Photocalypse: Hangin' in the Kings' Court

OK, it's no secret that there's a new player in town. There's a lot of folks that can dress up nice and talk with an accent... but that only gets you so far. You aren't somebody until you've scored courtside tickets to the local NBA franchise... and, well heck... looks like we've got a new playboy in town!

Alright, well maybe we didn't quite score a handfull of courtside tickets, but the bottom line is that we were courtside. And hell, we were paid to be there, so beat that!

I was sent out to cover the Kings-Blazers preseason game the other night. This was actually my first time covering an NBA game... I'd shot plenty of college (and a bit of WNBA) ball, but I'd never actually been courtside for an NBA game. Not bad... I just wish somebody decent was playing.

Now, in all fairness, I was raised a fan of Oregon sports. My dad is a UO alumn, and I regularly wore a Blazers hat to class in elementary school. So it was nice to see someone familiar beating my newly adopted home team. Still, there's a lotta famous ballers out there... it would have been nice to see at least one.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this experience was seeing who was actually paying to be down on the court. For you see, the folks sitting behind the photogs were pretty darn close to where we were crouched. A cross-legged shoe kept kicking the back of my battery pack, jolting my beautiful shot from where it should have been. It started to piss me off after a while, especially after listening to their conversations (old rich douchebags trying to impress young floozie bitches... highly entertaining). Still, they were out of my league... sitting so close to the action and all... so I left them to their own.

The next day I hit up my chiropractor (something no photog should be without, in my opinion), who mentioned that one of his clients hooked him up with courtside (or "Kings' Court") tickets once... which were priced at nearly $1000 each. Sweet Jesus... If that's what it takes to get down on the floor, then it's no wonder that those floozies with those guys were so good lookin'. Too bad they didn't have a team that justified the price!