Right on. I think the design of the Toy Box has a great deal to do with the lower bowl being like it is. It's almost like the upper bowl is "segregated" from the game. You can't see the upper bowl, full of ardent fans often enough, at all during broadcasts, and as you point out, there is zero sense of intimacy where we play now. Frankly, I don't see an easy way of "fixing" that. It's the fundamental design. The upper bowl should have been larger, lower, and closer to the court. I would have preferred 3 tiers of seats instead of 2, all closer to the court. I've suggested, as have numerous others here, that management change the season ticket policy for the lower bowl to get some upper bowl bodies in those empty chairs. Somehow, someway, Tilman needs to figure that out. Maybe a pre-game ticket lottery of some kind? It would have to be done in such a way that your whole party could move down, not individual seats. It isn't like that couldn't be handled in the lower bowl most games, from what I've been seeing.
First Rockets game I ever went to at Toyota Center back in 2005. I'm a kid, jumping and screaming while watching the guy I destroyed my friends with in NBA Live 05 (T-Mac)... I get told to please sit down by three guys with suits sitting a row behind me and my pops. Pathetic atmosphere for every single game that I've been to. Unfortunately, a big part of it has to do with the fact that Houston is a transplant city for professionals around the country. They come here, spend cash for the good seats, and are completely indifferent to the results.
Oh yeah that's how it looked @ the tip and could have had some impact on the teams uh...lack of fire in the game.
And San Antonio's arena is not downtown...it is on the outskirts of downtown. The Houston problem began when the city decided to build the Toyota Center. It was built downtown and parking around TC is a pain, even in the TC parking garage. You can watch the game from the clubhouses both live and watching local TV coverage at the same time. Most of the empty seats noticeable on TV are people in the club house, eating, drinking or networking for business reasons while watching the game. A former Mayor and their entourage would be in their seats at the beginning of games. and then they would all go up to the Clubhouse after the first quarter...never returned. The problem is the building was built for businesses first and fans second...like most football and basketball arenas of today. The company suites at TC are built the same way. Seats on the outside, but TV coverage on lounging seating inside...with a server attending to everything, including going down to the Clubs to fetch stuff. The food and drink is also fantastic too. And then there is the dessert cart that drops by each suite during second half...OMG, best desserts anywhere. There is also a fantastic Grand Club under Clubhouse seating that is for those that sit courtside...its buffet is fantastic. The people in the suites and clubs are fans, but they are pampered fans. As long as the Clubhouses and Suites exist, the crowd noise will not increase. Remember, CC had few suites and no clubhouses. It was more intimate, so it had more fans involved in cheering. You can't and won't get the same atmosphere at the TC. Yes, I'm a former STH...I'm now handicapped. TC is not built for the handicap either. It is too hard to navigate and seating for the handicap is limited. I now enjoy watching on TV. When I had seats in the Clubhouse lower bowl, I sat in them from beginning to end. And the Company Suite was a treat, but I enjoyed sitting in the outside seats over the inside seats...I agree it is a true fan's experience. I also cheered...loudly.
Oracle, Wells Fargo, MSG, Barkley's, Moda, Amway, Staples - they all play music and have t-shirts firing out of the guns. They all do ridiculous stuff during timeouts. None of them have as weak of a crowd as what I see on TV in the Toyota Center. Stop making excuses. You know when they don't play the music? When the crowd gets loud! You're too stupid to realize what is actually happening. The music isn't stopping the crowd from making noise, the reason they play the music is because the crowd is not making any and they don't want a silent arena
one of the things you get to see with nba league pass is all the stuff that goes on during every timeout at every arena around the league and they all do the same things. this has been an issue for the rockets for a while. the red rowdies were created by van gundy because of the poor atmosphere.
It was bad when the Rockets played in the Summit. I remember going to games. I left Houston before the championship years but I think once Hakeem left they seemed to quiet down again. They were loud for a bit in 87 and 88 I think in the post-finals run halo. But from 89-93 the crowd was terrible. I didn't realize it until I started going to other arenas. Honestly the Rockets are like the Clippers before Chris Paul.
The Rockets fans are great. Lower bowl tickets are expensive but when you go you are there for you not everyone else
I sure hope the answer isn’t moving away from downtown. PEople come late when the start time is 7 because of traffic but leave early if the start time is 730-8 because the game ends too late.
You don't notice it because they drape the seats with the same shirts they give the fans to create an optical illusion that its more full than it is.
Part of the original Choke City games was that the crowd was really weak in game 1. There were all sorts of excuses, starting with it being on Mother's Day, and some of the Rockets, especially Maxwell, just plain said the fans sucked. Admittedly that did seem to trigger something and the fans suddenly started getting better after that, especially after the team came back from Phoenix...
- I agree with those that stated that the arena itself is a big part of the problem. Toyota Center flat-out sucks compared to The Summit. The Toyota Center feels more like a generic entertainment venue intentionally designed to appeal to big spenders (corporate and to a lesser extent celebrities), while I suspect the Summit was designed to be an intimate basketball arena first and everything else second. Also, the location of the TC isn't very good. - Houston's culture just isn't very conducive to rowdy basketball crowds. The city lacks identity. Our demographics (blue collar, oil, etc.) consist of people that are way more into football and baseball. And Houston's sprawling suburbia is primarily your typical social conservative middle class families...soccer moms, and dads/kids that gravitate towards baseball. People like that aren't going to be big fans of players like Harden. With that said, football tends to be more popular in most US cities. Heck if Oklahoma City or San Antonio obtained NFL teams in the near future, then it wouldn't take long before those teams became more popular than the Thunder or Spurs. - With one or two exceptions (Golden State, etc.), most NBA teams that have loud crowds tend to be in smaller markets where the NBA team is the only professional sports entertainment in or near town. - Some posters mentioned Miami. Miami (and Florida in general) is a bad comparison. Miami is a poor SPORTS city (any sport) at both the pro and college levels, because of it's laid-back party culture. Similarly for So-Cal (Los Angeles). The Atlanta Hawks crowd may be a better comparison to Houston's situation. - Improving the crowd noise situation and creating more of a home-court advantage will be a tough challenge for Fertitta. I don't think that game start times or ticket prices have much to do with it. Many other NBA teams with louder crowds have the same start time (in their local time zone) as the Rockets.
Simmons has been on my ish list since his article ripping the whole city back in 2005. But he is absolutely right here, on tv or in person, the vibe at Toyota Center is absolutely stale. Whatever the reason for the empty seats needs to get fixed, corporate seats not being used, the 7pm weeknight starts, cost, whatever. It sucks.
It's a serious issue with Rockets games, playoff or regular season, and I don't know if it'll ever be remedied. Usually in the playoffs it's not a big deal since the games start later, but we did have an unfortunate number last season that were 7 PM tipoffs. Fans simply cannot arrive in time to be in their seats. What's odd is that this wasn't an issue for Astros playoff games that had first pitches around 7:15-7:20. Minute Maid Park was pretty much full and the crowd was standing and screaming their lungs out. Why that's happening for one pro sports team and not the other in the same city is beyond me. Especially when both stadiums are downtown.
Houston has two problems. Its size (640 sq/miles) and lack of clean and SAFE public transportation. Most cities are 200-300 sq/mles in size which give them higher population density closer to areas. Houston population is so spread out and I'm not even talking about the woods/land suburbs just within the city limits. If Metro was more reliable and safe more people would ride it to games instead of driving.