Ball Is Life

This summer, J's first foray into high school basketball has been playing up with the F/S team as one of their starting guards. And M has been rehabbing his surgically-repaired Achilles' tendon - he's disappointed that playing with the summer JV team was off the table, but hopes to be back on the court for the regular season in November. At our house, ball takes up a lot of our life, indeed!

As soon as we realized that there were no F/S games on the calendar during the first weekend of the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, we bought our tickets and booked a hotel room right away. We even convinced some friends to join us for the quick trip...

The NBA Summer League teams consist of newly drafted rookies, 2nd year players, and others hoping to earn a spot on a team's regular season roster. There were 24 teams participating in the Las Vegas league (July 8-18), with as many as 8 games per day played in UNLV's Thomas & Mack Center and the adjoining Cox Pavilion. With a ticket for the day (~$32/person), you can watch basketball 'til your butt goes numb.

On Friday, the ballers first wanted to watch 19-year-old Thon Maker and the Milwaukee Bucks take on Kay Felder and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Cox Pavilion. John Stockton's son, Michael, also saw playing time for the Cavs. We bumped into some of M's teammates who made the trek out to Vegas for the weekend, too! Seeing the Cavs' head coach, Tyronn Lue, in the opposite stands prompted us to gawk at the spectators in addition to the game on the court.

We then headed over to the Thomas & Mack Center to watch the Minnesota Timberwolves (Kris Dunn) and Denver Nuggets (Emmanuel Mudiay). We were sitting in the section next to the seats reserved for team personnel. TWolves head coach/GM Tom Thibodeau was there watching his players and didn't seem very happy about the poor defense. M zipped over between quarters to get his autograph.

Still smiling because the game hadn't started yet...

  

The final game we watched was the match-up between the New Orleans Hornets (Buddy Hield) and the Los Angeles Lakers (DAngelo Russell and Brandon Ingram). There was a lot of excitement from the Laker fans throughout the arena - probably because they haven't had much to cheer about lately. *snicker*

Since we weren't really rooting for any particular team today, it was fun to watch the highly touted players and to cheer/jeer at great plays like dunks and "broken" ankles. Trying to spot current and former NBA players or coaches was pretty entertaining, too.  Well, for some of us more than others...

R (excitedly): Look over to the right. That's Tracy Murray!

J: Who?

R: He played for UCLA in the '90s and was a pretty good NBA player, too!

J (unimpressed): Oh.

J (excitedly): Hey look, Brandon Ingram is wearing Damian Lillard 2's! 

R: Oh.

Father-son bonding over basketball... shoes! Haha!

By half time of the Laker game, we decided to call it a day and grab some dinner from Monta, a Japanese noodle place that is a favorite of R and the rest of the March Madness guys. Now I can totally understand why! So good!