December 15, 2008

Hoops-a-daisy!

Three Times...A Charm: Had ourselves some free tickets to the first three games for the Erie BayHawks (or is it Bayhawks? *shrug*) over the weekend. Thursday night they played the then-undefeated Iowa Energy, then played the Fort Wayne Mad Ants (yeah, thats their name) on Saturday and Sunday night. Got to catch all three games. Pros and cons...

Pros:
1. Incredible basketball team. They control tempo, they are very fast when it needs to be, and they play really hard, you can just tell. Iowa, an undefeated team, got out to a 15-3 lead in the first quarter on Thursday but Erie went on a twenty point run and never looked back. Definitely some fight in this team.
2. Excitement abound! The promotions and marketing team for the Bayhawks appear to have got their lessons from the actual NBA (I'll get to that in a moment). Loud music, kids play area next to the court, in game promotions that aren't stupid (like the Otters), and affordable tickets! (Well, they were free, so, uh...)
3. Clutch. The Mascot. Dude is just as cool as the San Diego Chicken was. Climbing all over the stands, leading cheers, doing handstands, making fun of the floor waitresses...I'm not ashamed to admit my eyes were following the mascot around rather than the Bayhawks dancers. Well, Amanda was there, so I couldn't have anyway; not that they're pretty or anything, honey. Okay, they are, but they need some more dance moves. Can't expect season ticket holders to watch the same three dance moves all season, girls.

Cons:
1. Erie. Yeah, I said it. Erie sucked as a fan community this weekend. I'm sorry to say it, but when its opening night for a big time new basketball team and less people show up than at recent Otters games, you have a problem. The biggest cheers of the weekend were when they were offering free products -- free t-shirts got the fans on their feet, not the three pointers of Erik Daniels and Taj McCullough. Free fries got people screaming like children, not the dunks of Ivan Harris. THERE WERE PEOPLE LEAVING THE GAME WITH FIFTY SECONDS TO GO ON SUNDAY, AND THE GAME WAS TIED!!

I'm not sorry I said any of this, but if the NBA D-League continues to put product on the floor that is at LEAST the best the SeaWolves have put out, Erie doesn't deserve a team like that. Fans need to show more love....I expected more people out for this weekend. Not less than the Otters draw during a losing streak. Pretty sad.

....by the way, the D-League is a relatively new league that the NBA put into action a few years ago made of of mostly Western US teams. Erie is the farthest East by A LOT, only Fort Wayne stands between them and South Dakota. And even then, South Dakota is quite a jaunt from the next easternmost team in Tulsa.

Anyway, the league is made up of out-of-college prospects, much like minor league baseball, but 98% of the players aren't owned by the parent NBA clubs. In Erie, theirs are the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Philadelphia 76ers. But if the Cavs had a player that they signed out of college and he ended up needing a little more polishing but they had no space on their team for him to catch up, he'd go to the Bayhawks to get more playing time.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of these players on the court are professional-caliber guys. No doubt. Good show though, I must say. I was hugely impressed. And coming from a guy who had only been to two basketball games in his life before hand, thats saying quite a bit.

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