Royalty goes to Auburn Hills to see the Pistons after Lions football!

Prince at the Palace of Auburn Hills

After I had dinner with Paul Swaney, I arranged to meet up with my pal Domish who went to see college hockey at the Joe as they call it in Motown while we were watching football and eating. I walked back to the car after I said goodbye to Paul. I sent Domish a text and he said to meet him by the Greektown Casino which wasn't far from Ford Field. He took the People Mover which is the monorail that moves people around the downtown area of Detroit. I picked up around 6:25PM. We proceeded to drive out to Auburn Hills which is a suburb that's 30 miles north of downtown on I-75. We got off the exit that goes to The Palace of Auburn Hills which is the home of the Detroit Pistons. We had to park in the parking lot for $10 because there's no other option out there. After I parked the car, Domish and I parked towards the box office. Domish said a friend of his told him tickets should be $10 to get in. We were going to get on line when I heard somebody say and I quote "anybody need two tickets." I walked over to that person and I said I do. The guy handed me two free tickets for the game. Too bad Paul Swaney couldn't join us to see how easy it was to get tickets. It took literally a few seconds. Timing is everything. This time I was in the right place at the right time. Unlike at Ford Field, where I couldn't even get a reasonable offer to buy a ticket for the longest time. What a contrasting experience it was.

After we got the tickets we went inside to walk around and then we went upstairs near center court and we sat down and enjoyed the game as the Pistons were hosting the Milwaukee Bucks. The place wasn't too crowded. They announced a crowd of 14,219. It should be noted they have a special promotion on Sundays for families so that helped to enhance the actual attendance figure. The arena does hold over 22,000 and they used to sell out often in back in the day especially during the Bad Boys era when they won their championships. Those days, tickets were nearly impossible to come by. Nowadays they beg people to show up. We still got to see a professional basketball game for free.

As for the game we saw, the Pistons raced out to an early 13-0 lead. They wound up leading, 30-23 after the first quarter as the Bucks staged a comeback to get back into the game. At halftime, the Pistons got the lead back up to ten, 55-45. In the third quarter, the Bucks sliced the lead back to seven, 78-71. In the fourth quarter, the Pistons did their best to try and give the game away. The Bucks took a two point late but in the Pistons came back and they wound up beating the Bucks, 96-94. It turned out to be an entertaining game.

The Pistons got 20 points from Tayshaun Prince who led the way as four other players scored in double figures to help the Pistons escape with the win after blowing a big early lead.

As for the Bucks, they got a game high 30 points from guard Monta Ellis and forward Ersan Ilyasova came off the bench to finish with 24 points in the losing effort.

After the game, we drove to Coldwater, Michigan which is about 12 miles from the Indiana border and we spent the night at Super 8.

Stay tuned as I recap the way we spent the last day of 2012.

Thank you for reading and following along.

Yours truly,

Gary Herman