The Annual NBA Outdoors Game
The Suns hold an annual basketball exhibition game, the NBA Outdoors, every first weekend of October in Indian Wells Tennis Garden in Indian Wells, California near the city of Palm Springs, California. The team owner Richard Heckmann has a home in Rancho Mirage, California also one of two homes by Lakers' coach Phil Jackson and the two teams share the market of the American Southwest, but the Suns agreed to participate in the last three games (2008, 2009 and 2010).
As a result of a recommendation by the Coachella Valley Recreation and Park District's Superintendent of Operations, Craig DeWitt, the NBA held its first outdoor exhibition basketball game on October 11, 2008. That stadium facility was built primarily for tennis tournaments and music concerts, and it can hold up to 15,000 fans. The Phoenix Suns lost the game to the Denver Nuggets. A second annual outdoor exhibition game was played on October 10, 2009, this time the Suns lost to the Golden State Warriors. On October 9, 2010, the Suns beat the Dallas Mavericks in the third annual outdoor exhibition.
In 2008 and 2009 pre-seasons, the Suns held training camp in the Auditorium in La Quinta, California and the College of the Desert Gymnasium in Palm Desert, California along side with the Portland Trail Blazers. But in 2010, the Suns began their training in San Diego and the Trail Blazers in Tucson, Arizona as well held exhibition games in Seattle, Washington.
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Famous quotes containing the words annual, outdoors and/or game:
“Time that scatters hair upon a head
Spreads the ice sheet on the shaven lawn;
Signing an annual permit for the frost....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The neo-hippie-dips, the sentimentality-crazed iguana anthropomorphizers, the Chicken Littles, the three-bong-hit William Blakes—thank God these people don’t actually go outdoors much, or the environment would be even worse than it is already.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“Wild Bill was indulging in his favorite pastime of a friendly game of cards in the old No. 10 saloon. For the second time in his career, he was sitting with his back to an open door. Jack McCall walked in, shot him through the back of the head, and rushed from the place, only to be captured shortly afterward. Wild Bill’s dead hand held aces and eights, and from that time on this has been known in the West as “the dead man’s hand.””
—State of South Dakota, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)