This past Tuesday night a group of friends and I made our way out to the
basketball stadium where the Daegu Orions professional basketball team compete with other teams from around the nation. I was really excited because I had not yet been to a professional basketball game here in Korea but had seen little bits of games on T.V. During baseball season I was given the opportunity to attend two professional baseball games which turned out to be the Korean equivalent to the World Series. Although Daegu's team, the Samsung Lions lost, I had so much fun and was interested to see what basketball was like in Korea. I knew that basketball was not as popular of a sport as baseball but wanted to check it out. I love watching sporting events live because even if I have never seen either team play, if I have a team to support I get really competetive and into the games. I enjoy yelling at the other team's players: insults that I argue are funny but other people could quite easily find annoying. I love chanting with the crowd and standing up and dancing crazy in an attempt to get free things.
So on Tuesday night we meet up with about 10 people, buy our tickets and walk into the stadium. I'm suprised at the size of the stadium which is much smaller than any medium sized college arena. In the crowd are probably only a few hundred people. I'm a little disappointed by this but I figure that I'll head over to the beer gods and they will help ease my pre-game nerves (yea, I was really nervous). When I get to the one and only beer/snack stand I face disappointment #2 when I realize that all they have are 12oz cans of Hite. I am not a fan of arguably the most popular Korean beer as I have a more refined palate and prefer the more robust flavor of Cass. Actually, I really hate all Korean beer but I doubt many places around the world can compete with the incredible selection of microbrews that the Pacific Northwest births. Everyday I see someone drinking a Korean beer I long for a Ninkasi Total Domination IPA. Despite my not-total-hatred but strong-dislike of Hite I figure that I'm at a basketball game and I want a beer. I buy a Hite.
The group settles into our few rows of seats as the Korean national anthem begins to play from the speakers. The crowd stands up and puts their hand over their heart. I don't really know what to do during this. Should I show respect and also put my hand over my heart? I notice that the foreign basketball players have their hands behind their backs so I do the same. Actually, I really didn't give a shit about this.
The game between the Daegu Orions and the Jeonju KCC begins. With only ten minute quarters it seems like the game is going to be pretty quick. Each team has two foreigners on their team: tall black guys which it's apparent at the beginning of the game that they are going to be the star players. Apparently each team can only play their foreigner when the other team is playing their foreigner. I don't know why but this is a really funny concept to me. Both teams playing are apparently really shitty as the Orions are ranked 7th of 9 teams in the country and KCC is ranked 8th. This gives me a little bit of hope. After about a minute our foreigner goes down and sprains his ankle or something. This means that our other foreigner has to play the entire game. Otis takes the court and begins his domination. I'm pretty sure he scored like 70% of the points the Orions made that game. I thought it was a bit unfair that Otis was the only player on the team that had his own song. The DJ would play part of a song and the crowd would chant Oh-tis-uh in that so familiar put-an-UH-at-the-end-of-every-English-word way. His name had to be made into three syllables otherwise the Koreans wouldn't understand.
When KCC brought out Ogre I was convinced that the game was over. Ogre was probably at least 7 feet tall and easily the tallest and beastliest man on the court. Most impressively, he was Korean. He was a bit googly-eyed and I couldn't help but yell really hilarious things like "Too many ogres on the court!" and "OOOOOOGGGGGGGGRRRRRRREEEEEEE!!" in a low pitched voice while he was shooting (and most often missing) his free throws. There was no way that anyone could block any of his shots without fouling him so he got to shoot many. Really his only skill was standing under the hoop and dropping the ball through the net. Not that impressive. The other team also cheated by having a half-black half-Korean guy on their team that counted as 'Korean' and not 'foreigner'. This meant that they were allowed what I saw as 1.5 foreigners on their team at a time plus Ogre. They definitely had an advantage. In our defense we did have the handsome #40 이동준 (Lee-dong-joon). A long haired, greasy ponytail-wearing, young, tall Korean guy whom was being fought over by a couple of girls in our group. After the game they decided to split up the days of the week that they would have him so they both could get a piece.
Ogre
Lee-dong-joon
My favorite cheer, which was brought to my attention by Kyle, was the 'de-fense' cheer that sounded like the popular brand of adult diapers, 'De-pends'. Every time the announcer started the cheer by yelling "De-pends" in a low voice and the crowd followed I chuckled, cheering along with 'De-pends' innocently.
I also really enjoyed the cheerleaders along with their dances and outfit changes. Their uniforms, in a rainbow of colors, did not match the red and yellow of their basketball boys. Even though they were probably the cutest cheerleaders I have ever seen, their skinny, gumby-like bodies gave them a different style than what I was used to. Maybe I was just bitter because one of the girls pretty much put a free Papa Johns pizza right under my nose for me to smell the steaming cheese and then took it away from me and gave it to a young group of guys. I was definitely dancing at a more spastic level during a time out than those stupid boys. She looked right at me as she was walking up the stairs as if to say, "Hey, girl, this juicy pizza that you've been craving is all you." I swear she kept eye contact with me and had a smile on her face until the moment she did the psych out and placed the pizza box in the boys' hands. Then her face turned from a sweet smile to a sly 'ha-ha-ha I've got the pizza power' grin. Needless to say I was angry. After this I was determined to get something for free as I love free things. I danced like a crazy bird for the rest of the game and eventually was thrown a free Pocari Sweat. Even though it was a small prize for all my hard work I still enjoyed it.
Overall the ball handling on both teams was very poor. The players looked a little bit like out of control monkeys. The ball and players were flying all over the court and the shooting skills were sub par. I swear the Orions missed like 75% of their shots, or so it seemed. It was kind of frustrating to watch. Even though our team only ended up losing 94-89 we played like we should have lost by 20. Now we're ranked number 8. Despite the poor performance by the Orions it was still a fun game to watch and I enjoyed the company of my friends.
Oh, an upon further Ogre speculation (me searching for pictures) it looks like he played for the Portland Trailblazers.
Pictures borrowed from Google Images.
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