Samina Gets in the Paint

Last week I crossed one more activity off my "Becoming a Clevelander" list. This activity was probably the most important, I went to a Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game. Everyone here is Cavs crazy because Lebron James is going to lead us to the Holy Land or at least an NBA Championship and then everyone in Cleveland can stop being so damn miserable.

As a former Southern California resident it's difficult to watch any basketball game that's not a Laker game. But it's "root, root, root for the home team!" even if my heart is in LA. Plus, the Cavs have SHAQ now! Who wants to see Lebron throw some baby powder in the air when, instead, you can see SHAQ shoot stiff free throws? (curse you Taco Neck Syndrome!) I DO, I DO! So when David came home and said, "Guess what?" I am getting two FREE really good tickets and a parking pass to the Cavs game on Thursday!" I said, "Thank you cardboard box supplier who works with David!"

The day before the game I called and gloated to my basketball-watching brother back in Laker Land that I was going to a Cavs game. Like a true Laker fan he spit and said, "I care not for your Cavaliers." I was okay with that. This was really about the seats!

I was slightly bummed David only had two. I prefer to go into Downtown Cleveland and new places with more people. Preferably, natives who know the Quicken Loans Arena like the backs of their mitten-ed hands. But I was going with David which means we left later than I would have liked and missed the first quarter. But the game went into overtime so maybe that makes up for missing whatever way basketball games start. Football starts with a kick-off. Which makes it easy to badger David about missing the beginning, "Seriously, you are taking a bath right now? Right now? Don't you know that kick-off is at 8 PM and it takes at least 30 minutes to get downtown?" Basketball starts with what, a whistle? a coin toss? a jump ball? Either way, I was being my usual passive-aggressive bitchy self and did not tell David when I wanted to leave. I just let him take his bath and fumed about not being in our seats before the game started.

Parking was easy because we had the pass. We were so late there was no crush of people jostling to get in so we waltzed through security. Then I followed David through to the concourse to find our seats. This concourse was like no other I have ever seen. It was carpeted, clean and well-lit! The people traversing it to get to the concession stands were dressed in business attire. The concessions were serving the normal fare, hot dogs and Bud Light but also bruschetta and gluten-free beer! I started to pull back on David's hand,"Are you sure this is where we are supposed to go?," I asked. I frantically started to pull my blue-collar down under my coat. Indeed, we were in the right place. We found our really good padded seats and smiled apologetically at our row-mates as we squeezed by. We also picked our jaws off the floor long enough to order drinks from our "designated server" who we didn't have to shout for. She just magically appeared every so often took our order and then another server came with our drinks. We weren't court side with Josh Cribbs but we were definitely far from the nose-bleed, cheap seats David sat in all last season.

Sitting in awesome seats is probably not the best way to see my first Cavs game. We will be back in the cheap seats next game not being able to see if Anderson Varejao is on the ground trying to win a "Best Exaggerated Fall in an NBA Game" award or if it's Moondog horsing around. It's all downhill from here.