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For Christ­mas I bought my friend Alex tic­kets to see the Los Ange­les Lakers play bas­ket­ball against the Gol­den State Warriors. Howe­ver, ins­tead of going with regu­lar pri­ced seats, I deci­ded to splash out and bought tic­kets just a few rows back in the lower tier from StubHub. The game was this Satur­day and it was awesome!

We were sat directly behind the sports repor­ters next to one of the bas­kets and, while I knew the tic­kets would be great, I did not rea­lize how much they would change what you see of the game. Being that close to the action allows you to see and hear the pla­yers much more clearly and makes you really appre­ciate the phy­si­cal nature of the game.

Dunks

The game itself was fan­tas­tic — although the Warriors lost — with a num­ber of ridi­cu­lous dunks from Kwame Brown, Baron Davis, Smush Par­ker and Jason Richard­son. One of Jason Richardson’s dunks in par­ti­cu­lar was a brea­ka­way where he appea­red to be coming straight toward us in our seats.

I have uploa­ded some pho­tos from the game, inc­lu­ding a few taken from the tele­vi­sion cove­rage of the game with Alex and I in our seats in the back­ground. I have used notes on Flickr to show where we were sea­ted, inc­lu­ding a close-up of Alex while Kobe hits the shot of the game.

While I cer­tainly can­not afford to buy these tic­kets on a regu­lar basis, I would love to do this again in the future.