Breakthrough at the RBK Court

The soundtrack: The Roots – “Do You Want More?!!??!”
The time: 1:35pm (it should be 12:35pm) on Sunday
The story:

So it’s the day after a practice that should have been meaningless. No news and nothing really interesting to investigate, but oh so momentous in the grander scheme of my career.

The Saturday shoot-around “opened” to the media (all 3 of us on this day) an hour after the expected time. Everyone’s still just playing around; Mike James, Andre Barret and Darrick Martin are having a 3-point competition of sorts; Chris Bosh, taped thumb/wrist and all, is jogging around dribbling and making lay-ups, while some of the others are working on post-moves at the other end of the court.

A few minutes later, Mike James is about to leave.

“Anyone want to talk to Mike?” asked the media relations guy.
“I’ll talk to him if anyone else does, but I don’t want to keep him on a Saturday afternoon,” I said.

No one else wanted to talk to him, but I threw a couple generic questions to him anyway, regarding [today’s] game against the Hornets. It wasn't really exciting.

As quiet as the practice was, I wanted to talk to Jose Calderon about my upcoming trip to Spain. (Sidenote: I’m going to Spain with my kind and loving family at the end of May) As I’d told my Dad, I wanted to try and catch a game somewhere. So I asked him about teams to look for, and places to watch them. I also asked how the fans were.

This is not vertabim, mind you, but it’s close:

“You know the soccer fans?” Jose asked in growingly impressive English.
“Oh yeah, I know the soccer fans.” I replied.
“They’re just like that… but for basketball.”

Great.

After he dropped some names of places that I’ll never remember, he thankfully offered me his e-mail address, should I need anything.

What a guy.

Speaking of which, Sam Mitchell decided to stroll on by just a few minutes after that. I had a general idea of what I wanted to ask him: stuff about the Hornets.

Something to the effect of:
“With the Hornets sitting just 2 games out of 8th in the West, are you at all concerned about their intensity?”

I knew, while saying it, that he would eat me for breakfast after spitting out trash like that. He did:

“I thought everybody was supposed to play hard. What are you asking me? I can’t figure out the question.” He then repeated the question to the media relations guy, as if looking for confirmation that he wasn’t crazy. “Everybody we play plays hard. I don’t know how to answer that. I’ll put it to you like this: I assume every NBA team plays hard. I assume that.”

At this point, I obviously wasn’t feeling very good about myself. The scrum went on as usual. No blips. Then he told us to turn our recording devices off. He told us a story about his playing days, and the conversation just turned into a… conversation.

There was a new reporter there (not new in terms of he just got the job, but new as in, he hadn’t covered the Raptors this season) who introduced himself. I really liked the way he worded his questions. There was just something about how he’d sort of tell a story before throwing out what he wanted to ask.

Sam then looked at me and (again, this is by no means verbatim) noted how this reporter had very thought-out questions. He said this reporter had likely written out, and planned, what he wanted to ask.

He then asked me if I wrote out my questions. I told him the truth, “no, I don’t.”

He suggested that I do so from now on. He asked me where I wanted to go in life. Something to the effect of:

“Don’t you want to get out of radio, and eventually write? Get a nice house so you can relax?” He asked.
“No. I want to stay in radio.”
“What, you want your own talk show or something?”
“No. No talk show.”
“Then what? You want to do this every day?”
“Hey, if I could hang out and travel with an NBA team everyday, I’d be a happy man for the rest of my life.”

I think at that point, he understood me. The first-day reporter backed me up, and told Sam to take it easy on me saying ‘I’m just a young guy who loves basketball.’

That’s when the conversation took a turn… for the much, much better. He talked about what he respected in certain reporters, and what he expects from me from now on. He said I need to prepare my questions so they don’t come off so cold.
I told him I do prepare, just not in the conventional way. I know the NBA, and for the most part, I have an idea of what I want to ask. I threw one of his analogies back at him.

“Sam, it’s like you’ve told us time and time again about your rookies. They practice well, but sometimes when the lights come on… they freeze.” I said.
“That’s a confidence thing.” He noted.
“That’s what I’m saying.”

I didn’t want to lay down ALL my cards, and tell him I talk to the players just fine, it’s just that he intimidates the hell out of me, so I didn’t. I left it at that.

Before we wrapped up, Sam said this:

“You’re no longer a rookie.”

When the media relations guy told him I’d be a rookie until the first game of next season, Sam said: “Nope. He’s not a rookie anymore.”

Time to step up.

==
Now I’ll recap the Suns game in brief, seeing as how it all went by in a flash. Phoenix had 12 assists on 16 field goals in the first… and that pretty much dictated the play throughout:

140, 126

That 140 points is the most any team’s ever scored at the ACC (and the second most given up by the Raptors all-time – The Clippers dropped 158 on the Raps at the Skydome in ’98). Steve Nash had 20 points and 10 assists (right around his averages), while Boris Diaw contributed 26 points, 8 boards, and 9 helpers. Leandro Barbosa shot 11/15 for the Suns, to score a team-high 28 off the bench. Phoenix had 37 (!!) assists by night’s end.

For the Raptors: Mo Pete scored a career-best 38 points (13/19 shooting), Mike James notched 36 and 10 dimes, while Pop Sow had career-highs in both points and rebounds (13 and 15, respectively) for his first career double-double.

After the game, Nash was bombarded by the media (as to be expected). I was standing about 6 inches to his right, crowded by his heavy leather coat, and about 6,832 other reporters. I didn’t ask him anything.

In fact, the only Suns I spoke to were Coach Mike D’Antoni and Shawn Marion (who likes to cut the 2nd half of every word out).

Usually by the end of the game, and all the scrums, my bladder tells me it’s time to unleash a urinary fury… So I head to the post-game-show booth, drop off my stuff, and relieve the need. When I get back, I grab my minidisk player and get my things ready to chop up the clips and write up a sched for the hosts.

My player flashes: “NO DISC. NO DISC. NO DISC.”

My heart starts beating rapidly. Like bad trance music, 158 bmp rapidly. I wipe a bead of sweat off my brow, and start to walk over to the hosts to tell them I fumbled badly. I’ve got nothing.

Then I see my co-worker/friend holding the gleaming blue disc, laughing his ass off.

Nothing a kidney-shot wouldn’t change.

…

So that’s that. The Raptors play the Hornets in just a few hours, then host the Celtics (as mentioned in the previous post) on Tuesday. We’ll chat soon.