Bobcats @ Hawks: Twenty Dollar or Less

Since I have been breaking the bank with my recent forays to Philips Arena, I decided to formulate a plan to spend less than $20 on dinner, booze, parking and good seats at a Hawks game. This is the Lola Sports Talk Recession Special.

The Recession Special begins with a cheap, 100 level ticket.

Being the strategic ticket shopper/sports paparazzi crazy person that I am, you will notice I got  a seat by the Hawks player entrance. This is essentially buying a raffle ticket for the sweat drenched headbands Josh Smith throws to fans on his way to the locker room every game.

The price of the ticket was deflated because of the opponent (the Bobcats) and the hometown (Atlanta), so I bought the cheapest 100 level seats possible, knowing that there would be a plethora of empty seats available that I can move up into. It’s like buying the smallest house in a really nice neighborhood.

I’m like the Sebastian Pruiti of breaking down how to get great tickets cheap, frame by frame.

Parking directly under Philips is $10 (cheap for sports venues) and you can even park curbside outside the club section for $30. I selected option C and parked a half mile away FOR FREE in the neighborhood of CastleBerry Hills. The neighborhood overlooks train yards that you may recognize from AMC’s The Walking Dead (specifically when they went to rescue the handcuffed redneck on the roof). The bridge across the tracks has been the scene of many a roman candle duel between my late, great friend Low and myself.

After spending $26.46 on the actual tickets, we still had $13.54 to play with. We spent $7 on four pieces of fried chicken and some mac salad. I’m fortunate enough to be friends with the 2009 Nashville Hot Chicken Champion and I had some hot chicken sauce in my fridge, so I was able to spruce up my meal. Other meals available on this budget are Wendy’s dollar menu and just buying some chicken thighs at the supermarket and baking them (the healthiest route).

At the Jets/Giants game (debacle) a few weeks ago, I snagged a large amount of these “Green it” towels they were giving away. The Jets performance in the game so so pathetic that I have been using the towels around the house, to clean things, as a dishrag, wash cloth, or in this case, a napkin. Can you tell I’m still bitter?

With the remainder of our $20 a piece budget we bought Eight 8 ounce Budweisers to drink on the walk and two tiny bottles of gin to smuggle in. I’m pretty sure I could have made the beer money stretch further but I didn’t want to buy anything that ended in “Ice” or “High Gravity”.

Side tangent alert: How come beer and cigarettes are the only things you can buy where you can “supersize” for the same or even less money? Like if you go to McDonalds and order a number 3 and then ask to get it supersized, the price goes up 50 cents (I’m really out of touch with McDonalds pricing). If you go to the cigarette store, the 100′s, the longer version of the regular cigarette, costs the same as the regular one. If you go to the beer store, Bud Ice, which has MORE alcohol in it than regular Budweiser, costs LESS than regular Budweiser? How does that make sense?

Unfortunately for me and my friend D, Indian Summer had finally run out. Icy winds whipped across my face, bringing with them flashbacks of winters along the Hudson River in Manhattan.

An unoccupied horse and carriage rode by. I would have loved to hitch a ride, but it wasn’t in the budget.

“Looks like a level from Halo” Said a passer by. It touched my heart someone still cared about Halo.

Since I bought the tickets a few hours before the game, they were emailed to me. I have a fancy new iPhone 4s and I simply downloaded my ticket. When I arrived at the arena, I presented my phone, the woman scanned it and I started walking in. I was then stopped by this guy (he was missing a front tooth which set off my crackhead sense) who said they weren’t allowed to scan phones and I had to go with him to the ticket office and get a copy printed. “I thought we live in the future?” I said. “We do live in the future, just here at Philips Arena they told us we can’t scan phones” he replied.

At the ticket office printing out my ticket proved to be a painless experience. We may not live in the future, but the dreaded trip to Office Max to print out a ticket to a Hawks game is a thing of the past.

All season I have been documenting some of the wacky stuff they have been selling at the Hawks memorabilia auction. So far we’re seen a plaque commemorating LeBron James’s Rookie of the Year award, Jordan on the Wizards and a painting of Michael Jackson. I am slowly beginning to think some Hawks exec is discreetly having a yard sale. This week we have MLK, Jordan and Ali and a Bama Plaque. Nice to see Joe Namath getting some love.

And a herd of elephants running through a sea of red waves in the twilight. What the hell? What does this have to with the Hawks? It’s probably some of that yard saling exec’s kids stuff.

Food Note: If you walk through the CNN center to the game there is a food court with non stadium priced foods, including a Chick Fil A which, as you can see, is visible from inside Philips.

I’m pretty sure that you can buy the Chick Fil A and walk it in so that you won’t be subject to the bland foods available inside the arena. At this point I’m a certified expert on food at Philips, I’ve sampled everything from the suites to the nosebleeds and I can tell you it’s pretty bad. The food selection there is equatable to the Cleveland Cavaliers of a few years ago. The Crepe Stand was LeBron James, superhumanly carrying a woeful, talentless roster. Unfortunately during the off season, management made “The Decision” to discontinue the crepes.

SkyHawk posed with me for a picture with me, even though I was wearing a Bishop Eddie Long coat I found at a thrift store. SkyHawk is just glad to be back, not all mascots were able to weather the storm in the lockout.

As suspected I was able to move up a bunch. I can finally cross “going to a Hawks/Bobcats game off my bucket list.

Here’s the Hawks cheering section. I’m sure they all are legitimately Hawks fans, but this whole thing is set up as they get free seats. The Arena has to add this psuedo fan section so that TV cameras can always cut to, to give the illusion that the crowd cares and is pumped up. if you look around them you can see how pumped up the crowd is.

I’ve tried to talk to them before but they are all dodgy and evasive. Honestly I don’t think you could pay to go to all 41 Hawks home games and cheer my head off the whole game regardless of the situation. Even if the Jets had a cheering section like this I would have been fired at their last home game.

There’s the Heineken Lounge in the sky. It’s basically like a slick bar that happens to have a good view of the game. Strange it was vacant opening night (when I commandeered it), yet occupied for the game against the Bobcats?

Ivan the Terrible….basketball player that everyone in Atlanta has been getting excited about because the other off season acquisitions were T-Mac, Jerry Stackhouse and a Collins twin.

Josh Smith, one of the more exciting players to watch in the NBA. His front court mate Al Horford was injured in the previous game and I don’t think Josh minded the extra offensive responsibility.

Sometimes during intermissions two fans will get to shoot for money on the court. There are different zones ranging from $25 (lay ups) to $100 (3 pointers). The guy on the far side of the court was trying to hit longer range shots for more money, while the guy on my side simply stood under the hoop, piling in $25 baskets.

He finished with $450 and then predictably air balled half court shot for $1000. It was the first time I have seen someone abuse the $25 shot, I’m sure next time there may be a some kind of stipulation to prevent further abuses(can’t shoot from the same spot consecutively?), it’s not like the Hawks are made of money.

How do you get the seats with the flat screens? Considering I just got NBA League Pass on my iPhone for $40, I’m not that impressed.

To pass time during a timeout, the Hawks had a (pre taped) competition between Vlad Radmanovic and a fan on who can name the most European countries. Vlad’s sole mistake was that he thought Czechoslovakia was still a country. This seems to be a common mistake in Georgia as local rapper Gucci Mane is quoted as saying “I got more checks than a Czechoslavian”. Vlad won 17 to 10, I’m pretty sure if the fan would have faced off against Josh Smith the outcome would have been different.

Much like the guy at intermission shooting shots for money, this game was played at the rim.

And thus fulfills my quota of of at least one photo a game of Josh Smith with some kind or scowl, frown, grimace or any other form of bad facial body language.

Boosie is at the game, in spirit. If you’re on the fence about Lil’ Boosie, watch this.

I set the blueprint for the $20 game/meal/parking/drinks. I still had my little bottle of gin on me because they searched me like they never heard of Richard Jewell (or whoever blew up that park across the street during the Olympics). It’s totally doable. Unless you have will power that is weaker than Kevin Durant coming out of college on a bench press, which I do. I laid siege to one of the worst meatball heros (or subs as they are called here) and comically over sized cups of Fosters. Hopefully my will power can make a turnaround like Kevin did on the bench.

I can’t stress this fact enough: with the subtraction of the Crepe stand, Philips Arena has some of the worst food in sports.

This trip I came to the realization that Philips Arena is like a nightclub that’s full of sports fans. I do about as well with Georgia girls as Josh Smith does shooting basketballs from beyond the 3 point line, so it’s good to know the girls here are a sports fans. Talking sports is a great ice breaker (unfortunately I break ice about as well as the Titanic did).

The Hawks keep the scoreboard from their old stadium, “The Omni”, on display. We’re so quick to shutter and blow up old stadiums that have given us so many great memories (fighting back tears thinking about the Old Meadowlands), it’s nice to see an arena paying homage to the past.

Part of the reason I chose the Bobcats game to attend was that I had recently picked up Bobcats center Bryon Mullens in my deep fantasy basketball league. Mullens was a former first round pick of the Thunder who was buried on the bench until his off season trade to the Bobcats for relative peanuts. Now he is playing heavy minutes on a teams in dire need of scoring. I felt like a younger, fatter Billy Beane sitting in the stands, watching on as he poured in a career high 21 points.

But with a mug like that I made the decision to only take photos of Byron when something is blocking his face.

If you sit in these courtside seats, cheerleaders bring you candy.

The Kiss Cam.

My assault on my body via food and beer continued as I washed down some sugary chinese food with another Fosters. My budget is deader than Jimmy Darmody.

This is like “Where’s Waldo”, except its “Where’s 3D Dennis Scott wearing a full denim outfit socializing with people”. Find him and win a prize.

As you can see, there wasn’t much of a crowd. Umm, do they like basketball in Winnipeg?

When you see Matt Carroll and Jerry Stackhouse in the game, you know its effectively over.

It’s nice the Hawks got Zaza another Eastern European guy to hang out with.

Another page for my upcoming calendar “Zaza: The Georgian Georgian”.

Here’s Zaza rejecting the Bobcats prized rookie Bismack “The Big Mack” Biyombo. It’s not a good omen for your career when you are drafted by Michael Jordan.

And that was the game. It wasn’t one that Atlantans would tell their kids about, like the Nique-Bird shootout, or the time the Hawks turned the tables on the Magic in the playoffs and Zaza attacked the palm of Jason Richardsons hand with his face.

Joe Johnson threw his sweat drenched towel in the crowd, this girl caught it and draped herself in it. Sports makes people do funny things.

The Hawks fans/employees return their props to the bowels of Philips Arena.

I would like to think that I set the blueprint tonight, showed you can still have the Holy Trinity of good seats, food and booze for less than a twenty. Of course I couldn’t adhere to the blueprint, I’m a much better coach than player in the game of life.

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