The other night, I went to my first NBA game (even though I’ve been around in Chicago for over 4 years). From all records, we picked a very good game to watch. I believe it was a playoff game, the 6th in the series between the Chicago Bulls and the Boston Celtics. In English, it means the two teams play 7 games, and whoever wins 4 games first gets to move onto the next round. In game 5, the bulls lost, which meant that they must win game 6 in order to move on.i.e. this was a big game!

I must say, I enjoy watching basketball muchbetter than baseball. In the last 2 White Sox games I went to, we took a picture and left. I lasted through the entire 3.5 hours of this game, and there weren’t too many dull moments! To begin with, it is a much simpler sport to understand, with a much faster pace, that even an amateur like me can appreciate. More importantly though, with 95% of the stadium in red, the atmosphere was thrilling. I was surprised at how blatantly the audience and the stadium put down the other team, it doesn’t seem like a very nice/hospitable/good sport thing to do, but I suspecgt it is part of the charm of watching basketball- we all get a chance to let our inner high schoolers out. The scoreboards very creatively cheered the Bull’s on and called for defense when the Celtics attacked. The  audience too cheered the bulls and unabashedly boo-ed the Celtics, with the audience sitting directly behind the Celtic’s goal frantically waving shiny distractions whenever the Celtics had a penalty shot, in the hopes that they’ll miss. I especially enjoyed the half sober audience in my section, chanting things like, “Celtics sucks!”, I haven’t heard that in a long time! I would like to thank the one lone Celtic fan in my section, dressed in green, for providing me with such entertainment, as the people around shouted obscenities and threw fries at you. Yes, I take joy in other people’s misfortunes.

The game itself was pretty exciting. It was a super close call, with triple over time! At one point towards in the last quarter, the Celtics were winning, but then the Bulls swiftly caught up and pushed pass 100 points (yay, free Big Mac for us!) and they were tied. Then every time we thought the Bulls were going to win, the Celtics miraculously caught up (they hold up very well under pressure!). It’s amazing how 20 seconds in a game could matter so much in a game. I definitely got my money’s worth in terms of excitement, intensity and length of game. In fact, I personally thought it was a bit too long. After the second O.T, the boy who cried wolf came to mind. You keep on thinking this is it and you get all hyped up, but then the Celts catch up and you get another5 minutes. And it’s not just 5 minutes, no. Both sides kept on calling Time Outs, that the Love-a-Bulls cheerleaders were getting not so loveable. Finally the Bulls won by one point and all was well. It was straight out of a movie, where they struggle behind, but finally prevail in the end.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the entertainments in between the game. The tic-tac-toe, the doughnut race (too bad my donut came up short!), the people jumping on trampolines shooting hoops, the magicians who had a million different outfits (they must get ready reallyquickly in the morning), the plastic container drummers (even though I think they’re more impressive on the streets) and the parachuting tshirts. I’m by no means now a basketball fan, I’d still prefer a DVF sample sale any day, but it was definitely more fun than baseball.

Go Bulls tonight!