Day Two of media availability for the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers continued today. It was the first one for me, having landed late last night after the Houston Rockets had defeated the Indiana Pacers in Taipei.
The shuttle to the Beijing Mastercard Arena is on an hourly schedule, so I figured it would only take half an hour each to get to the arena and back. Instead, the trip from hotel to arena took more like 45 minutes as we took backstreets and suffered through spotty traffic.
When I arrived on the hardwood, Stephen Curry, like Jeremy Lin the other day in Manila, was seated comfortably on the padded scorekeeper’s table, already in full interview mode, surrounded by dozens of Chinese reporters.
Kent Bazemore was shooting three-pointers on the near court, with Brian Scalabrine and Nemanja Nedovic rebounding. Andre Iguodala was also standing in the key, with both knees taped with ice.
On the far side of the court, Coach Mark Jackson could be seen chatting with Draymond Green and David Lee, with Ognjen Kuzmic rebounding Harrison Barnes‘s trey and Andrew Bogut‘s free throw attempts.
A quick glance around gave me no quick indication that anyone else was being interviewed, so I headed over to the Steph mob.
He was barely audible from where I was positioned three rows back, also against the table padding, essentially to Steph’s direct left. While leaning in and trying to get my voice recorder closer to him, I looked around and noticed that behind the scorer’s table about ten yards away, Klay Thompson and dad Mychal Thompson were seated with a camera and reporter faced squarely in front of them.
The carnival had begun. This was going to be interesting. I began thinking how impossible Warriors TweediaDay (a social media play on words with the traditional Media Day) was to cover, and how these next thirty minutes would take on the same form.
I stayed as long as I could, jumping in with a question about Steph’s brother Seth Curry, with another reporter standing closer to Steph helping out by taking my recorder and holding it closer to Steph with his. In due time, Warriors VP of PR Raymond Ridder came by with a loud voice saying we had to wrap it up and to make the next question the last one.
Meanwhile, Seth and his father Dell Curry were setting up adjacent to the Thompsons. Dewayne Dedmon settled in a seat by the Warriors’ bench, along with Marreese Speights and Jermaine O’Neal. I’d soon have to pick which direction to go.
I decided on Klay and Mychal since they had already started their interview. I’m always wary of trying my best not to ask a popular question that may have already been covered, so I decided that, today, I would play “observer” mode and just record as much as I could. Besides, it would give a lot of the Chinese reporters a chance to cover the “basics” (e.g., how do you think the Warriors will do, what’s it like to play with Iguodala, et. al.), since they are privy to such NBA fanfare no more than once or twice per year.
Soon after settling in with Klay, you could hear Ridder direct Steph over to where Seth and Dell already were, and typical Ridder strategy to have both sets of father-sons began to reveal itself. I concluded it was going to be a nightmare trying to cover everything being said and I imagined that Steph would be re-answering a lot of the questions he was just asked.
After several minutes, the questions for Seth subsided and I asked him a follow-up to something Steph had asked. By then Ridder warned the reporters that the opportunities with these five would soon be over, and when that moment arrived Seth started walking, knees both taped with ice, back to the court via the Warriors’ bench. Since there was nothing else going on behind the scorer’s table anymore, I followed suit and soon found O’Neal and Dedmon by themselves, with only one reporter talking to JO.
That gave me an easier time jumping in with questions that I had wanted to ask JO ever since I observed him two weeks prior after practice in Oakland, where he ended the Warriors practice huddle with a speech.
Jermaine turned out to be very articulate, passionate about his craft and his role on his team, and I didn’t have to prod much at all to get a lot of information from him. I would say he’s possibly even more articulate than media darling D.Lee. And my role as “observer” would now morph into “feature story writer”. Stay tuned for that one.
After five-plus minutes with JO, Ridder was going around telling all the reporters that things would be wrapping up soon, as the Lakers were coming in next. Dedmon was already headed to the locker room while I observed Seth walking down for one more group photo, as directed by Ridder, to the opposite foul line where Bazemore had been shooting. By now, Bazemore and Andre were nowhere to be found. Incidentally, there was also no sign of Toney Douglas nor Nedovic.
Klay, however and true to shooting junkie self, was still putting up shots around on that end of the court, with Mychal offering a hand in the face for a couple, then probably getting tired of that quickly. As the big-wig media who had requested the Curry group photo assembled their shot, I heard Warriors advisor Jerry West throw his hands up in the air at Seth, “Two ice packs?”
NBA personnel then started gently shuttling the reporters back to the opposite baseline, as it was time to let the Lakers take the floor practice. As we waited, Steph, Draymond, Jackson, and Dell congregated at that free throw line near us and Steph burst out in laughter at something his coach said. Pretty soon they made their way to the locker room and that gave me a chance to update our Instagram account.
Little did I know, that would be the first of two circus shows I saw in one day, as I was given late notice of an event for Steph at the Under Armour store inside Xi Dan Joy City mall. Stay tuned for the LetsGoWarriors full report on that one, too.
And with all of this, one wonders if this trip to China, pre-ordained by the NBA last year, will act as a bump in the road or a bonding agent. I’ll have a report on the possible role that Jermaine O’Neal may be playing in that, but a clear test will be tonight’s game against the Lakers here in Beijing.
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