Season Ticket Review: Bored
I couldn’t tell you the score of Friday’s Skyforce game. In fact, I had to look it up.
Game 16: February 6, 2009
Fort Wayne (10-15) at Sioux Falls Skyforce (14-13)
Actually, I wouldn’t know if the fourth quarter was as exciting as it seemed to others. I wasn’t there.
I won’t try to convince you that D-League basketball is always great. It’s not, as we saw Friday night. On one hand, we had the Fort Wayne Mad Ants (seriously, it seems like we play them every home game these days) who were running crazy, playing like, you know, the game mattered.
On the other hand, the Skyforce; camouflaged in Military Night uniforms, blending into each other as if drops of mercury rejoining the site of a spilled thermometer. They played sluggish. They didn’t care.
And, for that reason, either did we.
This was our first night seeing last year’s MVP Kasib Powell. I had hoped for a good showing, and he didn’t disappoint, seemingly the only guy who had even bothered to commit to the game. Unfortunately, his play was overshadowed by the rest of the group. A group that was tired. A group that couldn’t be troubled to fight through that tiredness. A group that was as uninterested to be there as we were come halftime.
It was a date night, and we were excited to be there without Sierra. It turns out that the best part of the evening was when we left, went to Culvers, and watched as the guy blending my Concrete Mixer was giving more of an effort than the paid basketball players we had just left.
It was sad. There were a lot of people there to witness a good time. And I know the Skyforce are a better team.
Listen to me. An angry fan, just another railing against the professionals, telling them to know their place, bitching about poor play with a ham-fisted series of lame accusations.
It was probably just an off night. But whether or not it’s because we go to fewer games, or because we were expecting something better – payback for the last two Fort Wayne losses, perhaps – or simply because we’re getting tired of being losers at home, I took the loss personally.
I took their lack of effort personally.
I took the game personally. I just hope they did the same.