I was at the Rose Garden for last night's Blazers match-up against the Sacramento Kings. The home team held on for a one-point victory but you can read about all of that here. Instead, here's a slew of photos covering the sort of stuff that takes place center court when the cameras have cut away to commercial.

As with just about every professional indoor sport these days, halftime, gaps between periods and timeouts are filled with games and stunt-shows to keep the crowd from...presumably heading out to the concessions to buy stuff and support their local arena (?). With Civil War weekend fast approaching, the Rose Garden invited a few college students to serve as human bowling balls between the first and second period. Instead of one undergrad representing the University of Oregon and another for OSU, which would have made sense, they went with a "frat boy," a "sorority girl" and a "college dropout."

The frat boy managed to knock down the most pins and the dropout fell off his board at half court, evidently further proof that a lack of a college education won't help you if you ever find yourself participating in a goofy contest at an NBA game. The whole thing was obnoxiously staged and, yeah, pretty mean-spirited. Myself, I hold these sorts of things to a higher standard. Shame on you, Rose Garden. You should have just brought out the cheerleaders with the t-shirt cannons.

Another contest involved three people, a five-month pregnant woman included, running around with pizza boxes. The pregnant gal came in second.

And, of course, there was Blaze the Trail Cat who came out during the fourth quarter for a round of trampoline-fueled dunks. Blaze is far from being the NBA's most popular mascot and, with the Sonics now residing in Oklahoma City, the following question must be asked: does Sasquatch need a job and how quickly can he get to the Rose Garden from Seattle? Another job skill that might make him the perfect candidate to take over for Blaze? He's quite the drummer.

Labels: sports