What's the most memorable NBA game(s) you've seen in person?

mine was this suns vs hornets double OT game on feb 6, 2008.

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=280206021

– I got to sit in one of the box suites that the company i worked for owned
– Was with my wife and we were sitting next to the CEO who had a very dry persona
– Nash vs CP the two best PGs in the game at the time
– Shaq had just been traded (for Marion) to the suns and was in attendance for the 2nd half, he was sitting just below us. when they showed him on the jumbo tron he stood and pointed to his ring finger and the fans went nuts (he did not... bring a ring to phx)
– So many great shots including the loose ball rebound kick out to barbosa to hit the 3 and tie in double ot
– but then Peja hit this pretty ridiculous "well i guess i should shoot it" shot over stoudemire to win it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPwrY1eRW40
– chris paul 42-5-9-8 / amare 26-20-3-4 blocks / Jannero Pargo 22 points lol
– dantoni playing basically only 7 players for a double ot reg season game
– I was screaming my lungs out going nuts at everything and the CEO just sat stoically

this is a link to the whole game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXA8XdiqSXI

a few other more recent ones...

the year after steph's 54 point game at MSG he returned and put up a triple double. he joined lebron as the only visiting player in history to have both a 50 point game and a triple double at MSG. this actually wasn't a very good game and is memorable to me bcuz it was such a blowout that i was able to sneak down into the lower level for most of the fourth quarter, where i was able to watch tyson chandler get ejected w/ like 2 mins left in the game for shoving mareese speights after speights hit a series of random heat checks right in his face w/ the warriors up 20

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=400489742

Anthony had 23 points and 16 rebounds for the Knicks, blown out for the second straight night in a season that's starting to feel hopeless no matter what the sorry Eastern Conference standings say. They seem to know it, with an agitated Tyson Chandler thrown out in the fourth quarter after picking up two technical fouls, the first for shoving Warriors backup Marreese Speights.

"It's not a mental thing, it's a heart thing,'' Knicks forward J.R. Smith said. "You can't let people score 40, 50 points in the paint over and over again, then we ain't going to win. We ain't going to win games like that.''

New York is six games behind eighth-place Atlanta.

i went to see luka's first game in MSG in 2019. he played fine, dennis smith jr put up a triple double (for the mavs, lol), but it was also dirk's final game in MSG and he dipped into his bag which turned the game into a dirk celebration. to their credit, knicks fans quickly gave up any pretense of caring about their team winning (kevin knox led the team in scoring with 17, followed by trey burke w/ 16, and mario hezonja w/ 13. dark times.)

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=401071431

During a glorious 2:28 second-quarter span he was, well, Dirk, scoring nine points in vintage-Nowitzki ways. A 3-pointer. His patented one-leg turnaround from the left wing. Another one-legger from the right baseline.

He sat out the third quarter and most of the fourth, but with chants of "We want Dirk" echoing in the Garden, he returned for a curtain call and added five points in the final 2:41.

"Oh, my God, the whole bench was on fire," Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said. "I was choking up. I was happy for him. If you're going to get hot, MSG for Dirk is that place."

https://www.dallasnews.com/sports/mavericks/2019/01/31/in-what-may-have-been-his-last-game-at-madison-square-garden-mavs-dirk-nowitzki-gives-fans-performance-to-remember/

the coda to that mavs-knicks game is that the porzingis trade happened the day after & i can't help but feel like the knicks front office was swayed by dennis smith jr putting up a triple double on their G league level roster

prob this celts/heat game where IT scored 52 (including 29 in the 4th Q)
https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201612300BOS.html

saw pierce light the knicks up a bunch of times lol but that was dependable the one that really stood out probably when a knicks fan behind me spent much of the game heckling spreewells shiny shoes, saw a few bird era celtics games as a kid but dont remember much abt the games persay, been to a few early round celtics playoff games on shitty seats, nothing really stand out tho oh well!

watching the blazers with clay was memorable!

Not NBA but probably the most devastating moment in the history of hoops:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyWmkHbPf-I

wtf

you were there for that!?

i cried like a baby watching that documentary

the coda to that mavs-knicks game is that the porzingis trade happened the day after & i can't help but feel like the knicks front office was swayed by dennis smith jr putting up a triple double on their G league level roster

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, March 2, 2021 12:53 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

that's hilarious and probably 100% accurate.

you were at that game Albert? holy shit.

I am happy to crow about mine:

https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/200205250BOS.html - Celtics beat Nets, Game 3 of 2002 ECF

A friend was in school in Boston and got hooked up with tickets. I came in for the game from upstate New York. My first playoff game, and the biggest 2nd half comeback in playoff history. I don't remember too many details aside from it not seeming real that it was happening, and the deafening cheering. The Celtics were down by 25 with a minute left in the 3rd quarter and won. Looking at the box score now, it is truly unbelievable that a team led by Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker accomplished that without either of them shooting a single 3! Times sure have changed, eh? The entire comeback was getting to the rim. I do remember the culmination, with everyone hi-fiving and hugging, when they finally tied the game with less than a minute to go. I didn't remember that Jason Kidd missed 4(!) 3s off offensive boards in the final 10 seconds of the game, but lol.

I have a couple other good ones:

https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201312110GSW.html - Game winner with 3 seconds left before Steph was Steph. This was especially sweet because I had flown in for 24 hours for an annual get-together with 2 childhood friends, and this was how we started the gathering. They picked me up at the airport and we went straight to Oracle, then tripped on the beach the next day. Good times.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201705150BOS.html - The Kelly Olynyk game. It was a game 7 so it was gonna be exciting, but I never really feared the Wizards. This was the only time I got to see the Celts with Isaiah

Other than that it's a steep drop off to pretty exclusively unmemorable attendance experiences.

Yeah it was the WCC semifinal afternoon twofer hosted at LMU. Game #1 was LMU vs. Portland, Game #2 was Pepperdine (feat. Doug Christie) vs. San Diego.

They canceled the game (and the following game, plus the rest of the league playoffs) when they carried Hank off the court. It was pretty heavy as this was a pretty small stadium (3-4k maybe?) and you could hear a pin drop for most of Hank's last moments.

I can't tell you just how amazing it was to watch LMU's gameplay during this era. Full court press plus run and gun offense system which just led to the most absurd scoring you can imagine. They had a 2guard named Jeff Fryer who had the green light to do the half-court shots that are all the rage these days, pretty accurate as well from 40+ feet which at that point in time was just jaw-dropping.

The tourney story was amazing as well: they lose their co-captain/arguable-best-player and at 11th seed in the West absolutely destroy #3 seed Michigan by almost 30+ points. Then in the sweet 16, Alabama employs a targeted slow-game strategy and LMU squeaks out a 2-point win with a score they'd normally have at half-time. Then they lose a heartbreaker in the 8 vs. Tark's UNLV who would go on to win the title.

I mentioned this on the 30-for-30 thread that if they could make a film out of Moneyball, they absolutely could make a film out of the Gathers/Kimble/Westhead LMU days.

(also should mention that the style of officiating/roughness-of-play was still in the late 80s/early 90s mode... it was very, very hard to earn a technical foul so to see all that action framed in the brutality and flagrance of the era absolutely could not be replicated today)

watching the blazers with clay was memorable!

hfs @ albert’s story

yeah, that's crazy

sometimes the founder of Funcoland would give away his courtside tickets at the Target Center and one time I got to go with my boss and another guy I worked with. Was literally sitting about 10 feet from the basket on the baseline.

Was in the height of KG when the Wolves were actually an event. Saw Jimmy Jam walk in and Jesse Ventura. There used to be this guy who was famous for hitting the court with a rolled up newspaper, longtime season ticket holder, gadfly dude, we were sitting close to him....anyway KG did this MONSTER dunk and hung on the rim then jumped down, crouched in this weird panther position in front of the guy and looked at him and put his finger to his mouth and "ssssshhhh'd" him

oh and last year when I went to Portland pre-Covid and saw the Blazers/Heat because it was the only time I saw an NBA game that didn't involve the Timberwolves, which is pretty cool. Dame was awesome to see live. Jimmy was out but he had a pretty sweet outfit on.

I can't tell you just how amazing it was to watch LMU's gameplay during this era. Full court press plus run and gun offense system which just led to the most absurd scoring you can imagine. They had a 2guard named Jeff Fryer who had the green light to do the half-court shots that are all the rage these days, pretty accurate as well from 40+ feet which at that point in time was just jaw-dropping.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Tuesday, March 2, 2021 4:31 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

those teams were crazy! was very annoying in the 30 for 30 when they were going on and on about the wild style of play and showed like 2 seconds of game footage total

anyway KG did this MONSTER dunk and hung on the rim then jumped down, crouched in this weird panther position in front of the guy and looked at him and put his finger to his mouth and "ssssshhhh'd" him

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, March 2, 2021 4:44 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao

i want to be taunted by KG

I’ve been to so many games that it’s all just blended together into nothing, there were years where I would go to almost every blazer home game on free tickets, what a weird life! I’ll try to post moments as they come to me now and then.

off the top of my head I remember in the late 00s somehow getting tix where I got to sit at the scorer’s table (!) when the Jazz were in town. You see different stuff that close. On and OOB play boozer was inbounding (dude had the worst juiced-skin I’ve ever seen far and away) and there was blood trickling down his face by his ear. The ref hands him the ball to inbound and I say “hey dude he’s bleeding!” and the red heard me and stopped the game to get him cleaned up lol

feel like you need to track down the video of that

"hey dude he's bleeding!" - guaranteed attention-getter

what can I say I love the spotlight

the only NBA game I’ve seen in person was when the blazers won their playoff series against the clippers in 2016. Austin Rivers got his nose broken during the game but came back and balled out after getting bandaged up. Also I was just really glad to see Paul Pierce in person, just watching him stand around during warm ups and stuff <3, im a fan

my dad was at the knicks finals game that happened during the oj bronco chase, he said that people literally left their seats to watch the chase on tvs in the concourse

my mom and my sister got a connect for floor seats at the garden and were in the row behind regina king when embiid nearly crashed into her: https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/02/joel-embiid-regina-king

personally, i've been to a few playoff games but nothing super memorable. i saw the knicks get eliminated by vince carter and the raptors in 2000 (the last knicks playoffs season for a while), which was cool, i guess.

the most memorable basketball game i attended was michigan vs. louisville in the 2013 ncaa finals (we lost :( )

i havent been to a playoff game yet :/

Sorry to keep crashing this thread, but wanted to post this for lag∞n, an example of how much chaos/disruption a team can cause that it becomes not only an incredibly physical game that also causes brute, unforced mental errors:

LMU scores 8 points in 5 seconds during their first-round upset at the 1990 NCAA tourney
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8P4FI6P5FU

all college teams should play like this

^^^NMSU was #16 in the nation going into the tourney. LMU had already outscored them 20-6 in the 2nd half PRIOR to that 8-0 run.

The physique and fitness of LMU was just beyond comprehension. You'd see it when they'd play really good teams, the game might be close in the first half and then the fog of fatigue and lack of conditioning would cause these great opposing teams to just slowly unravel and fade.

Here's the full game vid vs. Michigan (#13 in the nation):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAX2jr5WUDY

A 5 point game with 14 minutes left in the 2nd half becomes an absolute bloodbath: Michigan stops hustling, arms dropped to their sides, they start turning the ball over, leaving LMU shooters wide open... LMU would just grind their opponents into the ground.

Final score 149-115 with LMU's second team mopping up for most of the final chunk of the game.

so freaking sick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn-oWEc3LeQ

This is the other contender, check out the end of the first overtime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFJ9y2efaTw

Nice. Would have loved to have seen a Hakeem/Admiral duel

ridic euro battle xxp

good ones matt. if you dont mind me asking... about how old were you for that spurs/rox game?

No playoffs or anything that significant, but I saw Sixers-Lakers on 01/25/2020 in Philly. LeBron passed Kobe in scoring that game and the Philly announcers made a big deal about it because of the Kobe-Philly connection. The next morning they announced Kobe died.

good ones matt. if you dont mind me asking... about how old were you for that spurs/rox game?

Nice. Awesome game. That spinning and1 layup by the admiral was incredible