I am mere hours from stepping into one of the more storied hockey venues in the world as I will be in attendance to see the Blackhawks visit the Red Wings this evening. As far as hockey arenas go, this is one of the ones I'm really most excited for given its relative age, tenant and history. The Red Wings have been among the most well-run franchises in professional sports for the last 20 years and tonight I will get to see, firsthand, one of the more unique arenas in the League.
This will be a fun and appropriate capper to what has been an enjoyable few days in Michigan. This state is actually the only one of the upper Midwest that I had never spent much time in, so not only was I happy to get a taste of Ann Arbor and various staple eateries such as the Maize and Blue Deli or The Cottage Inn, but I've also gotten the opportunity to try what has to be the greatest named beer I've ever heard of in my life, which was of course, a local brew from the city of Detroit known as.... Ghetto Blaster.
I won't even claim to be above the fray on this one. We absolutely bought a pitcher of this beer simply because the name was hilarious and the word "blaster" made me immediately assume this was the type of beer that would be produced by some combination of events on The Wire and at Mos Eisley Spaceport. Whether or not they serve it at the cantina, I can't say, but if Han drank it he would almost certainly be shooting first. The beer itself isn't half bad, though I wouldn't consider it great.
Also, I was only hit on by one man, which, even as a heterosexual, was kind of disappointing. I'm just going to assume they could tell I wouldn't be interested.
Of course, the biggest event so far was my visit to the Palace of Auburn Hills to see the Pistons beat the Nets in an entertainingly high scoring, and defensively nonexistent affair. The Palace is an interesting arena because it's more than 20 years old and yet as the forebear of the modern wave of luxury-suite laden basketball and hockey arenas, it actually holds up very well. It hardly seems as old as it is even though some of the murals are a bit out of date, such as the one depicting the three-time WNBA champion Detroit Shock, who have since moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Also, the ubiquity of dumbest basketball GM alive Isiah Thomas is less than inspiring if you're a Knicks fan, but otherwise the building has aged better than George Clooney in a number of senses. If I had been told it was four years old, I would have believed it.
Of course, 48 hours later, the far more meaningful event of the week, given the fact that both teams are still alive and have won Stanley Cups in the last three years, is happening tonight, and I am pumped. I have no idea what traffic heading into Detroit will be like, but I'm optimistic that I'll have plenty of time to see how the place looks and hopefully scope out that statue of Gordie Howe they've got. And there's also the outside chance that I'll get to see Chicago clinch a playoff spot depending on what happens between Dallas and Colorado, an event that, remarkably, in all my years of attending sporting events would be a first.
Of course, for that to happen, quite a few chips would have to fall into place. Beggers can't be choosers. I'm just happy to be there.
And if they serve Ghetto Blaster on tap, I may just be even happier.
It's that time of year, people. The time I start to forsake my friends, loved ones and job for the ultimately foolish experience of carefully timed trips to see sports venues.
Yes, I know that I did already make trips to see the Philadelphia 76ers and Washington Capitals earlier this year, but this right here is my first two-fer and the first time I've actually needed to board a plane to get anywhere. Of course that plane ride started off somewhat bumpy when I found out that Spirit Airlines is actually not the deal they claim to be because they actually charge you $30 to bring a carry-on bag onto the plane. Isn't avoiding bag fees the whole reason we pack light and make carry-ons to begin with?
In any event, the trip since then has been entirely smooth as my good ol' buddy Lindsay was at DTW in no time to pick me up AND THEN WE HAD CULVERS.
So yeah. So far it's been good. The reason for all this commotion of course is that over the next three days I will be knocking two vaunted names off the list of 122 that I have not yet seen before in the Detroit Pistons and the Detroit Red Wings. I actually did see the Detroit Tigers four years ago when I was a senior in college, but even including that day trip from Chicago, I've spent almost no time in Michigan in my life so this will be something of a new experience, and considering that I had completely forgotten about Culver's being in Michigan, this is already worth the trip.
I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I was particularly excited for Friday night's game for multiple reasons, namely a) Joe Louis Arena, the Joe, looks to be something like the Fenway Park of hockey, b) my seats are going to be awesome, c) they're playing the Blackhawks, who I always enjoy seeing, d) the Blackhawks may well be playing for their playoff lives that night.
It should be fun all around.
Of course, the basketball game comes before that, which should also be fun because the Pistons, in terms of historical significance, I find to be one of the more underrated franchises in North American sports. Their history includes names like Joe Dumars, Isiah "I'm an awful GM, but really a pretty good basketball player" Thomas, Dick Vitale and the recently Hall of Fame-inducted Dennis Rodman. You know, back before the transformation.
Of course, as the 11th-ranked team in the East that history isn't having much of an effect on the Pistons right now, nor is it on the 12th-ranked Nets whom they'll be playing tonight. But if anything, it'll probably be better basketball than we saw Monday night when the Butler Bulldogs went colder than Michigan in January in the second half of the NCAA National Championship Game. During one stretch, Butler went a stunning 1 for 22 from the field in the second half.
So yeah. That may have been the worst National Championship Game I've ever seen. Hell the women's game the next night was better. Really.
And those teams had something to play for, unlike the squads I'm seeing tonight, who will mostly be jockeying for possible Draft lottery positioning. Then again, that's something the Nets are probably used to at this point, unlike their Prudential Center co-tenants, my New Jersey Devils. The Devils played Pittsburgh last night to an eventual 4-2 loss in an utterly meaningless game as far as New Jersey was concerned. This is tough to see as a Devils fan, but considering the last time the Devils played a regular season game with nothing on the line and no playoffs to look forward to was on April 2, 1989, I suppose I can live with it. Bizarrely, those Devils were disappointed to miss the playoffs after getting one win away from the Stanley Cup Final the season before. Also, hey, the Mets are somehow in first place, so how bad could life really be?
Of course, those teams would have plenty to play for in the coming seasons. Who's to say what will happen for the Pistons and Nets after tonight? As for what happens tonight itself, well, probably some mediocre basketball.
But I will be there to find out. And that's the important thing.
When I perused my twitter feed this morning an interesting thought came to mind when I saw this tweet from @TheHappyRecap noting that of the four New York sports teams he follows, the one that had a starting wide receiver accidentally shoot himself in the leg while wearing sweatpants was probably the least embarrassing. Because I went to sleep fairly early last night, it was after this that I saw that Francisco Rodriguez had gotten himself arrested last night after apparently taking a swipe at his father-in-law at Citi Field following the Mets 6-2 loss to Colorado.
The only way to understand how Isiah Thomas could have been in charge of the Knicks for so long is to assume that he must have had some sort of dirt on completely inept Knicks owner James Dolan. How else could we explain the recently embarrassing news that New York was bringing Thomas back into the fold as a consultant just two years after he completed running the 'Bockers into the ground? Naturally this didn't go over well with most of the fan base, and fortunately for all of us, NBA bylines deeming the deal a conflict of interest with Thomas' day job as the head coach at FIU have saved us all from those best laid plans.
But, like I said, this isn't just about the joke-a-thons that are my favorite teams. The Jets, Rangers, Nets and Islanders, a team once nearly purchased by a man with no money, have all had more than their fair share of misery both on the field and off over the past few decades.
So as I sit here, I'm going to make a rare plea to my four readers and ask you to submit some comments and ideas. Of all the teams, not necessarily in New York, which has had it the worst?
If you're a pained, suffering fan, you'll know what to do.
I preface this entry with the warning that 99% will probably not care at all about most of what I write about. Don't worry, there's some basketball later. But sometimes you have to do some things for yourself. You know, artistically. So here we go.
Perhaps one of the biggest highlights of my recent jaunt to Israel was a chance encounter with a group of Australian teenagers at our hostel in Jerusalem. No, not that kind of chance encounter. This was a collection of 18-year-old men who hailed from Sydney, and what made the meeting so exciting for me is that it provided a rare opportunity to talk football.
I'm talking about footy, AFL, Aussie Rules. Thiskind of football.
I've made mention before of my affection for the Geelong Cats, and I always enjoy the rare chances to talk shop with a native Aussie or any other AFL fan. I'm far from an expert on the game, but in a year or so I've picked up my fair amount of history, and in this case, given that I had just had one of my rare opportunities to use a computer 15 minutes earlier, I actually had the upperhand knowing Western Bulldogs had knocked off St. Kilda in the final of the NAB Cup, a preseason NIT of sorts for the AFL.
Happy to deliver the news we riffed about Gary Ablett and Leo Barry, names that you surely have never heard of before, and both of us compared our own joy over sportsfandom triumphs, in my case Super Bowl XLII, in his Sydney's nail-biting win over West Coast in the 2005 Grand Final, ending a 72-year title drought for the Swannies.
My favorite moment probably came when he asked me if Tom Brady was a huge celebrity in America. I suppose I would have sounded just as silly if I queried about the Australian popularity of Nick Riewoldt.
It wasn't all positive. Sydney has dealt Geelong a heartbreak or two, including one particularly brutal loss in the 2005 Qualifying Final, when the mercurial Nick Davis scored four unanswered goals in the final quarter. But I chose not to bring it up because a) I wasn't watching footy yet when that happened, and b) I was having too much fun just talking footy at all.
I mention this because, as I'm sure you all know, Geelong opens its 2010 campaign tomorrow at the bright and early hour of 4:40 a.m. ET against the Essendon Bombers. Now, surely I would be crazy to wake up early enough to watch this showdown at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, but I never claimed to be sane, and I will be in front of the computer with my navy and white hoops on. If anyone wants to come over to watch the excitement, let me know. There will be beer. And chips.
Surely you're all wondering how you can watch tomorrow. While AFL was dropped from its contract with the premium channel Setanta Sports a year ago, ESPN360.com, or as it will be known next month, ESPN3.com, is showing several live matches every weekend, while ESPN2 will have a few live matches throughout the summer, as well as a live broadcast of the 2010 Grand Final on September 25th.
My Cats are defending champions, as some of you may recall, after topping St. Kilda in a thrilling Grand Final last fall. They're coming off their second premiership in three years and third straight appearance in the AFL's championship match, but there are many issues the team is sorting through as the season begins. For starters, tomorrow's game will be the 200th in the Geelong career of Joel Corey, a man responsible for one of the biggest plays in Geelong history as you can see above. Other topics concern whether or not the young Tom Hawkins is due to break out and become a start, how the team will manage in its first year without captain Tom Harley, who retired this offseason and the always tense saga of whether or not Ablett, last year's Brownlow Medalist and considered by many to be the best in the game, will leave Geelong for a lucrative offer with upstart Gold Coast, which begins play as the AFL's 17th franchise next year. The potential distraction, as well as the aging roster even has some of the Cats players thinking this will be their last chance before the window of opportunity closes to take another title.
So basically, yeah, there's a lot to talk about. Get excited. If you can't be bothered to watch online, your first chance to see footy on ESPN2 comes in 15 weeks when Geelong faces Hawthorn, who no doubt will be looking for revenge after essentially getting knocked out of the playoff race by the Cats a season ago when Geelong overcame a 35-point deficit to knock off the Hawks.
Get excited.
Oh yeah, basketball. That NCAA Tournament thing starts again today, and while I will be watching, I'll mostly be rooting for Cornell to knock off Kentucky, thereby ensuring that none of my Final Four teams make it to the Elite Eight and clinching my worst bracket ever. To be honest, at this point I'm far more interested with seeing if the Nets can win one more game (they defeated the Kings last night) to stave off the sole position as the worst team in NBA history. I feel that if Kentucky does, in fact lose to Cornell today, John Calipari, who ironically never had a team this bad when he coached the Nets, will probably take it with more grace than Nets CEO Brett Yormark.
Say what you will about how mismanaged the Knicks were under Isiah Thomas, and don't get me wrong, they were about as mismanaged as a professional sports franchise can be, but at least Bert and I weren't given no guff when we donned our own paper bags a few years ago. With your team chasing the title of "Not the worst team of all time" perhaps it might be wise to avoid an acrimonious relationship with your fan base. After all, you never know when they'll start protesting that you have a job.
The dull box of Brendan Byrne Arena has played a much larger role in my youth as the first home of my New Jersey Devils, and likewise Madison Square Garden for the New York Rangers, but remarkably enough, I had actually made my first visit to the Byrne a month before that fateful loss to Toronto, when I went to see the Devils’ co-tentants, the New Jersey Nets. My first professional basketball game was on November 11, 1995. That morning I was playing in a pee wee football game in Summit, New Jersey, when a parent of one of my teammates offered my father their tickets for that night. I had never been to an NBA game before, so I was fairly excited, but despite that, I remember shockingly little about the game itself.
The Nets were playing the Sacramento Kings, this much I recall, and the Nets won by an 86-84 score as the Kings fired up a three-point shot at the buzzer that bounced off the rim. The more impressionable aspect, however, was the horrific weather that night. The Meadowlands of northern New Jersey are a large flat area where wind can pick up and wreak havoc, which has often been an element of difficulty for punters when the Giants and Jets play across the parking lot. On that particular night, when there was a massive thunderstorm, my father, my friend Matt Nedostup and I sprinted from the arena to our car, at one point on the trip seeking refuge behind a parked 18-wheeler as a break from the swirling winds. By the time we were once again under a roof we were completely soaked.
Much of the in-game experience that night is a total mystery to me. What I remember of the arena itself has long been pounded into my head by my many trips there to see the Devils, and the inside feels fairly similar except the center of the action is wood rather than ice. I’ve only been to a handful of Nets games in my life, though a game in 2003 between the Nets and Pistons does come to mind. The Nets were a double casualty of both only a scant interest in the NBA in my childhood and the fact that when I finally did get sucked into professional basketball, it would be the Knicks that I’d call my team.
This was a bad decision. I first paid attention to the Knicks in 1994 during their seven-game loss in the NBA Finals to Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets. I rooted for them and remember watching Patrick Ewing standing on the scorer’s table and soaking in the cheers after defeating the Indiana Pacers for the Eastern Conference title that year. But I also liked Michael Jordan and the Bulls. How could you not? I wasn’t the most enthusiastic follower -- really I was mostly a fan of the legendary NBA on NBC theme music -- and didn’t really settle myself as a fan of a particular team until 1999. The first half of that season had been cut short by a lockout, one of many monetary squabbles between two different sets of rich men that rarely get any sympathy or understanding from the public.
In reality, collective bargaining agreements do broach a number of serious issues and determining how to divide the pain is no small matter.
By the time the playoffs rolled around for the shortened campaign, the Knicks snuck in as the No. 8 seed, and did so as a fairly different group from the one that made the finals five years earlier. John Starks was gone in favor of the energetic and controversial Latrell Sprewell, likely the biggest difference between the two teams. Sprewell was so deemed controversial because in December 1997 he had been told by P.J. Carlesimo, his coach with the Golden State Warriors, that he needed to “put a little mustard” on his passes.
Sprewell responded by choking Carlesimo.
Sprewell wouldn’t play again for 14 months until the Warriors dealt him to the Knicks at the start of the shortened 1999 season. With Spree, a self-described changed man, providing energy off the bench while Larry Johnson and Allan Houston created from the perimeter, the Knicks stunned the NBA with a remarkable postseason run that saw them get past the top-seeded Heat on a late runner by Houston in Game 5. New York was only the second No. 8 to advance to the second round, after the 1994 Denver Nuggets, but they would be the first to reach the conference finals after a sweep of the No. 4-seeded Atlanta Hawks.
One round later against the infinitely clutch Reggie Miller and the hated Pacers, the Knicks would become the first No. 8 to reach the NBA Finals in a dramatic six-game series that featured Larry Johnson’s miracle four-point play in Game 3 and forever cemented Sprewell’s place in the hearts of Knicks fans. The Knicks would fall in five games to a vastly superior Spurs team that featured the almost unbeatable frontcourt of Tim Duncan and David Robinson, but my mind was made up.
This was my team. I was a Knicks fan.
For the next decade I would wonder how I could have gone so wrong. While the local Nets would trade for future Hall of Fame point guard Jason Kidd, who led them to two straight Finals appearances in 2002 and 2003, the Knicks would wallow in mediocrity until hiring Isiah Thomas to be team President in 2003, a move with longterm consequences so far reaching and so disastrous that by the time he was forced out in 2008, New Yorkers were wishing they were merely wallowing in mediocrity again.
To recount Thomas’ myriad mistakes and poor decisions is an interminably frustrating exercise in masochism. During his tenure, Thomas traded for former Coney Island phenom Stephon Marbury, a man with a long history of being a difficult ball hog as well as a locker room cancer. Marbury’s greatest accomplishment as a Knick might have been providing comic fodder during a sexual harassment lawsuit against Thomas and the front office when he admitted on the stand that he had lured an intern into his truck for sex. Not to be outdone, Thomas also traded two unprotected first-round draft picks to the Chicago Bulls for Eddy Curry, a vastly disappointing high draft pick with a known heart condition. When asked about how Curry could improve his rebounding once, his former coach Scott Skiles said, “Jump.” One wonders how difficult it was for Bulls GM John Paxson to hide his laughter when Thomas first called up to offer the deal.
The Knicks would be horrendously bad during Thomas’ tenure, and moves to add Zach Randolph and sign Jerome James to a five-year $30 million deal only compounded the pain. James is often forgotten when recounting Thomas’ mistakes, but he may supplant Curry as the most awful. James would only play 90 games for the Knicks in three and a half seasons while averaging a whopping 7.72 minutes per game. At one game I attended against the Milwaukee Bucks, the Knicks were being thoroughly handled when James finally made his first appearance late in the fourth quarter. Much of the depleted crowd cheered wildly whenever he touched the ball and completely erupted in cruel mockery when he actually score a basket.
As one fan yelled from behind me during the next possession, “Give it to Jerome! He’s got the hot hand!”
At another game against the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2007, my friend Bert and I attended fully prepared with grocery bags to wear over our heads. Unfortunately, that night was one of those rare instances when the Knicks actually defeated a team vastly superior to themselves, but we still took a picture for our records, and were asked to pose with the bags on for a photo by some visiting Cavs fans to boot.
While my first Knicks game came after their inspiring run to the 1999 Finals, it was actually before the Thomas Circus did everything short of literally burn down Madison Square Garden to ruin the franchise. It came on January 24, 2002, on a night when I clearly shouldn’t have gone. A junior in high school, I had my AP U.S. History midterm waiting for me the next morning, and after settling in for a night of cramming everything from a different Marbury in Marbury v. Madison to McCulloch v. Maryland, I got a phone call from my friend Jon Weg telling me Bert had given him two tickets to that night’s game. Clearly, the more practical option would have been studying for the exam, but who was I to turn down a gift?
To maintain some foolish notion that I was actually studying, I brought my notebook with me as I walked to the train station and met Weg on one of the cars. I assume my mother wouldn’t have allowed this, but fortunately for me she was at some sort of meeting at the time. When Weg and I sat in the car, I distinctly recall him having a terse interaction with the conductor. While Weg is generally something of a provocateur, this all fell on the conductor. The cost of a round trip ticket at the time was $8.50 and Weg handed the conductor $10 and two quarters, expecting to get two dollars back. Instead the conductor gave him back his 50 cents along with the remaining $1.50 in small coins.
“I wanted bills!” Weg told him.
“Well, you can enjoy your quarters.”
Weg drove home his disappointment by loudly reading the conductor’s number off of his hat and saving it to his cell phone. For whatever reason, the conductor seemed undeterred by the threat of a complaint being filed by a 16-year-old, rightfully so perhaps. Weg never did file a complaint, but as he showed me at a Mets game later that year, he kept the conductor’s number saved for months in case the mood struck him.
Unlike the Nets, this game I remember quite thoroughly. Knicks games at Madison Square Garden, when the team isn’t atrocious, are an exciting affair. The Garden and the tenacious fan base create an atmosphere that is difficult to replicate when you combine both the intensity and the intimacy provided by a smaller arena. On this particular night the Knicks were coming off a dominating win over the Toronto Raptors, and responded by giving the fans a tremendously flat first half against the Phoenix Suns. After the second quarter the Knicks trailed by 18 points and the crowd rained down a deluge of boos as the players went to the locker room. My only joy had come from taunting the Suns’ Bo Outlaw because he had such a peculiar free throw shooting form and the Garden PA announcer referred to him by his given name of Charles.
This was far different from the later years when a poor performance might have been expected. The Knicks had made the postseason 15 straight years and were only three seasons removed from a Finals appearance. The Knicks weren’t in the midst of a good season, but this still wasn’t the team I had been used to watching on TV for the past few years. According to the game story the next day, Knicks coach Don Chaney apparently unloaded on the team in the locker room at halftime.
And they responded.
The Knicks came out blazing in the third quarter and turned the tables with lockdown defense that held the Suns to just 33 points in the second half. New York rallied for a 96-91 win much to the excitement of the gathered crowd. Interestingly, this makes the Knicks the only one of my four favorite North American sports teams to win the first game I saw them play in person. Weg, ever the friendly and bubbly sort, was hugging and high-fiving strangers all around him as the final seconds of the clock ticked away. I joined in the fracas while frantically reminding myself not to leave the history notebook I had stashed under my seat.
I came home and did a poor job of forcing myself to study, or at least I think I did. The academic part of the evening is hazy at this point. But I do remember letting it slip to my math teacher, Mr. Fox, that I had shirked my studious responsibilities for the sake of a basketball team that was 10 games under .500 at the time I decided to go. Mr. Fox was a great teacher, a good man and one of the primary reasons I consider myself to have succeeded so well in high school and later college. However, this time we didn’t particularly see eye to eye. You never spoke out of turn in Mr. Fox’s class, nor did you ever show up late or without your homework done. To be fair, he was only expecting the same dedication when it came to academics from his students that he gave to them. And when I told him I had attended a basketball game instead of studying his silent disapproval was a clear sign of how he felt.
But he was also a Rangers fan, so clearly he couldn’t be right on everything. Moreover, I don’t know how I did on that exam, but Dr. Conlon, my history teacher, never knew as far as I know. And that’s probably a good thing since she wrote me a letter of recommendation when I applied to college later that year. As for Mr. Fox, he must have gotten past my irresponsibility. He wrote me a recommendation, too.
