(Pre) Olympic Basketball in Las Vegas

Team USA paid a visit to Las Vegas last Friday night for their last scheduled game in America before the Olympics in Beijing. To say they beat Canada's Olympic team is an understatement. The 120-65 final does not reflect the truly poor level of play that garnished most of Team USA's perfomance that night. Had they been firing on all cylinders the score could have easily been 160-50.

As for the show, it was cool to have more than the stock four standard-definition cameras we are accustomed to using for sports in Vegas. In fact, there were 8 high-definition manned cameras. (Now before you think that's a lot, during the 2007 NBA All-Star game I was #24 of thirty-something.) For this game, however, I ran the low slash camera (#7) which is used mainly for replays--which translates into more fun, ESPN highlight footage. In fact the game was aired nationally on ESPN and globally to dozens of countries. It's a fun camera to run since it shows the court at a 45 degree angle and is very close to the action. The only real problems were that the camera may not have been high enough in the stands to see over the tops of players, and that the camera was on the wooden extension of the bleachers and not concrete. Thus any foot traffic (and there was a lot) caused the lens to shake. I was thankful for the Thomas & Mack security/ushers for trying to keep the area clear.