Last night the Utah Jazz were in town to play the Washington Wizards, so a couple of friends and I decided to go. We got cheap tickets in the upper bowl, where the view looked a lot like it looks on TV.

Perhaps the most entertaining part of the evening was during the pregame shootaround, when I noticed Andrei Kirilenko was talking to and then hugging a gray-haired man in a suit on the side of the court. When Kirilenko left and Carlos Boozer came over to shake the man's hand, I noticed that it was Senator Orrin Hatch. Each Jazzman, in turn, made the rounds to greet the senator, though a couple of them clearly (from the upper bowl, even) appeared to be thinking, "Who is this guy? He thinks he's so important he can just interrupt our shootaround and shake everyone's hand?" I looked away for a moment, and then Orrin was gone. He'd done what he came to do: greet some of his most famous constituents. (But apparently the non-U.S.-citizen Kirilenko is his biggest supporter on the Jazz, since he was the only one who gave a hug in addition to a handshake. I was hoping someone would give Orrin a pat on the bottom, but alas.)

Another non-basketball comment. The previous evening during a game in Philadelphia, Paul Millsap had sustained a small cut on his cheek that required three stitches. He wore a Band-Aid on his face. I could see the Band-Aid from the upper bowl. Ever since I was small, I have wondered: why don't they make Band-Aids for black people? You'd think if dark-colored Band-Aids existed, an NBA team would be able to get its hands on one. Oh well. Maybe that's something President Obama can work on.

As for the game itself, it was a lot of fun. Although the Jazz lost thanks to a last-minute collapse, they led for most of the game, and it was fun to listen for the cheers of the scattered Jazz fans throughout the Verizon Center, especially when Ronnie Brewer drained a near-half-court buzzer-beater at the end of the first quarter. My friends and I chatted and ate disgusting popcorn and talked about how great Kosta Koufos might turn out to be, how it's weird that Kyle Korver has the reputation for being a three-point specialist when he can't hit a three-pointer to save his life, and how the Jazz have a disproportionately high number of players with K names (Koufos, Korver, Kirilenko, Knight). It probably would have been a different experience had we been closer to the action, able to hear the players' words and feel the vibrations of their feet on the hardwood, but the live sports atmosphere was great. It sure beats a baseball game, anyway.