The surreality of the NBA

I’m no stranger to the cheap seats. Most of the time you’ll find me in row X, my head scraping the rafters while I swill expensive beer and break down offensive sets like an assistant coach during a film session.

But about once a year I splurge on a lower-level NBA ticket, scouring the secondary market for an affordable seat as close to the floor as I can get.

The only way to describe the experience is surreal.

It’s the lights, mostly. The hardwood is illuminated more like a Broadway stage than a gym, the glare not quite enough to make you squint but sufficient to settle with a dull ache in the back of your eyeballs.

Microphones embedded in the backboard pick up the swish of the net and the clang of the rim and broadcast it to the arena at an incredible decibel level. Your ears never fully adjust to the jackhammer of the piped-in entertainment.

And then there’s the cognitive dissonance of seeing the people you associate as characters on TV right in front of you. On the screen or from up high, they look mostly normal.

But from this perspective, even the point guards are impossibly big. They speed down the court and recover to their man with an epileptic fury. Seven-footers casually snare the ball from heights I’ve only reached on a ladder. Their jerseys are too crisp and the colors too bright.

I like to listen to audiobooks sped up, forcing the narrator unnaturally fast so I can zoom through a seven-hour book. The NBA this close to the court is life at 1.5x.

I’ve never gotten press credentials to cover an NBA game. With my job, I probably could, but I value my routine of loaded nachos and generic beer cups too much.

If I ever make it inside the post-game locker room, I don’t think I would ask about the second-quarter run or effort off the bench. I’d ask how long it took for all of this to become routine.

When I sit this close to the court, I can’t keep track of the score or how much time is left in the game. My brain is too overloaded to process that much. During timeouts, I have to convince myself that the world is still real. I watch the TV broadcasters prepare for their live shots and security guards scanning the crowd, their fidgeting and small talk a refreshing dose of reality.

Or sometimes I’ll use my phone to record a minute of game action. It’s not about preserving the moment for later. It’s about watching the game just for a moment through a lens that brings the proportions back to earth.

I need that filter, that distance, to feel like the game I love is real.