Thursday, February 22, 2007

cK at the Toronto Raptors Game

cK AND THE BIG BLACK MACHINE GO TO SEE TORONTO RAPTORS vs. CLEVELAND CAVALIERS

Recently, THE BIG BLACK MACHINE came into some really good tickets to see the Toronto Raptors playing the Cleveland Cavaliers. He asked me to join him. We went together and upon arriving at the Air Canada Centre, we didn't know what entrance to use. Apparently, our tickets were for Platinum Platinum Club access, which was really plush and nice. When we got to our seats, we noticed little menu booklets awaiting us. We were not used to being THIS close to the game. We are usually in the cheap $15 seats in the Sprite Zone. A girl introduced herself to us and told us that our seats were part of the serving level where they actually bring the food and drinks to you. She was going to be our server for the night. We thought that was really cool.

Anyways, not to offend the server girl, but we went and got our food ourselves! We went all out, a bag of popcorn, nachos, 2 slices of pizza, 2 fountain drinks and a chocolate bar. By the time we returned to our seats, the national anthems were just about to get under way to open the game.

After the anthems played, the game started out. It was pretty exciting and had lots of fun things going on, like the music and the Raptors' Mascot bringing so much cheer to the crowd. In between plays or pauses in the game, there is a dj playing music to keep the crowd lively and energized. At one time, there was this song -- umm.. by the Sugar Hill Gang called, "Apache" that was played.. actually for quite a while. TBBM and I only had visions of that famous scene where Will Smith and Alfonso Ribeiro in "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" were dancing away. (you can see that scene here) We were re-creating the scene in our seats dancing to ourselves. Just then, the silent crowd awaiting the game to commence again began cheering for no reason. That was of course until TBBM pointed up as we were both on the jumbotron! So we just strutted our stuff!!! What else could we do??

Okay that was really fun. So the game commences and our seats are really close to the court. How close to the court do you ask? Oh.. enough for us to heckle the star player on the Cleveland Cavaliers, LeBron James and make him look back and smirk. Yes, yes, it's true! TBBM was heckling him, barking his name just when he was close enough. At more than one occasion, LeBron stopped, turned back at TBBM and just smiled. The rest of the night the Raptors were leading and then losing by 2 to 5 points. It was really close though and at the last 2 seconds of the game, it came down to one shot and 1 point away from tieing. Unfortunately, it wasn't the Raptors' night to win. It was, however a really entertaining experience!

That was it --- oh! We did get to use that serve-in-your-seat option where we requested another drink and within a minute or so, they had a person rush down to our seat with it. It's really amazing technology!

If the Raptors keep playing like this, I'd like to see 3 or 4 more games!
GO RAPTORS!!
Here are some photos of the night below: