Famous People

It's not everyday that you find yourself in an Olympic Basketball Stadium (Wukesong Stadium) sitting five or six seats down from Cindy Crawford and simultaneously watching LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Dwight Howard, Jason Kidd, Carlos Boozer, Tayshaun Prince, Dwayne Wade, Michael Redd and Deron Williams ball out on the court.

Of course, the ever-terrible, devilish, rat-looking Coach Krzyzewski of Duke University was there as well, but no situation is perfect right? (GO HEELS!)

It's only a matter of time until Roy coaches the Olympic team, I'm sure.

Anyway, I arrived at work on August 11th to find out that I had received a ticket for the August 12th USA Men's Basketball vs. Angola game. I was ecstatic! I expected to go to an Olympic event, but in all honestly I was 100% convinced that I would not be able to make it to any of the USA Basketball games. I figured that I would end up at Badminton, or shooting or something, but not Basketball.

My co-workers Ludo and Aurelie also received tickets, so we hitched a ride with one of the company vans and arrived at Wukesong Stadium just in time for the beginning of the game.

Wukesong is huge! Not only that, but the lighting on the building is fantastic! Every ten or twenty seconds, the entire building changes from Red, to Yellow, then to Blue, and all sorts of other colors. Security was semi-tight, with two waves of bag checks at different points. After that though, it was just like going to any other basketball game.

Oh wait, I must add that the beer was extremely cheap as far as important sporting event venue pricing goes: one good-sized cup of Yanjing was only 5 kuai, which is less than 1 USD. Ludo and I had a pretty constant feed of the stuff coming our way, which made the event that much better!

About five minutes or so after sitting down with our first cups of beer, I noticed Sasha, OMEGA's major VIP-PR agent, looking for her seat. Almost any other time that I have seen Sasha she has been in the presence of one celebrity or another, so I immediately began scanning the nearby crowd for famous faces.

Sure enough, about ten seconds later I spotted Cindy Crawford sitting closeby. I must admit, she still is still pretty striking.

Anyway, trying to be as professional as possible in the presence of my co-workers (we were surrounded by other OMEGA staff), I kept my eyes on the game. This was not a difficult feat, for the court was full of the NBA's biggest stars.

Speaking of which, I must say that while MVP Kobe Bryant is impressive, no player is more interesting to watch than LeBron.

I known very little about basketball, but there is something about LeBron that simply sets him apart from all of the other players. It's not just his scoring or his amazing skills, but something in the way that he watches everyone move on the court, waiting to strike like a lion in tall grass awaiting a wandering gazelle.

Alright, I'm going to stop that cheesy rambling before it gets out of control.....just know that LeBron is awesome, that is all that's important.

Go USA!