Last night Brian took me to a basketball game. Or rather, his company took us. A bunch of employees at his workplace were treated to a luxury box for a Warriors game; these were $156 tickets.

Not exactly a $156 game, as the hapless Warriors were playing the only marginally less hapless Wizards. I still wish we would have followed through with our D&D/Harry Potter themed costume ideas for the game. Especially since one of the guys in the box next to ours was famous NBA player Chris Mullin, who maybe would have gotten the joke, maybe not.

The Warriors are currently 7 – 18. Right on track, if you look at their performances over the last decade or so. I don’t know much about basketball, and I find parts of the game frustrating — such as the way every game inevitably loses all momentum in the last two minutes, turning into a boring sequence of time outs and free throws.

So anyway, they are a fairly losery team. Like, say, the Atlanta Hawks or the… Wizards. We showed up in our “luxury” box and found a spread of free hot dogs, pasta salad, drinks, chips and dip, etc. Pretty nice. Had private kitchenette, restroom, and seats, plus a TV where we could enjoy Monday Night Football and the Swan Pageant. Brian wondered which was more of a trainwreck, the game down on the floor or the post-op Swans parading around in slutty lingerie. Tricky.

Attendance seemed decent, maybe half the seats were full as the game started, and the arena looked two-thirds full by half time. Before the game, one of the Warriors players got the microphone and thanked the audience for coming out to support the team. Aw. That’s so cute! Even cuter was the team introduction, complete with loud music and spotlights and faux excitement. Yeah! The Warriors! Let’s go for our eighth win, guys! Good effort! Polite applause!

The game starts and we’re all up there hoping for a miracle. But soon, the Warriors start making all kinds of retarded mistakes. I mean, these bad teams are bad for a reason. Like, running down the floor with an open basket and then just missing the dunk. Or repeatedly passing to the wrong team or throwing the ball away. Or airballs. Or shooting when everyone in the crowd knew “no way is that going in.” And the Wizards seemed to be just better at, you know, making the ball go into the basket. Even with my rudimentary knowledge of the sport, I could tell that the Warriors were way more chicken as far as making shots close to the basket with defenders around, and instead, kept trying all these outside shots that inevitably bounced off the rim.

It seemed to be retro night or something (players were wearing “old school” uniforms — AND YET did not complete the look with short-shorts or knee socks), and we were treated to the Warrior Girls performing in skanky “60s” outfits. Or possibly 70s? I don’t know. A group of children did a dance routine in campy retro costumes a while later, and kind of outdid the cheerleaders. Especially the little six-year-old boy on center court; he’s going to be a STAR.

So as the game dragged on, the Warriors stayed about ten points back for most of it. We kept hoping for some kind of run, some kind of energy. Also we kept eating all the free food and spying on the celebs in the next box and watching the football game and making fun of the cheerleaders.

Then in the fourth quarter, with about two minutes left, the Warriors had that run, and actually tied the game somehow. Victory was within view! The crowd actually got into it for the first time in the entire evening, apart from the cheerful applause for making a basket, or the disgusted gasps at some dumbass error.

They were tied up with only ten seconds to go and the Wizards had the ball. They took it down the court and then seemed to hesitate, running out the clock, and everyone hoped that the Warriors would actually put together some defense. But no, as the very last possible second ticked down, the DC player drove right in and made a layup right at the buzzer, ending the game on an extremely heartbreaking and anti-climactic note.

As we headed home, shaking our heads, one thing was agreed upon: free food is awesome, and hey. At least it wasn’t a blowout, right?

When does baseball start again?