While making highlights from this game, I couldn’t help but notice that the Little Caesars Arena (it should be called the Jet’s Pizzadome but apparently nobody thought to consult me on this) was looking empty. Like, really empty. Fan apathy towards the Pistons is at an all-time high with Griffin out, Rose out, and Drummond toiling away in Cleveland (not that I think Drummond’s presence was selling tickets). The new arena is harder to get to for the suburbanites who are mostly likely to go to games, and, as Pistons fans will helpfully remind you, the arena has so much stuff to do that fans will not always be in their seats during the game.
It’s like a mall, they tell me.
In order to improve the vibrancy of the game-time experience and hopefully sell more tickets to line the cocaine-filled pockets of Tom Gores, I have a new proposal for halftime entertainment that will blow your socks off:
The Brandon Knight Knight’s Joust.
Here’s how it will work: Brandon Knight dresses up in a full suit of armor. One lucky person chosen from the hundreds of fans in the stands is also dressed up in armor. Then they’re both given those big jousting sticks and drive at each other full-speed on really tall tricycles. Whoever falls off the tricycle first loses. This doesn’t have to be a “traditional” joust (I don’t know what the “traditional” rules for jousting are anyway); if either Brandon or the fan just wants to whack the other person with their stick, they can do that. I’m also thinking there should be obstacles on the court to make things more interesting, like wailing peasants dying of famine, or emaciated livestock, or a whole big castle with archers inside shooting felt-tipped arrows. There’s a lot of cool things you can do with this idea. I hereby volunteer to dress up as the grim reaper and use my scythe to try to “kill” the combatants with “the plague”.
Try telling me with a straight face that you wouldn’t sit in your seat for fifteen minutes, ignoring your need for concessions or the bathroom, to watch that. You can’t. Because you would. You would sit there with rapt attention while Brandon Knight rides around on a tricycle and attacks a random fan with a jousting stick while smelly cows walk around and moo at everything.