DALLAS – So there I was last Friday afternoon in Austin, Texas, a little over 48 hours before the historic 2010 NBA All-Star game would take place just 200 miles away in Dallas. Somewhere around 100,000 tickets were said to be sold, including an unquantified number of $30 Standing Room Only “party passes.” The Great Recession of 2009 had left me nearly flat broke when they went on sale last year though, so I remained ticketless and with little hope. Then I read an interview with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, where he seemed to up the ante on what this event could be.
I don’t think Cowboys Stadium has really been leveraged as a party destination the way it can. I think people are going to be pleasantly shocked. It’s more designed to be a night club than a destination for a sporting event. And because this is really geared toward fun, I think it’s really going to shine,” Cuban told the Dallas Morning News. “You’re just there to have fun. I think that makes a big difference. No one’s betting on this game. No one’s screaming and yelling. It’s just ‘Are you having fun? Yes or no.’ That makes for better people-watching. That makes for better enjoying of libations and such. It’ll be a lot of fun.”
Cuban was probably engaging in a hype game, but all this talk of unprecedented, newly leveraged fun seemed to demand personal investigation. I hit the Dallas and Austin Craigslist ticket boards, trying to find someone who might unexpectedly have found themselves with a couple of those party passes to sell for face price. Most were asking around $60 apiece, while some pirates sought $100. Then I saw a posting that more of the party passes were now on sale at Ticketmaster.com – one click later, he shoots, he scores! I knew prospects for getting a decent view of the game were slim, but how could any serious NBA fan pass up the chance to attend this historic contest for a mere $30 and a three-hour drive? Not to mention that a California friend had just relocated to Dallas that week for a new job, providing free lodging to boot. It had clearly become a mission from God.
On Saturday afternoon, this Cleveland native grabbed every piece of Cavaliers gear he owns and hit the road to Dallas. As I drove into Dallas around 7:30 PM, the downtown skyline appeared lit up in majestic grandeur – one of the tallest buildings in the city was lined with green neon and sported a huge all-star logo with Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki and none other than King James down the side of the entire building, a nice touch indeed. The scene around the Mavericks’ arena where the All-Star Saturday night festivities were being held wasn’t quite as festive as I imagined (probably due to the chilly weather), but the downtown restaurants and bars were indeed packed with basketball fans enjoying plentiful libations while watching the slam dunk contest.
When Cowboys Stadium first appeared in our sights on Sunday afternoon, it seemed like some sort of extra-terrestrial mothership that had journeyed across the cosmos to attend the historic party. ESPN’s Henry Abbott would write that while the venue is called Cowboys Stadium, “it feels more like Cowboys Death Star.” It does have some of that sterile Death Star vibe going on, although I figured that with a population of somewhere around 100,000 NBA fans (it turned out to be over 108,000) instead of stormtroopers, the venue might take on a more pleasing atmosphere. Phoenix Suns guard Steve Nash was also taken by the sci-fi vibe.
This is a beautiful building, but it’s so big that in some respects you couldn’t even see many of the 108,000 people. It was surreal in that way,” Nash told ESPN after the game. “I felt like I was in a spaceship.”
The question would be how many of the 108,000-plus could see Nash and his fellow all-stars do their thing on the largest basketball stage in planetary history. We were taking no chances with traffic and arrived plenty early, looking to be there right when the doors opened to get a spot in that GA baseline area. Thousands of others had the same idea, expecting to enter around 5 p.m. But despite the fact that those thousands were freezing their butts off – the temperature was a chilly 40 degrees – the gates would not open until 5:30 PM and Jerry Jones’ minions could not be convinced otherwise. Bad move Jerry – people were actually huddling in the auxiliary mens’ room outside the stadium just to try and stay warm! This was no way to get a historic party started.
When the gates finally opened, we rushed inside with everyone else. Most of the stadium would take a while to fill, as only the GA party pass holders felt a need to show up early. But did we really want to stand around all night struggling for standing room space? Hell no. Surely those trained in the fine art of Jedi mind tricks could find a better location. The 200 and 300 level seats didn’t seem reachable, as we were cut off by club level ushers, so we kept climbing the stairs until we reached the top level. There was hardly anyone up there so we went around and sat at mid-court. The first thing you notice is the ridiculously massive TV screen above the court, which utterly dwarfs all perceptions. It’s beyond gargantuan. We attempted to observe the players warming up, but it was tough without the screen because we were so far away. Was that LeBron James shooting threes way down there? The player wasn’t wearing his jersey yet, so it was frankly hard to tell.
After a few minutes, we decided that this spot probably would not do. But using Jedi mind tricks to improve one’s position takes timing. You need to wait until the place is starting to fill up so you can then attempt to see where there might be an opening. We decided to kill some time by going back down to get some all-star merch from the team shop. An event such as this must be commemorated. It was a total zoo in the shop, so by the time we got out of there game time was approaching and we were ready to get some drinks and go find some seats.
This is where I was looking to verify Mark Cuban’s assertion that Cowboys Stadium is more designed to be a night club than a destination for a sporting event.” If this were really true, there should be lots of bars serving a wider variety of adult beverages than your standard stadium/arena fair. On this point, Cowboys Stadium came up short. There didn’t seem to be any bars in either the upper or lower main concourses where you could get an actual cocktail. There were endless beer kiosks that Miller Lite seemed to have cornered the market on with their 16 ounce bottle, and a few sporadic food stations that also had 12 ounce bottles of Dos Equis and Pacifico available. Other than that, the only other alcohol we saw for sale was frozen margaritas. One can only therefore suspect that Mr. Cuban’s experience at Cowboys Stadium has been limited to the club/suite level, which is probably totally tricked out.
We bit the bullet on the Miller Lite and turned our attention to finding seats. We could always go back upstairs, but since we were already downstairs, why not scope out the lower bowl? This turned out to be surprisingly easy as we waltzed right in to a lower corner section and sat in two aisle seats behind four fans wearing Celtics jerseys. They were about to welcome us until they saw my Cavaliers jersey, which soured them just a bit. But I had to give them some credit for seeming to acknowledge that the Celtics brief resurgence in the Eastern Conference was about to give way to the reign of the James Gang’s Wine & Gold.
Scoping out the crowd since we’d first arrived, it seemed that either a lot of Cavaliers fans had journeyed down from Cleveland or LeBron James was simply the NBA’s most popular player. The hometown Mavericks were the only team that seemed able to challenge the Cavaliers for most fans in attendance. One might expect that the NBA All-Star game would feature fans from around the league, but outside of predictable representation from fans of the Celtics, Lakers, Spurs, Rockets, and Heat (thanks to Dwyane Wade) there were very few other team jerseys to be seen. Even notorious New York Knicks fan Spike Lee punked out by wearing a Yankees hat listing the Evil Empire’s many championships instead of his usual Knicks gear – weak sauce Spike.
The team introductions featured musical accompaniment from hip-hop star (and Cavaliers minority owner) Usher, of which we had a close view. LeBron attempted to rally his mates in a few dance moves, but nothing here could match the moves that Shaquille O’Neal threw down at last year’s game in Phoenix. It felt odd not to see Shaq out there with the all-stars, although he would indeed still make his presence known. And while something seemed wrong with the fact that James was the only player representing the team with the NBA’s best record, he was at least joined by Cavaliers hype man Ahmaad Crump, who intermittently appeared to rouse the crowd just as he does at Quicken Loans Arena (aka The Q) in Cleveland.
As the game got underway, the crowd seemed surprisingly subdued. Cuban was right about at least one thing – without a strong rooting preference, the crowd vibe was definitely different. But it seemed more like the distant indifference that comes from being so far away from the action than “having more fun.” The early atmosphere could not begin to approach the electrifying intensity of a BCS bowl game, for example, or even a first-round NBA playoff game. As the fast break action began, it started to become clear that alley-oop dunks were the only thing that would get much of a rise out of the crowd. I could only imagine how fans in the 400 level felt. We soon feared we’d find out when another person came to sit on our row, forcing my companion and I to vacate the row.
But the basketball gods were on our side as we merely walked around to the lower corner on the other side and found two more aisle seats close down to the floor on the other side of the baseline stage. The sight lines still weren’t great, as a stadium like this is just not built to proper basketball viewing angles. But we had a nice clear view from the corner and were about as close down as one could be without being on the floor, so we were quite pleased to hang on to these seats for the rest of the game. We would find out from a neighbor that these seats retailed for $285 and some in the section had paid nearly double that for their tickets. But our neighbor didn’t begrudge us sneaking in with our party passes. “I’m not a hater,” she said. The way we saw it, calling the tickets “party passes” gave us carte blanche to party where we pleased.
The game started to pick up as each spectacular dunk by LeBron, Wade and Chris Bosh stirred the crowd a little bit more, and the high-scoring first half was indeed quite entertaining. Halftime turned into an unexpected treat. When Usher had performed, I had commented that someone like Alicia Keys or Shakira would have been more entertaining. I became a prophet at halftime when we surprisingly received performances from BOTH Shakira and Alicia Keys! We were even able to go down onto the floor for up-close viewing of these sensationally sexy pop sirens. Mad props to the ushering staff at Cowboys Stadium for letting the fans have the run of the place (and to all the beer vendors who patrolled our section regularly.)
As the East blew a 14-point second-half lead and the West rallied to nearly send the game into overtime, the crowd started to take on more of a rooting interest, with most understandably rooting for the West. But an interesting juxtaposition took place when a dapperly-dressed Shaq appeared down on the floor by our section. Despite the fact that the West had a chance to tie or win the game in the waning moments, most fans in the section were more concerned with trying to take pictures of Shaq or get down onto the floor to try and shake his hand or get a picture with him. This soon caused the self-proclaimed “Head of Witness Protection” to disappear under the baseline bleachers.
The crowd was on its feet as the West had a shot to tie or win in the final five seconds, with Mavericks fans being clearly disappointed that the Nuggets’ Carmelo Anthony attempted the shot instead of their Dirk Nowitzki, but so it goes sometimes. Despite an excitingly tight finish, the game will certainly be more remembered for the atmosphere at Jerry Jones’ palace in Dallas (nearby Arlington actually) than the game itself. But as Cuban had predicted, this contest was more about being part of the record-setting atmosphere than the game itself.
This was a historic event,” game MVP Dwyane Wade told ESPN afterward. “It felt like we were on stage. [When] we went out there to warm up, we were like kids.”
ESPN’s John Hollinger called it a “brave new world of All-Star games,” suggesting that the NBA can’t possibly go back to holding the event in 20,000-seat arenas after selling five times as many tickets in Dallas. “One presumes that after next year’s affair in L.A.’s Staples Center, the NBA will start emulating the NCAA Tournament’s model of holding the event in mega-domes — sightlines be damned — and taking advantage of the hoards of paying customers that Cuban and Jones proved were out there,” wrote Hollinger.
The question of sight lines is worth further examination, for even the lower bowl did not provide great ones. Could there be a way to enhance them? But the bigger question is whether the “Brave New World” venue size that enabled five times as many fans to attend is the main story. An argument could be made that charging fans for mostly pricey tickets to a game that they could view better on the giant TV screen than by looking at the court is a greedy money grab by the NBA that would be better described as “The Empire Strikes Back.” But in the final analysis, the sale of what seemed like somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 SRO party passes at only $30 apiece helps Jones, Cuban and the NBA to contend that it really was all about the fans. Was it more fun to be there as a Witness than to be watching on TV at home? Hell yes!
