Ninety percent of Americans are crazy about (watching) sports and big games are on all year long. Extremely popular are the NBA (basketball) and the NFL (American football) but there is also hockey, baseball and football as we know it in Europe. We had been told that watching a live sports event in the US is an absolute must so we bought tickets for an NBA game in Orlando. The Orlando Magic team was receiving the Brooklyn Nets in their gigantic Amway Arena with a capacity of 18'000. The couch surfers we were staying with in Orlando (a 70-year old couple btw!) promised us it was going to be a lot of fun but we weren't quite sure what exactly was going to be so much fun so we left their house quite excited. In our excitement we got carried away in the Magic fan store and spent our money on t-shirts and caps, Benoit even had his name printed on the back of his shirt. Because we spent so much, we were gifted with a Magic mascot monkey and a NBA-games dvd, yeah!
We had bought the cheapest tickets so our seats were quite high, which didn't really matter because like that we were able to observe everything and everyone. The game opened with a cute little girl singing for the victims of super storm Sandy; very dramatic, very American. For those who are not into basketball, just like me; the game lasts four times 12 minutes, so 48 minutes but is interrupted constantly by timeouts, fouls and the half-time so you'll end up spending more than two hours in the stadium and most of the fun actually happens during all those breaks. There are the cheerleaders, the kiss cam, the mascot acting crazy,...During half-time, an illusionist entertained the crowd and a dance school performed. The funniest thing was that Benoit got picked from the public to participate in a little contest and he won a smart phone! Because of all these things going on, we didn't care so much that 'our team' lost badly against the Nets. After all, we'd just had one of our best nights out in the US!
No comments:
Post a Comment