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Playing pickup

Sporting News, The, April 1, 2005

I'm standing in a dimly lit room. In one corner, a guy is serving drinks. In another corner, a DJ is playing Outkast's "Hey Yd." Anxious-looking women, clutching their coats and fussing with their hair, are clustered along one wall. Across the room are some of the most uncomfortable men I've ever seen. No one is dancing. No one is mingling. What is this, junior high?

No, it's the "ice-breaking" portion of the Washington Wizards' popular Singles Night event. Fifty dollars buys you a ticket to a Wizards game and a chance to meet the man or woman of your dreams. But the road to Mr. or Ms. Right has hit a little speed bump. "I was married for 10 years, and I can't believe how much it's changed," confides the woman next to me. "Men just don't approach women anymore."

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Someone forgot to tell Tommy the Matchmaker. He blows into the room with a microphone--think Martin Short on speed--and immediately begins to pull people together. "Guys, can you believe all the women pretending they don't want to look you in the eye?" he says. "Come on, ladies, don't hold five the coat, because the guys can't see the product?"

Oh. My. Goodness.

I make my way into the arena, where the Wizards are getting ready to take on the Rockets. We are supposed to sit boy-girl. I plop into my seat in the middle of the row. "So, you know anything about basketball?" says the guy on my right.

Gee, you think? I edit most of the NBA coverage in the freakin' SPORTING NEWS, and I still play the game once a week. But I am incognito--no mention of my job. (The girls at work have instructed me to say I'm a stewardess, a la Miranda from Sex and the City, if asked.) I shrug. "I know a little."

He snickers. "Yeah, right."

A guy has just arrived on my left. "I don't like basketball," he tells me. "But I really like Yao Ming."

I manage a polite smile. "Yeah, he's really popular."

I spend most of the first half trying to catch the attention of two cute guys at the end of my row. I'm not having much success. On the court, Tracy McGrady has missed four of his last five shots. Beautiful. T-Mac can't score, and neither can I.

We get new seat assignments for the second half. A girl in front of me asks the guy next to her (who most certainly is having the first conversation of his life with a member of the opposite sex) to fix her paper wristband. He obliges. AN, the sweet scent of foreplay. They talk and smile and are inseparable for the rest of the night.

A man who could be Bill Walton's stunt double has been shadowing me since before the game, and he finally makes his move. "I saw you writing something before," he says. "Are you writing in a diary?" How did you guess? Dear Diary." I met the cutest guy at Singles Night. He totally looked like that hottie Bill Walton. I'd play one-on-one with him ANY day! "Um, no," I respond.

The second half flies by. McGrady clangs a potentially game-tying 3 to end the game, and we all come back together for the nightcap: a dating game featuring one of the Wizards dancers and Laron Profit. (What? Kwame Brown was busy? Let me tell you, I saw the game--he wasn't that busy.) I'm standing in the back of the room, and I'm tired. I'm tired because I can't remember the last time I got a decent night's sleep, tired of the loud music, tired of fending off socially inept men whose mothers should have taught them a whole lot better. I'm trying to decide whether I should stick around when I sense a guy approaching me. Not Walton again. I turn to look at him. It's one of the cute guys from the first half.

"Hey," he smiles. "Can I get you a drink?"

Hmm. Maybe Singles Night won't turn out to be a bust after all.

Playing pickup

Sporting News, The, April 1, 2005

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