Looking Up
This was my third Sydney Kings game of the season and, deliberately, my third different place to sit.
The game itself was Sydney against Brisbane at Afterpay Arena on a Wednesday night. I had not even booked the ticket until about three o’clock that afternoon. Work had been sitting over the day, and once a large project reached the point where I could finally put it down, a 7.30 basketball game at Sydney Olympic Park became possible. So I booked.
This time I went low. As low as I could reasonably get, only a handful of rows back from the court and towards the Brisbane end. My first two games had both been from higher positions and from the other end of the arena. I wanted to see what changed.
From higher up, basketball makes a certain kind of sense. You can see space developing. Players move through patterns. Gaps open and disappear. Down here, some of that structure gets harder to see. Other things become much easier.
The first was the physicality.
Basketball gets described, at least casually, as a non-contact sport. That becomes a slightly funny concept when you are sitting close enough to watch bodies collide, players hit the floor and defenders fight for position only metres away.
A clean pass from above looks almost violent at court level. The ball gets from one pair of hands to another very quickly. Players change direction with remarkably little space. Small gaps suddenly matter because, from this angle, they really are small. I am not sure the view was better. It was simply different.
Being lower also changed what existed around the game. I could see the Brisbane bench properly. I could watch the coaches reacting to decisions and talking to the officials. Expressions and gestures that disappear when you are sitting further away were suddenly part of what I was watching.
The crowd changed too.
Wednesday night meant fewer people than the weekend games I had been to, although school holidays helped fill the arena with children. The Kings had made the game free for kids, and there were plenty of them.
My own row was another matter. When I booked the ticket, the seat map suggested I would have company. By game time I had virtually the whole row to myself. It should perhaps have felt isolated. It didn’t.
Most of the crowd was behind me. The chants, clapping and instructions to yell defence came forward like a wall of sound. Sitting near the front somehow made joining in easier rather than harder. When everyone behind you is making noise, remaining completely silent begins to feel like the unusual option.
Basketball does not leave much empty space anyway. There is music, an announcer, chants, prompts, competitions, graphics and something happening during almost every break in play.
I have noticed that at each Kings game, but I am starting to notice something else as well. Some of the noise is manufactured. Some of it isn’t. The announcer tells everyone to make noise, but the crowd already seems trained in what to do. Defence. Clapping. Let’s go Sydney. Nothing particularly elaborate, but everybody appears to know the vocabulary.
Even the booing has rules.
I have never particularly liked booing players, but an opposition free throw at a basketball game seems to exist in its own little category. This time there was an added incentive. Miss two and everyone gets the chance at a free burger.
The first missed free throw therefore changes the sound in the building. The second attempt matters for the score, but it also suddenly matters to several thousand people who would quite like lunch. The noise gets louder. I joined in. I am still not entirely comfortable admitting that.
The game itself started badly for Sydney. Brisbane scored freely in the first quarter and opened an eleven-point lead. From where I was sitting, I became unusually interested in the statistics on the giant screen above the court.
Above really was the word this time.
From the higher seats I had been almost level with the screen. Down here I had to tilt my head back to look at it.
The numbers gave me something else to watch. Brisbane were taking plenty of three-point shots. Early on, enough of them were going in to hurt Sydney. Later, many more were missing.
Once I had noticed the numbers, I started noticing the shape of it on the court as well. Brisbane seemed to have space outside while Sydney were much tighter closer to the basket. I started wondering whether that space was being conceded deliberately.
Maybe it was. Maybe I was inventing tactics from a scoreboard.
Either way, the statistics had changed the way I watched the game. I was not just seeing who was ahead. I was watching for why one team was getting certain shots and why another team seemed willing to live with them.
I was beginning to recognise the players without needing the screen to tell me. Kendric Davis is hard to miss. He is not a large man in basketball terms, but he moves quickly enough that size seems largely irrelevant. Andrew Carr is rather easier to identify for the opposite reason. And Matthew Dellavedova was already a name I knew long before this season.
I bought a purple Dellavedova T-shirt after the game. First you buy the ticket. Then you learn the way in. Then you learn where you like sitting. Then one night, after the game, you walk out carrying merchandise.
Sydney recovered after quarter-time and eventually took control. Late in the fourth quarter came the piece of basketball I will probably remember from the night.
Davis put the ball towards the hoop. Torrey Craig appeared above it. For a moment the pass and the jump seemed to arrive at exactly the same place, and Craig slammed the ball through while being fouled. Three points once the free throw was added.
I have watched enough basketball now to know what an alley-oop is. Seeing one from this close was something else.
Sydney won 93–78.
Then I walked.
Rather than joining the transfers out of Olympic Park, I headed towards Concord West station. I have done this often enough now that it has become part of going to events here. I am not convinced the train connections through Olympic Park and Strathfield actually get me home any faster at this time of night, and walking gives me the freedom of simply reaching Concord West and taking the next useful train.
It also gets my legs moving after sitting in arena seating for a couple of hours. Although even the seats had been different tonight. There seemed to be a little more room between the rows down low. People could get past without the usual awkward negotiation between knees and seat backs. I would never have known that from the other end of the arena.
Three games. Three seats. I still do not know which view I prefer.
There is apparently more than one way to go back to the same place.
