Life on the beat - - Tuesday
Thanks for all the e-mails and comments about Monday's post. Like I said, I'm going to keep this going through this stretch of four games in five nights.
TUESDAY
9:30 a.m.: The Jazz typically hold a morning shootaround on game day, though not if they're playing the second game of a back-to-back set. In that case, they'll have a breakfast meeting at their hotel on the road or will come early to EnergySolutions at home.
When you've coached as long as Jerry Sloan, you get to be pretty big on routine. The Jazz always start shootaround at 10 a.m., even if it's the East Coast and their body clocks are still lagging two hours behind.
The home team typically gets first choice of times and sometimes there are conflicts. The Jazz are committed to shooting at 10 a.m., so this year they held one shootaround at a Presbyterian Church in Orlando, Fla.
The team walked from the hotel to the church in warm-ups. The Lord then rewarded them with their only road victory in December.
The hotel the Jazz are staying at here in Minneapolis has a gym with a regulation basketball court. It's a luxury they take full advantage of by not leaving the premises for shootaround. They usually wrap up by 10:30 a.m.
We're not allowed to watch either practice or shootaround - - this is another common misperception. The Jazz held an open practice to finish training camp in Boise and held an open scrimmage back in Salt Lake City during the preseason.
The topics are pretty straight forward: We ask Jerry Sloan about some comments that former Jazz guard Kirk Snyder made upon arrival in Minnesota that he never appreciated what Sloan was trying to teach him until he left Utah.
We also ask Sloan about the likelihood of the Jazz adding another player this season, with the Saturday deadline by which a player must be waived to sign with another team and be eligible for their playoff roster.
With four games in five nights, the Jazz aren't likely to practice Thursday. I don't have that same luxury as far as not writing a story. With a game against New Orleans on Friday, we ask a couple of questions in advance about Deron Williams and Chris Paul.
There's a television crew from Iowa Sports Weekly (I've concluded Iowa might be the friendliest state) that made the six-hour drive to sit down with Kyle Korver. They've already interviewed his mother, father and three brothers for a story.
Korver's family isn't coming to the game, but he said a couple of friends had bought tickets for the Sixers/Timberwolves game before he was traded and tried to get their money back. It doesn't work like that, though, and now they're stuck with tickets for a dog of a game.
There's also a fun discussion about getting the Jazz coaches to switch from their staple lunch of Subway to Potbelly's. It's a chain of sandwich shops that started in Chicago and is fast franchising across the country. There's one along the Skyway here in Minneapolis.
I lived around the corner from one in college and describe eating there as a life-changing experience. The Jazz coaches are set in their ways, though, with assistant Phil Johnson (turkey breast and ham) saying: "You can't upscale Subway." Quote of the day.
12:32 p.m.: I file a story from shootaround that runs just on our Web site. This is one big change we've made this season. The hope is Jazz fans stop by for an update in the afternoon. We've also beefed up our blog and file Web-only game stories at the horn as more and more emphasis is put on the Internet side.
I'm not sure what the future of newspapers will be - - it freaks out my wife to read some of the stories right now about the business - - but I hope people are reading in one way or another. You can subscribe to the Tribune or read it at sltrib.com. We're even publishing and handing out at TRAX stations a free commuter daily called Afternoon Buzz.
2 p.m.: I try to take a nap on game days but usually give up after about 20 minutes. Today's no different. There's big news that Yao Ming is out for the season with a foot injury, which initially seems devastating to the Rockets. I'm interested to see what Luis Scola can do and what happens when they dust off Dikembe Mutombo.
There's a story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in which Marko Jaric talks about Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia. You don't find a lot of articles that tie in the NBA and Slobodan Milosevic. Morris Almond also has a new blog post about two Jazz season ticket holders who swapped seats with him and Kyrylo Fesenko on the flight to New Orleans for All-Star weekend. Almond and Fesenko rode in first class while the two fans sat in coach.
4:30 p.m.: I usually get to the arena about 2 1-2 hours ahead of time. It's a short walk here from the hotel to Target Center along the Skyway. I want to talk to Snyder about his reflections on playing for Sloan, so I head to the Timberwolves locker room as soon as it opens. It might have been the saddest locker room I've ever been in.
Antoine Walker was openly talking about his buyout possibilities with teammates. Al Jefferson rolled in about an hour and 20 minutes before tipoff. Snyder came off the court after warmups and talked for five minutes about his time with the Jazz. He said he wished he hadn't stirred up so much "hay" during his rookie season.
6:15 p.m.: I always put in at least an appearance in the Jazz locker room before the game. We do a lot of the work at shootaround, but I view it as a time to chat with guys (the locker room closes 45 minutes before the game) as well as to make yourself available in case they have any problems with something you've written. So far, nobody has this season.
I head back to the press room and get started on the Jazz notebook for Wednesday's paper. I also call into 1280 AM back in Salt Lake City and do a five-minute segment about the game with Kevin Graham and Gordon Monson. I chide Gordon for his injury column in Sunday's paper somehow leading to Yao Ming's season-ending stress fracture.
7 p.m.: The upper deck at Target Center is vacant. We're sitting courtside right in front of the sticky plastic the players step on to get the dust off their shoes. Carlos Boozer peels off a sheet and looks around with nowhere to trash it. He hands it to me. Deron Williams says it's time I make myself useful. "You just get a free ticket to all the games," he said.
There's so much that happens in your typical NBA game that I could write a 1,500-word story most nights. Thankfully for the reader, I'm not allowed. I keep notes on every possession waiting for the moment when the game swings one way or another. You're also searching for the small details that can bring color to a game story.
The key themes from Tuesday's game: Embarrassing loss to Minnesota four days after embarrassing loss to Clippers. Mehmet Okur struggles all night and especially during the key fourth-quarter runs. Four guys you've never heard of from the Timberwolves each score 20 or more. Jazz give up 111 points to Minnesota after giving up 114 to Clippers. Blown chance to go 3 1-2 games up on Denver.
I mention the season-high 24 turnovers but don't dwell on it. It's a contributing factor, but the Jazz were tied going into the fourth quarter even after committing 21 turnovers. I wish I'd mentioned that the bulk of the 14-4 run to open the fourth came with both Williams and Boozer on the bench. You can drive yourself crazy second-guessing your story.
We talk to Jerry Sloan first outside the locker room and ask about all the big themes. It lasts about four or five minutes. It wasn't much fun talking to the players back in December as the losses mounted, but everybody's a pro tonight. We go to Okur, Williams, Harpring and Boozer in that order.
"Hopefully we can just get it back," Williams said of the Jazz's lackluster return from the All-Star break. "We're the same team. We're not any different than we were then. It's just a matter of going out and executing and helping each other out."
11:30 p.m.: Some nights the story gets written faster than others. I wrote pretty efficiently tonight. The Tribune has an 11 p.m. deadline for the state edition, which you can get as far away as Mesquite, Nev., and a 12:15 p.m. deadline for the city edition. On the West Coast, I'm using every last second. Thanks to the Central time zone, I'm done tonight by 10:30 p.m. MST.
12:30 a.m.: Back at the hotel, I take care of a freelance assignment and wind down by writing the blog. The Tribune's Web traffic peaks at around 9 a.m. when most people get to the office and log on to the computer. I try to have something up on the blog then, which for my schedule usually means posting well after midnight.
It cuts into sleep for sure, but there's been a lot of stories for the paper that have started as blog posts the night before.
1:30 a.m.: Now comes the not-so-fun part. I book plane flights months in advance and am leaving at 6:10 a.m. Not sure whether that was because of price or my fear of getting caught in a snowstorm in late February. The key is to get any sleep, even if it's just an hour. It makes a difference. My alarm's set for 4 a.m.
Last story of the night: After the December game in Miami, I had a 6:30 a.m. flight out of Fort Lauderdale to get back to Salt Lake to meet up with my wife for Christmas. I checked into the hotel at 2:10 a.m. and told the guy working the desk that I was going to set a world record for the shortest stay ever at his hotel. I was up at 4 and checked out at 4:30.
--Ross Siler
TUESDAY
9:30 a.m.: The Jazz typically hold a morning shootaround on game day, though not if they're playing the second game of a back-to-back set. In that case, they'll have a breakfast meeting at their hotel on the road or will come early to EnergySolutions at home.
When you've coached as long as Jerry Sloan, you get to be pretty big on routine. The Jazz always start shootaround at 10 a.m., even if it's the East Coast and their body clocks are still lagging two hours behind.
The home team typically gets first choice of times and sometimes there are conflicts. The Jazz are committed to shooting at 10 a.m., so this year they held one shootaround at a Presbyterian Church in Orlando, Fla.
The team walked from the hotel to the church in warm-ups. The Lord then rewarded them with their only road victory in December.
The hotel the Jazz are staying at here in Minneapolis has a gym with a regulation basketball court. It's a luxury they take full advantage of by not leaving the premises for shootaround. They usually wrap up by 10:30 a.m.
We're not allowed to watch either practice or shootaround - - this is another common misperception. The Jazz held an open practice to finish training camp in Boise and held an open scrimmage back in Salt Lake City during the preseason.
The topics are pretty straight forward: We ask Jerry Sloan about some comments that former Jazz guard Kirk Snyder made upon arrival in Minnesota that he never appreciated what Sloan was trying to teach him until he left Utah.
We also ask Sloan about the likelihood of the Jazz adding another player this season, with the Saturday deadline by which a player must be waived to sign with another team and be eligible for their playoff roster.
With four games in five nights, the Jazz aren't likely to practice Thursday. I don't have that same luxury as far as not writing a story. With a game against New Orleans on Friday, we ask a couple of questions in advance about Deron Williams and Chris Paul.
There's a television crew from Iowa Sports Weekly (I've concluded Iowa might be the friendliest state) that made the six-hour drive to sit down with Kyle Korver. They've already interviewed his mother, father and three brothers for a story.
Korver's family isn't coming to the game, but he said a couple of friends had bought tickets for the Sixers/Timberwolves game before he was traded and tried to get their money back. It doesn't work like that, though, and now they're stuck with tickets for a dog of a game.
There's also a fun discussion about getting the Jazz coaches to switch from their staple lunch of Subway to Potbelly's. It's a chain of sandwich shops that started in Chicago and is fast franchising across the country. There's one along the Skyway here in Minneapolis.
I lived around the corner from one in college and describe eating there as a life-changing experience. The Jazz coaches are set in their ways, though, with assistant Phil Johnson (turkey breast and ham) saying: "You can't upscale Subway." Quote of the day.
12:32 p.m.: I file a story from shootaround that runs just on our Web site. This is one big change we've made this season. The hope is Jazz fans stop by for an update in the afternoon. We've also beefed up our blog and file Web-only game stories at the horn as more and more emphasis is put on the Internet side.
I'm not sure what the future of newspapers will be - - it freaks out my wife to read some of the stories right now about the business - - but I hope people are reading in one way or another. You can subscribe to the Tribune or read it at sltrib.com. We're even publishing and handing out at TRAX stations a free commuter daily called Afternoon Buzz.
2 p.m.: I try to take a nap on game days but usually give up after about 20 minutes. Today's no different. There's big news that Yao Ming is out for the season with a foot injury, which initially seems devastating to the Rockets. I'm interested to see what Luis Scola can do and what happens when they dust off Dikembe Mutombo.
There's a story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in which Marko Jaric talks about Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia. You don't find a lot of articles that tie in the NBA and Slobodan Milosevic. Morris Almond also has a new blog post about two Jazz season ticket holders who swapped seats with him and Kyrylo Fesenko on the flight to New Orleans for All-Star weekend. Almond and Fesenko rode in first class while the two fans sat in coach.
4:30 p.m.: I usually get to the arena about 2 1-2 hours ahead of time. It's a short walk here from the hotel to Target Center along the Skyway. I want to talk to Snyder about his reflections on playing for Sloan, so I head to the Timberwolves locker room as soon as it opens. It might have been the saddest locker room I've ever been in.
Antoine Walker was openly talking about his buyout possibilities with teammates. Al Jefferson rolled in about an hour and 20 minutes before tipoff. Snyder came off the court after warmups and talked for five minutes about his time with the Jazz. He said he wished he hadn't stirred up so much "hay" during his rookie season.
6:15 p.m.: I always put in at least an appearance in the Jazz locker room before the game. We do a lot of the work at shootaround, but I view it as a time to chat with guys (the locker room closes 45 minutes before the game) as well as to make yourself available in case they have any problems with something you've written. So far, nobody has this season.
I head back to the press room and get started on the Jazz notebook for Wednesday's paper. I also call into 1280 AM back in Salt Lake City and do a five-minute segment about the game with Kevin Graham and Gordon Monson. I chide Gordon for his injury column in Sunday's paper somehow leading to Yao Ming's season-ending stress fracture.
7 p.m.: The upper deck at Target Center is vacant. We're sitting courtside right in front of the sticky plastic the players step on to get the dust off their shoes. Carlos Boozer peels off a sheet and looks around with nowhere to trash it. He hands it to me. Deron Williams says it's time I make myself useful. "You just get a free ticket to all the games," he said.
There's so much that happens in your typical NBA game that I could write a 1,500-word story most nights. Thankfully for the reader, I'm not allowed. I keep notes on every possession waiting for the moment when the game swings one way or another. You're also searching for the small details that can bring color to a game story.
The key themes from Tuesday's game: Embarrassing loss to Minnesota four days after embarrassing loss to Clippers. Mehmet Okur struggles all night and especially during the key fourth-quarter runs. Four guys you've never heard of from the Timberwolves each score 20 or more. Jazz give up 111 points to Minnesota after giving up 114 to Clippers. Blown chance to go 3 1-2 games up on Denver.
I mention the season-high 24 turnovers but don't dwell on it. It's a contributing factor, but the Jazz were tied going into the fourth quarter even after committing 21 turnovers. I wish I'd mentioned that the bulk of the 14-4 run to open the fourth came with both Williams and Boozer on the bench. You can drive yourself crazy second-guessing your story.
We talk to Jerry Sloan first outside the locker room and ask about all the big themes. It lasts about four or five minutes. It wasn't much fun talking to the players back in December as the losses mounted, but everybody's a pro tonight. We go to Okur, Williams, Harpring and Boozer in that order.
"Hopefully we can just get it back," Williams said of the Jazz's lackluster return from the All-Star break. "We're the same team. We're not any different than we were then. It's just a matter of going out and executing and helping each other out."
11:30 p.m.: Some nights the story gets written faster than others. I wrote pretty efficiently tonight. The Tribune has an 11 p.m. deadline for the state edition, which you can get as far away as Mesquite, Nev., and a 12:15 p.m. deadline for the city edition. On the West Coast, I'm using every last second. Thanks to the Central time zone, I'm done tonight by 10:30 p.m. MST.
12:30 a.m.: Back at the hotel, I take care of a freelance assignment and wind down by writing the blog. The Tribune's Web traffic peaks at around 9 a.m. when most people get to the office and log on to the computer. I try to have something up on the blog then, which for my schedule usually means posting well after midnight.
It cuts into sleep for sure, but there's been a lot of stories for the paper that have started as blog posts the night before.
1:30 a.m.: Now comes the not-so-fun part. I book plane flights months in advance and am leaving at 6:10 a.m. Not sure whether that was because of price or my fear of getting caught in a snowstorm in late February. The key is to get any sleep, even if it's just an hour. It makes a difference. My alarm's set for 4 a.m.
Last story of the night: After the December game in Miami, I had a 6:30 a.m. flight out of Fort Lauderdale to get back to Salt Lake to meet up with my wife for Christmas. I checked into the hotel at 2:10 a.m. and told the guy working the desk that I was going to set a world record for the shortest stay ever at his hotel. I was up at 4 and checked out at 4:30.
--Ross Siler
12:29 AM
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4 Comments:
Once again, your "four games in five nights" blog series has been extremely insightful and entertaining to read. Most of us, if not all, have no idea what players or writers do while on the road and even the minor details are relevant. I look forward to reading more about the next several days as this is a pretty important stretch of games.
Do you think the Jazz were caught looking ahead to Detroit last night? Even while looking ahead to the New Orleans game on Friday seems like a daunting task with the defense the Jazz are playing.
The "four games in five nights" could almost be described as a sandwich series. There was Minnesota last night (the top bun, a so-called fluff team with no direction, youth and disappointment mixed together), Detroit tonight (The meat, the tenacious team defensive and the championship caliber toughness), New Orleans on Friday (the bacon, lettuce, tomato and the other condiments of choice, they have CP3 holding the team together while being surrounded by good key players), and lastly Memphis on Saturday (the bottom bun, the lowest of them all, the team which trades it's franchise player for some silly and expensive party gifts, for which most western teams look at them with disgust.) Regardless of the layering this could be one devastating burger to have to digest come Sunday morning.
Great blogging. One suggestion though: When you refer to something like Morris Almond's blog, it would be very nice if you'd include a link.
Love the blog Ross. Check out the real fans view of the Utah Jazz at http://myutahjazz.blogspot.com
Not nearly as informative, but much more PG-13. Keep up the great work. It's nice to have you in Utah.
Nice work Ross. I hope D-Will is just goofing with you. Otherwise he comes off as kind of a jerk.
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