04/13/08: NBA Basketball – Dallas Mavericks @ Seattle Supersonics
Hotel - Seattle, WA
NBA fans in Seattle (who actually still care about the Sonics) have suffered through quite a bit this season to say the least. The team was terrible on the court all season long, which is just how the pack of lying weasels who own the team wanted it to go down. I was busy this Sunday but still made some time to go down and hound the visiting team before what could be the last home game in Sonics history. I only had a few cards for this outing so I wasn't expecting a whole lot. I got to the hotel pretty early and found the regulars already lined up by the ropes. As it turned out everyone wanted to come out for the last home game of the season so the number of graphers swelled to about twenty, which wouldn't be much in other cities except the hounding space was so small that people were stacked two to three deep. I was near the back too so getting stuff done would have to test my reach-over skills. Graphers were talking about the possibility of this being the last NBA hounding day in the city for awhile. The first player out of the hotel was the one I needed most: Jason Kidd, on a Sports Illustrated. While a couple dealers were double-dipping on him, I was trying to stretch my clipboard out to get him to sign, which I finally did. I got some other guys who were doing mostly one apiece given how large the crowd was; it also didn't help that it started raining, so only part of the crowd was covered from the elements. One of the last players to come out was Dirk, with a goofy grin on his face. He started signing with his own black pen, and I was one of the last guys to get him. To save space on my album I had put two Dirk cards on a page, and one Stackhouse. Note to self... never do this kind of thing again. Dirk signed my Stackhouse card, getting half of his already sloppy signature on the card and half on the album... totally brutal. I'm not even counting that as a graph in the totals below, it's that bad. Things didn't get much better from there. Avery Johnson did sign for a bit but couldn't stick around too long, and left before I could get him. To wrap up this fairly mediocre Mavericks outing, Mark Cuban hurried out of the hotel and said the bus was waiting on him. Overall this was an alright day but definitely somber for basketball fans in this city. I couldn't go to the final game, but heard that it was the most well-attended game in a long time and that Gary Payton signed up a storm there (figures) from his seat in the front row. Oh well, there's always next season... (wait a sec... aw, crap!)
Erick Dampier 2/2 cards
Josh Howard 1/2 cards
Juwan Howard 1/2 cards
Eddie Jones 1/1 card
Jason Kidd 1/1 SI
Tyronn Lue 1/2 cards
Dirk Nowitzki 0.5/3 cards
Antoine Wright 1/1 card
Mark Cuban 0/1 running late
Avery Johnson 0/1 signed, but only got about to about half
