Well the abbreviated 2011/12 NBA basketball season recently got underway over the Christmas weekend. After being a season ticket holder for 12 years I did not renew my season tickets this year for my local team the Minnesota Timberwolves, however I am finally a bit excited about our team and have some hope of success for them. We have acquired some new young players with huge potential, a new coach with a plan, and have a renewed sense that we could be good again. While watching the game on TV a few nights ago it got me thinking about the last time I was actually at a Timberwolves game two full years ago.
As usual I had season tickets last year, but with a 1-year old daughter at home and a son due last August I ended up selling every single one of my tickets. So I have not been to see a game in person for two years, with the last one being a game against the Boston Celtics. The Timberwolves have been a horrible team for the last 6 years or so, especially after they traded away Kevin Garnett to the Celtics in the summer of 2007. Their hopelessness as a team however is actually both bad and good for people going to see the games in person. On the one hand it is sad to have to pay to see a team suck so bad, but on the other hand they suck so bad that hardly anyone ever goes to the games so you can sit wherever you want to in the arena. It's fun! My motto the last few years has been: "If a team sucks but nobody is there to see them, do they really suck?"
Okay I hope my Timberwolves rep is not reading this but my season tickets have always been the cheap $5 nosebleed upper deck seats...and since nobody ever attends the games I would usually just waltz right down to the lower deck and sit in the $100 seats, and occasionally when it’s really empty sit near the court in the $200 seats. In fact at one game my friend Mike Spicoli and I were 1st row off the court, dead center behind the scoreboard table. I knew the game was televised so I called my wife Nadia and told her to tune in so that I could wave to her on TV. Unfortunately though she tuned in to the game just in time to see us being kicked out of our seats as the real owners of the seats decided to show up a half hour into the game.
So anyways, the Wolves were so bad two years ago that even with Garnett and the Celtics in town I still found a great aisle seat in the lower deck about 15 rows up from the court. I could not find anybody who wanted to go to the game with me however, so I gave my extra ticket to a bum and settled in to my great seat by myself to watch what I though would be the Celtics beating up the Timberwolves. It actually turned out to be a great game though and surprisingly close. The Timberwolves lost of course but they fought the Celtics right down to the end and made it interesting. The only problem that night really was the douchebag Celtic fan sitting in the seat directly behind me.
He was your typical visiting-team fan doing his best to be a douchebag. A loud obnoxious male in his 20’s, fully decked out in Celtics jersey, Celtics hat and drunk. As I said I had an aisle seat and he had the aisle seat directly behind me. Every time the Celtics would score he would stand up, yell, spill his beer, point to his jersey, and take his hat off and wave it around showing it to everyone around him. I would have been embarrassed for him if I didn't loathe him so much. I am a peaceful guy, but he was so damn annoying that I just wanted to turn around and donkey-punch him right in the throat. His friend sitting next to him was relatively quiet and obviously embarrassed by his friend's antics, but he made no attempt to quiet him so I consider him a 'douchebag-by-acquaintance'.
So after putting up with this jerk for the entire the first half, we get into the 3rd quarter and things get a little hairy. If any of you have been to a Timberwolves game you know that their mascot is a guy in a big furry wolf outfit named ‘Crunch’. He runs around entertaining the crowd and does all the typical mascot things like messing with the referees and goofing around with the kids and doing massive trampoline slam dunks at half-time. One of the bits that he does once a game during a time out is they roll out a long carpet in an aisle on the lower level from the top of the stairs all the way down to the court below. Then Crunch gets on a plastic slide at the top and slides all the way down to the arena floor. It’s fun and a big crowd-pleaser.
I have seen it many times but never in my aisle, and sure enough midway through the 3rd quarter the security guys roll the long black carpet down the stairs past me to the floor below. I look back and Crunch is behind me at the top of the stairs holding on to his sled and urging the crowd to cheer him on. Everyone in the arena is looking at him and clapping and cheering and he’s about to jump on the sled and slide down the stairs when suddenly the jerk behind me jumps into the middle of the aisle and blocks Crunch from going down while waving his stupid hat around and yelling and pointing to his Celtics jersey!
Well one of the angry security guys with his walkie-talkie (they're always angry about something, I think they were born that way) comes running up the stairs and forces the guy back in his seat. So then Crunch gets the crowd going again and is just about to slide down when the jerk jumps back up into the aisle and blocks his way again! The security guy comes flying back up the aisle, screaming into his walkie-talkie and freaking out now he’s so pissed off and he forces the guy back into his seat. You can tell Crunch is getting pissed now too, but he waits patiently while they sit the jerk back down. He’s finally about to slide down and...yep...the guy jumps back into the aisle and blocks his way for the third time.
By now I’d had enough so I jump out of my seat into the aisle and grab the guy around the waist and start wrestling with him. He had been jumping up and down waving his hat around, but now he’s got me wrapped around his waist and I’m trying to haul him back into his seat. While wrestling with him I happened to look up and realize that we are on the arena's big jumbo-tron screen, which is weird because it's one thing to wrestle with a dude but it's another thing entirely to see yourself wrestling with a dude on the jumbo-tron. In addition, the entire arena crowd is watching and they are all clapping and cheering me on. The guy was young, big and strong though and I was struggling mightily with him when the insanely pissed of security guard comes running up the stairs for the 3rd time and helps me put this f*cker back in his seat.
A time-out is only a minute or two at most, so now this guy had taken up so much time blocking the stairway that the time-out was over. They were about to re-start the game so they had to roll up the carpet and Crunch never got to slide down the stairs. The bit was ruined. The entire arena booed and booed while this guy just sat in his chair laughing and nodding his head like he was the sh*t. I looked up and we were still on the big screen and he was just eating it up, laughing and gloating for the cameras that were trained on him. It was so annoying and I kept wishing they had just kicked this guy out. About 15 minutes later though I happened to look back and there was Crunch coming down the stairs towards us holding a huge bunch of helium balloons tied to a string with a black clip on the end. He had his finger to his lips up shushing me and the crowd so as not to give him way, and he sneaks up, grabs the jerk's precious hat, clips it to the balloons and throws it up into the sky.
The stunned guy jumps out of his chair and while Crunch is waving bye-bye to the hat floating up towards the arena rafters, the guy runs up the stairs after it frantically jumping up and down trying to grab it. But it is too late now as the hat is out of reach nearing the upper deck and gone for good. He comes back to his seat behind me and plops down, swearing under his breath. He just sat there pouting for the rest of the game. We are on the big screen again and the entire crowd is now clapping and jeering. The cameras go back to him several times during the game when the Wolves would score and he just sat there stewing in his seat. It was perfect...almost too perfect. Sometimes I wonder if the entire thing was staged but I don't think so...at least I hope it wasn't because it was awesome. The only way the night could have been better would be if the Wolves had won. Ah well, it was a fun night anyways.
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