On the Inside Looking Out – Courtside at the Lakers’ Season Opener

On Tuesday, we here at Johnny California received the Los Angeles equivalent of the Willy Wonka Golden Ticket:  An invitation to sit court-side at the Lakers’ season opener.  The evening was fun, but super weird.  Part of the weirdness stemmed from the fact that not only had we never been to a Lakers’ game before, but only 180 minutes elapsed from the time this invitation coaxed us from our musty ballot proposition research pod and on to the “floor” of the Staples Center, surrounded by some of the world’s greatest athletes, icons of American film, and Duckie from Pretty in Pink.

But more importantly, we were among California Ballot Proposition superstars. Sitting right in front of us was none other than T. Boone Pickens, the bazillionaire-natural-gas-snake-oil salesman behind Prop. 10.

Gov. Schwarzenegger was there too, who even after being (unfairly) booed by everyone in the entire arena, still had that Yes-On-11 gleam in his eye.

Our seats were in the third of three rows of floor seats.   From those seats, the whole experience of watching the game was a bit overwhelming, because from those seats, we were forced to watch two different games, in two different sports, at that same time

The first game was the NBA basketball game, which is a game that moves very very fast.  There were moments when Kobe Bryant was moving so quickly that he was literally a blur.  Sitting that close, It was tough to see plays develop, the game became a series of explosive moments rather than a “whole” experience with an over-arching story.

Part of the problem was that we were distracted by the other sporting event orbiting around the basketball game.  We’re not really sure what this other game is called but it involved very famous, very wealthy people doing laps around basketball court while the basketball game went on.   Every now and again a famous someone would stop at another famous someone’ seat and whisper something into their ear, or they would point at each other and laugh, or give the occasional pat on the shoulder as they walked by.  There are definitely rules to this game, but we could not figure them out, which actually made it a lot like watching Rollerderby.

This whole two-games-at-once thing resulted in sensory overload.  As ridiculous as this sounds, it was hard for us to process a Kobe Bryant lightning-strike dunk while David Beckham was also in our field of vision, wearing some sort of designer 1991-rave-hat-urban-turban and trying to squeeze by Jeffrey Katzenberg who was whispering something into Leonardo DiCaprio’s ear.  It was difficult to absorb Andrew Bynum throw down a ferocious block with Gov. Schwarzenegger chatting up Mr. and Mrs. Denzel Washington in the background.  There was simply too much to take in at once.

The most surprising aspect of the night was the food and drink situation.  The people in the front row of the floor never need to leave their seats for refreshments.  Servers bring them menus, take their orders, return with food and drinks and cash out their tab. Those sitting behind us, off the floor in the “regular” seats never need to leave their seats either, they have the usual roving stadium/arena food vendors with the trays of beer, coolers of ice cream, etc.  But if you’re in the second or third row on the floor, you neither get front-row service nor do you get the wandering refreshment hawker.  2nd and 3rd rowers, need to get up out of their seats, which cost $5.10 per minute of game time per seat, and walk up to the main concourse, stand in line, wait for the stoned college freshman in front of them to find his credit card, and retrieve their $18 hot dog and beer themselves.

Don’t get us wrong, we’re not complaining,  we had a blast, and we’re grateful to our host.  Also, having the opportunity to witness Kobe Bryant’s superpowers up close is not something we will soon forget.

But at the end of the day, the Lakers’ game is just not our scene. We know, we sound like spoiled brats, but we’re not, we’re really just everyday, no-nonsense Johnny-The-Californias.  It seemed like everyone on the floor was having fun, but it was business-fun, not actual-fun.  When we go see sports we like to have actual-fun.  We’re sure  things are different “off the floor” but either way we look forward to April 13…Dodgers opening day!