Sports in the Pacific Time Zone

O'Briens Irish Pub in Santa Monica, the local Giants bar

Besides bragging about the sunny weather, I think the LA topic I talked most about with friends before moving this summer was the adjustment to the start time of west coast sporting events.  Since my favorite teams play the majority of their games on the east coast, the consensus seemed to be that it would be really inconvenient to follow my teams on a Pacific Time Zone schedule.  Midweek baseball and basketball games would be starting while I'm still on campus.  Weekend football and college bball games would be kicking off at 9 or 10 am. 

The jury is still out on this one, but so far it's definitely hasn't been bad, and in fact, I might prefer it this way for a few reasons.  The weekdays are typically too busy for me to be watching entire games anyways, but if I get back home around dinnertime, the timing works out pretty well that I can get a bite to eat while watching the end of an east coast game.  I rarely used to watch entire Sunday and Monday night football games b/c they usually didn't end until near midnight, but now when those games end there's still a full night ahead.  Previously, if my teams were on west coast road trips, I wouldn't know if they won until the next morning, but now all games throughout the country are final before I go to bed.  And I've actually enjoyed this football season where the games start up in the morning.  I don't usually sleep in too much anyway, so it's not like I'm setting an alarm to watch football and it seems to clear up much of the rest of the day with the games front-loaded.

Staples Center for Knicks-Clippers

I think I anticipated going to sports bars more often to watch the Giants or other games (oh how I miss you Carpool), but that really hasn't been the case.  That's the one negative I've noticed; that if you want to go out to watch a morning game it's tougher to get yourself, and others, to go to a bar at 10 am.  I did recently find a Giants bar in Santa Monica which I went to last weekend.  That was pretty fun, since everyone there seemed to be transplant New Yorkers and were all rooting for the same team.  It also meant I got to order a breakfast burrito and Irish Coffee.  Not sure if I'll make it out there again with finals coming up and then winter break, but it's good to know for next year.

In other sports related news, I attended the Knicks-Clippers game here in LA a couple weeks ago.  The Clippers live deep in the shadow of the Lakers in this town, so tickets are real easy to come by (a ton of $5 tickets were available on Stubhub). I brought a couple of my friends from class, including one international student who had never been to an NBA game before, and it turned out to be a good one.  Despite it being a matchup between the 5-8 Knicks and the 1-12 Clippers, it was actually one of the most entertaining NBA games I've been to.  Blake Griffin, the Clippers' highly touted rookie, put on an absolute show, scoring 41 points including a variety of spectacular dunks, but more importantly to me, the Knicks had a good showing themselves, and got the victory.  I'm not sure if another Clippers game is going to top this one, so I might as well start saving up now for Lakers tickets.