Easy Enough
I was already coming from one sporting event when I arrived at Sydney Olympic Park for another.
The Swans women had played earlier in the day, the weather had been indecisive for hours, and I arrived at Afterpay Arena by Uber expecting that I might be cutting things a little fine.
Instead, I was early.
Before I even reached the arena, another game was demanding attention. Next door at Accor Stadium, Newcastle and Penrith were playing an NRL preliminary final, and the noise coming from inside was extraordinary. It rolled out across the precinct in a way that made whatever was happening in there sound enormous.
It was a pretty good way to arrive.
Inside Afterpay Arena everything changed. The rain disappeared, the sound changed, the lights changed, and suddenly I had twenty minutes before tip-off with not much to do except find my seat and watch the place fill.
At first there were a lot of empty seats, although plenty of Kings supporters were already there. Once again, I noticed just how much merchandise and paraphernalia people bring to these games. Jerseys, shirts, caps, flags, basketballs, signs and pictures of players. There is a lot of Kings gear in the stands.
This was only my second game of the season, but I was already looking at the arena differently.
I was sitting in roughly the same part of the building as the previous week, at a similar height and looking towards the same end of the court, but this time from the opposite side. It didn't sound like much of a change when I chose the seat, but from here I could look directly down towards the players' tunnel.
Before the game, at halftime and afterwards, I found myself watching players moving in and out and seeing some of their interactions with supporters, particularly the kids around that part of the court.
Last week I hadn't really noticed it.
That started me looking around at the other sections too. My membership gives me some flexibility about where I sit, so rather than finding one position and staying there, I am beginning to wonder what the game looks like from everywhere else.
The expensive rows around the court obviously give you proximity. People sitting there are being looked after with food and drinks, and they are much closer to the players. From higher up, though, I can see the whole court.
Every position seems to give something up and give something back.
So I already know what I am doing next time: lower.
By the time the game was ready to start, most of the obvious gaps had filled, although it still didn't feel as busy as the opening game against Cairns.
Then came something I am already learning to expect. The lights went down, the court stayed lit, music filled the arena and phone lights appeared around the stands.
I like this bit.
There isn't much dead time at these games. Even before tip-off there are introductions, interviews, sponsorship bits, music and people talking to the crowd. The same thing happens through time-outs and quarter breaks. One thing flows into the next, and sometimes the basketball seems to restart almost before everything around it has stopped.
It would be easy to miss thirty seconds, and basketball can do quite a lot in thirty seconds.
Sydney eventually settled into the game and won 121–100.
Another 21-point win.
They had beaten Cairns by exactly the same margin the week before. Apparently this is how my Kings season works.
I am still learning some of the language too. At one point there was discussion about Sydney scoring well inside the painted area. I knew what was meant, even if the area didn't look particularly painted to me.
There are plenty of these little things I don't know yet.
Oddly, that doesn't seem to matter very much.
Basketball is proving remarkably easy for me to watch. Not because nothing is happening. Quite the opposite. I just don't feel as though I have homework to do before I can enjoy it.
I don't know every player yet or understand every term, and I am certainly not seeing all the little tactical things somebody who has followed basketball for years would see.
But there aren't that many players to become familiar with. They are introduced, their names keep appearing through the presentation, and the announcers keep giving enough context that I rarely feel lost.
It doesn't feel like a lesson.
You just pick things up by being there.
There were families everywhere again, with children happily responding to the chants and yelling whenever they were encouraged to yell.
A couple of the kids in front of me appeared to have chosen Illawarra for the evening. I wasn't completely convinced. They were among Kings supporters, some of the group were wearing Kings gear, and every so often the supposed Hawks supporters forgot themselves and cheered Sydney too.
Whatever was going on, they were enjoying themselves.
So was I.
I had originally bought a six-game pass. At the time, that seemed like a reasonable commitment.
Now I am planning to be back on Wednesday for a third consecutive home game and have started looking through the rest of the schedule to see how many more I could realistically attend.
Six suddenly doesn't sound like very many.
On the way out I stopped at the merchandise store. A Kings cap seems inevitable, which is unfortunately one of my weaknesses, and with summer coming some of the polo shirts were looking pretty good too.
This was apparently what not requiring much investment looked like.
Then I walked back outside.
It was colder now. The rain had settled into little more than a light sprinkle, and the NRL game next door had finished sometime while we were inside.
But Newcastle supporters were still everywhere.
A lot of them were heading north, which meant I was heading the same way. On the train I ended up sitting near four Knights supporters, as well as a mother and son who, like me, had been at the basketball.
The Knights supporters were happy. Some considerably more enthusiastically than others.
The mother said she followed St George. Her son didn't seem particularly interested in rugby league at all.
My Swans gear eventually attracted attention.
"Swans!"
Yes. They had played that day too.
So somewhere on the journey back towards Hornsby we ended up talking about rugby league, basketball and the AFLW, surrounded by people heading home from different events at the same sporting precinct.
I was still wearing one team's colours.
I had spent the evening supporting another.
And I was already thinking about buying the cap.
