Greatest Athlete IP Experience Ever!

First off, I know this isn't baseball related but I've never posted on the basketball forums and everyone I know from this community is on the baseball board.

So for Christmas, my wife and I got special presents for our two kids (Cade-8 and Chloe-5). My daughter is a princess so she got tickets to the Nutcracker Ballet. My son Cade is a sports fanatic so we wanted to get him tickets to a sporting event. I live in the middle of nowhere and the closest professional sports team is the Utah Jazz, which is still a 4-hour drive from here. We left the day after Christmas for our trip to the big city for the ballet and a ball game. Let me preface this by saying that I'm not a basketball fan at all. I liked the NBA when I was in high school (Magic, Bird, Jordan days) but have been soured by the NBA for a lot of years due to the attitudes of some of the players.

We chose a Jazz vs. Trailblazers game because Portland has two rookies this year from the University of Nevada, me and the wife's alma mater. Game was on 12/27. We got to the game about an hour early to watch the shootarounds. Of course, we all wore our Nevada Wolf Pack gear to the game. So we're 5 or 6 rows up in the stands watching the Blazers during shootaround (that's as close as security would allow). One of the rookies from Nevada is Luke Babbitt, a real tall white guy. We looked but he must have been in the locker room. The other Armon Johnson, is a real tall black guy. Well, there were 9-10 guys that fit that description shooting so we were trying to figure out who Armon was. As were trying to figure it out, we hear a commotion to our right. We all look over to see one of the Blazer players climbing up into the stands. He comes over to us and asks if we're from Nevada. We tell him yes and he introduces himself as Armon Johnson. We told him we were there to see him play! At this point he thanks us profusely for coming to support him. He actually sat down and started talking to both the kids......asking their names, favorite team (the Blazers!) and so on. He stayed for 5 minutes or so and just talked to us. Without us asking, he offers autographs and pictures. Throughout the entire experience, he kept thanking us for the support. What an amazing person!

I have to say that we all are now huge Portland fans and even bigger fans of Armon Johnson. What a classy, down to earth, and genuinely nice person. Needless to say, the Armon player collection has already begun!

That's an amazing story and something both of your kids will not forget. Seeing the shirts must of made him feel at home. All athletes should be like him, seeing the fans as the true core to sports.

that is a awesome story, great to see stardom hasnt made him a ******.

A GREAT story ! Thanks for sharing it

Nice experience my fav NBA guy is Deron Williams and team is Spurs
So are you going to watch NBA again?
Also it looks like the arena is dead before the game? Easy
to meet the players maybe?

Nice Stuff!

It is always cool to read up about other people's awesome IP experiences... I hope you and your kids will remember that one for a long time to come!

Awesome experience! Thanks for sharing!!!!!!!!!!

Awesome story.

A+! Awesome! Thanks for sharing! It is so refreshing when ppl aren't griping about athletes and a truly nice gesture is made and reported.

You went to UNR?! Me too!

Small world man!

you can tell he is sincerely happy to be standing there with your kids.. Awesome story.. seems like a good kid too.. I will have to support him with the Trailblazers come to Atlanta..

Thta's absolutely awesome.

and THAT is how memories are made for children, thanks for sharing.

that is a great story. hopefully he will stay that way with the fans. your son will remember it forever and i knwo y'all will also. its players like that that still give me hope that all athletes are total aceholes. probably one of the best ones out there as far as signing and thanking fans (unless he has changed) is jeremy roenick, he played in the NHL for friggin ever. he said he will never turn down an auto request since the fans are the reason he has a job. bobby hull says the same thing..

Great story and memories for the kids!

Nice story and thanks for sharing. Hey you never said how the Nutcracker Ballet was. :lol:

Awesome story. Thanks for sharing.

I'm offically a fan of Armon Johnson now... great story!

Moonlight Graham said:

I'm offically a fan of Armon Johnson now... great story!

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Never heard of him, but I'm now a fan too!


That is an AWESOME and AMAZING story!!! What a super nice thing to do! It's a nice change to read a story like this, thank you for sharing it.

bowmanchromeandorr said:

that is a great story. hopefully he will stay that way with the fans. your son will remember it forever and i knwo y'all will also. its players like that that still give me hope that all athletes are total aceholes. probably one of the best ones out there as far as signing and thanking fans (unless he has changed) is jeremy roenick, he played in the NHL for friggin ever. he said he will never turn down an auto request since the fans are the reason he has a job. bobby hull says the same thing..

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I'll vouch for good ol' JR. When he first got traded to the flyers, they did a free signing with him at a sporting goods store. Well since the line was so crazy and he had been there for hours, the store tried to turn back everyone after a certain point in line, but Jeremy insisted that he sign for everyone who had waited, no matter that he had already been there ~3 hours signing. When we got up front, he was just as friendly and talkative as if we were the first in line. Will never forget that.

Edit: and to the OP, great story...while the majority of the stories you hear are about pampered athletes being jerks, there still are those gems out there. Armon Johnson seems to be one of them.