The third quarter ended, and the Warriors and the Thunder huddled to plot strategy for the fourth. Between them, seated at midcourt behind the scorer’s table, a man named Brett Yamaguchi had a game plan of his own.
“O.K.,” he said into the microphone attached to his headset. “Let’s drop.”
Hidden in the rafters of Oracle Arena, 12 workers on the catwalks began releasing 100 small parachutes, each holding a McDonald’s gift card. In a dark booth at suite level, someone clicked a computer to change the graphics on the video scoreboards to reflect the sponsor. Nearby, a man at a control board set the 66 moving spotlights in the ceiling in motion. Someone else triggered the nearly 20,000 light-up bracelets that had been given to fans to blink red and yellow. The in-house D.J. played the Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.”
Most of the fans stood, looking and reaching skyward for the gifts as they slowly descended. A small digital clock on each basket, below the shot clock, counted down the seconds to the end of the timeout. The last parachute was caught, the fans still standing, just before the ball was inbounded to start the fourth quarter.
“There was still a lot of hope at that point,” Yamaguchi said later, minutes after Oklahoma City had upset Golden State, 108-102. Around him, fans shuffled quietly out of the arena and the dozen workers in the catwalks made their way down. They had stayed up there for the fourth quarter, intending to drop 50 pounds of confetti to celebrate a victory.
That is the way it usually ends. A Warriors game at Oracle Arena has been called the best show in sports, with Stephen Curry and his teammates leading a high-energy, high-scoring team working toward another N.B.A. championship.
But most of the show is not basketball. Game 1 lasted 2 hours 33 minutes. Basketball was played for 48 of those minutes. The other 105 minutes — 1:45 — was something else.
What Yamaguchi oversees each night, orchestrating every nonbasketball bit of entertainment from the moment the doors open hours before the game to the rooftop fireworks that send fans home after a victory, might be more complicated than anything Warriors Coach Steve Kerr draws up.
“The stars are on the court, and we know that,” said Yamaguchi, whose title is director of game experience. “It’s Steph Curry 1,000 percent. And we feed off that energy as much as we can. But there is a lot of time between that we try to keep the fans engaged.”
He has a full-time staff of three: the assistants Alicia Smith and Marco Nicola, and the dance team director Sabrina Ellison. But on game nights, Yamaguchi employs more than 100 others, from anthem singers to halftime acts, dancers to D.J.s, pyrotechnicians to scoreboard controllers, roving M.C.s to camera operators, T-shirt throwers to confetti droppers. They are the people who take over the show when the basketball players step away.
“O.K.,” he said into the microphone attached to his headset. “Let’s drop.”
Hidden in the rafters of Oracle Arena, 12 workers on the catwalks began releasing 100 small parachutes, each holding a McDonald’s gift card. In a dark booth at suite level, someone clicked a computer to change the graphics on the video scoreboards to reflect the sponsor. Nearby, a man at a control board set the 66 moving spotlights in the ceiling in motion. Someone else triggered the nearly 20,000 light-up bracelets that had been given to fans to blink red and yellow. The in-house D.J. played the Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.”Most of the fans stood, looking and reaching skyward for the gifts as they slowly descended. A small digital clock on each basket, below the shot clock, counted down the seconds to the end of the timeout. The last parachute was caught, the fans still standing, just before the ball was inbounded to start the fourth quarter.
“There was still a lot of hope at that point,” Yamaguchi said later, minutes after Oklahoma City had upset Golden State, 108-102. Around him, fans shuffled quietly out of the arena and the dozen workers in the catwalks made their way down. They had stayed up there for the fourth quarter, intending to drop 50 pounds of confetti to celebrate a victory.
That is the way it usually ends. A Warriors game at Oracle Arena has been called the best show in sports, with Stephen Curry and his teammates leading a high-energy, high-scoring team working toward another N.B.A. championship.
But most of the show is not basketball. Game 1 lasted 2 hours 33 minutes. Basketball was played for 48 of those minutes. The other 105 minutes — 1:45 — was something else.
What Yamaguchi oversees each night, orchestrating every nonbasketball bit of entertainment from the moment the doors open hours before the game to the rooftop fireworks that send fans home after a victory, might be more complicated than anything Warriors Coach Steve Kerr draws up.
“The stars are on the court, and we know that,” said Yamaguchi, whose title is director of game experience. “It’s Steph Curry 1,000 percent. And we feed off that energy as much as we can. But there is a lot of time between that we try to keep the fans engaged.”
He has a full-time staff of three: the assistants Alicia Smith and Marco Nicola, and the dance team director Sabrina Ellison. But on game nights, Yamaguchi employs more than 100 others, from anthem singers to halftime acts, dancers to D.J.s, pyrotechnicians to scoreboard controllers, roving M.C.s to camera operators, T-shirt throwers to confetti droppers. They are the people who take over the show when the basketball players step away.
by John Branch, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Jim Wilson
