March 23rd, 2008. Warriors at Lakers.My premiere Lakers experience!Ok WELL...
March 23rd, 2008. Lakers to play the Warriors at Staples at 6:30pm, PST. Imadul over here, very excited, hyped, pumped, etc. Going with his Paki friend Asim again. Tix around $200 each (I KNOW), Section 107, Row K (11th row behind the basket down low on the flo), seats 4 and 5. BUT before all that...
I set my alarm at 9:30 am (why so early? We'll see). Got up at 9:45. Did the usual peeing/brushing teeth. Ate some chicken my mom made, got ready. Oh had to take a **** so I did. Wore my white Lakers tee with KB8 jersey over it, jeans, and my Lakers kicks. Got a haircut and got clean-shaven the day before. Wore my glasses, even though the right side part that goes on my ear is broken off. So Asim says he's coming to pick me up at 10am, but he's Asim, you guys know, so he gets here at like 10:40am...
We head off, he has his Turiaf jersey with him (first game he's wearing it to!), wearing a purple lakers shirt, jeans, and a purple lakers hat, and has a SoBe for me in the cupholder (Strawberry Daiquiri). So first we head off to Bed, Bath and Beyond. We find a white hand towel that Asim must utilize for his Turiaf celebration and that's all we get from there. Then we go to Office Depot. Get a pack of 4 silver sharpies (so Asim can hopefully get his purple cap signed, and they don't let you buy single silver sharpies), and get masking tape (if you've heard/seen my previous experiences, you know where this is going). Now we head off to our destination!
We have tickets for Fiesta Lakers 2008 at the LA Convention Center (right next to STAPLES), going on from 12pm to 5pm. Many Lakers will be there, and we can get stuff autographed and signed, can't wait! Well we get to the Convention Center (park nearby in a lot... section K24 for good luck). Get out, Asim puts on his Turiaf jersey, we use the masking tape to put a "x3" next to my 8 on the jersey on both sides. It was stared at my many people. We go check out the Convention Center... and wow. Longest line I have ever seen. So we went into the Team LA store, looked around, stood in line for no reason (and talked about random lakers ****), checked out Latinas (MANY MANY since it's Fiesta Lakers haha), and at 1:40 were like let's get outta here...
We went back to the car to get Asim's new rented lens for his camera, and the towel. We come back to STAPLES, why? Cuz the LA D-Fenders game is on at 2:30pm!!! Doors are supposed to open at 2pm, get in free with a Lakers ticket. Well they opened at like 2:15pm, stood in the sun. Went in, bought a Hot Dog and drink for myself and a drink for Asim. Go in the arena itself and chose the closest free seats, midcourt right behind the scorer's table, suhweeeet. D-League I love you! We look at the players to see if anyone is familiar during the shootaround. I check the D-Fenders and I'm like "Oh ****, is that Jelani McCoy!?" Why yes it was, M2 reader. Then I check the other team, The Albuquerque T-Birds... "Oh **** is that Darvin Ham!?" He turns around and yes, Ham is on his back. I also found out that Alando Tucker from Suns fame was on that team. Ok so this D-League game is gonna start! There's like 10-20 people in attendance...
During the intros, I learn that one of the starters for LA is from UCSB ('07 class, UCSB being my school duh)... so we check and it's Cecil Brown, #11. So Asim cheers on/scolds Jelani every time (Jelani dunk it! Jelani noooo why'd you do that!?), as do I, but I also yell out "YOU SEE ESS BEEE!!!" every time Brown does something good. He had skills, seemed like a nice guy too. Neither of them really acknowledged us at all, even though I'm sure everyone in attendance could hear us...
Halfway into the 2nd qtr, one of the dudes who works there comes up to us and asks "Hey wanna be part of the FT contest at the half?" I say hell yes and we both go and he takes us to sit behind the D-Fenders basket, the first row. We are hyped, gonna go against another 2 people, 30sec to make the most FTs, us 2 gotta rotate between shots. While we're sitting there...... AHHH SASHA AND PAU ARE WALKING HERE!!!!!!!! I go like "Yo wassup Sasha" and we shake hands and **** as he's walking, he even moves over his Gatorade bottle to his left hand for me. Pau is coming and I go "Yo wassup Pau" and we shake hands, and I go "Hey so you're gonna be back playing soon right" and he says "Yea I hope so"... suhweeeeeet. He was looking fly as hell and Sasha had like this black collared polo shirt and his sexy hair of course. Maaaan. So it's halftime and we go, with the 15 people watching us. I drained my first FT easy and ran and passed to Asim who airballed, then I got the reb and ran back to shoot and missed, then he airballed, then I missed, then he made it, then I had 3 sec on the clock so ran and did a turnaround fadeaway at the buzzer... and missed! So we lost like 3-2 or something haha, wack. But we got the same ****, a D-Fenders bag with a white D-Fenders cap, lil whiteboard thingy, pencils, souvenir cup thingy, and some papers, it was suhweeet.
We felt so damn good, but in the 3rd we saw Ronny back where we just sat (right now we were forced back to our original seats), and we tried to get to him but damn security wouldn't let us, *****es. So no talking to Ronny 
. The rest of the game was cool, and yess LA won 112-105 I think. The players all sportsmanshipped each other and hugged and ****, and I see Cecil and yell out "UCSB!" and he looks around. I yell out "SANTA BARBARA" and he sees me and smiles and holds up his hand with his index finger pointing up, man it was tight. I felt good. After the game they had to clean the arena, so we had to wait in STAPLES outside the arena. Asim used the bathroom, and we see Jelani McCoy (#00) and Wendell White (#24) of the D-Fenders signing autographs! I go and get my cap I just won signed by both of them. Then I'm like damn, so I get lil posters everyone is getting signed and go back and get that signed by both of em, and this time shake hands with them too, yes! I put on the hat after that. We wait there a bit, Asim gets a pretzel, and finally at 5 they let us in for the Lakers game...
