Game 14 of 122

Indiana Pacers vs. New Jersey Nets at Conseco Fieldhouse (Indianapolis, IN)

The title of this blog should be Team Spirit; or more appropriately, lack there of.  I've never experienced anything like this in my life.  I have been to a lot of sporting events and this was by far the quietest crowd ever.

As you can see from my pictures, with about 30 minutes from tip off, there was hardly anyone there.  It seems like a crowd you would get in the middle of a snow storm or perhaps a crowd in which the schedule conflicted with an Indianapolis Colts playoff game - neither of which was true tonight.  It was a typical Friday night and I guess very few wanted to see the Pacers play - did we miss something more exciting going on in town that we didn't know about?

The official attendance was just over 11,000 people, which is about 60% of capacity.  The other obvious thing about this crowd was the lack of team colors.  I would estimate that of all the other games I have been to, 80% of the people are wearing some form of team colors - this crowd was closer to 20%.

Maybe this guy stole everyone's team colors.

Despite the small and quiet crowd, my family and I had a great time.  We had excellent seats (5th row near the baseline) which allowed us to get really close to the action.  The kids enjoyed it not only for the great seats, but because they got a bobble-head doll, were close to Boomer the mascot, got cotton-candy and were permitted on the court after the game.  Taylor is starting to take more interest in the games.  She studied her program for about an hour, learning about the team, individual players and other information.

Conseco Fieldhouse is one of the smallest arenas in the NBA, but it is very unique place to watch a game, including the tunnel-like feel as we walked down to our seat.  My knowledge of Indiana basketball is limited to the movie Hoosiers, Bobby Knight at Indiana University and Reggie Miller as a great NBA player that couldn't quite win the big one. 

The game itself was rather exciting and the Pacers won in a blowout.  This was the first NBA game on my checklist and with my commitment of donating $1 / point in each of the games to the Jimmy V Foundation for cancer research, basketball games certainly add to the total quickly (216 total points scored in this game).

Record:  9-5.  I have now seen 5 wins in a row by the home team.

Trend:  The target is to be completed with all 122 games by December 2024.  I'm on pace to complete by May 2019.  But Deb may not want me to keep up quite this quick a pace :)

Official Box Score of the Game

To learn about my fund-raising efforts, visit:  http://www.firstgiving.com/christopherapel