The Clippers have gone Wall to the Ball for Game 7.
On Friday, Los Angeles season-ticket holders David Evans and Paul Boulos — and 123 other bastions of “The Wall,” the Intuit Dome’s famed baseline section that specializes in free-throw distraction — had an email pop into their inbox from the Clippers. It stated, as they recounted roughly, that owner Steve Ballmer had selected them to fly out to Denver to invade enemy turf for Game 7.
Ballmer, they said, chartered a bus. Chartered a plane. Paid for 125 tickets. And so 125 Los Angeles agents met for a secret mission Saturday at the West Garage of the Intuit Dome, fan Mason Cook said and headed for LAX, where a jet awaited to bring a special dash of L.A. mania to Denver on Saturday.
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“That’s unheard of, first off, for an owner of an NBA team to even recognize his fans like this,” Evans told The Denver Post before Saturday’s game. “Second, who do you call to say, ‘I want 125 tickets, a charter plane, and three charter buses to get these people to the arena?’”
“I’ll tell you who,” Boulos interjected, standing beside him. “Steve Ballmer does it. ‘Cause ain’t nobody else in the world can do that.”
It created a surreal scene pregame, as a slowly-filling Ball Arena suddenly bellowed with the hoots and hollers of a contingent of Clipper fans sitting behind the baseline, Denver’s promotional “We Believe” towels tossed aside and replaced by signs like “FEAR THE WALL.”
“Get out of here! Go home!” a lone Nuggets fan dressed as The Joker shouted from a nearby section.
He was met, appropriately, by a wall of jeers.
After the Clippers knocked off the Nuggets in Los Angeles on Thursday to extend the series, Adelman urged fans to “go to brunch and come” to Saturday’s Game 7. They needed energy, Adelman said. They needed juice.
They were beaten at their own game by Ballmer, on Saturday, in a truly outlandish move from an owner who’s had a penchant for out-of-the-box marketing hijinks since he bought the Clippers in 2014.
“If the Denver Nuggets thought that they could take the Clippers to their house in enemy territory, and not expect the whole swell, the whole Wall to come crashing down upon them – well, that’s going to be a great surprise for them,” Boulos boasted Saturday.
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