USA 2019 - 33 Phoenix Suns vs Philadelphia 76ers in Phoenix Arizona (2019-11-04)

Phoenix is in the position where it has a representative team in all four major American sports, namely baseball (Diamondbacks), American football (Cardinals), ice hockey (Coyotes) and basketball (Suns). The last time I visited the States I lucked out and was able to watch a MLB baseball game between Los Angeles Angels and Chicago White Sox in Anaheim, and pleasingly, this time around I got to attend my first ever NBA basketball matchup in the form of the Phoenix Suns taking on the Philadelphia 76ers!

The Talking Stick Resort Arena (which has since become the Footprint Center), is just up the road from the Phoenix Convention Center, and as such, pretty much all the NACAS C3X event attendees joined the swelling crowd as everyone pulled into the stadium arena for the evening’s fast paced entertainment.

Make no mistake, entertainment is the indeed the name of the game here – as with pretty much all American sports, a NBA game is punctuated with seemingly constant breaks in play, meaning a plethora of additional acts get wheeled out to keep the energy of the crowd alive, from t-shirt cannons, dancing grannies, performing gorilla mascots, all the way through to a dog doing tricks with his human. Luckily, the basketball was equally as entertaining (though given our last minute decision to join, we were seated rather high up so everything was happening in miniature scale), but at the end of the day (and sadly for the arena’s vibe), the home team walked away empty handed.