Stephanie and I walk from my office to AAC. We heard that 15 minutes after tip-off, all tickets are dramatically discounted. This is not true. So we resort to scalpers. One scalper has a pair of tickets on the floor but they're $110 each. We tell him we have $30 each. 15 minutes later, he caves and we get the tickets. Stephanie gets the credit for driving a hard bargain. We're not sure exactly where Section 111 is but we find out it is where the mAAniacs are. Only we pass them on our way down to Section 111, Row AAA, Seats 1 and 2. That's those folding chairs next to the basket. Here's my view from our seats and a very vague glipse of Dirk before he got hurt. I actually majored in photography at one point in my life. You would never know because I obviously keep my mad camera skills very well hidden.
We got in at the end of the first quarter. It unreal how close we were. That Avery Johnson has got a set of lungs on him. Also, right as I made the comment "I'm afraid they're gonna put us on the jumbotron right as we're making dumb faces" Stephanie looked up to see us on the jumbotron.
The weirdest part was that we were right there and neither of us saw how Dirk got hurt. We watched the replay as well and still couldn't see it. He did not look like he was in pain at all. My money was on a minor case of food poisoning but obviously the ankle injury is always the safe bet.
Stephanie high fived Champ the mascot when he was walking back to the tunnel and we learned that the cheerleaders will not give shirts to people like us. But I also witnessed firsthand Jason Terry's ability to whip the crowd into a frenzy and it is unreal. Also unreal was how for the last 3 minutes of the game, the place was going nuts. Everyone was on their feet. I've never heard such a deafening mob before in my life. The gasps that went up each time Diop or Stackhouse missed one of their free throws in those last two minutes were terrifying. But in the end, the Mavs won and we all got free tacos. Also, I got an Acme Brick sign and a foam finger and they were passing out posters of Avery Johnson. It's a triple exposure picture of him first yelling, then acting pensive then sort of half-smiling and it says THE GENERAL on the bottom.
The only con of the night (other than Dirk's "ankle" injury) was the security guard by the score table. More than any Mavs player or mascot or cheerleader or coach, I wanted to say hello to Bob and Mark mostly because I feel like certain overused phrases of theirs have made it into my everyday vernacular. So we went by the score table while they were off air during the post-game locker room comments. Our main goal was to tell Bob that indeed, one of these nights one of those will go in. We're standing there a few rows behind them when Mark looks over at us and stares for a solid 10 seconds during which our only recourse was to smile back and try to not look demented which I think we acheived. Then Mean Security Guy comes up and talks to us like we're there for a retard convention. His actual quote, "Bob and Mark are working. They have to work now and you need to leave." But I took a picture as we were being ushered out which is another jewel in my photography crown:
