As a fitting close to our Summer League memories our Official 2007-08 Blazersedge Poet Laureate DrDave has penned an ode commemorating his trip to watch some of the games. (Note: despite people continually insisting on confusing the two of us because of the name similarities this is NOT me!)
Random Thoughts
on the
Vegas Summer League
Like baseball under cover or football on a rug,
basketball in July rubs rough against the purist-polished hide.
A hundred an' fourteen in the shade? A wind-whipped rain is more fitting.
I grab my dog-eared program to identify the camel-haired white kid:
a coach's son from Boise State.
If you come for excellence, expect small doses
as former supernovae fade to red dwarves on this stage,
underachieving from weariness.
The pre-lottery, post-lottery, pre-draft, post-draft, jet-lag blues
is the genre featured here.
By nature, we elevate our champions above reality
yet we witness more mediocrity than superiority.
Speculation and Analysis are siblings skipping merrily through the crowd.
But come November, who will remember...
as they, from behind the walls of time, laugh out loud.
Just down the street,
games of a different sort...
Boa-clad women...
World-class performers...
Highwire acts.
So...why am I drawn here ?
Maybe more for what's on the sidelines
than the offering on the court.
For the mere fan, a chance to rub shoulders with legends
otherwise protected by handlers and rope barricades.
(those granite floorguards locked at 'parade rest' give me the creeps)
Autographs and handshakes come easy. Perhaps bump into a Bird or West.
Porter and Lucas in the same hour?
A hug from the ticket lady (if it's your birthday).
For a country boy - a memory mecca.
For a country boy's son...fodder for future fatherly fables.
Sixteen hundred miles @ $3.25 / gallon for gas - not to mention food and lodging...
extreme...(I agree) for a weekend jaunt to the torrid desert.
But having the company of a son/friend and the simple pleasure
of a handshake and smalltalk with fellow fans,
witnessing the future of the NBA,
literally meeting it's past,
I shamelessly admit to extremism.