Thursday, February 28, 2008

   As soon as I write about how few flight problems I've had this season, everything goes to hell. I'm posting this early because I have no idea what time I'm getting into Lafayette, La. - - note, not New Orleans - - late tonight. I feel like I brought this on myself keeping this journal this week.

    THURSDAY

    10 a.m.: The gods have smiled on me. The boss is allowing me to skate by with just a notebook in Friday's paper. This happens a handful of times all season. Gordon Monson's column will be our Jazz presence on the front of the section.

    When the team doesn't practice - - as the Jazz are today - - usually we hang around the locker room a little longer after the game night before and gather extra quotes for an off-day story.

    The problem is that Wednesday's victory over Detroit was just too incredible. The story in Friday's paper has to come from that. It's going to look ahead to the New Orleans game by asking the simplest question: Why can't the Jazz play that way all the time?

    I'm also including a little on the Chris Paul/Deron Williams friendship. Jazz coach Jerry Sloan had a couple of thoughts on the subject at Tuesday's shootaround in Minnesota. This is an example of how sometimes as a beat writer, you're almost forced to go in a direction.

    When the Jazz had their 10-game winning streak earlier this month, I felt like I had to keep writing about it until it came to an end. If the Jazz had dropped another game or two in December, you'd have seen a series of "What's going wrong?" stories.

    12:30 p.m.: A couple of you have e-mailed to ask about how I got this job in the first place.

    The short answer is that I started writing for a small local paper in high school in the Washington suburbs. I went to Northwestern for college, worked on the student paper and interned for the Palm Beach Post and Washington Post my junior year.

    When I graduated, I sent a resume and clips to probably 100 newspapers across the country. I think five of them even wrote back to acknowledge they'd received it. One paper had an opening for a part-time high school sports writer.

    My now-wife and I were planning to move to San Francisco (where she's from) after college, but we detoured south when the job came open at the Los Angeles Daily News. Neither of us imagined we'd wind up living there for five years.

    I worked two years covering high schools, which meant driving all over Southern California. I still have the same car out here . . . with 116,000 miles on it. I really wanted to be a baseball writer, but never got considered when we had a Dodgers opening at the paper.

    Thankfully, I had an editor who counseled me to be patient and wait my turn. (Kind of like Jerry Sloan's telling C.J. Miles right now.) I got to help out at the 2004 NBA All-Star Game and travel as a third writer with the Lakers during the 2004 playoffs.

    We're having lunch in Detroit during the Finals when Howard Beck (now at the N.Y. Times) tells me he's probably leaving to cover the Knicks once the Lakers' season is over. All of a sudden, I'm three weeks away from having to cover the biggest circus in sports.

    If you remember that summer, Phil Jackson wasn't brought back as coach, Kobe Bryant opted out of his contract and Shaquille O'Neal was traded to Miami. My first day on the beat was the Shaq trade. It was the off-season from hell.

    I'm not sure it was actually official that I was on the beat until the start of training camp. You'll never hear me discount how big a factor luck is in life. I was in the right place at the right time and got to cover the Lakers at 24, something I clearly had no business doing.

    It was the most incredible experience, but also a frustrating one at times just trying to compete as a No. 3 paper. I covered every game my first 2 1-2 seasons - - 195 straight - - in the hopes of not missing a story. There's nothing like being baptized by fire.

    You're not supposed to learn on the job when you're covering a team like the Lakers. I'm just grateful I was able to. The opportunity to cover the Jazz came about in April and I was sold before I got on the plane to interview. I just had to convince my wife about the move.

    Two of my former sports editors at the Daily News had previously left to take jobs as editors at the Tribune, which obviously didn't hurt. The Daily News, incidentally, has had a long line of NBA writers that also includes Marc Spears and Marc Stein.

    My advice to people is pretty simple: Read and write as much as possible, push yourself to always make that extra call or show up to that extra practice and take advantage of any and all breaks you get. You never know when an opportunity will come about.

    Now we return to regularly scheduled programming.

    5 p.m.: I file my notebook, preview capsule and a chart that'll run with Gordon's column. Instead of a leisurely flight to New Orleans, I get to the gate and learn that our plane is delayed with "mechanical issues." About 10 minutes later, they cancel the flight.

    This is incredible to me because apparently SkyWest has no replacement jets at the Salt Lake airport. It's one thing to have a flight canceled because of a blizzard, it's another thing when it's 60 degrees and sunny outside.

    Tim Buckley from the Deseret News and I are on the same flight. For as much as we compete on the beat, we're also in this together. We have two options: Either fly on the red-eye to Atlanta and connect to New Orleans or fly late-night to Houston and drive.

    It's about a five-hour drive if I remember from Houston to New Orleans. The red-eye is something we want to avoid at all costs, especially with a 7:30 a.m. flight Saturday to get to Memphis connecting through Atlanta.

    We decide to go to Houston and try to find a hotel somewhere in the middle of the drive to New Orleans. So we're heading to Lafayette, La., a place that Jazz p.r. guy Jonathan Rinehart just informed us is "the heart of Cajun country." Can't wait.

    We've got meal vouchers that'll get us $7 of food here in Salt Lake before leaving for Houston. If we make good time, I figure we'll get to Lafayette sometime around 3:30 a.m. We'll drive the last 135 miles Friday and get to New Orleans in time for the game.

    And this is only the first of five flights I have to take to get from Salt Lake to New Orleans to Memphis and back home the next four days. I'll let you know how Lafayette is.

    --Ross Siler