sweet in the suite

Last night the boys and I were lucky enough to get to see the Utah Jazz play the Cleveland Cavaliers. The company I work for has one of those luxury suites, and it is sweet to watch the game from the suite! I think 22 is the maximum number of people we can have in the room, and last night, amazingly, there was not that many people in the suite, so it was pretty comfortable. The game was on ESPN, the second game of their double-header, so it was a late start at 8:30. Since it was on TV, the timeouts were a little longer and maybe more frequent? We got home around 12:00, but we were so jazzed about the outcome of the game (I know, but I couldn't resist!) The last 10 seconds of the game were so exciting:

Jazz are up by 3, but Lebron James makes a 3-pointer to tie the game, leaving just a few seconds on the clock. I thought for sure we were heading for free basketball (overtime). Deron Williams takes the inbounds pass the length of the floor and lays the ball in for 2. Cleveland quickly gets down the floor and launches a 3 pointer that misses and the Jazz win! I screamed and cheered so loudly that I was actually hoarse today! It's been awhile since I was that excited during a game.

I've watched the NBA since I was a kid. I remember watching Magic and Bird and loving that Laker/Celtic rivalry. We also watched the Jazz whenever they were on TV. My favorite player back then was Adrian Dantley. When I played basketball with the boys in the neighborhood and we picked who we were, I was always A.D. I was a big Malone and Stockton fan and one of the reasons I was glad to move from Idaho to SLC was the fact that the Jazz were here and I'd be able to go see some games. I have been to many games and it has been great. I even liked the team when they weren't very good. It's better when they are good, though!

It's been fun for me to watch the games with my son. Last year he played Jr. Jazz basketball and part of the package was 2 tickets to a Jazz game. The game we got tickets for was against Dallas and it was Coach Jerry Sloan's 1,000th coaching career victory. That was cool. The bad part was that we were in the very top row of the whole arena. T was horrified. This kid has been lucky enough to watch many games from the suite and even sit in the 3rd row of a preseason game with Phoenix. (Also very very cool!) So to him, sitting in the top row was terribly inconvenient and not much fun. We still had a good time and we'll do it again, but you just can't beat the suite.