friday morning, so engrossed that I was unable to eat because my hands were shaking and my stomach was in knots.
I am a Los Angeles Lakers fan (I could already hear the people snickering at that statement... but I don’t care, hehe). Due to the time difference between the US and the Philippines, NBA games would be playing in the morning, while most of us were at the office. I remembered how nerve wrecking the play-offs and eventually the finals were for me in 2010 despite the fact that I was only able to follow the game via the scores on NBA.com. I remembered watching that crazy roller-coaster Game 7 vs the Celtics via a cell phone on a Friday morning, so engrossed that I was unable to eat because my hands were shaking and my stomach was in knots.
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I know I came to San Francisco to study, but part of the Hult experience is to take advantage of everything that this city has to offer. And being me, I know that I have to watch at least one NBA game while I’m here. As fate would have it, the home team Golden State Warriors, are the reigning NBA Champions and are going on a crazy winning spree and the Lakers are coming to town twice, one in November and another in January. I had originally planned to watch on November 24, but then I saw that I had class that night, I decided to get a ticket for the other date, January 20. And what an event it turned out to be, for it became Kobe Bryant’s last game in Oakland.
Here are some of the things I learned from the experience.
Because the website said that the gates open on 6:00pm, I decided to go earlier to give ample allowance in traveling there, just in case I got lost. Well, I didn’t get lost and arrived at the Oracle Arena an hour early. But to my surprise, there was already a long line of wet shivering people waiting to get in. If I thought I was a crazy basketball fan, I am a slacker compared to these NBA fans.
When we were finally allowed to go in, each person was given a free Klay Thompson bobble head doll. We were also told that if we “checked-in” to the Golden State Warriors Home Game on Facebook, we would also get a free mini jersey towel. I do not know if this is a norm in the Oracle Arena, but the any organization is pretty awesome when they give their customers gifts to recognize their patronage.
I knew that I was going to be seated way up in the rafters, and since I knew that my cell phone wouldn’t be able to zoom in to the players, I bought a camera lens kit to help me document my experience. As I was using it, the person behind me tapped on my shoulder and asked if I could email some of the photos to him because the photos he took weren’t clear. Knowing the demographics and preparing ahead of time can be vital when you want to immortalizing an already memorable event.
I felt chills trickle down my spine as the silent sold-out crowd of 19,000+ watched the glassy-eyed NBA Legend Jerry West on the jumbo-tron give his special message for the player he drafted for the Lakers 20 years ago as 17 year old kid out of Lower Merion Highschool. This tribute was followed by “Ko-be Ko-be” chants as the Black Mamba was finally called on to the floor as part of the Lakers’ line-up. When you are at the end, there is nothing like having the person who chose you at the beginning, acknowledge that they made the right choice and that you greatly exceeded their expectations.
For the first two quarters of the game, the scores were pretty close. But I knew there was a very slim chance of my Lakers actually winning the game. They were currently the lowest ranked team in the Western Conference playing against the top team in the league. As expected, the Warriors started to pull away by the third quarter to push away any doubt that the result would be anything but what was expected. People always have a lot of motivation and give great effort at the beginning of any task, but enduring to the end is what separates the quitters from the winners.
It was down to the last 4 minutes of the game. The Lakers were down by double digitals when the crowd began to chant Kobe's name. At this time he was sitting at the end of the Lakers bench, when he looked up, and unlike the previous games where he chose to just sit out the entire 4th quarter, this time, he slowly gets up and walks to the scorers’ table and checks himself in, to the resounding cheer of the crowd. He plays for around two minutes before he checks himself out for the last time. He waves at the crowd that was giving him a standing ovation. When someone has spent 20 years of his life striving to be the best and by doing so has raised the standard of an entire industry, his mere presence will demand respect from everyone.
Though I originally bought the ticket to tick one of the items off my bucket list, the game I watched turned out to be so much more. As I walked out of the Oracle Arena with the mixed crowd of Warriors and Lakers fans, I knew that I had just witnessed an event that could never be replicated. A crowd of 19,000 had just bid a childhood hero of mine farewell in such an awesome fashion and I was just grateful that I was there to witness it. Yes, the ticket was expensive but experience was priceless.
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