Beşiktaş

In Istanbul, we have so many sports teams - for example for soccer (or football as we call it here) we have Beşiktaş, Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray. Istanbul was even named the European Sports Capital for 2012.

I had been saying for months that I wanted to go to a basketball game and tonight was finally the night! Beşiktaş vs Spain in some kind of special match (no one knew what though so it mustn't have been very important!)

Let me preface this by saying that basketball here is nothing like the NBA. I would probably compare it more to basketball at a good 5A high school. The stadium only holds 3500 people. No concessions. Lax on rules (or maybe they don't even have things like a 3 second rule?) Despite all this, it was still fun. The crowd, even without alcohol, goes crazy almost the whole game with cheers and chants, reminiscent of Texas Fight in my days of UT football. And the game was actually incredibly close - Beşiktaş gave up a double digit lead to trail in the last 20 seconds, and eventually lost the game. The best part? Its not crowded, so you don't have to buy tickets in advance. Just show up and pick your own seats. Easy as pie.

Beşiktaş players and bench

Game action

 

Beşiktaş fans cheering the team on