Dispatch: Never Hungover at the Smoothie King Center

A Night in New Orleans with the Brooklyn Nets

You can run from your past, but it will always catch up to you.

The recently-competent Brooklyn Nets visited the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday night. As I’ve explained before, I moved this year to New Orleans in part to “start over,” to experience a life previously unfamiliar to me, an ambition that necessitated my ending – or at least significantly modifying – my toxic relationship with the Brooklyn Nets. Of course I knew that the Brooklyn Nets would play in New Orleans at some point – that’s how the schedule works. By any reasonable stretch of the imagination, though, the Nets’ date with the Pelicans should have taken place during a franchise free-fall. I anticipated, at the start of the year, that I would host the Nets in a sort of sober, celebratory, and overdue funeral. I did not expect, for instance, that Kevin Durant would be on the team when they came to town.

Of course, the Nets would not make this clean break easy. After running in rapid succession through a parade of spectacle and absurdities to try and command my attention—trade demands, coach firings, dalliances with scandalized head coaches, the first-ever hotep-induced suspension in league history, and a new, post-fourth-wall generation of Kevin Durant posting—the Nets were threatening, at long last, to lose my attention. Momentarily, lose my attention they did. After sending my magnum opus of Nets derangement into your inboxes, I stopped writing and seriously following the Nets not as a conscious decision but as a matter of happenstance. The Nets, I suspect, felt this dwindling interest. In response to my largely viewing games at bars or through my younger brother’s texts, the team decided to pursue a new, radical strategy to win my attention: winning games. From the time I last wrote about the Brooklyn Nets, they went on to win 11 games in a row, entering their night at the Smoothie King Center having won 16 of their last 18 games.

Of course, this posed a problem for me. I had anticipated my experience of Nets-Pelicans to be an exercise in absurd self-flagellation: I would sit in the cheapest seats in the Blender, get drunk enough to strike the appropriate balance of irony and sincerity when cheering for Ben Simmons, and leave having felt that I had “done my job” and “seen my boys off into the sunset.” Instead, I was tasked with the far more serious business of being an engaged fan at an away game in the NBA.

It was an experience I’d only had once before – at Game 2 of the first round of the Eastern Conference Playoffs in Boston’s TD Garden. My tour at the Garden was a psychotic, terrifying journey, reducing me at its end to certain schizoid numbness, convincing me that professional basketball could never deliver anything resembling satisfaction to my life, and redoubling my professional commitment to social justice so as to curb the evils I had witnessed around me. To emerge from my shift at the Smoothie King Center spiritually intact, I would have to learn from my mistakes. The first, and most important, variable was mercifully handled for me: this game would be in New Orleans, not Boston; there was no risk here of having to endure a horde of wage thieves, landlord-side housing lawyers, dishonorably discharged police officers, and bloggers erupting at a timely Marcus Smart three. Still, it felt important for me to pick my seats wisely and create a sort of “safe space” within which I could envelop myself from home fans razzing Kevin Durant, booing Kyrie Irving, or laughing when Ben Simmons smoked a layup. Both as protection (I’ve found that there is an inverse correlation between one’s seat location and commitment to the game) and to allow myself to be close enough to the court to add some sort of “journalistic insight” not readily available from a YES Network broadcast, I decided that I would want to sit in relatively good seats.

This decision, too, had its attendant consequences. For one, I have no money. Relatedly, as I was committed to not going to the game alone, I anticipated that it would be difficult to recruit a group of friends to pay a significant sum to see me grumble and eye my Seth Curry voodoo doll (This would be made all the more difficult in light of my spirited and largely unsuccessful effort to assemble a group to attend Avatar: The Way of Water in IMAX 3D the night before). Looking to find a way around at least being gouged by secondary ticket market fees, I reached out the day before the game to an officemate and enthusiastic Pelicans season ticket holder and asked him if he knew of anybody selling tickets. He assured me that he would ask around, and I went back to waiting for the announcement that Kevin Durant would be out with a Non-COVID illness that would make lower bowl tickets affordable.

On the morning of the game, I awoke to a text from this coworker informing me that his girlfriend couldn’t make it to the game and that he had an extra ticket. I felt a pang of remorse at the prospect of abandoning my potential group, especially since the friend who had seemed most open to the idea of going to the game was also the only person courageous enough to venture to Pandora with me the night before. Still, I was under the impression that my coworker’s seats were well-placed. More significant than free, good seats, however, was the prospect of going to the game with a functional stranger. His company, I suspected, would curb my fandom’s excesses, forcing me into projecting and embodying a certain “normality.”

I carried this mission – Be Normal – into the game. As we coordinated logistics, my coworker sent me a video from his seats from which I deduced, with tremendous gravity, that I would be visible on television for nearly the entirety of the broadcast. I spent the next few hours contemplating, to varying degrees of intensity, what I would be wearing. I was reluctant to drape myself in Nets gear, thinking it somewhat disrespectful to accept an invite from a coworker and show up “decked out in the opposition.” I briefly flirted with the idea of dressing like Ben Simmons from the clown game before realizing that my wardrobe lacked the range. Ultimately, I went with a relatively unassuming outfit, wearing a shirt just colorful enough to signal to friends and family where I was – that I’d “made it,” was “out here,” and so on – while not making a statement. I donned my gray Nets hat as a tasteful show of support. I realized, as I looked in the mirror, that this was the first time I’d worn my Nets hat in public since the Kyrie debacle, during which time the Nets hat felt not totally unlike a MAGA hat in terms of its status as political accessory. I briefly considered switching into a Yankee hat, knowing that so doing would almost certainly guarantee that the YES crew would focus on me during promotion for Spring Training coverage. Just as I prepared to switch lids, though, I thought about Nets Daily. Specifically, I imagined him watching the broadcast, seeing a man in a Brooklyn Nets hat all the way in New Orleans, and feeling heartened by the global reach of Brooklyn’s merchandise sales. The prospect of Nets Daily seeing me struck me as deeply, almost impossibly, hilarious. I wonder if he would be able to tell, through a sort of cosmic premonition, how much I tweet about him. I suspect he knows I exist – I know that many of his writers read my Substack. I walked into my coworker’s car brimming with ideas, thoughts, and inspiration.

As we drove over to the game, I checked my phone and realized that it was January 6th. It wasn’t yet obvious to me whether this date would be a hopeful or ominous sign for the Nets. My coworker and I talked ball, exhibiting a masterclass of male bonding as mediated through sports fandom. He wore a Texas Longhorns hat in a show of support for Kevin Durant, which to me felt like a sincere and meaningful show of diplomacy to his guest. The sniper, and I, was welcome here. We parked, walked under the shadow of the Superdome, weaved through various doors, and ended up at a narcotically blue-lit bar area just above the seats. I hesitated to suggest we buy drinks, torn between wanting to make a show of appreciation for the tickets and the prospect of coming off as “aggro,” unserious, or “inappropriately flippant toward the fact that my coworker drove to the game.” When he asked if I wanted a drink on his own accord, I enthusiastically obliged. I asked if he wanted a beer, trying to keep the ritual of budding masculine friendship rolling apace. He opted with precision to a double Jack and Coke. I realized with an indecision that leaned optimistic that I might get kind of drunk at the game.

As we took our seats, the first thing I noticed was Morris Bart, the plaintiff’s lawyer whose face and number is plastered across the city of New Orleans, hovering above his courtside seat, backslapping and politicking. It felt poetic and logical that the face of New Orleans’ ubiquitous yellow posters would be right in front of me at this game, a sort of symmetry between my seeing his billboards every time I drove in this new city and Kevin Durant seeing his face every time he drove to the basket. Bart put his AirPods in at the start of the game, where they would remain until the final buzzer.

The lights dimmed for the national anthem, which was sung by three people, none of whom were “L.J. Saint,” a golden-voiced guy I’d run into at a local karaoke bar whose Instagram suggested he sang the national anthem at quite a lot of Pelicans games. During the anthem, Seth Curry stretched visibly and exaggeratedly in a display I found oddly anti-imperialist. Ben Simmons took deep breaths with his eyes closed, looking as if he was resigning himself to the horror of dying for a cause in which he does not, and could never, believe. When they announced his name, he was met with a tremendous chorus of boos, due presumably to his tenure at LSU. Just before tip-off, Zion Williamson emerged from the locker room, smiling ear-to-ear and dressed like Archie.

The game got off to an uneven, stilted start. Kevin Durant could not make a shot, but neither could the Pelicans. I learned that Pelicans fans have a sort of “mandated stand until the first basket” policy that was dramatically complicated by Nic Claxton recording three blocks in the first two minutes of gameplay, leaving me standing for longer than I wanted to and somewhat “pissing me off.” When the Pelicans made their first shot, a three pointer, the crowd erupted in an elation that felt more comfort- than basketball-related.

Good seats have a certain effect on me by which they minimize my perception of the game’s intricacies by captivating me entirely with minutiae. I watched rapt as Durant cursed himself for missing a series of midrange shots, as Naji Marshall slapped a conciliatory hand from Ben Simmons away, as Brandon Ingram rolled onto the bench thirty minutes late and as high as I imagine a person can get. My coworker and I entered a certain détente that bordered on polite attempts to jinx the other team: we each politely praised the other’s team, performing a dance where I committed to ensuring him that the Pelicans’ second-round picks were “some players” and he reacted to every KD miss with a sort of foreboding “oh no, now he’s really gonna get started.” We were in a good place.

As Durant bricked shot after shot, I realized that I had a potential ally in the woman next to me. She was cheering for Durant more than the Nets, but she emboldened me to start being a bit more vocal – I mixed in a few ‘come on, sniper’s  to build out the relationship. She told me that she, like Durant, was from Prince George County, Maryland, and that she was rocking with him. Her date, for what it’s worth, was tied up in a convoluted and encompassing parlay which more or less forced him to root for the Nets. My attempts to ensure him that the bet would hit were perceived as “bad juju” and my seatmate cautioned me to “take it easy.” We, too, settled into a certain rhythm whereby we would more or less just repeat what the other had said. The first quarter was a volley of stray pleas: “He’ll kick up soon,” “that’s not the shot,” “Sniper…” “That’s nasty,” she dismayed at a foul called on Durant. “Nasty,” I repeated. “It’s nasty work,” she rejoined. “Nasty work,” I affirmed.

It was around this time, spirit beaten with a series of Durant bricks, that I logged onto the neighboring Superdome’s Wifi (It’s not clear that the Smoothie King Center has its own network) and started receiving texts. I was prominently visible on the broadcast, I learned – not in-your-face, at no risk of becoming a meme, going viral, being a “courtside baddie” and so on, but if you were looking for me you could find me with some ease. I became hyper-aware of my being televised, feeling a certain obligation to “perform” my fandom balanced against my overriding desire to “be normal” and remain a respectful guest. A man to my left continued to scream at Kevin Durant and criticize his male-pattern baldness, which baldness I find actually quite endearing. When, moments later, the heckler was informed that he was in the wrong seats, I saw that he was alone with his preteen daughter who looked remorseful and supernaturally tired.

As the first quarter broke, the PA made an important announcement: as tonight was the official beginning of Carnival season (at the gate, every fan was gifted a really quite nice “Carnival beanie,” which I anticipate to wear often), the two-or-so-month-long bacchanal that culminates in Mardi Gras, the Pelicans were excited to announce the return of the Smoothie King Center’s King Cake Baby. The Baby is a blood-curdling horror – a gigantic beast whose expectant smile is a gaping void. Its eyes are wide open, giving the impression even from the Jumbotron that it is peering into your soul. My coworker informed me that the Baby notoriously terrifies children, which struck me as a fun continuation of a rich tradition of scary Pelicans mascots. He predicted that the small child behind us would be terrified by the Baby; the child did not react, but a blood-curdling shriek escaped from the woman to my right. Moments after the Baby’s reveal, the camera cut to a man in the stands wearing a full-body skin suit, the Baby’s face, and a large diaper. I admired his tenacity and “commitment to the bit.”

My coworker got us a second round of drinks right around the time that my seatmate spilled a good deal of my double whiskey ginger into her lap. The Nets offense went from flailing to non-existence, sending me into a sort of spiral only possible by watching your team get torched by Jose Alvarado. After a miserable second quarter, the Nets were down 12. Dejected and unexpectedly drunk – I had not eaten since having a green smoothie hours earlier – I decided to meet a friend at the concourse to get some food. When I learned that he couldn’t access the blue-lit club where I sought refuge, my disappointment was balanced against a certain “importance” and “exclusivity” I felt at having the privilege of being in the club. I ordered a $20 prime rib sandwich with “hurricane sauce,” caramelized onions, and a bag of chips. I’m reminded of my recent experience of a Saints game at the Superdome, during which I ordered a “Cajun Dog” and writhed in gastric pain throughout the night. I took stock of my emotions – minutes earlier, YES Network had caught me with my head in my hands. I realized with tremendous immediacy both that I had just finished my second drink and that I had to wake up at 4:30am for a flight. I scheduled an Uber in line for my sandwich as a show of “handling my responsibilities.” I realize, in my swirl of thoughts, one thing that Durant has not missed tonight: that the Nets do have me in hell.

As I’m waiting, I ask my coworker if he would like anything. He opts for a third and final round of drinks. I get my sandwich and get in line for drinks; as I leave the sandwich line, I hear the man behind me order a Yellow Fanta. Crowd noise notifies me that the second half has begun. In the four-or-so minutes of gameplay during which I am not in my seat, the Nets go on their strongest (and, on reflection, only) run of the game, erasing the Pelicans’ 12-point lead. I am faced with the now-inescapable fact that I am the problem with this team. When they have my attention, they flounder; it is only when I unconsciously uncouple myself from the Brooklyn Nets that they have a chance at success. It is an evil paradox – their success draws me back in, and on cue my attention undermines them. I ponder the aphorism: if you love someone, let them go. For a moment, I consider walking out of the Smoothie King Center, leaving this all behind. Instead I walk back to my seats, balancing one of two drinks on the surface of my plate cleared of chips.

Fed and watching a tie game, I slipped into a comfortable sort of presence in the Smoothie King Center. The ephemera of my experience were becoming imperceptible; perhaps I was just getting drunk, but more likely I was just “watching hoop,” being lulled into the unique pace of a game defined by slogs rather than runs. It never became clear to me how the Nets took the lead, as I can’t recall them making a shot for the vast majority of the game. Kevin Durant quietly amassed more than thirty points, which with his four three pointers kept my neighbors’ parlay alive and well. I’m told that while I was gone Durant challenged a fan to a 1-on-1.

In the fourth quarter, with the crowd more frequently standing, I felt emboldened to start “acting a fan” for the television. I wouldn’t be obnoxious to those around me, but after three drinks I decided that I had a role in the YES Network ecosystem – from viewer to content creator. As the fourth quarter stretched onward, I dabbled with three-point goggles, “rocking the baby,” and the good-old-fashioned “stand and clap.” I wondered if the threat of doxxing myself outweighed the promotional capital that my seat offered had I brought a sign advertising Never Hungover.

Somehow, the Nets win. Kyrie Irving, who has missed shots like they were COVID boosters throughout the night, makes a three pointer from well beyond the arc to seal the deal. YES Network cuts quickly to Irving, but ESPN allows me a tasteful celebration.

I walked out of the arena satisfied but not entirely victorious, feeling fairly sickened by the display the Nets had put on throughout the night. I feel more connected to the basketball being played – the slowed staccato of Simmons’ half-hearted drives, Royce O’Neale’s rat tendencies, Kyrie and KD doing a secret handshake every time play stops – such that when the basketball is bad, I myself feel sick. I wondered if it wasn’t easier to root for a team for whom basketball was incidental, just a stated justification to engage in mind-bendingly absurd off-court antics. There is a responsibility in rooting for a real basketball team for which I may not be cut out.

After the game, I met the friend who was previously unable to enter the blue-lit prime rib club at a nearby hotel bar. A jazz band played as we caught up, watching a group of peripheral Pelicans organizational figures trickle in – an assistant coach here, a partial owner there. During the band’s second-to-last song, Morris Bart, the billboard plaintiff’s lawyer, walked into the bar. Amid a flurry of hushed whispers, Bart approached the band; the lead singer recognized and shouted him out immediately. Bart shook his hand for a noticeably long time, suggesting that he had handed the singer a number of hundred-dollar bills. The band had finished their song, but the handshake is a jolt of energy – they reprised the chorus, this time substituting in the slogan on every Morris Bart billboard: “Just One Call!”

Amidst the reverie, Morris Bart walked out of the bar a conquering king. I went to shake his hand and he brought me in for a remarkably fluid, practiced dap-into-hug. For the first time tonight, I am aware of being part of something larger than myself.