Perspective-Last night largest crowd to see a basketball game in California

[Sir Richard F. Burton]

Thought it was funny that a California record was broken last nigh Golden State Warriors vs Dallas Mavericks. Attendance: 20,672 would that many show up at Rupp for a Vandy game.

[Will Lavender]

That's wild.

And forget Vandy. We drew 22,000 last year against Santa Clara.

[patpat4three]

i saw that on espn and thought how weak is that

[Doug Hardin]

That has more to do with arena capacity than anything else.

All of the current NBA arenas (Staples, Arco, Oracle) and the old ones (The Forum, the Sports Arena) and miscellaneous basketball venues (HP Pavillion in San Jose, The Pond in Anaheim) only seat somewhere in the 16,000-19,000 range. They also don't have any domed stadiums they could convert to basketball use for a Final Four or regional final.

[The Old School JPS]

I wonder if that would even rank in the top 500 basketball crowds in the history of the state of Kentucky.

I assume UK has played about 430 home games at Rupp.

The SEC tourney was played at Rupp in 1982, 1986 and 1993. Kentucky was in the final each time. That's another 9 home games, basically, likely with huge crowds for some of the other games played on the same day.

There have been about 35 or 40 NCAA games played at Rupp. Two of them in 1984 featured UK. One in 1980 did also.

UK has drawn crowds of over 20,000 at games at Freedom Hall.

Add to that all of U of L's games at Freedom Hall with crowds in excess of 20,672 and I would think there have been over 500 basketball games played in Kentucky with crowds larger than the largest in California history.

[LAcat]

That has more to do with arena capacity than anything else.

All of the current NBA arenas (Staples, Arco, Oracle) and the old ones (The Forum, the Sports Arena) and miscellaneous basketball venues (HP Pavillion in San Jose, The Pond in Anaheim) only seat somewhere in the 16,000-19,000 range. They also don't have any domed stadiums they could convert to basketball use for a Final Four or regional final.

That's exactly right. Staples holds about 19,500 but has three levels of luxury suites. The Lakers have sold out most every game for years.