Alas, no tickets, only TV

At two seconds past 12 Noon, not a single Spurs ticket was available from the Ticketmaster Web site. At any price. In any section. I doubt that the first Game Seven in the NBA Finals since 1994 was really available to non-season-ticket holding fans. It sure wasn't available to us, unlike our 2003 Finals foray.

Okay, not entirely unavailable. For about seven grand, we can attend in the best seats. The link on the right hand side of this page for eTickets promises,

SEC: 24 ROW: 3
Across from Spurs bench - seats are very close to David Robinson & Eva Longoria

$3,425.00 each

At least it didn't cost us that much to attend a couple of Finals games in 2003. There's always the drive to Fatso's, the San Antonio sports garden where the Spurs fans hang out. Or maybe we can watch at something as simple as the Cheatham Street sports bar, just down the street from our rent house in San Marcos. I watched a conference semifinals game there last May, a night when a domestic beer was $2 a pint and the chairs were full of college kids.

I walked in at 11, since the Spurs were playing late on the road in LA against the hated Lakers. Most of the hardback wooden chairs were full of students, though a few teachers were in evidence. A table opened up just minutes after I walked into the Cheatham Street River Pub, right in front of the big-screen TV. The table was a carved-out, shellacked plank bolted in place right in front of the TV. Not moving. Meant to watch TV from. Though it was littered with empties and soggy napkins, I moved in anyway and ordered one of those $2 beers.

It's two-dollar Sierra Nevada night, an evening deep in the University's finals season. When my beer shows up, I leave a dollar under the napkin for the waitress. A young man stands next to me. He wears a Houston Texans hat backwards on his medium-short haircut and asks if I'm waiting for group to join me. After all, I'm sitting at a table big enough for eight, a table empty but for me and him. He takes a chair when I report I'm on my own for the night. He juggles a frosted beer glass, a rocks glass of something brown, and a pitcher of Bud Lite. He is Brazos, he tells me, and then introduces his friend Thomas. Then Brazos waves over a couple of Hispanic girls, slim and a little drunk, but only a little. The shorter one keeps busy playing with her cell phone. He introduces them as Cheryl and Theresa, and we shake hands all around, very polite.

This is my moment to share something about myself. I tell Brazos I'm holding tickets for Game 5, to be played next in the series, after he takes note of my "Champs Again" Spurs t-shirt. I wear my colors over my heart tonight.

The pub is loud and full of laughter. It's already less than an hour before last call, which arrives at midnight by local ordinance. But I don't know how short the drinking time has become. Brazos asks me, "What do you think this town needs that it doesn't have?" A great icebreaker question. "A place to drink beer and watch movies all at once," I reply, because I enjoy the Alamo Drafthouse. Brazos nods, passes along my answer to Thomas. He's with his friends, people close enough that later on, when he lights his cigarette, Cheryl takes it out of his hands and takes a puff. They have shared more than this one Marlboro.

The Lakers surge on the TV. My heart sinks with each of their buckets. They retake the lead from the Spurs, and then it swings back a few more times. Finally LA pulls away on Kobe's deadly accuracy, all the more plain to me from the big screen. I must look depressed, because Brazos tries to buy me a beer. But it's already past last call. I have nursed my pint glass like the Spurs nursed their lead, for nearly an hour. The Spurs' hopes for tonight are as drained as my glass. In the last five minutes of the game, a waiter comes by to count down the time until the table must be cleared of glasses and pitchers. 10 minutes left to drink, then 5, then he announces "one minute," although the Spurs have more than that left on their clock in LA.

Finally the waiter swings past us like Kobe crossing above the arc on the TV, scooping up the glasses and pitcher like so many loose balls under the rim. Time runs down and the Spurs lose in LA. I leave the pub before the last horn sounds on the four pub TVs. People trickle out slowly behind me, only some engaged in the game's outcome. There's other things to do with an evening, after all, besides mope over a ballgame. Like Chris Rock says about nights that single folks spend with each other, "there's fucking to do!" A few more jokes to be told, laughs to be wrung from lipsticked mouths with straight, white teeth.

I think about the outcome and try to force a smile. Game Four evens the Spurs' chances at 2-2, and now I know I hold tickets for me and Abby to see "the Pivotal Game Five" down at the SBC, the night after next. Well, actually tomorrow night, I correct myself, since it's already past midnight here while I head down the street to the little Rio Vista house. I totter home a bit unsteady on my feet after my one beer, slip a little in the mud on the corner from the spring rains. Like the Spurs, I think, slipping in the adulation of winning their first two games in this 2004 series. I comfort myself with the hope they can right themselves back home in the Texas night to come.

That night I didn't know we'd soon be witnesses to the nightmare of the .4 second miracle Lakers shot in Game Five, the crusher that ushered in elimination. So there are times when it stings less to be outside the arena. I will take that as some comfort against the worst possible outcome tomorrow night, when the Spurs try to win their first Game 7 Finals contest, while we watch on a TV somewhere.