It's really about the kids, anyway...

I think I would consider myself completely void of any soul if I didn’t start this blog by talking about Dez, his older brother Devan, and his mom Tia. Dez is a 12 year-old African-American boy from Philadelphia who has a life-threatening medical condition. (I never found out more than that about his condition, mainly because I’m just not exactly sure how to ask such a question.) Dez’s wish was to meet and hang out with Carmelo Anthony, so Make-A-Wish flew his family to Denver for the experience. Dez is one of those fans that reads the program and player stats cover to cover. It was pretty cool to hang out and talk to him during the game, because in the end it’s really about the kids, anyway…

At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself ever since the middle of the second quarter when I found out that due to the 8:30 PM local time tip-off, Dez and his family was invited to spend the afternoon with the team instead of the original plan of meeting Carmelo after the game. It was a brutal blow; stupid Sacramento and their larger West Coast viewing audience. On the outside I sat there and listened to Dez’s story of how great his day had been having a limo pick him up, meet the team and shooting hoops with them during practice and playing play-station with ‘Melo, while on the inside I grew more and more jealous. But, I decided to stay because the suite was nice and at halftime it was still an interesting game. However, it did take me until the end of halftime before I was able to engage in any type of meaningful conversation again. So as I still try to recover from this turn of events, let me run down my favorite parts of the evening:

• 
  · Marcus Camby being announced as Marcus “yes you Cam” by. Hopefully, his 20 points and 11 rebounds last night will earn him a much cooler nickname; actually just another nickname would be better.
  · At halftime, trying to answer Dez’s question of why The Dukes of Hazzard was so popular. This was spurred by the Nugget cheerleaders doing a halftime dance to Waylon Jennings “Just the Good Ole’ Boys” and having clips from the original show flash on the jumbo-tron. God, Denver is such a white town.
  · The young business protégé in the suite next to us, out for the night to impress some clients, getting so drunk by the end of the third quarter that he falls over the rows of seats in front of him. It was perfect. It took his boss and their clients about two solid minutes to pull him back up by his slacks. Later he was asked to leave the suite.
  · Rocky, the Nuggets unidentified feline mascot, making a half-court shot over his head, and then some strange man coming into our suite and asking Dez if he saw Rocky point to him after making the shot. I was watching the whole thing; there was no point. But I understand Rocky was elated by his nearly impossible feat, actually it took 22 attempts spread out over three commercial timeouts.
  

I truly am happy for Dez getting his wish fulfilled, I’m just also shallow enough to hold a grudge against him for getting to meet 'Melo. At least the Nugs got their second win of the season, even if it was over a 1-4 Kings team.