The Warriors Love Bloggers to the Tune of $10,000

A little old blog called Golden State of Mind decided to round up its army of commenters and readers for a trip to a real-life game. The fellas at GSoM hooked the fans up with some nice value: $20 bought you a $35 ticket, the privilege of watching the early shootaround from courtside seats, a free Baron Davis poster, and the priceless opportunity to mingle with fellow blog fans in a less nerdy setting. Well, slightly less nerdy -- "Hi, nice to meet you ... what's your username?"

The GSoM peeps turned out 350 strong for the event, your girl Miss Gossip included. With very conservative estimates for parking and concessions, that was probably a cool 10 G's of revenue the blog pulled in for the Warriors. The team rewarded us with a special T-shirt toss just for our section.

We sat way up in the nosebleeds for the game, but watching the shootaround courtside was fun. The Warriors did their best to entertain us in the face of the antics-heavy Wizards (picture Al Harrington randomly wrestling Monta Ellis to the ground for no reason); Washington in turn delivered on the schtick with their repeated attempts to hit shots while sitting on the bench.

Yeah, the Wiz probably should have been actually warming up, because DeShawn Stevenson ended up having a hard time not feeling his face while Baron Davis decided to just go bionic on fools. It was a high-scoring shoot-em-up kind of game -- the halftime score was a ridiculous 73-64 with a final of something like 504-497 in favor of the throwback Dubs. Golden State pulled it off even without savior Stephen Jackson (who was ejected in the first quarter). Gil kept his shorts hiked up extra high the entire game.

Overall it was a very successful night. My only complaint of the evening is that I sat next to a drunk high school girl who threw up at halftime. And I don't mean she "threw up" a Warriors "W." No, this breezy straight booted at my feet. But other than that ... big up to GSoM for putting on a huge non-electronic blog event!

UPDATE: Great recap and fan pictures here.