As a kind of spur of the moment type of thing I decided to go to the Blazers game tonight. It was their last game of the season and against the hated Lakers, so I was sure it would at least be interesting. I searched the Tri-Met website and decided we'd go to PGE Park and take the MAX into the Rose Garden from there. Parking would be after 6pm on the street, so that would be free, and also MAX was free. Better than paying $14 for the Rose Garden parking, yeesh.

We left around 5:20 and encountered horrible traffic trying to get into Portland. I knew southbound from Portland would be bad, but I didn't think northbound would be so bad. Anyways, we finally got through and onto 405, getting off at the PGE Park exit, and for once, not getting lost. It was 5:49 so we decided to risk the 11 minutes of unlawful free parking and boarded the MAX. It was about a 15 minute jaunt to the Rose Garden but it went by pretty fast. The MAX trains are really nice, I only wish they covered more ground.

We got to the Rose Garden and headed to the ticket booth. There were already a lot of people milling around outside for being 40 minutes before the game. The box office only had $24 dollar seats, and they were singles away from each other. We didn't want to pay that much, so we searched for guys selling tickets on the street. Didn't find any, so we decided to give in and pay $24. When we got back, all those had sold out and now the cheapest was $49. Screw that.

We then decided to go the the Portland Beavers game that was starting at 7 at PGE Park. Well, we still really wanted to go the basketball game, so we started to circle the Rose Garden looking for scalpers. We ran into one, who didn't have what we wanted, but yelled at this other guy, who came over and then ran to this other guy, who had the right tickets, and gave them to us. $15 a piece for decent nosebleeds, so that was all swell and well. For being a half hour before the game and the game being sold-out, we got lucky.

We got into the game with about 20 minutes until tipoff. The Rose Garden filled out with a sellout crowd of 19,800ish and the game started. Portland played really good the first quater and had a small lead. For once the arena wasn't dead... mostly because it was the last game and against the Lakers. The crowd was pretty loud and enthusiastic.

Second quarter went good as well, Blazers leading 59-49 going into halftime. We wanted to try and switch to better seats at halftime, but, for the first time this whole entire year, just about every one was filled. We were content with where we were though. A 31 year-old lady behind us got carded for her beer... that was kind of funny. Blazers sorta fucked up in the third quarter and lost their lead.

Fourth quarter was great. Blazers came back to take the lead, only to relenquish it, only to take it back, only to give it up... etc. Blazers were up one with about 30 seconds to go. Kryompa (Russian guy) drove and gave it off to Outlaw, who slammed it down. The crowd went beserk and it was deafening. Kobe Bryant then got an offensive foul, drawing even more cheers. From there the Blazers were able to coast to a 106-103 win.

Also, since the Blazers scored 100 points and won, we got free Chalupas at Taco Bell. A quick MAX ride after the game and we were right on the freeway headed back to suburbia. We stopped at Taco Bell to receiver our free food before heading home.

Overall it was a really fun game, glad I got an itch to go right after work when I was reading the paper. I didn't think it would sell out, and I thought we were screwed for a minute, but thankfully the scalper network came through.