Basketball Intifada

Last Sunday, the NBA and basketball in general reached a milestone. The All-Star game of 09/10 was played in front of the record crowd of 108,713. It may be true that more fans came to see Shakira than Allen Iverson (here’s a humorous twist), but this game set the bar high and it’s not unimaginable any more that we’ll see a play-offs game in a converted football dome some time soon. Or some future Olympic Games Finals played in front of the 100K crowd. This game compares well with and surpasses most other sport events, even the ones traditionally played outdoors in big stadiums. (The game which still stands alone is the famous soccer game “Maracanaço“ [video, Spanish], in which 199,854 fanatical Brazilians witnessed their country’s loss to Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup, in one of the greatest sports upsets of all time.)

The number of people present doesn’t always equal the intensity of the crowd. The most unusual basketball game I’ve watched, when it comes to the fans, could have been the late eighties match-up between Partizan and Maccabi (Tel Aviv), played in Belgrade. It was one of the loudest, too. I had to show up an hour early because having the ticket didn’t guaranty that I would get in. There was no such thing as my own seat, in stark contrast with my first NBA experience in the Garden in Boston. As soon as I found a decent spot, a good angle to see the game from, I saw a group of maybe 300 rabid Partizan fans who chanted with a very strong accent. Their head gear wasn’t much different from the hats and scarves regular Partizan fans wore. As a visitor to the city, not too familiar with the Grobari rituals (“grave diggers” is what Partizan fans call themselves), I asked the guy next to me who they were and he said: “These are Palestinian students, they come every time we play against an Israeli club.” Read more ->