Monson: ESA, Staples opposites in every way
By Gordon Monson

If the Jazz are the farmhands in the muddy dungarees and sweated-through T-shirts in this second-round playoff series and the Lakers are suave in silky suits, the buildings in which they play are equally disparate.

EnergySolutions Arena is a barn. Staples Center is a theatre.

During games at Staples, they put on a show. At EnergySolutions, they do balloon drops.

Before Game 1 in L.A., the lights were brought low and a circular curtain was unfurled from the massive, clear video screens over the court and huge, smooth images of Laker players were beamed in all directions.

At Jazz games, the lights stay on because technicians supposedly cannot dim the stands without blacking out the court, too. And if they dumped the whole place into the dark, it would take 10 minutes to fire them all up again. Moreover, Jazz players are introduced on a clunky, grainy Jumbotron-like box that makes it difficult to tell Deron Williams from Carlos Boozer.

It's the difference between a Ford and a Maserati.

At Staples Center, stars are everywhere, and it goes far beyond Jack in his customary seat on the floor near the visitors' bench. Half of Hollywood shows up. The other day at Game 1, as I was moving through the inner bowels of Staples, I bumped into - quite literally - Denzel Washington. I also bump into people at EnergySolutions, but the last one was the guy who fumigated my neighbor's house for termites. Then, there's the entertainment. At the Arena, we get small doses of the Jazz Dancers, who are fine, in a limited way, if you like that sort of girl-next-door-tries-hard-to-be-sexy thing, and an FM radio DJ who shouts into a microphone giving away gift certificates for pizzas, and such.

The Laker Girls are the staple at Staples. They are featured - a lot - and they are extremely talented. Beyond talented. They have talent coming out the wazoo. And they dance a little, too. The game-production people there might be taking the whole Laker Girl phenomenon a bit far, though, when they display shots of individual Girls up on the big screen, complete with video interviews of them telling the paying audience what their favorite food is, what they like to do in their spare time, what kind of tree they'd be if, in fact, they were a tree, and what they look for in a man. Everything is listed but their phone numbers.

Cavernous Staples Center was built with bigness in mind. Big cash. Circling the venue's midsection is a triple deck of luxury suites. They dominate the place. Below them are expensive seats down to the floor. Above them, 15 stories from the court, is the seating for Joe and Jill Sixpack.

In a way, this is representative of everything that is wrong with pro sports. The regular fan gets punted to Egypt, while the wealthy consume gourmet food and drink, and enjoy the best views of the game.

The same might be true at EnergySolutions, but, in the Arena, with only one layer of luxury boxes, there are still seats in the upper deck that afford decent views for fans.

Speaking of fans, the only way to make this next point is to come right out and say it: The Lakers, their fans that is, lead the league in Botox and silicone. I thought the Texas arenas might be tough to beat in this particular category, but Staples Center does exactly that. Especially over in Section DD.

Wow.

Every section is DD.

While there are fewer monuments to cartoonish cleavage at EnergySolutions, the same principle applies in both palaces: The closer you get to the court, the more expensive the seats, the larger certain womanly attributes get. Don't want to blow that out of proportion, but, when the wife's staring at the players, you go ahead and pay close attention to the principle and see if it's not true.

Last thing, EnergySolutions is a pure basketball venue, with stodgy - and, in some cases, downright cheap - elements mixed in. It is the loudest arena in the NBA, with the fan noise ricocheting off cinder block walls and steel girders overhead. During games, it sounds as though a squadron of F-16s is landing on the floor.

Staples is not nearly as loud. The overall ambience is what you would get if you dropped a basketball court in some strange hybrid of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Glendale Galleria.

EnergySolutions Arena gets the job done. The Jazz take comfort there.
Staples Center revels in its excesses. The Lakers revel in theirs.
Home is home, either way, and, in both buildings, regardless of how strange the environs, the visitors in this series will be forced to ratchet up their performances to take their comfort on the road and make victory their own.

http://www.sltrib.com/jazz/ci_9179520