During last year’s NBA playoffs, my son Josh developed into a fan of Derrick Rose on the Chicago Bulls. I’m not exactly sure why, and maybe it somehow connects mentally to the past few seasons of soccer he’s been playing. Great for me, because I was also a late blooming sports fan too. Also, we get to bond and watch football and basketball together.
For this past Christmas, my sister and my brother-in-law got Josh two tickets to see the Bulls play the NJ Nets at Prudential Center in February. Neither of us are Nets fans, but it would be his first live game, and opportunity to get him closer to the game itself. Yeah, you’re gonna spend $10 on chicken tenders and $4 on a bottle of water, but you gotta live life once in a while.
Josh & I at his first NBA game
Tipoff was at 7:15pm, so I worked from home, picked the kids up, waited for my wife to get home, and then Josh and I were off to Newark. I planned to park at a nearby garage that my company runs (free parking for employees), but I didn’t know exactly where it was but we eventually found it.
We made it to our seats with no issues, and on time. Neither of us are Nets fans, but neither were most of the attendees. Josh was rocking his new Derrick Rose – Bulls jersey, and he joined a sea of red in the crowd. Sad, I say. The Nets were surrounded by Bulls fans in their own house. Sad.
As was slightly expected, the Bulls trounced the undermanned Nets, though Rose left the game early in the 2nd quarter due to back spasms. We sat, we watched, we ate chicken tenders. It was all good.
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