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The Houston Rockets are hawking $1 beers to avoid a late-arriving Game 5 crowd

Ben Rohrbach
·Senior NBA writer
Hello? Hello? Hello? Is there anybody in there? (AP)
Hello? Hello? Hello? Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone at home? (AP)

The Houston Rockets have struggled for years to get fans in the Toyota Center doors before tipoff, even for Game 2 against the Oklahoma City Thunder in a series that features the league’s two MVP favorites, so Rockets CEO Tad Brown has taken an idea out of the Jackie Moon playbook in “Semi-Pro.”

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That’s right, the Rockets will open doors a half-hour early for Wednesday’s Game 5 and ply folks with $1 beers from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., so they’re good and loose for the 7 o’clock tipoff in Houston. Fans can also wash down those dollar beers with $1 nachos and hot dogs, so get in line for the bathrooms early.

Of course, the cheapest two tickets together remaining for Game 5 on Rockets.com will set you back a cool $398, so you might have to down several dozen beers and hot dogs to get your money’s worth.

Some might say this will line some pockets with at least an hour and a half’s worth of business before the crowd might normally arrive, and they’d be right, but it should also ensure seats are full of booze-fueled fans ready to cheer their team on for a home close-out game in a series the Rockets lead 3-1.

The Rockets have one of the NBA’s 10 smallest crowds, according to ESPN, and their 94.2 percent capacity puts them a tick below the perennially bad Orlando Magic and even with the lottery-bound New Orleans Pelicans. One search for late-arriving crowds in Houston offers years worth of evidence:

The Rockets tried the dollar-beer trick on at least two other occasions, prior to a Monday night game against the Indiana Pacers in late February, and for last month’s nationally televised showdown with the Golden State Warriors. For what it’s worth, Houston lost both games by a combined 18 points.

In addition to dollar beer, nachos and hot dogs, the Rockets plan to “rile up” the crowd with a local band and a pregame address from former player Vernon Maxwell, a member of Houston’s title teams in 1994 and ’95. When you follow Maxwell on Twitter, you begin to understand the Mad Max nickname:

And the Rockets CEO did well to serve as a hype man for Mad Max’s scheduled pregame address:

“He’s the type of guy people love to come in and see because you’re never exactly sure what will happen with Vernon,” Brown told the Houston Chronicle’s Jonathan Feigen. “There will be other folks, former players, all around, but Max wants the opportunity to get the crowd riled up.”

So, we’re “never exactly sure what will happen with Vernon” and fans will be three sheets to the wind by the time Game 5 starts on Wednesday night. What could possibly go wrong here? Oh, that’s right:

If Rockets guard Patrick Beverley thought the Oklahoma City crowd was a little too into Game 3, just wait ’til Russell Westbrook gets a load of 17,000 Houstonians filled to the brim with beer and nachos.

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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie and Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!