Kori Ellis
03-07-2005, 05:08 PM
The Links
By Lang Whitaker
http://slamonline.com/links/03072005/
Monday! And we're going to begin by naming our Linkstigator of the Night: Stephon Marbury, who went for 26 points and 16 assists and got elbowed in the head by Kurt Thomas last night against the Warriors. The Knicks have won four of their last five, by the way...
I was out most of last week, and I wrote a little report on what I was up to...
It's 6:24 a.m., Saturday morning, and I'm sitting in first class on a Northwest Airlines flight from San Antonio to Memphis. Before we get into how I managed to end up in first class, I'm wondering right now if I'm the only person on the flight that is amused that the in-flight magazine on here is called NWA. If I was running the mag, possible cover lines would include:
Ice Cube: From Gangsta to Family Friendly!
Remembering Eazy...Again!
MC Ren -- Have You Seen Him?
I spent the last four days in San Antonio hanging with the Spurs. They may be the most slept-on great team in the League, and I can sort of understand why. San Antonio is a great little town -- a bit sleepy and a bit small-town. As Robert Horry told me, "People are a lot nicer here. People are always like, Man, how can you leave L.A. and move to San Antonio? The only thing bad about L.A. is that when you meet someone somewhere you have to be on a list. L.A. is always about the lists. That's the funny part. People are cool, but the people here in San Antonio are friendlier."
Tell me about it, Rob. When I first got to the SBC Center, between the media lot and the locker room, every security guard and usher and janitor and everything else gave me a Hello, a How Are You? And I'm from Atlanta, the South, where people are supposed to be really cool.
Oh, the first class thing: don't have any idea how this happened. My flight down, from New York through Chicago to San Antonio, wasn't first class. (Shout goes out right here to Nitza, SLAM's unprecedented travel agent.) But at least I had a window seat. That flight left NYC at 6:00 a.m., and I had stayed up all night before, finishing up work stuff. So I slept each leg of that flight. One of my goals in life is to, at least once, fall asleep on a flight before it takes off and wake up as we pull into the terminal. I came pretty close on that flight.
Anyway, the Spurs are a good bunch of guys. I went to two games, a practice and a shootaround. I talked video games with Tim Duncan, golf with Devin Brown, and Eva Longoria with Tony Parker (word!).
Some random notes from the trip…
-- On Wednesday night, the Raptors are in town. Before the game, I give Horry the current SLAM, and Devin Brown accosts me because he wants a closer look at the Air Jordan XX's I'm wearing. Brown claims to have every pair of Jordans, though he doesn't wear any of them.
-- "He doesn't read any magazine unless it's about golf." -- Horry, on Brown.
-- Devin Brown is one of the nicest guys I've met in the NBA.
-- Tim Duncan shows up and started talking about SOCOM 2. Duncan won't speak to the media before games, so I was kind of left to just stand there and eavesdrop. TD reminds me of a tremendously big Tiger Woods, especially the voice.
-- Horry is apparently learning how to play Socom 2 online, with Duncan and a big crew of his friends. "I got my first kill last night," Horry reports. "It was some guy way up on a hill, about 500 yards away. I just started shooting."
-- Horry and I spend about ten minutes discussing SEC football from the '80s and '90s. He gets all excited when I mention former Alabama quarterback Walter Lewis.
-- Beno Udrich in the house! We speak briefly, and I never get around to mentioning that he needs a haircut, or at least a stylist. He speaks really good English, and I ask him if he studied it in school. "No, every team I play on before here, we mainly spoke English. In Italy, in Israel, so many guys from different places, so we all spoke English."
-- Dinner tonight: Country Fried Steak, Mashed Potatoes. Yee-uh.
-- Thought it was interesting that the Spurs have one of the most devoted fan bases in the League, one that's predominantly white, and yet they still play mostly hip-hop in the arena. Can we let the San Antonio front office be in charge of All-Star next year?
-- Still, it's kind of funny to hear the censored version of "Sh-Shake That Ass, Girl," which instead just goes, "Shake, shake that...girl."
-- When they introduced the starters, Manu and Tony Parker got the biggest cheers. It's also totally gangsta that they don't even announce the opposing team's starters. The Raptors players were all standing there waiting to run out...but no intros were coming. At least they didn't skip the Canadian National Anthem.
-- I like the SBC Center. The seats are close and seem right on top of the action, but they don't feel like they're all jammed in there.
-- At the tip, the crowd is going crazy, like a college game. I feel like standing and yelling, "HEY, THEY'RE PLAYING TORONTO!!"
-- When Manu hits an early jumper, the fans behind me start singing "Ole, ole, ole, ole..."
-- I'm not too happy with my seat, considering there's two rows of press seats courtside. I actually write "The Spurs are hating on SLAM" in my notebook. Then, about three minutes into the game, Spurs PR guru Tom James comes up and upgrades me to the second row. That's what I'm talking about...
-- It's kind of cute how every time Tony Parker screws up he glances over at Gregg Popovich, as if he's waiting to be punished.
-- The Raptors are running clear-outs for Chris Bosh every trip down the court. This would be a good idea except for the very real fact that he's being guarded by Tim Duncan on every play. Not really putting the kid in a position to succeed there, Sam Mitchell.
-- Beno could totally pass for a Spurs ballboy.
-- Rafael Araujo couldn't mean "fish" in Portuguese, could it? His mouth hangs open at all times, like he's got a hook stuck in there.
-- I love that PJ Carlesimo is an assistant in San Antonio, but I wonder if players see him and immediately think, "Hey, you're the guy that got Sprewell so angry he tried to choke you." What a strange stigma to have attached to you. PJ seems to be doing great, though.
-- Sam Mitchell: Tony, what is going on down there!?
Ref: Go back to your bench, Sam. Stop jumping up and down.
Sam Mitchell: My man just got killed down there!
Ref: There was no foul.
-- The Spurs are handling the Raps easily. Jalen's ice cold, no one else can shoot, and the Spurs are up 20-18 after one quarter.
-- In between the first and second quarter a huge, inflatable rolled up newspaper comes out of the tunnel and is apparently supposed to hover over the crowd and crap stuff out, like perhaps free newspaper subscriptions. Only the thing won't elevate, so it comes out and just slowly crashes into the stands. The fans all pass it back to the tunnel.
-- The in-arena host during time-outs is named Crazy Lou. Maybe putting San Antonio in charge of All-Star weekend isn't such a great idea.
-- Toronto has suddenly gone cooler than cool (ice cold!), as their shooting percentage plummets to 16-percent (the Spurs are shooting 45-percent).
-- Mitchell gets a little desperate and puts in Lamond Murray, who I didn't even know was still in the League. (OK, I knew, but I'm making a point.) Murray's really crafty. Watch next time how he'll catch the ball and take two or three steps before he dribbles. He manages to make it look legal, but it throws off the defenders (and the refs).
-- Donyell Marshall hits a three to bring the percentage to 18.5, then misses a two to drop it to 17.9.
-- Robert Horry drains a three and "Pour Some Sugar On Me" starts blaring through the PA system. I get up and leave.
-- An esoteric thought: do coaches call time-outs because the situation really warrants it, or just because they're conditioned to call one in certain circumstances, like after the opponent goes on a small run and the crowd is hyped up?
-- I imagine Phil Jackson is sitting on a beach somewhere in New Zealand thinking about similar things.
-- The Raptors play more zone than anyone I've seen this year. At least they are tonight. They're even shifting between a 2-3 and a 1-3-1.
-- Offensively, the Raptors are a complete mess. With Jalen on the bench, Bosh is the only guy who can create his own shot, so the Spurs don't double him, leaving him to go one-on-one with Duncan, which doesn't really work. Even worse, the Raptors run the same set on every play, with the point guard coming down the left side and getting a side screen from Bosh. The small forward just stands in the corner and waits for a pass at the end of the shot clock. It's really amazing -- they run the same play 12 times in a row. I'm not sure if this is genius or lunacy from Sam Mitchell.
-- Tonight the role of Matt Bonner is being played by Dash Mihok.
-- "Hey Rafer, come here," says Mitchell. Rafer hops off the bench and runs to the scorer's table to check in. "Go and get...go and get...hey, f*ck it, just get Chris."
-- That might be my favorite coaching quote of the year. I can't figure out who you should sub for so...ah, screw it!
-- During a late first half timeout, the Spurs run some kind of promotion for a local grocery store and a giant stuffed grocery bag walks out. To make it look more realistic, I suppose, a carrot, a carton of milk, a loaf or bread and a t-bone steak are peeking out of the top of the sack.
-- The Raptors pull closer, making it 42-36 at the half. They're still shooting 24.3-percent.
-- Overheard at the half: "This game is like soccer -- a lot of running up and down but no scoring."
-- At the half we get a weather update from Bill Taylor, a local weatherman, who promises the best from "Vipir 5 Dopplernet." I think he was in the movie Anchorman.
-- By the way, tonight's low? 49! Yeah, I'm really missing New York City right now.
-- Nazr Mohammed is stuck to the bench. Welcome to San Antonio!
-- Oh, forgot: ran into Nazr in a hallway at my hotel earlier in the day. Apparently he's yet to find a house in San Antonio.
-- You know how the refs stand in a group of two and one, with the one standing way off by himself? I wonder if the two are talking about all the calls the one messed up.
-- Araujo looks exactly like Manchester United star Christiano Ronaldo, but on steroids.
-- As soon as I wrote that last line down in my notebook, Araujo basically punched Manu (ManU?) Ginobili in the face on a drive down the lane.
-- The Spurs start the third on a 9-0 run.
-- The Raptors get absolutely no calls, which the Spurs must enjoy every night. Anytime a Toronto player goes up near the rim and Duncan tries to block it, no call is made, contact or not. Whenever Duncan goes up, a call is made. Must be nice.
-- Halfway through the third, the Spurs are up 58-37, with the Raptors shooting 23.3-percent. I'm starting to feel bad for Sam Mitchell.
-- I don't judge for the most part, but the Spurs have a motley cheerleading crew. Not the dancing girls, the cheerleaders.
-- Jalen Rose may be the only person I've ever seen to have his forearms covered in tattoos but his biceps completely clear. Either he's saving space for something spectacular or he got it all backwards.
-- Poor Rafer. After Rob Horry drains another three, Rafer runs back to halfcourt and yells to Sam Mitchell: "My fault man...damn!" Reminds me of that old Chris Farley skit on Saturday Night Live where he'd do a poor job interviewing people and then slap his head and yell, "Stupid!"
-- There's nothing I hate more about the NBA than the late foul call, well after the play has happened. In this case, Jalen goes for a layup that's contested by Bruce Bowen. The shot is missed, Jalen lands, turns, gestures to the ref for a foul call, which is then whistled against Bowen, maybe three seconds after the play. Wouldn't it be great if the rest of us were allowed to do our jobs three seconds late whenever we felt like it? You'd never say the wrong thing to anyone again.
-- The Spurs are up 70-56 after three, and Duncan has 8 points, 10 boards. Stealth.
-- The attendance is announced at 17,795. For a Wednesday night game against Toronto! I just looked it up, and when Toronto played in Jersey two weeks ago there were 14,000 in the house.
-- With 9:36 left in the fourth, Pop pulls Horry from the game. Rob puts on an angry face and stalks toward the bench, like he's furious about coming out. Right as he gets to Pop, he cracks up, and Pop shoves him and laughs, too.
-- Poor Chris Bosh. I wonder if he stays up late at night thinking about what it would be like to be surrounded by good NBA players.
-- Duncan hits his first bank shot of the night just as The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" kicks in. (One of the best arena songs of all time, by the way.) 80-67, 7:00 to go.
-- Every time down in the fourth, the Spurs throw it to Duncan in the post. The Raps double him, he hits the open man, who then drains a wide-open 16-footer. Ho-hum.
-- Toronto cuts it to 11 with 2:52 to go. Also, I just noticed Eric Williams hanging around the Toronto bench, dressed like Tony Montana (wide-collared shirt, huge gold chain).
-- Rafer hits an improbable three with 1:52 left to cut it six points, and as it rips through the nets, Sam Mitchell stabs the air with his fist.
-- The Spurs don't flinch, as Manu pops a two off the glass and Duncan gets a tip-in next time down. Spurs win, 92-86.
-- Postgame, Pop emerges and says, "We decided to go ahead and count it as a win after much discussion...''
-- Duncan takes a shower and gets dressed somewhere in a back room, then comes out from the back and talks to the TV crews for about three minutes and then disappears. Poof.
-- Tony Massenburg kicks over a huge bottle of some sort of red liquid in his locker. Not good.
-- The Spurs just won their third-straight game and every question postgame is about how the Spurs aren't playing well. More importantly, the Spurs players know they're not playing great.
-- Next morning, Thursday, I go to the Spurs practice facility on the northwest side of town. They keep the media out until practice is almost over, and then we're all ushered into a corner of the gym to watch the third team practice the offense and Nazr Mohammed get some reps.
-- After practice, I'm introduced to Gregg Popovich, and our initial discussion goes like this...
Popovich: (smiling) SLAM, is that similar to US News and World Report? Time, the same sort of thing?
Me: Well, they kind of took our style, but yeah...
Popovich: (smiling) Like when I was doing papers in college I would quote from SLAM?
Me: You should have, I don't know if you did...
Popovich: (laughs) If I had any sense I would have, right?
Me: Well, I didn't want to come right out and say that, but...
-- Pop and I were talking about how supportive the fans are in San Antonio, and he said, "We're a lot like Utah or Portland in that regard, where it's the only game in town, so to speak. The people fall in love with the Spurs and have always loved the Spurs, and they really love the players as individuals. Like, we just made a trade, sending Malik Rose for Nazr Mohammed, and it's like there was a death in the family. And I think that's a real tribute to the fans and the players that are here and were here, that the fans feel so close to them."
I want to point out that people in New York weren't really feeling the trade either, but for entirely different reasons. But I don't.
-- After practice, I hit some Texas steak house for lunch then go back to the hotel and transcribe tape all day. I go out for dinner and am back in my room by 8:00 p.m., and then I'm in the room working all night, too. Yes, road trips are a blast. I did get to catch up on Survivor, The Apprentice and Law and Order, though.
-- Friday morning, Spurs shootaround at 10:00 a.m. at the practice facility. Afterwards I grab Tim Duncan for a few minutes. He's thoroughly unexcited to talk, so I wind up by asking, "SOCOM 2 or Halo 2?"
"SOCOM, dude!" he answers. "I'm a PS2 guy, because I can't bring my Xbox on the road."
This segues into a five-minute discussion on the PlayStation Portable, out next week. Duncan is really excited about it, having played around with one at All-Star Weekend, especially the wifi feature, he says.
-- After practice, back to the hotel to transcribe and write some stuff for the upcoming issue of SLAM.
-- The Spurs host the Bulls tonight, and locker rooms open at 6:00 p.m. I'm in there talking about golf with Devin Brown -- "I can hit 310, 320 off the tee, usually," he says -- when Duncan comes in and plops down. He hadn't said a word to me before shootaround this morning, and he "never speaks to the media" before games, a Spurs staffer tells me.
I walk up and hand him my copy of Electronic Gaming Monthly, which I'd bought for the plane ride down and was going to throw away.
"Thought you might want this," I say, and walk away to leave him alone.
A few minutes later, he says, "Hey, hey man, come here." I go over to him. "So are you a gamer?"
"Yeah," I say. "I review the games in SLAM and play pretty much every day."
We spend the next 30 minutes talking about video games. I mention that I wasn't big on Metal Gear Solid 3, and Brent Barry pipes in from the corner, "Man, that game was terrible!" Horry spins around and asks why. Barry hated the camera angles, which I agree with. Duncan says he loved MGS 1, was OK with MGS 2, but hasn't even played MGS 3 (turns out Barry has Duncan's copy).
I tell them about my recent obsession with MVP Baseball, and how my Braves were $10 million over budget and I had to trade Chipper Jones for a minimum-wage player just to meet payroll. "You shoulda traded Smoltz," Horry says. "He's much older than Chipper." I point out that Chipper was batting .240 in my game, though, and Horry understands.
This leads Devin Brown into a whole thing about how much golf baseball pitchers must be able to play while they're on the road.
-- Press room dinner tonight: Barbeque Pork Chops.
-- Tonight's pre-tipoff arena song: "Get Your Shine On."
-- Once again, the Bulls are not officially introduced in the arena. They all stand around bewildered.
-- I always forget Chris Duhon is even in the NBA. Scott Skiles calls him "Du" throughout the game.
-- Before the game, one Spurs player says of Eddy Curry, "To have a body like that? Come on...give me something, give me some hustle. Tyson Chandler plays harder than Curry." A second later he says, "Of course, Curry will probably score 40 tonight and block my shot 20 times."
-- You know how they play that music really loud during plays? It completely drowns out both coaches, so the players have no idea what they're saying during the plays. Aren't we technologically advanced enough by now to be able to point the music so it'll just drown out the opposing coaches? I bet Duncan could figure out how to make that happen.
-- A ball falls loose on the court and the Spurs pick it up and run at their basket, though the Bulls knock it out of bounds. The Spurs are about to inbound the ball when Bulls coach Scott Skiles sprints onto the floor screaming, "Shot clock! Shot clock!" The clock is at 22 seconds, and Skiles thinks it was reset at some point. The refs come to the scorer's table, where they consult with the scorers and realize that the clock is right, because the Spurs didn't officially gain possession until the ball was right under the rim anyway. The scorers all shoot dirty looks at Skiles.
-- San Antonio is playing like crap, and Chicago leads 26-20 after one. Points in paint: Chi -- 14; SA -- 0.
-- Eddy Curry sneaks up behind Tony Parker to set a pick. Someone calls the pick out, and Parker blindly reaches back to feel for Curry and ends up grabbing a handful of Curry's crotch. Ouch.
-- A guy proposes to his girlfriend during a timeout, and she goes for it, crying and bawling and nodding yes. Sitting next to me at the press table, a single tear drops from Ric Bucher's eye. (Kidding, Ric.)
-- Bulls announcer Johnny "Red" Kerr is sitting in front of me, announcing entire the game with a lollipop in him mouth.
-- Scott Skiles, to the refs: "He wasn't shooting! How was he shooting? F***! It's a f***ing guessing game out here every night."
-- The Spurs go on a run, led largely by Tony Parker, to lead 55-46 at the half. Tim Duncan is still getting every call. Poor Tyson Chandler got slapped on the arm on one drive (with no call) and I could hear it from midcourt. Tyson got his money's worth by picking up a T.
-- The Spurs score the first eight points of the third to grow the lead to 63-46.
-- One thing I notice is how Duncan dribbles with his right hand and right before he jumps, pushes off slightly with his left arm and clears out enough space to get his shot off. Very subtle but very effective.
-- Tony Massenburg checks in and covers his hands with talcum powder. The Bulls miss a shot and Massenburg rebounds, and for two possessions there's a huge white handprint visible on the rock. Finally Parker takes an inbounds pass, wipes the ball off on his jersey, then continues play. Perhaps Massenburg's biggest contribution of the night.
-- Grasping at straws, Skiles inserts Othella Harrington, who immediately goes nuts, scoring left and right (mostly left, actually, because he can't drive right at all). He finishes with 20. I push Bucher to feature Harrington in ESPN the Magazine.
-- Beno Udrich is cold blooded. The Bulls see the rook check in and throw a full-court zone press at him. Udrich dribbles all the way through the zone and drains a pull-up jumper.
-- Eddy Curry, you've been benched.
-- Led by Othella Harrington (word I've never written in my life), the Bulls close the gap. Skiles then teams Duhon, Hinrich and Ben Gordon in a three guard line-up, and the Bulls actually take a 94-92 lead with 2:05 left. But Duncan and Ginobili carry the Spurs down the stretch, and the Spurs win 102-99. TD finishes with a quiet 31 and 13.
-- Postgame, the media is swarming around Tony Parker, and they don't even notice Duncan emerge and stand in the corner of the room, silently waiting for anyone to come talk to him. He lifts his hand and ticks off 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, then pumps his fist and loudly says, "Yes! Alright, I'm gone!" A couple of cameramen actually noticed him as he counted five and tried to scramble over to him, but they were too late. About three minutes later, Duncan shows up again and does the same thing, and again no one notices him. "I got y'all twice!" he announces. And Tim Duncan is out.
As am I.
By Lang Whitaker
http://slamonline.com/links/03072005/
Monday! And we're going to begin by naming our Linkstigator of the Night: Stephon Marbury, who went for 26 points and 16 assists and got elbowed in the head by Kurt Thomas last night against the Warriors. The Knicks have won four of their last five, by the way...
I was out most of last week, and I wrote a little report on what I was up to...
It's 6:24 a.m., Saturday morning, and I'm sitting in first class on a Northwest Airlines flight from San Antonio to Memphis. Before we get into how I managed to end up in first class, I'm wondering right now if I'm the only person on the flight that is amused that the in-flight magazine on here is called NWA. If I was running the mag, possible cover lines would include:
Ice Cube: From Gangsta to Family Friendly!
Remembering Eazy...Again!
MC Ren -- Have You Seen Him?
I spent the last four days in San Antonio hanging with the Spurs. They may be the most slept-on great team in the League, and I can sort of understand why. San Antonio is a great little town -- a bit sleepy and a bit small-town. As Robert Horry told me, "People are a lot nicer here. People are always like, Man, how can you leave L.A. and move to San Antonio? The only thing bad about L.A. is that when you meet someone somewhere you have to be on a list. L.A. is always about the lists. That's the funny part. People are cool, but the people here in San Antonio are friendlier."
Tell me about it, Rob. When I first got to the SBC Center, between the media lot and the locker room, every security guard and usher and janitor and everything else gave me a Hello, a How Are You? And I'm from Atlanta, the South, where people are supposed to be really cool.
Oh, the first class thing: don't have any idea how this happened. My flight down, from New York through Chicago to San Antonio, wasn't first class. (Shout goes out right here to Nitza, SLAM's unprecedented travel agent.) But at least I had a window seat. That flight left NYC at 6:00 a.m., and I had stayed up all night before, finishing up work stuff. So I slept each leg of that flight. One of my goals in life is to, at least once, fall asleep on a flight before it takes off and wake up as we pull into the terminal. I came pretty close on that flight.
Anyway, the Spurs are a good bunch of guys. I went to two games, a practice and a shootaround. I talked video games with Tim Duncan, golf with Devin Brown, and Eva Longoria with Tony Parker (word!).
Some random notes from the trip…
-- On Wednesday night, the Raptors are in town. Before the game, I give Horry the current SLAM, and Devin Brown accosts me because he wants a closer look at the Air Jordan XX's I'm wearing. Brown claims to have every pair of Jordans, though he doesn't wear any of them.
-- "He doesn't read any magazine unless it's about golf." -- Horry, on Brown.
-- Devin Brown is one of the nicest guys I've met in the NBA.
-- Tim Duncan shows up and started talking about SOCOM 2. Duncan won't speak to the media before games, so I was kind of left to just stand there and eavesdrop. TD reminds me of a tremendously big Tiger Woods, especially the voice.
-- Horry is apparently learning how to play Socom 2 online, with Duncan and a big crew of his friends. "I got my first kill last night," Horry reports. "It was some guy way up on a hill, about 500 yards away. I just started shooting."
-- Horry and I spend about ten minutes discussing SEC football from the '80s and '90s. He gets all excited when I mention former Alabama quarterback Walter Lewis.
-- Beno Udrich in the house! We speak briefly, and I never get around to mentioning that he needs a haircut, or at least a stylist. He speaks really good English, and I ask him if he studied it in school. "No, every team I play on before here, we mainly spoke English. In Italy, in Israel, so many guys from different places, so we all spoke English."
-- Dinner tonight: Country Fried Steak, Mashed Potatoes. Yee-uh.
-- Thought it was interesting that the Spurs have one of the most devoted fan bases in the League, one that's predominantly white, and yet they still play mostly hip-hop in the arena. Can we let the San Antonio front office be in charge of All-Star next year?
-- Still, it's kind of funny to hear the censored version of "Sh-Shake That Ass, Girl," which instead just goes, "Shake, shake that...girl."
-- When they introduced the starters, Manu and Tony Parker got the biggest cheers. It's also totally gangsta that they don't even announce the opposing team's starters. The Raptors players were all standing there waiting to run out...but no intros were coming. At least they didn't skip the Canadian National Anthem.
-- I like the SBC Center. The seats are close and seem right on top of the action, but they don't feel like they're all jammed in there.
-- At the tip, the crowd is going crazy, like a college game. I feel like standing and yelling, "HEY, THEY'RE PLAYING TORONTO!!"
-- When Manu hits an early jumper, the fans behind me start singing "Ole, ole, ole, ole..."
-- I'm not too happy with my seat, considering there's two rows of press seats courtside. I actually write "The Spurs are hating on SLAM" in my notebook. Then, about three minutes into the game, Spurs PR guru Tom James comes up and upgrades me to the second row. That's what I'm talking about...
-- It's kind of cute how every time Tony Parker screws up he glances over at Gregg Popovich, as if he's waiting to be punished.
-- The Raptors are running clear-outs for Chris Bosh every trip down the court. This would be a good idea except for the very real fact that he's being guarded by Tim Duncan on every play. Not really putting the kid in a position to succeed there, Sam Mitchell.
-- Beno could totally pass for a Spurs ballboy.
-- Rafael Araujo couldn't mean "fish" in Portuguese, could it? His mouth hangs open at all times, like he's got a hook stuck in there.
-- I love that PJ Carlesimo is an assistant in San Antonio, but I wonder if players see him and immediately think, "Hey, you're the guy that got Sprewell so angry he tried to choke you." What a strange stigma to have attached to you. PJ seems to be doing great, though.
-- Sam Mitchell: Tony, what is going on down there!?
Ref: Go back to your bench, Sam. Stop jumping up and down.
Sam Mitchell: My man just got killed down there!
Ref: There was no foul.
-- The Spurs are handling the Raps easily. Jalen's ice cold, no one else can shoot, and the Spurs are up 20-18 after one quarter.
-- In between the first and second quarter a huge, inflatable rolled up newspaper comes out of the tunnel and is apparently supposed to hover over the crowd and crap stuff out, like perhaps free newspaper subscriptions. Only the thing won't elevate, so it comes out and just slowly crashes into the stands. The fans all pass it back to the tunnel.
-- The in-arena host during time-outs is named Crazy Lou. Maybe putting San Antonio in charge of All-Star weekend isn't such a great idea.
-- Toronto has suddenly gone cooler than cool (ice cold!), as their shooting percentage plummets to 16-percent (the Spurs are shooting 45-percent).
-- Mitchell gets a little desperate and puts in Lamond Murray, who I didn't even know was still in the League. (OK, I knew, but I'm making a point.) Murray's really crafty. Watch next time how he'll catch the ball and take two or three steps before he dribbles. He manages to make it look legal, but it throws off the defenders (and the refs).
-- Donyell Marshall hits a three to bring the percentage to 18.5, then misses a two to drop it to 17.9.
-- Robert Horry drains a three and "Pour Some Sugar On Me" starts blaring through the PA system. I get up and leave.
-- An esoteric thought: do coaches call time-outs because the situation really warrants it, or just because they're conditioned to call one in certain circumstances, like after the opponent goes on a small run and the crowd is hyped up?
-- I imagine Phil Jackson is sitting on a beach somewhere in New Zealand thinking about similar things.
-- The Raptors play more zone than anyone I've seen this year. At least they are tonight. They're even shifting between a 2-3 and a 1-3-1.
-- Offensively, the Raptors are a complete mess. With Jalen on the bench, Bosh is the only guy who can create his own shot, so the Spurs don't double him, leaving him to go one-on-one with Duncan, which doesn't really work. Even worse, the Raptors run the same set on every play, with the point guard coming down the left side and getting a side screen from Bosh. The small forward just stands in the corner and waits for a pass at the end of the shot clock. It's really amazing -- they run the same play 12 times in a row. I'm not sure if this is genius or lunacy from Sam Mitchell.
-- Tonight the role of Matt Bonner is being played by Dash Mihok.
-- "Hey Rafer, come here," says Mitchell. Rafer hops off the bench and runs to the scorer's table to check in. "Go and get...go and get...hey, f*ck it, just get Chris."
-- That might be my favorite coaching quote of the year. I can't figure out who you should sub for so...ah, screw it!
-- During a late first half timeout, the Spurs run some kind of promotion for a local grocery store and a giant stuffed grocery bag walks out. To make it look more realistic, I suppose, a carrot, a carton of milk, a loaf or bread and a t-bone steak are peeking out of the top of the sack.
-- The Raptors pull closer, making it 42-36 at the half. They're still shooting 24.3-percent.
-- Overheard at the half: "This game is like soccer -- a lot of running up and down but no scoring."
-- At the half we get a weather update from Bill Taylor, a local weatherman, who promises the best from "Vipir 5 Dopplernet." I think he was in the movie Anchorman.
-- By the way, tonight's low? 49! Yeah, I'm really missing New York City right now.
-- Nazr Mohammed is stuck to the bench. Welcome to San Antonio!
-- Oh, forgot: ran into Nazr in a hallway at my hotel earlier in the day. Apparently he's yet to find a house in San Antonio.
-- You know how the refs stand in a group of two and one, with the one standing way off by himself? I wonder if the two are talking about all the calls the one messed up.
-- Araujo looks exactly like Manchester United star Christiano Ronaldo, but on steroids.
-- As soon as I wrote that last line down in my notebook, Araujo basically punched Manu (ManU?) Ginobili in the face on a drive down the lane.
-- The Spurs start the third on a 9-0 run.
-- The Raptors get absolutely no calls, which the Spurs must enjoy every night. Anytime a Toronto player goes up near the rim and Duncan tries to block it, no call is made, contact or not. Whenever Duncan goes up, a call is made. Must be nice.
-- Halfway through the third, the Spurs are up 58-37, with the Raptors shooting 23.3-percent. I'm starting to feel bad for Sam Mitchell.
-- I don't judge for the most part, but the Spurs have a motley cheerleading crew. Not the dancing girls, the cheerleaders.
-- Jalen Rose may be the only person I've ever seen to have his forearms covered in tattoos but his biceps completely clear. Either he's saving space for something spectacular or he got it all backwards.
-- Poor Rafer. After Rob Horry drains another three, Rafer runs back to halfcourt and yells to Sam Mitchell: "My fault man...damn!" Reminds me of that old Chris Farley skit on Saturday Night Live where he'd do a poor job interviewing people and then slap his head and yell, "Stupid!"
-- There's nothing I hate more about the NBA than the late foul call, well after the play has happened. In this case, Jalen goes for a layup that's contested by Bruce Bowen. The shot is missed, Jalen lands, turns, gestures to the ref for a foul call, which is then whistled against Bowen, maybe three seconds after the play. Wouldn't it be great if the rest of us were allowed to do our jobs three seconds late whenever we felt like it? You'd never say the wrong thing to anyone again.
-- The Spurs are up 70-56 after three, and Duncan has 8 points, 10 boards. Stealth.
-- The attendance is announced at 17,795. For a Wednesday night game against Toronto! I just looked it up, and when Toronto played in Jersey two weeks ago there were 14,000 in the house.
-- With 9:36 left in the fourth, Pop pulls Horry from the game. Rob puts on an angry face and stalks toward the bench, like he's furious about coming out. Right as he gets to Pop, he cracks up, and Pop shoves him and laughs, too.
-- Poor Chris Bosh. I wonder if he stays up late at night thinking about what it would be like to be surrounded by good NBA players.
-- Duncan hits his first bank shot of the night just as The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" kicks in. (One of the best arena songs of all time, by the way.) 80-67, 7:00 to go.
-- Every time down in the fourth, the Spurs throw it to Duncan in the post. The Raps double him, he hits the open man, who then drains a wide-open 16-footer. Ho-hum.
-- Toronto cuts it to 11 with 2:52 to go. Also, I just noticed Eric Williams hanging around the Toronto bench, dressed like Tony Montana (wide-collared shirt, huge gold chain).
-- Rafer hits an improbable three with 1:52 left to cut it six points, and as it rips through the nets, Sam Mitchell stabs the air with his fist.
-- The Spurs don't flinch, as Manu pops a two off the glass and Duncan gets a tip-in next time down. Spurs win, 92-86.
-- Postgame, Pop emerges and says, "We decided to go ahead and count it as a win after much discussion...''
-- Duncan takes a shower and gets dressed somewhere in a back room, then comes out from the back and talks to the TV crews for about three minutes and then disappears. Poof.
-- Tony Massenburg kicks over a huge bottle of some sort of red liquid in his locker. Not good.
-- The Spurs just won their third-straight game and every question postgame is about how the Spurs aren't playing well. More importantly, the Spurs players know they're not playing great.
-- Next morning, Thursday, I go to the Spurs practice facility on the northwest side of town. They keep the media out until practice is almost over, and then we're all ushered into a corner of the gym to watch the third team practice the offense and Nazr Mohammed get some reps.
-- After practice, I'm introduced to Gregg Popovich, and our initial discussion goes like this...
Popovich: (smiling) SLAM, is that similar to US News and World Report? Time, the same sort of thing?
Me: Well, they kind of took our style, but yeah...
Popovich: (smiling) Like when I was doing papers in college I would quote from SLAM?
Me: You should have, I don't know if you did...
Popovich: (laughs) If I had any sense I would have, right?
Me: Well, I didn't want to come right out and say that, but...
-- Pop and I were talking about how supportive the fans are in San Antonio, and he said, "We're a lot like Utah or Portland in that regard, where it's the only game in town, so to speak. The people fall in love with the Spurs and have always loved the Spurs, and they really love the players as individuals. Like, we just made a trade, sending Malik Rose for Nazr Mohammed, and it's like there was a death in the family. And I think that's a real tribute to the fans and the players that are here and were here, that the fans feel so close to them."
I want to point out that people in New York weren't really feeling the trade either, but for entirely different reasons. But I don't.
-- After practice, I hit some Texas steak house for lunch then go back to the hotel and transcribe tape all day. I go out for dinner and am back in my room by 8:00 p.m., and then I'm in the room working all night, too. Yes, road trips are a blast. I did get to catch up on Survivor, The Apprentice and Law and Order, though.
-- Friday morning, Spurs shootaround at 10:00 a.m. at the practice facility. Afterwards I grab Tim Duncan for a few minutes. He's thoroughly unexcited to talk, so I wind up by asking, "SOCOM 2 or Halo 2?"
"SOCOM, dude!" he answers. "I'm a PS2 guy, because I can't bring my Xbox on the road."
This segues into a five-minute discussion on the PlayStation Portable, out next week. Duncan is really excited about it, having played around with one at All-Star Weekend, especially the wifi feature, he says.
-- After practice, back to the hotel to transcribe and write some stuff for the upcoming issue of SLAM.
-- The Spurs host the Bulls tonight, and locker rooms open at 6:00 p.m. I'm in there talking about golf with Devin Brown -- "I can hit 310, 320 off the tee, usually," he says -- when Duncan comes in and plops down. He hadn't said a word to me before shootaround this morning, and he "never speaks to the media" before games, a Spurs staffer tells me.
I walk up and hand him my copy of Electronic Gaming Monthly, which I'd bought for the plane ride down and was going to throw away.
"Thought you might want this," I say, and walk away to leave him alone.
A few minutes later, he says, "Hey, hey man, come here." I go over to him. "So are you a gamer?"
"Yeah," I say. "I review the games in SLAM and play pretty much every day."
We spend the next 30 minutes talking about video games. I mention that I wasn't big on Metal Gear Solid 3, and Brent Barry pipes in from the corner, "Man, that game was terrible!" Horry spins around and asks why. Barry hated the camera angles, which I agree with. Duncan says he loved MGS 1, was OK with MGS 2, but hasn't even played MGS 3 (turns out Barry has Duncan's copy).
I tell them about my recent obsession with MVP Baseball, and how my Braves were $10 million over budget and I had to trade Chipper Jones for a minimum-wage player just to meet payroll. "You shoulda traded Smoltz," Horry says. "He's much older than Chipper." I point out that Chipper was batting .240 in my game, though, and Horry understands.
This leads Devin Brown into a whole thing about how much golf baseball pitchers must be able to play while they're on the road.
-- Press room dinner tonight: Barbeque Pork Chops.
-- Tonight's pre-tipoff arena song: "Get Your Shine On."
-- Once again, the Bulls are not officially introduced in the arena. They all stand around bewildered.
-- I always forget Chris Duhon is even in the NBA. Scott Skiles calls him "Du" throughout the game.
-- Before the game, one Spurs player says of Eddy Curry, "To have a body like that? Come on...give me something, give me some hustle. Tyson Chandler plays harder than Curry." A second later he says, "Of course, Curry will probably score 40 tonight and block my shot 20 times."
-- You know how they play that music really loud during plays? It completely drowns out both coaches, so the players have no idea what they're saying during the plays. Aren't we technologically advanced enough by now to be able to point the music so it'll just drown out the opposing coaches? I bet Duncan could figure out how to make that happen.
-- A ball falls loose on the court and the Spurs pick it up and run at their basket, though the Bulls knock it out of bounds. The Spurs are about to inbound the ball when Bulls coach Scott Skiles sprints onto the floor screaming, "Shot clock! Shot clock!" The clock is at 22 seconds, and Skiles thinks it was reset at some point. The refs come to the scorer's table, where they consult with the scorers and realize that the clock is right, because the Spurs didn't officially gain possession until the ball was right under the rim anyway. The scorers all shoot dirty looks at Skiles.
-- San Antonio is playing like crap, and Chicago leads 26-20 after one. Points in paint: Chi -- 14; SA -- 0.
-- Eddy Curry sneaks up behind Tony Parker to set a pick. Someone calls the pick out, and Parker blindly reaches back to feel for Curry and ends up grabbing a handful of Curry's crotch. Ouch.
-- A guy proposes to his girlfriend during a timeout, and she goes for it, crying and bawling and nodding yes. Sitting next to me at the press table, a single tear drops from Ric Bucher's eye. (Kidding, Ric.)
-- Bulls announcer Johnny "Red" Kerr is sitting in front of me, announcing entire the game with a lollipop in him mouth.
-- Scott Skiles, to the refs: "He wasn't shooting! How was he shooting? F***! It's a f***ing guessing game out here every night."
-- The Spurs go on a run, led largely by Tony Parker, to lead 55-46 at the half. Tim Duncan is still getting every call. Poor Tyson Chandler got slapped on the arm on one drive (with no call) and I could hear it from midcourt. Tyson got his money's worth by picking up a T.
-- The Spurs score the first eight points of the third to grow the lead to 63-46.
-- One thing I notice is how Duncan dribbles with his right hand and right before he jumps, pushes off slightly with his left arm and clears out enough space to get his shot off. Very subtle but very effective.
-- Tony Massenburg checks in and covers his hands with talcum powder. The Bulls miss a shot and Massenburg rebounds, and for two possessions there's a huge white handprint visible on the rock. Finally Parker takes an inbounds pass, wipes the ball off on his jersey, then continues play. Perhaps Massenburg's biggest contribution of the night.
-- Grasping at straws, Skiles inserts Othella Harrington, who immediately goes nuts, scoring left and right (mostly left, actually, because he can't drive right at all). He finishes with 20. I push Bucher to feature Harrington in ESPN the Magazine.
-- Beno Udrich is cold blooded. The Bulls see the rook check in and throw a full-court zone press at him. Udrich dribbles all the way through the zone and drains a pull-up jumper.
-- Eddy Curry, you've been benched.
-- Led by Othella Harrington (word I've never written in my life), the Bulls close the gap. Skiles then teams Duhon, Hinrich and Ben Gordon in a three guard line-up, and the Bulls actually take a 94-92 lead with 2:05 left. But Duncan and Ginobili carry the Spurs down the stretch, and the Spurs win 102-99. TD finishes with a quiet 31 and 13.
-- Postgame, the media is swarming around Tony Parker, and they don't even notice Duncan emerge and stand in the corner of the room, silently waiting for anyone to come talk to him. He lifts his hand and ticks off 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, then pumps his fist and loudly says, "Yes! Alright, I'm gone!" A couple of cameramen actually noticed him as he counted five and tried to scramble over to him, but they were too late. About three minutes later, Duncan shows up again and does the same thing, and again no one notices him. "I got y'all twice!" he announces. And Tim Duncan is out.
As am I.