Jazz, burgers sizzling at the Sky Box

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 14, 2007 | by Lee Benson Deseret Morning News

Playoff fever is sweeping the city, and nowhere is the epidemic any more evident than right here at the Sky Box Sports Grille & Arena in The Gateway, where the place sells out every time the Jazz make their way along championship highway.

Home or away, it doesn't matter. The Jazz game is always on at the Sky Box.

Sometimes the Sky Box sells out twice, even three times, on the same night, depending on the intensity of the game and how many people elect to leave after they've finished their cheeseburger and fries or decide to keep spending a minimum of $5 an hour so they can sit at their table as long as they want.

The $5 hourly minimum works out to about 12 bucks for a regulation game dripping with intensity -- and that includes the food.

Granted, the Sky Box is not EnergySolutions Arena, although you can see -- and hear -- the home of the Jazz, since it's right across the street.

With 70 TVs hanging from the beams and in the bathrooms it's the next best thing to being there. Plus there's instant replay.

A lot of Jazz fans have figured this out, much to the delight of Tiffany Price, the Sky Box's manager, who sums up the prevailing playoff mood in five words:

"This has been like insane."

Insane in a good way.

It's also been largely unexpected. Because even though the Sky Box has been open for a little more than five years, playoff mania has been mostly absent.

"We'd just never really seen what it can be like in the playoffs," said Tiffany. "We've experienced it a bit in the past, but nothing like this."

The Jazz made the NBA playoffs in 2002, the first year the Sky Box opened, and again in 2003. But both years the team flamed out in the first round and then, for three straight springs, there was no such thing as playoff basketball in Salt Lake.

No excuses for people to paint their faces and get hysterical. No real reason for fans to, as Tiffany puts it, "go around high-fiving people they just met."

But this year, after the seven-game Houston series and now four games deep into the series with Golden State with at least two more games guaranteed, playoff frenzy has been revived. The Earth has returned to its axis. Lives are being arranged around the Jazz game - - just like the good old days.

Those who can, go to the arena; those who can't go to places like the Sky Box.

There is seating for 340, including 166 in the stadium area where diners/spectators watch a 16-foot-high definition-capable theater screen.

"There are three tiers of seating

in the stadium area, and they all have a great view of the screen," said Tiffany. "There's really not a bad spot to sit."

For every game in the Golden State series, every seat in the stadium area has been reserved at least a day before tipoff.

Even during the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics -- which came along just after the Sky Box first opened -- the demand wasn't so intense.

"It was crazy during the Olympics," said Tiffany, "but it depended on the event. It wasn't consistently full like this."

It's turned everyone associated with the Sky Box into Jazz fans.

"This time of year has been really slow for us in the past," said Tiffany. "On a good weekday in May we take in $5,000 or $6,000. Last Monday and Wednesday (games one and two of the Golden State series) we did over $12,000 each night -- double what we normally consider a good night in May. The owners are loving it."

The only downside is sometimes you can't hear yourself think.

"It gets loud," said Tiffany. The other night, in that overtime game, I was in the cash room, with the door closed, talking on the phone when (Okur) hit that three and I had to plug my ears just to try to hear."

But that's just part of playoff fever. Ears ring all the time. In time they'll clear up. It's why there's July.

Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.