Nobody Beats The Wiz

My friend had a few extra tickets to see the Wiz play tonight. I was stoked. When I told another friend, there was confusion. She thought I was referring to the “African American adaption of the Wizard of Oz that tries to capture the essence of the inner-city experience”. I wasn’t. I was talking about the Washington Wizards, or the basketball players formerly known as the Washington Bullets prior to the PR geniuses realizing that the team-branding concept wasn’t too wise in Murder City, USA. They were playing the Portland Trail Blazers, or the basketball players commonly referred to as the Portland Jail Blazers for their propensity to smoke the sensimilla and/or train their bulldogs to illegally fight other dogs.

It was my first NBA game in a fairly long time. It’s very different from the college game. There’s crowd noise pumped into the stadium at high decibels, the concepts of the cheerleader take on new connotations, Gheorghe Muresan is often spotted giving high fives in the stand like a real-live mascot, and they serve beer. The stranger sitting next to me leaned over at one point, “if you fly, I’ll buy.” I had never heard this saying before, and was a bit confused about whether or not he knew I had no pilot’s license. I figured it out though, spent 15 minutes in line for him, and scored a free beer. I love NBA fans!

The woman sitting on the other side of me had a stack of All-Star ballots filled out. Instead of questioning her about voting impropriety, I asked her why she had chosen to vote for Amare Stoudemire (24 times). “He’s really good.” True. That’s a decent answer, but the dude has been injured all season, and most likely will still be injured by the All-Star break (he’s single-handedly destroying my fantasy league team). I mentioned this to her. She was mildly amused, especially when I told her it would’ve made more sense to vote for Gheorghe Muresan.

The Wizards won, but if you ask me, I think we’re all winners in the NBA.