I got to work a game at the old Veteran's Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix several years ago. That's where the Suns played before US Airways Center was built.

Same type of situation as Rut...small private school that bought a block of tickets to to a Suns game and got to play their game earlier in the day on the floor. I have pictures, but it was before the advent of the digital camera, so they are stuffed in a box somewhere in my garage.

The one thing that I remember most is that when we were fininshed and leaving the floor, Karl Malone walked out to shoot for awhile...He took off his warmup jacket...biggest d*mn biceps I have ever seen....

Then you've never seen the East German women's swim team. :p

Congrats, Jeff, on the assignment.

Few years ago I officiated in a college league championship game at the Air Canada Centre (ACC) in Toronto, right on the Raptors floor. My game was at 2, and the Raps played at 7. It was pretty cool.

I never thought to bring a camera, though. :mad:

We were told that we were permitted to change in the ACC official's change room. I guess the ACC staff member hedged that these rooms would be available at 12:30pm - which is when we showed up to the ACC. We get let in to the referee's change room and two bags are already there! So the ACC staff member says that the NBA refs must have already "checked in to the arena". Naturally, he's not going to leave us in there with two bags of NBA referee gear.

He says that we can use the female referee's room... and in there: the exact reason that only two bags were in the [male] referee room. Violet Palmer was assigned to this game at 7pm. What luck!! So we can't use that room either. We joked that we didn't mind if Violet was in the room during our post-game and shower. :D

So we are taken to an auxiliary room, which was still rather nice, but not quite as big, and only had 1 shower instead of 2.

The game was good - I do recall that we missed a call that could have been a triple-whistle (NBA standards): right at/just below the free throw line. We each later admitted that we didn't have a good look at the play, thinking that another ref would grab it if it was a foul. So in the end, we all missed it. LOL