As a blue-collared young professional, whenever my colleagues and I are fortunate enough to attend a game, we find ourselves trudging up endless flights of stairs staring wearily at a ticket that reminds us we belong in the 300s. Much like Gerard Butler’s movie, our 300 experience is fraught with perils like overweight, under-clothed freaks, dangerous projectiles, and the chance of falling over a ledge to our death.
We do, however, embrace the overwhelming level of true fan support up in the thin air, and are afforded the luxury of avoiding some of the most irritating elements of watching the game at home:
– The game is on TNT. Giving me Ernie, Kenny and Charles before the game and Reggie Miller during it is like going to a restaurant where Scarlett Johansson is the hostess and Courtney Love is your waitress. Reggie and Courtney both peaked in the 90’s, were only good from long range, and are the one sexual encounter thousands of men regret most. I don’t want to deal with either of them while I’m eating.
– The game is in Miami or LA and you are water-boarded into seeing immeasurable amounts of douche-baggery in the form of indoor sunglasses. A fashion choice that seemed contained in Euro clubs has become a courtside epidemic, rendering everything our grandfathers fought for meaningless. We throw Vujacic and Gasol onto the court for five minutes and every t-shirt and pair of jeans starts to auto-shrink like Marty McFly’s jacket in 2015.
The latter has become more problematic because we can always simply watch our local broadcast to eliminate the drivel. We get it, you scored second row tickets behind the opposing bench through your dad’s firm and he is heading down to Montenegro yielding two extra tickets. You invite your best friend and the hottest girl either of you are acquaintances with. As a result of the overwhelming offer they are not only too jaded to offer realistic advice, but are obligated to approve of the evening’s attire. As a result you enter the stadium with your go-to acid-wash jeans, extra medium Tee and lightly tinted, oversized shades just in time for the 8 p.m. tipoff. At this point, this three-headed dragon has used every media vehicle to let the world know they will be on TV for every timeout, panned bench shot and breakdown of attending celebrities. For the extra fortunate, they are posted up behind the scorers table and get prime face-time, competing only with the even hotter girl texting the entire night and Frank Caliendo product placement trucker hats.
While the ratio is absurdly in favor of non-daywalkers, there is a guarantee that big name, primetime games will attract at least 12-17 of these folk, not named Jack Nicholson. There is an understanding that cities like Miami and LA carry extreme cultural differences compared to Middle America or your less glamorous city, but saying it’s OK to wear sleeveless shirts and sunglasses at a hoops game is like saying 2012 was this years Hurt Locker. Sidenote, like many things, there are tolerances. Example: an overweight fellow wearing a sleeveless “Beat LA” tee with chest lettuce poking out of the top is very much more adored then the shaved, tanned up gym rat sporting a deep vee with dragons and card suits plastered all over. This falls into the same principals as using “their”, “they’re” and “there”, sound the same, but much different.
In review; we have seen fads and trends come and go, some leaving as quickly as they swept in but these newly acquired Heat fans are vandalizing several unwritten rules. Yes, the notion that Miami is more of a novelty act then an actual fanbase may be known to even the casual sports followers makes them an even bigger target. And yes, Heat home games are a Joan Rivers short of being a red carpet event. Can’t we form our own, smaller tea-party rallying for the end of sunglass-wearer-at basketball guy/gal?
Now excuse me while I go work on this wheatgrass latte.
