Spring is Orange

Finnish Men’s Korisliiga and the color orange seem to go hand in hand these days.

With KarhuBasket topping the table, once again, and their troops of fans traveling around the country supporting their team, the playoffs quite often get an ‘orange-wibe’ to them.

For us photographers it is great to see the fans travel to away games in numbers, always makes for great photos and atmosphere at the venues.

Now, this might sound strange – KarhuBasket got their own venue built in time for this season, and honestly the best looking venue in Korisliiga (even if the lights are better at Motonet Arena in Joensuu, sorry guys!). But new venue has taken away the home court advantage from Karhu this season, OK they only just lost the first Korisliiga game last week on the new home court.

But the old school gym, that was an intimidating place for the away teams to come to – fans with-in inches of the players, the drums and bells ringing all through the warm-up and the noise just intense.

The new venue, it does not have that – at least not yet. Then again, when you move from a venue holding about 1000 people, to one that can hold close to 3000, you will have some issues filling it quite the same way. And in a bigger venue, the noise just doesn’t stay on the court the same way.. as it has more places to hide and travel to.

Still – the Final pairings for Korisliiga seem to be (might be shooting myself on the foot here!) Seagulls from Helsinki and KarhuBasket from Kauhajoki.. on the venues, there couldn’t be much more difference. Kauhajoki – brand new purpose built basketball arena with all the bells and whistles. Seagulls – venue that was already in use at the 1952 Olympics and which has a legendary guest team locker room ‘situation’ with the team spread into two adjoining locker rooms and them being so low ceiling that even the point guards have trouble staying upright there. I really need to head over there and take a photo one day 🙂

This photographer also wishes that the playoffs on men’s side would also come alive finally at the last hurdle, so far the series have been a little to ‘bland’ and none have really offered (to me at least) the drama you want and expect from this time of the season.

Few more weeks of orange and yellow to go – unless Vilpas pull a comeback of all times and push KarhuBasket all the way to a game 7… you never know!!