Airing Some Grievances

I went to two basketball games in the last two weeks.  On December 10, I saw the Celtics play the Nets in the Barclays Center.  It was nice to be there for the first game Pierce and Garnett played against the Celtics since being traded, but it was weird to see them wearing a different uniform.  There were a lot of Celtic fans at the game and it was cool to hear them acknowledge Pierce and Garnett.  I would love to be in Boston for their first game back, but that won't happen.  Deron Williams and Brook Lopez played well and the Celtics lost.  But I have no grievances with the Celtics to air.  It's clear that they made a great deal with the Nets.  Three first round picks for two guys that weren't going to help them win anything anymore.  And those might be some good picks.  Also, Brad Stevens is going to be great.  I hope he's the Celtics' Gregg Popovich.  He just needs to find his Tim Duncan.  My only possible grievance with the Celtics is that they're winning too many games.  Obviously, they're not good enough to go anywhere in the playoffs (maybe they could win a first round series in the East, but the Heat and Pacers are the only two contenders in the conference).  But they're just not bad enough to be one of the worst teams in the league.  My ideal scenario would be the Celtics missing the playoffs (they'd need the Raptors or Knicks to win the division) and getting lucky in the lottery.  Even if they don't get a great draft pick, I feel confident about the future with Brad Stevens and all those draft picks.

My view in Brooklyn.

This past Saturday I went to Madison Square Garden for the BlackRock Gotham Classic.  Notre Dame was taking on Ohio State.  It was my first trip to the Garden since the renovations have been completed.  They did a good job.  I like it better than the Barclays Center.  There's still something special about Madison Square Garden.  The Barclays Center looks like it was designed by the Goth kids on South Park (the inside, at least).  Of course, New York City is ridiculous and is forcing Madison Square Garden to move in ten years.  How many hundreds of millions of dollars are going to be wasted on that?

Anyway, they weren't selling tickets for the upper level of the Garden, so I ended up behind one of the baskets.  My seats were actually inside the hockey rink.  That was the closest I've sat at a basketball game since I was in college, but I have to say that they weren't very good seats.  For one thing, I was too low.  I was about at the height of the backboard.  You don't have good depth perception when you're down that low.  Also, the height differential between the rows behind the basket is not that big.  That means that you kind of have to look around people to see the action.  On the near side of the court, I couldn't see the floor.  On outside shots, I couldn't tell if it was a three or a two.  And the last problem about sitting behind the basket is that the basket itself gets in the way of your view.

Close to the action, but not a great view.

Of course, the biggest problem was the performance of the Fighting Irish.  I didn't have high hopes considering Ohio State was ranked number three and we haven't played too well so far. But we hung in there in the first half, going in down by seven.  We came out with a great start to the second half.  The atmosphere was really good even though only the lower level was full.  Ohio State definitely had more fans, but there were a lot of Notre Dame fans there also.  The crowd really got into it when we took the lead.  Jerian Grant made a couple of beautiful jumpers and we led by as many as eight.  With a 58-50 lead with a minute to go, it looked like I was going to see the best win I've ever seen in person for Notre Dame basketball.  And then everything went wrong.  Eric Atkins fouled out and we had no idea what to do without him.  Garrick Sherman was playing in the middle of the zone with four fouls and not playing any defense to avoid fouling out.  Come on, Brey, you have to go offense-defense there.  Ohio State scored, got a quick turnover, and scored again.  At 58-54, it felt like we were going to find a way to lose.  We quickly turned it over again and committed a foul.  They ended up outscoring us 14-3 in the final minute of the game.  Bad times.  Terrible loss, but it's just a December basketball game.  That win would have been great for us, but no single game in December is going to ruin your season.  If we had a loss in football that was equivalent to the way we lost that game, I probably wouldn't want to speak to anybody for a week.  I won't overreact to a basketball game, but then yesterday it was announced that Jerian Grant (our leading scorer) has been kicked out of school.  It looks like our streak of making it to the NCAA Tournament is coming to an end this year, but there have been other years when things looked bleak and Brey found a way to make the tournament.  But yeah, I'm not too optimistic about ACC play.

What I didn't realize until I printed the tickets the day before the game was that it was a double header.  Bryant took on Delaware in the second game.  I would guess that at least 95% of the crowd cleared out after the first game.  I had no idea where Bryant was (Rhode Island), but they brought a small, but rowdy contingent to the game.  There were hardly any Delaware fans.  My dad and I moved to seats right by mid-court.  We only stayed for about the first ten minutes of the game to catch a train.  The last basket we saw was a sweet alley oop.  It turns out we missed quite a game.  Delaware won 108-107 in overtime.  If we had stayed, we wouldn't have gotten home until after 2:00 in the morning with the train schedule.

Delaware vs. Bryant

This was the first of my three straight Saturdays of Notre Dame sports.  Next up is the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium.  Hopefully the football team will perform better than the basketball team.