I just got back home to Las Vegas after a quick few-day visit to Los Angeles, California; this time around, I went to watch the Golden State Warriors face off against the Los Angeles Lakers for their National Basketball Association (NBA) season opener game at the Crypto.com Arena (formerly known as the Staples Center).

I’m not really that much of a basketball fan, but I have a friend who likes both watching and playing basketball. When she told me this, I started keeping an eye out for basketball-related opportunities so I could treat her to an experience she’d enjoy. Recently, I was quite pleased when I saw a chance to not only watch a season opener game against rival teams in my friend’s city of residence, but also do it from the corporate suite of Marriott, the hotel brand I always use and have the highest-tier Ambassador Elite loyalty status with.

Yesterday evening, I picked up my friend and headed over to the Crypto.com Arena. In the “know before you go” email, it said that doors open at 5:30 PM. Because this was my first time watching a sporting event at the Crypto.com Arena, I wanted to go as early as possible so I could have plenty of time to explore the suite levels, check out the main concourse if possible, and eat a hearty dinner with the all-inclusive food and beverage from the suite before the game started.

After entering the stadium, we took a very long flight of stairs up (because my friend is being health-conscious and wanted to take the stairs as exercise instead of going up the escalator) and arrived at the landing right in front of the Yaamava’ Club by San Manuel. I checked in with the attendant at the front and was told that, although access to the Legacy Club was restricted and came with an extra charge, the Yaamava’ Club was open to everyone.

(For those who are curious, that floating apostrophe after Yaamava’ isn’t a typo and also isn’t actually an apostrophe, but rather, a phonetic character representing a glottal stop in Maarrênga’twich, which is the language spoken by the Indigenous Serrano people.)

I took “open to everyone” to mean that, not only could we enter, but we could also partake in all activities inside the Yaamava’ Club. Unfortunately, that was apparently not the case. Although there was a ton of food laid out buffet-style across the entire lounge, actually eating that food was an extra charge. Otherwise, all we were allowed to do was sightsee and order à la carte items from the bar.

I did not realize this until I had about half a plate’s worth of food already gathered and a club attendant approached me to let me know that she would need to verify that I had my wristband. I, of course, did not have a buffet wristband, and I did not want to pay the quoted ~US$80.00 for access to the buffet, so I comically just handed over my plate of food to her and said I would leave.

My friend and I were tackling different areas of the buffet to start, so even though I was stopped, she was in an area that was out of eyeshot of the attendants. On top of that, I think she was observant enough to notice that I had found myself in an unfortunate encounter, so she quietly disappeared. By the time I had managed to find her, she was already almost done eating her plate of food (which I guess is better than them just throwing it out anyway like they surely did with my plate). After she finished, we headed upstairs to our suite.

This is what the common area of the Marriott suite looked like. For some reason, I did not expect it to be nicely branded like this, but I guess it would make sense if they are signing year-long contracts for rights to the space.

I found it quite funny that the light gray fabric couch closely resembled the style of couch that they use in the newer-generation Courtyards with the light color palette (though I believe the actual Courtyard couches have more wooden accents and a thicker back).

Because we arrived so early, the stands were still mostly empty. I snapped a photo from the edge of the suite, then grabbed some food and ate my dinner at the barstool table behind the seats.

One thing I observed was just how much premium seating was available at this arena. Even just with the suites, there were three entire floors of suites, stacked one on top of the other. I guess this makes sense for Los Angeles, considering how big of a business hub it is and how many companies are headquartered in the Greater Los Angeles area.

After finishing my food, we had some extra time before the game started, so my friend and I decided to bravely venture down onto the general admission floors to see what the rest of the Crypto.com Arena was like. As expected, by that point, it was quite chaotic and congested. There were so many people that I literally forgot to take any photos except for this one of the Los Angeles Kings Hall of Fame.

After finishing a full lap around the arena, we escaped back into the VIP area and returned to the suite to watch the warm-ups.

As the final component of the pre-game routine, we rose for the United States national anthem.

Basketball induces an interesting phenomenon for me when it comes to photography.

For context, I recently attended the Calgary Flames vs. Vegas Golden Knights hockey game at T-Mobile Arena, and every time someone scored a goal, I naturally went to capture a photograph. However, that is not feasible for basketball; if I were to snap a picture every time someone scored, I would just be taking pictures non-stop the entire time.

Well, apparently nothing about basketball gameplay prompts me to take a picture. When I was organizing my photographs and deciding which ones to include in my blog, I saw the one of the national anthem, then another one of the players walking out. At first, I wondered how this was possible, because the players obviously came out before the national anthem. Then I realized that I took zero photos during the first quarter, and I am pretty sure this is of the players coming out at the beginning of the second quarter.

Partway through the second quarter, we were notified that the dessert cart had arrived at our suite. This reminded me of the often-raved-about sundae cart on United Polaris, but with way more options.

My friend got a slice of carrot cake, while I got a cookie dough blondie with a side of vanilla ice cream.

At first, the cookie dough blondie was delicious, but it was so overwhelmingly sweet that it got cloying after about four bites. My friend’s carrot cake was also very sweet, so she only finished half of it. I had the remaining half of the carrot cake paired with the vanilla ice cream, and ended up throwing out the rest of the cookie dough because of how inedibly sweet it was.

Here is a rare photograph that I took of the actual gameplay.

For the halftime performance, there were two acrobatic dancers doing tricks on a large sheet of fabric hanging from the ceiling. I found this quite impressive, as the ceiling is extremely high up, so surely, the stability on that fabric sheet was not the best. Yet, they appeared to execute all their moves with precision and finished their repertoire without any noticeable rocking or swaying.

Also during halftime was a live band performance. … There is a very funny story to go along with this one.

To put it simply, the audio quality in this arena sucked yesterday. When they were playing videos on the jumbotron prior to the start of the game, the volume was turned up way too high so it sounded like the audio was constantly peaking, and the middle and treble tones were muddy and garbled.

But at one point, I heard an extremely crisp cymbal crash. I was incredibly confused because I would not expect such a clean sound to come out of speakers that were otherwise vomiting audio as if it were a chunky fire hydrant. I just assumed that there happened to be one singular high-quality speaker off to the side somewhere that they might have been testing out or something, but I otherwise didn’t care much and didn’t put much of an effort into finding out what was going on, because it’s not like I can ask the Marriott employee about the Crypto.com Arena’s speaker system and expect a technical answer.

Well, during the halftime show, I found out where that ultra crisp cymbal sound came from. … It came from an actual real cymbal, not a speaker. There was a live band in Section 308. 🤦

With less than half a minute left until halftime was over, the stadium got bathed in red lights and the Lakers logo was projected onto the court.

Here is a random photograph of the officials conducting a review of a prior call they made.

Something that I noticed was that basketball games have a lot of timeouts. I guess I never really noticed it on television broadcasts because I imagine that’s usually when they cut to commercials, but watching it live in person, it actually gets quite funny how frequently they call timeouts from the perspective of someone like me who doesn’t know anything beyond a beginner level about basketball and doesn’t know the importance of timeouts and pacing.

The game ended with a score of 127 to 105…

… with the Los Angeles Lakers emerging victorious.

In the previous two photographs, you might notice that large portions of the stands are empty. I was surprised that people left extremely early, as if they were only interested in the outcome and not in the actual gameplay. I’m sure that some people left early because they wanted to get to the parking garage and try to beat the traffic rush out of downtown Los Angeles, but there were a lot of people who were leaving really early—some even as early as the start of the fourth quarter. I think this was especially exacerbated by the fact that the Lakers were pretty far ahead the entire game.

I was not in a rush, so I stuck around until the very end. I saw that they were doing post-game interviews on the court, but they weren’t being broadcasted on the jumbotron at all.

Then, abruptly, as if they forgot to press the button to activate this earlier, a bunch of confetti and streamers poured down from the ceiling several minutes late in celebration of the Lakers’ victory.

Overall, I had a good time. Although I wasn’t particularly captivated by or invested in the basketball gameplay, the experience in general was quite pleasant. Obviously, the Crypto.com Arena is much older than any of the sporting venues in Las Vegas, so it’s not quite as shiny and fancy as the places that host my home city events, but with its age considered, it was actually pretty decent.

Just based on surface-level self-reflection, I think I like watching in-person sports with less frequent scoring (like the baseball and hockey games I’ve been to in the past), rather than consistent-scoring games like basketball. I think I personally prefer the flow of the game better when it is fairly relaxing for a large portion of it, then there are massive surges of excitement when goals happen. In other words, I think my style aligns better when there is a baseline 10% energy level in the stadium that spikes up to 100% once in a while, rather than a persistent 30-40% energy level that doesn’t really change much throughout the entire game.

With that being said, it’s not like I disliked the gameplay either. Although I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to watch more basketball, I’d be happy to return to another basketball game if it was for a special event (like a major rivalry, a season opener, or other important/deciding game). I’m also open to checking out a basketball game in Las Vegas as well—it seems like the Las Vegas Aces are a great team, I’m curious how the energy is different in the arena between men’s vs. women’s basketball, and I imagine Las Vegas will put its iconic party twist on the game and find ways to make it more memorable and exciting than games in other cities.