Big Adventures, Little World

The NBA is the United States’ National Basketball League and is the biggest and best basketball league in the world featuring the best of the best players. They have played pre season games in London for a number of years now, but this year marked the first year that they were to play a regular season game in London. Not just one game though, it was two games being played over two nights.

So on Saturday night we made our way out to The O2 Arena to see the New Jersey Nets take on the Toronto Raptors. Now let’s be honest, they hadn’t exactly chosen the best teams to play the games in London, but due to some last minute trades, New Jersey had picked up one of the best point guards in the league and recent All Star in Deron Williams, while both teams did have quite a few decent players, though not really super stars.

Having never been to The O2 Arena before, that was an experience in itself! It’s not just a stadium but an entire entertainment district including exhibitions, cinemas, night clubs, bars, restaurants, and of course the 20000 seat multi purpose entertainment venue. The arena is huge and we were sitting up near the back on the fourth level and looking straight down with a view over the whole court, which made everyone on the court look tiny. The place was pretty much full as well and made for a good atmosphere, although it was nothing like I imagine an NBA game in the US to be like at all.

After New Jersey had won the game the night before 116-103, Toronto were out to make amends. I didn’t want this though as I was going for New Jersey because of Deron Willimas, Elese however was going for Toronto because they are dinosaurs. Once the game started there wasn’t really too much going on though, and it wasn’t the most exciting of games. There was at least some great bits of play and some impressive dunks, and seeing some of top basketball players in the world made it great watching nonetheless. It wasn’t until the last quarter things really started to get interesting though with New Jersey coming from behind to put the game into overtime. Overtime began and went basket for basket until Toronto pulled out by 3 with about 10 seconds to go. New Jersey called a timeout and then on the inbound play, Sasha Vujacic made a big 3-pointer to tie the game and send it into double overtime. The second overtime was much of the same with i going basket for basket before Toronto ended up tying the game to send it to a third overtime period! It was a marathon game that just didn’t want to end until about a minute to go in the third overtime Toronto were leading by 7 points and the game looked over. This was when I said to Elese that a minute is a long time in basketball, which was then followed by the Nets coming from no where to take the lead and end up winning the game by a point. By this time the game had been going for over 3 and a half hours due to each overtime the teams would receive another time out and two 20 second timeouts as well, all of which went for about three times their alloted time. It was an epic game and a great finish to the London trip for the teams, and as fans we couldn’t have asked for a better game to watch in the end.

Other than the game though there was a number of things trying to get the crowd involved that just didn’t seem to work like I imagine they would in the US with all the screaming and passionate fans that truly get into the game and support their team. It was the best experience that it could have been though for an NBA game outside of the US given that not many people really were supporting any team in particular and were just there to see the game. The atmosphere just wasn’t quite what it could have been, but that has now just made me want to go see a few NBA games over in the US, like a game in Madison Square Gardens in New York, or the Staples Centre in Los Angeles. Maybe for the next season!

NBA @ The O2 Arena