Welcome back to BASKETBALLWEATHER, you know you love it.
Status has been on my mind all week. You know — the kind we all love to chase. Our entire society is set up for it, everything, it’s embedded into every experience we have, from the way we fly, 1st class, coach, etc, to the way we’re expected to eat at restaurants. Back table or table by that little area in the back where the waiters have to rub against you before they walk into the kitchen.
I enjoyed myself at the Clippers game earlier in the week, it was a hell of a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, and it was great to go see some ball in Los Angeles in person for half the price you would spend at a Lakers game. I even took the subway to the game, an amazing perk of my new living situation.
Feeling nice and tipsy during the 3rd quarter, I left my buddy behind and took a walk to the little area where they’re selling season ticket packages for the new Intuit Stadium, which the Clippers are slated to move into next year.
For those who haven’t heard of it yet, the Intuit Stadium is Steve Ballmer’s newest pet project. It supposedly has enough toilets and urinals to never make you wait to go to the bathroom.
As a lifelong Lakers fan I felt a tinkle of guilt as I got to the season ticket table, but good basketball is good basketball and just because I have season tickets to the Clippers doesn’t mean I would suddenly stop rooting for the Lakers.
Right?
And let’s say I did stop rooting for the Lakers, then it’s what was meant to be. The reality is that I am on a “waitlist” for Lakers seasons tickets, and it might be another 5-10 years before I ever see those tickets materialize, so what I’m left with as a fan of L.A. basketball is a choice: Wait till my hair turns white to get season tickets or jump into a new team’s arms. I choose vibes.
I needed to stop and think about it a little bit as I was having some doubts, so by the time I finally get to the booth, I’m a couple more beers in. A few Clippers reps are there showing off the new stadium on their Apple computers. I tell the rep who turns around when I walk up that I’m interested in season tickets and he smiles and starts to show me the 3D model of what it’s going to look like.
I’m an easy target — very easily impressed, but also kind of a basketball snob, so when he finishes showing me an area on the 3D model sorta kinda far from the floor, I tell him that I’m looking for seats that are good enough for the spouses of the players on the team.
His index finger slides down the mousepad; below the standing-room-only area, and he’s now navigating me into the sexy area. I tell him this is more what I had in mind.
But then he tells me the price. When he first says it, I’m like okay cool that’s a lot, maybe I can make it happen if I choose basketball over my kid’s college education, but then he tells me that the price he just quoted is for one seat.
Damn, I say, one seat? That’s a lot for one seat.
He tells me that there are perks.
Such as?
There’s access to a VIP area called the Red Room or something like that where you get free food, liquor, and can hob nob with all the others who have the same.
Cool, I say, is this the only VIP area? Or are there others?
He fingers the mouse a tiny bit, and then says that there is one other VIP area that is reserved for those guests who purchase floor seats.
Floor seats? I say, making it sound like I might be interested…
How come if you pay enough money for something you get the access?
And is paying over 100K a season for floor seats the only way to get the access?
I’ve been in those rooms before. They’re not exclusively filled with people who paid money. There’s more interesting ways to get invited and there’s something about paying your way into something that doesn’t sit well with me.
I guess walking up to that booth — I was, you know, expecting a different outcome. I’m not even sure what. Something that isn’t a Lakers game feel. You know what I mean?
Kardashians left and right, famous athletes, skulking Hollywood types, a see and be seen kind of a crowd. And that’s cool, I like a little razzle dazzle. But this is the Clippers. They’re supposed to be pure.
I know, I know, I should’ve known.
I’ve been to arenas in various parts of the country, and from Los Angeles to Cleveland, they’re all the same. Like first class tickets, 8pm reservations at David Chang restaurants, hotel upgrades, and nightclub vip tables — it’s always about membership and exclusiveness and blue check marks that trick the people who can “afford” it into feeling superior to the rest of us.
Maybe in my innocent little naive Los Angeles Clippers fandom I was hoping for something a bit more Clippersy. A stadium that had enough toilets and urinals to treat us all like equals shouldn’t have more than one “vip area.” But in getting the deets from the Clippers reps what I got was the opposite of pure, and as unsurprising as that is, it still broke my heart a little. I guess I may as well be a Lakers fan after all.
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