Some NBA arenas and NBA events are better for spotting celebrities than others. As a child, the sideline cameras at New Jersey Nets games picked out the few famous people in attendance with ease, mostly because veteran character actor Danny Aiello and Yo! MTV Raps co-host Ed Lover were pretty much always in the same seats but also because they were the only even mildly famous people in the building at all, up to and including many-to-most members of the Nets. To be fair, I was at a Nets game on Christmas Day where Method Man was in attendance. To be honest, I don't think I'm really leaving anything or anyone else out.
But NBA Finals games are different. Any sensible person with the necessary wherewithal and leisure time would attend one of those, and plenty do. The tweet below, from Milwaukee sports anchor Lily Zhao, is both a partial list of the celebrities who will be taking in tonight's Game 6 and a stunningly rich text in itself. Do not rush through this.
What begins rather conventionally with the names of some extremely famous people bangs an abrupt left turn with the inclusion of Brandon Jennings, who scored 50 points for the Bucks as a teenager in the ninth game of his NBA career, in November of 2009, and never advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs in any of his five seasons with the organization. While the transition from Gucci Mane to Brandon Jennings is jarring, things get no easier to parse from there. It is clear that Jennings marks the beginning of the Guy Remembering portion of the tweet, but sticking all-time NBA great Julius Erving between Bucks demi-legend Michael Redd and 2001 NBA Slam Dunk champion Desmond Mason is absolutely and dazzlingly avant-garde on its merits. Just terrific stuff!
We hope that you and every famous person in attendance, from Kanye West to Desmond Mason, enjoy tonight's basketball action, and thank you for your continued support of Defector!