Feeling the Vibe

So as some of you may have heard (or for the lucky people on Facebook, seen pictures as proof), I had the joy of attending Game 5 if the Raptors-Nets series on Tuesday night. That was the first "Big Four" (NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA) playoff game that I've had the luck to attend.... and let me tell you, it was an event.

Wince Carter... the turd.

I've been to big games before in the regular season (Jays-Yanks, Jays-BoSox, Leafs-Red Wings, Raptors-Suns, Bills-Dolphins), but nothing matches the playoffs.

Crowd losing it after a Nets turnover

I really thought, as I'm sure many others did, that we willed them to win, and while I don't usually tend to take a journalist at face value, Bill Simmons had an article this week where he tells me in no uncertain terms that, no... we didn't really affect anyting. We just did what we were suppsoed to do. Having grown up with the Celtics in the Boston Garden (the new Fleet Center isn't the same, apparently), I'm inclided to believe him. And he also managed to call that the Warriors were going to kill the Mavs last night (for what what is supposedly one of the biggest upsets in NBA playoff history), which I think lends some weight to his point.

I'd encourage you to read the whole thing for a more detailed explanation, but this excerpt gives a great analogy, while completely marginalizing an entire gender rather amusingly:

After I wrote last week that two special NBA crowds remain -- Madison Square Garden and Oakland's Oracle Arena -- the predictable slew of e-mails arrived from Sacramento, Chicago, Toronto [emphasis mine] and many other cities, all of them asking, "What about us?" I don't blame them for being deluded because they don't know any better.

There's no way to understand it unless it definitely has happened to you. Then you know. As strange as this sounds, it's like a woman being unable to tell whether she's ever had an orgasm. If she thinks it might have happened, or it felt like it kind of happened one time ... it didn't happen. When it happens, they know. Then they feel stupid for all the other times when they thought it had happened.

And on that note, here's hoping the Raps don't get blown outta the water tonight in Jersey... but let's be honset. I think we saw their last home game of the year on Tuesday.