Season Ticket Review: On hiatus
No. I’m not sure how these games will be. No, I’m not going to write about the half-time shows or the bad outside shooting. No, I won’t be boring you, the faithful reader, with a recap of how the opposing team has two players that may have been drafted in a draft that I watched on television during my honeymoon in New Orleans.
Games 16 and 17: February 25th and 27th, 2007
Fort Worth Flyers (18-12) at Sioux Falls Skyforce (17-14)
I won’t be doing that. I’m not going.
Now, now – before you start posting vicious rumors on the Sioux Falls Skyforce Message Board announcing my resignation from Skyforce fandom, I’m not mad at the team. I’m not ditching my allegiance. I’m not looking for some sort of pity party because after 15 straight home games, I’m missing two. I’m just tired.
That’s all. I’m tired.
We have just arrived home from a weekend long, blizzard-filled trip to the Twin Cities. We saw good friends, we watched good basketball and we sat around in a nice hotel while the world outside frantically sought out its shovel and mittens. We drove for nearly five hours in difficult Interstate conditions. And now we’re home, and it’s an hour before the game, and we don’t think we’re going. It’s too hard.
Being a season-ticket holder can be a bane as much as a boon. It means that we’re locked in to certain games, seemingly forced to go because, after all, we’ve already purchased the tickets. So while I do it with regret, with painful, torrential dismay, I will not be going to the games.
We may have had enough basketball for the week, anyway. Friday night was our annual Timberwolves trip – a yearly excursion to the Target Center to see our favorite team in tough battle against the Minnesota juggernaught. Or, in the case of this season, the jugger-NOT. Ha!
Usually, I’m forced to watch my beloved Indiana Pacers lose horribly as they are outmanned, pushed around, and generally despoiled on the opposing court. In other words, they suck it up, leaving me wondering what exactly I got for my $40 ticket.
This year was different. We visited Kerrie’s team: the Phoenix Suns. And the Suns, if you haven’t noticed, actually play basketball as if they had practiced it once or twice in their lives. It was fun; a few hours of high-flying cavalcade. It was a far cry from the Skyforce.
One thing I have to admit – I never really fully understood how bad the sight lines are in the Sioux Falls Arena until I spent 15 straight games shuffling around to see in front of the tall guy in front of me, then experienced a real basketball stadium and witnessed the feat of engineering that is “true stadium seating.” We were fair way back – at the Arena, we’d have been about six feet above the roof – and we had a better view than our regular season seats offer from a sight perspective.
There’s one other thing I’m going to complain about – because, after all, isn’t that why I write about the Skyforce? I will go ahead and guarantee the Argus Leaders utter failure in getting a full story on the Skyforce game to print both tomorrow and Wednesday. This is a local team – one of our biggest. And we never get a full story. Rarely do we get a picture. Often, we get two paragraphs. The AP feed would offer more of a synopsis of the game. Does the city just not care? Or has the Argus deemed the Skyforce so low on the sports totem pole that high school wrestling warrants a section-wide overhaul, but the longest running Sioux Falls professional team can barely make it off of the “news and notes” column?
And the road coverage is even worse. When the Timberwolves go on the road, does the Star Tribune grab a few sentences from the AP wire and leave it at that? No. They send someone to cover the game. It’s kind of a big deal when your professional team enters into enemy territory. Now, I’m not asking the Argus to send someone out there – but shouldn’t someone at least listen to the game on the radio? Or go to the NBA D-League website and get some stats? Two longish sentences won’t cut it.
No wonder no one knows how the Skyforce – or any local professional team – are doing during the season.
Anyway, Tuesday night we’ll be at a seminar, so we’ll be missing that game as well. This comes at a most inconvenient time – we’re playing the Fort Worth Flyers – the team currently 1.5 games ahead of us for second place (and just one game out of first). Two wins puts us not only higher in the standings – it gives us a great shot at a first round bye and home court advantage.
So these games are kind of a big deal. Hopefully, the Argus will have a rousing recap of an important game. Or, maybe, we’ll just find the same thing we always do – two paragraphs, a “oh by the way” coverage and a general care of indifference. Of course, maybe it’s not their fault.
Maybe they can’t see for the sight lines either.