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At least my view for last night’s game was good. Photo by Doug Bonham’s crappy cell phone, Colorado Daily.

So, yesterday I posted how I was excited to head out to last night’s Denver Nuggets – Portland Trail Blazers game at the Pepsi Center. A friend from high school who came to CU for undergrad and now grad school hunted down tickets last-minute and wanted to know if I would go to the game with him.

Umm, yes. Yes please. So we headed out, two Portland fans headed distinctly into enemy territory flying the wrong flag.

I was surprised. Maybe it’s more conditioning being used to college football rivalries, but the reception really wasn’t that bad. I guess we were seated in front of the designated heckler for that corner of the arena, but other than that nothing bad.

Well, except for how the Blazers played. ESPN’s match report says it all. Few mentions of Portland’s game; Melo and his 38 points (!) stole the spotlight.

I could go on and on about the minutiae of how Portland played, but nobody here knows or cares; I might as well type it in Japanese. But what I can relate is now the experience and emotion of being an opposing fan in the minority.

It seems like all the emotions are magnified. On good plays for your team, you’re one of a smattering of people able to rise against the home crowd’s tide; on the bad, or when things go south in a hurry (see: the fourth quarter last night), you want to shrivel up and die. Compared with how it feels to be a home fan – feeling part of a unified whole, rising with the rest of the crowd, falling and/or booing with them as needed – it’s a much more individual experience.

It is a fun experience, though, and I can see myself going back to see the Nuggets play somebody else as a neutral fan just interested in watching some NBA basketball. While the DJ and video screen in the arena really are the devil of professional basketball, the production and song choices and everything else associated were actually quite good; it’s still little consolation when you’ve got the home crowd going against you and the home team raking your squad over the coals, though.

So a good time had by all and a very worthwhile experience. A+++ Would watch again (well, again, except without Portland playing like a steaming pile of garbage). Much better than just on TV, that’s for sure.

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