Before the start of the NBA season, A-Train and I went to
After stopping for lunch, we drove to the
So, being that it was my cousin Anthony’s 14th birthday, I thought what better gift than to give him two of the tickets for him and his father, my Godfather Tom. Tom had Nets season tickets on the same side, four rows behind the net, so why not? The other ticket went to my brother Chris, also a Nets fan. So it was set, we had a nice cousins’ outing planned for a Wednesday night.
Then last week happened. You see, I forgot that I told Chris, so when A-Train asked me who I was taking, I replied, “You.” Oops. I called Chris and left him a message hoping that maybe he remembered. While I was waiting to hear back from him, Tom called and said we had a conflict. Anthony had a basketball game, where he is starting guard and really didn’t want to miss it. Well, now I’m down two tickets. Chris then called back and said he forgot too and had scheduled two client appointments. Now I’m down three. So called, who else, but 3910. Luckily, he was off from work. After making a few more called, I got a hold of his brother Pat, who used to work at the Center. He was in and the last ticket went to his girlfriend, who was begging him to take her to a Nets game.
In the meantime, Tom was going to overnight his two tickets to me Tuesday at noon, so I would have them in time for the game on Wednesday. Although I trust my Godfather and know he did everything correctly, something in the back of my mind had me worried. It certainly wasn’t him, but I had a bad feeling.
My fears were confirmed when I got home Wednesday night to find no tickets. So I called Tom. No answer. He texted me back and asked if I got the tickets. He then had his wife track them. In the meantime, I called the ticket office to see if I could get a reissue. Unfortunately, the tickets weren’t tracked, so there’s no way they could reprint them. However, my buddy at the ticket office, my newfound friend, said, “It’s a Wednesday night against the Pacers. There’s nobody here. Just buy two cheap tickets, and since you have the other two tickets, send those people down, then switch.” An employee of the Nets ticket office told me this. As if I didn’t already know how it all worked.
I had to break the news to everyone that we might be split up. So I decided to give Pat the two tickets we had and told them to go, while 3910 and I stayed behind in case the tickets showed up, which Mary, Tom’s wife had said, according to UPS, they were really sorry they were running late and that they should be arriving shortly. They just were going to contact the driver to confirm. 3910 and I waited around until just before 7 when Tom called again and said that UPS lost the package.
How exactly does this happen? $110 tickets, without the possibility of reissue, now lost by UPS. What can brown do for me? They can friggin deliver my tickets and not lose the damn package!! Nice work. I could have driven down to my cousin’s house and picked them up myself.
I actually felt really bad for Tom. He was more upset than I was. And it wasn’t his fault. Overnight means overnight, not maybe if we don’t lose it, it’ll get there. You can rest assured that heads are going to roll when he’s done with them.
Yet, I digress…
1) 3910 and I drive to the Center, (it’s weird, because I’ve always called it the Arena, but that’s no longer in the name), park, walked across the footbridge, underneath the ugly monstrosity that is Xanadu and purchase two tickets upstairs, Row 1, right behind our original seats for $15. (Not bad for a replacement.)
2) As we’re walking away from the booth, I bump into a kid that I graduated high school with. He’s one of those guys with a face you never forget. “Of course, having him as a friend on Facebook helps too, but still, I probably haven’t seen him in person in years.”
3) “Lemme guess. High school? Yeah, I figured with all the Prep guy stories.” ~3910. What he doesn’t understand is something I learned before I even went to high school. No matter where you go, you’ll always run into somebody with ties to St Peter’s Prep.
4) Wow, there is NOBODY here. (The ticket guy wasn’t lying.)
5) No wonder they are giving seats away.
6) 3910 thinks that there was a bigger crowd when he played here in high school.
7) A VC Three?? Really? That’s the best they could come up with? “He should be dropping 40 a night!” ~3910
8) Wow, I mean I thought I knew it before, but now seeing it in person, Yi is awful.
9) On the other side, for
10) I’m a big fan of the Brook Lopez pick. I think he can be a stud. (And if he can’t he always has the Lindsey Hunter All Stars to fall back on.)
11) “Show us your ti….stopped the song too soon.” Let’s just say somebody had a Karen moment. It’s a moment when you say something very offensive in a crowd while there’s a lot of noise, that just so happens to stop right as you get to the offensive punchline. Yeah, we’ve all been there.
12) 3910: Is it me or is there no cohesiveness to this team?
Me: There’s no cohesiveness to this night.
3910: To this organization
13) T.J. Ford is putting on a clinic right now and Vinsanity is officially pissed.
14) During a break, they played an NBA Cares spot on the big screen with Caron Butler talkin about helping kids. I turned to say something to 3910 who was flipping the bird. I thought he was flipping off
15) Mercifully, we’ve reached halftime and 3910 points out that you know your arena needs more championship banners when you take up rafter space to commemorate Bruce Springsteen’s 35 shows and WWE’s 1 million fans, which has me wondering. How many WWE events have been here? The place seats 20,000. That would mean that they must have held at least 50. Well, I guess it’s not as inconceivable as I thought. I’ll shut up now.
16) This halftime matchup of the Matawan Aberdeen Biddy All Stars is more entertaining than the professionals.
17) Number 10 on the blue team likes to shoot. I don’t think he’s touched the ball once without shooting.
18) Coach 3910’s analysis of the white team’s offensive strategy: “They’ve run the same play three times in a row and it didn’t work.” They don’t call him the best color man in the game for nothin’ folks!
19) SWITCH!! And the second team comes in
20) Yeah you can tell it’s the second team.
21) “Number 15 is having an offensive rebound fest.” ~3910. (He also had about 3 inches and 25 pounds on all the other 3rd graders.)
22) I just flipped off the UPS halftime report. Of course the halftime stats are brought to us by UPS. So what you’re saying is that you can bring me stats, but you can’t bring me MY DAMN TICKETS!!!
23) Yi just hit a three
24) What’s going on here? Yi is hitting shots.
25) How do you say buckets in Chinese?
26) Wow, the crowd that was quiet all night, just got loud for a Danny DeVito spot telling the crowd to get up on the big screen.
27) “They got 69.”~3910. (Yeah, we’re mature late-20-somethings.)
28) Jump ball called and the stadium DJ neglects to play the timeless classic "Jump Around" by House of Pain....Oh wait, looks like he heard me.
29)The loudest the crowd gets all evening is for the t-shirt launch. I can see where our priorities are.
30) “Hey Nets fans, it’s the fourth quarter! It’s time to get loud!” ~Yi. Okay, seriously, how many takes were needed before he got that right?
31)Oh!!! Sean Williams just got owned by Jeff Foster. (Okay, now it’s officially getting ugly.)
32) A couple minutes into the 4th, 3910 said that if the Nets are down 20 with 5 minutes to go, we’re outta here. I said if they’re down 20 at any point, we’re gone
33)Ah screw it, let’s get outta here.
There’s not much that I can say that would be positive about this game. The arena sucks. The parking is makes no sense. Xanadu needs to be dismantled. The team is awful. There were no fans and it was the worst display of professional sports I’ve ever seen. Take that
Oh by the way. The tickets arrived via UPS the next morning. Nice work guys. Really. Bang up job. I wonder how you would illustrate this on your stupid white board.
