Thunder in Portland

For those of you expecting to read a weather-related post, please stop now (although it did hail yesterday). No my friends, this post is about basketball.

The OKC Thunder were in town, taking on the Portland Trail Blazers. This gave us a chance to catch an NBA game, and of course do another OKC-Portland comparison. And let's be honest, how else can you really tell which city is better than in the form of a professional sporting event. I'll let the professionals take care of the sports write-up (here). Let's just say... it wasn't close. The Blazers hung 113 points on the Thunder, which could only manage 83. But enough about scores, let's talk about the event!

We had decent seats - first row of the upper section. So we got to have a great view of the court and all the other goings-on in the sporting "event". The game was exciting if you were a Blazers fan. Here is a summary of other activities that occurred before and during the game. In an announcer's voice:


Yes ladies and gentlemen, we have everything you need at the Rose Garden. Snack bars on every level...beers on tap, both domestic AND microbrews... In this corner, the Blazerdancers and in the other corner the Blazers stunt squad...you may even see the occasional hip-hop or break-dancer...watch out for Blaze, the lovable mascot...Oh! There is the inflatable Ford Edge dropping coupons to lucky winners...boy do we have giveaways: free egg mcmuffins, chalupas, pizzas, hats, cds, trips to Mexico... oh, don't forget, we do have a basketball game going on...


Here are some quick stats about the Rose Garden arena (I gave you a link to wikipedia, because the official Rose Garden site is littered with adds for "Celtic Women Theater of the Clouds" and Taylor Swift). The arena opened in 1995 and has a basketball capacity of 20,630. The arena also is powered entirely with renewable energy (SOURCE??). In comparison, the Ford Center in OKC opened in 2002 (when we first moved to Oklahoma) with a capacity of 19,599.