Here are the interviews or segments of interviews that will be played on air for tonight's Santa Cruz Warriors-Bakersfield Jam game in B-Town.
Casey Hill and I talk about the loss to Austin, coaching against his former boss Nate Bjorkgren (Bjorkgren was HC at Dakota and Santa Cruz while Hill was an assistant) and trying to contain a potent Bakersfield offense.
James Michael McAdoo talks about how he loves to surf, playing volleyball with his wife and trying to get to the NBA.
Nate Bjorkgren reminisces on his time in Surf City and waxes poetic on Elijah Millsap and Earl Barron, guys who are averaging double-doubles for the Jam this year.
Clink on the link text leading each of those mini-grafs to hear the interviews.
Game is coming up shortly here in Frisco so check out this interview with Legends assistant GM Travis Blakeley. Really good dude- have had a chance to talk to him every time I've come to Frisco and he's always fun to chat with.
Here's the unedited version of what will play on air. Before you get all excited, "unedited" doesn't mean this thing is laced with f-bombs or controversial remarks. All it means is that I didn't cut it down for time for radio purposes. The pregame version that will air is one question shorter (3-point shooting will be saved as an in-game soundbite).
We cover the two-game homestand against LA and Iowa, rebounding (1st in oreb% and last in dreb%), 3-point shooting, sharing the basketball and trying to contain a high-powered Legends attack that is averaging 128.5 points through two contests.
If you're a Santa Cruz fan, you'll want to knock on wood after reading these two statements -- Santa Cruz is 4-0 all-time against the Legends (3-0 in Frisco) and has never spent a day under .500 in either of their first 2-plus years. Santa Cruz is 1-1 entering tonight's contest.
No Bernard James for the Legends; he is off to China, per numerous reports.
Photo Credit: ripcityproject.com, at least that's where I found it. Don't sue me, please.
As I've done the last two years and will this year, I interview a different Santa Cruz Warrior and play it at the half of every road game (can't do it at home since it's a simulcast on YouTube, and I personally don't feel like running audio only for 5 minutes for something that is also supposed to have a video component).
This year, I'ma do best to post these interviews on Backpack Basketball, along with coaches interviews and whatnot.
Today, I sat down with 2-year NBA man Elliot Williams, now with the Santa Cruz Warriors. The former Blazer and Sixer has averages of 14.5 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists through 2 games. And, because this is my personal blog, I will not write out numbers below 10 because it's quicker that way and I'm not gonna be getting my Ralph Drusso on anytime soon.
Anyways, listen to the interview with Elliot Williams here that I've posted on SoundCloud. Since I'm too cheap to get a premium account, eventually I'll have to clear this to free up space for more interviews. Such is life. Anyways, we talk about 3-6 Mafia (he's from Memphis), him tucking his pants into his socks (I do the same thing with one of my jumpsuits -- yes, I have a jumpsuit, and it's freaking awesome) and other important matters.
I rarely remember
anything that the person I'm interviewing says. As an unskilled interviewer myself, I’m
more focused on trying to get the next words out of my mouth without sounding like
a total idiot or slipping up on my words (which, well, happens all the freaking
time. Just go and look at any one of my interviews with the Cardinal Channel.
Anytime I look good in any of those videos is because of the editing job done
behind the scenes by Bud Anderson, Hunter Armor, Anthony Benares or Mike
Johnstone. Trust me – interviewing is not my forte).
But at Summer League in Las Vegas last July, things were
different for one Q&A. The NBA D-League Select team was fresh off a win over the Denver
Nuggets late on a Wednesday night in a game in which barely anybody bothered to
stick around and watch, and I had the chance to speak with Tre Kelley, a guy
whose game I had admired from afar while watching him destroy opposing defenses
on YouTube (he probably indirectly sent the Santa Cruz Warriors to the 2013
D-League finals after his 4th quarter performance in Game 2 of a
first round series with the Austin Toros against the Bakersfield Jam; the Jam
went 4-1 against Santa Cruz that year and were the last team the Sea Dubs
needed to see in the semifinals). I was looking forward to finally get a chance to speak to the former South Carolina Gamecock.
The interview started off normal enough, but I’ll never
forget Kelley’s response when I asked him about D-League Select having a collective
chip on its shoulder playing against NBA teams in Summer League.
“They have what we want.”
There was more to the response, but that's the part that struck me right away. I don’t think there is a better five-word phrase to describe
a D-Leaguer’s mindset, be it player, coach, staffer, whoever.
They have what we
want.
You’re in the D-League because you’re chasing a dream – to play
or work in the NBA, something you’ve aspired to your whole life. There are much
better opportunities to get paid elsewhere in basketball outside of the
D-League if you’re a player; there are much better opportunities to get paid
elsewhere in life if you’re not lacing ‘em up.
But you’re in the D-League to reach that pot of gold at the
end of the rainbow, fueled by doubters or maybe your own self-doubts.
That phrase will stick with me as long as I am able-minded.
It might not translate well in the video above (which, yes, I know, has
horrible audio quality. Our budget for Summer League included our iPhone
cameras and that’s it), but I could sense the hunger in Kelley; he was seethingfor a chance to finally make it
through a training camp and stick on an NBA roster. He was ‘bout it (it hasn’t
worked out yet for Kelley, who is now playing in Italy according to RealGM, but
there's always the chance that we’ll see him back in the states at some point for another go at his
NBA dream).
Now it’s time for a new D-League season, filled with new
teams, new coaches and new players. It’s time for more guys to grind away in
hopes of fulfilling that lifelong dream.
It’s one reason why I love working in the D-League so much. Like
the music I listened to growing up, the D-League is the basketball underground; it's backpack basketball. The
D-League is “The Life of The Party” remix by Little Brother; it’s full of the
best basketball players in your apartment complex. Not rich enough to have their own crib, but dammit, they can play, even if you don't really know who they are because who do you really talk to in your apartment complex, anyway?
Outside of basketball circles (and even in some -- just ask Larry Brown), it's a league that gets little respect. I was listing for a friend of mine all the broadcasting jobs
I do, and he asked me, “so which one of those is the highest-profile, the high
school football gig?”
I nonchalantly responded, “Nah, it’s my radio gig with the
Santa Cruz Warriors,” but inside, I was sort of pissed like the Utah women's basketball team was after being picked to finish 11th in the Pac-12 this year (yes, I just made a reference you almost certainly didn't get so I could link to an article I wrote three weeks ago). Are you serious? High school football players, more prestigious than
professional athletes?! It served as
a reminder that I have to keep plugging away.
I’m far from being polished enough to score super-duper major
broadcasting gigs, which is why the D-League is a great place for me
personally. Hella games means hella reps. Archived games on YouTube just allows
me more practice time. Do I want to one day do NBA radio? Hell yeah; no doubt
about it. But I’m in no hurry to jet from the D-League, a place that has given
me a platform to hone what I want to be my craft for the rest of my life.
The best thing about the D-League is that you have to grind to survive and advance, to
borrow NCAA tournament terminology. It’s the only way; you can’t survive on
$25K (around the highest allotted salary for a player) forever.
It’s time for the games to begin, and I can’t wait to get my
verbs straight, to work to get to the point where every action on the court is narrated
by a descriptive-and-not-repetitive action verb to come out of my mouth. I can’t
wait to hit the road and stay in hotels that aren’t five-star accommodations
(for the most part, the hotels are usually pretty decent, but you know who
you are if a place is known to have bugs in its towels and Pepsi cans with 1990s labels in the soda machine…).
The next five months are going to be filled with 185-175
games between the Reno Bighorns and Rio Grande Valley Vipers (featuring 115 combined three-point attempts and 70 combined turnovers) and four-and-a-half-hour
bus rides from Sioux Falls to Des Moines. May the spirit of Tre
Kelley be with everyone trying to grind their way to The Association.
Whenever someone refers to me as a journalist, I cringe. I
know what real journalists have to do; I did it myself for a year in grad
school. It could mean spending six hours on the phone making 43 calls just to
get one quote for an article that turns out to be absolute crap, but you gotta
hand your editor something. It could mean roaming the streets of random
neighborhoods you’ve never been in before looking for man-on-the-street
interviews. That’s real work; that’s “it doesn’t matter how hard you work,
you’re still depending on other people to do your work for you” kinda work;
that’s the toughest kinda work. I don’t do that kinda work right now, nor do I
wanna do that kind of work. Your mind is always on the job; you’re on call 24-7-365.
I have the utmost respect for real journalists; I am not one of them.
More than that, though, journalism is about telling stories.
The first draft of history, as I’m sure a million journalism professors have
said in their opening remarks to a 101 class. When it comes to sports, sure,
journalists are there to cover the game: who won, by how much, who scored the
most points/goals and so on. But more
than that, sports reporters are intrigued by the storylines: How is an ankle
injury affecting the star athlete? Who is the unsung hero? Can David slay
Goliath?
I’m not interested in that. I mean I am, but I care more
about calling games. It’s why I love the D-League Showcase so much – not
because I might be getting a glimpse at the next Jeremy Lin or Danny Green, but
because I have been able to call 10 games in four days in each of the last two
Showcases. I love being able to watch and talk basketball. I love tracking how
a team’s shooting percentage rises and dives throughout the course of a game. I
love calculating a team’s defensive rebounding percentage at the end of
quarters (getting a little Vinnie Paz here with the repetition of the opening
phrase of a sentence). Basketball is my favorite sport; I love the way they
dribble it up and down the court.
Journalists love stories. I love reading stories, but I love
the actual games more. While I enjoy reading players’ backstories when I
prepare for a game, I love the fact that all of that takes a backseat when the
ball is tipped. It’s all about what you’re doing right now in a game,
background be damned. The rock doesn’t discriminate.
All that said (how about that for an extremely long intro-
welcome to Backpack Basketball, baby!), what happened on the night of December
12, 2013, at the Dignity Health Event Center in Bakersfield, Calif., deserves
to be told.
The play-by-play guy in me will tell you that Kiwi Gardner
came off the Santa Cruz Warriors’ bench with his team trailing the Bakersfield
Jam 88-71 with 9:15 remaining in the fourth quarter to score 23 points and lead
the Warriors to a 112-106 victory. The play-by-play guy in me would tell you
that Gardner went 9-10 from the floor and 2-2 from beyond the arc. The
play-by-play guy in me would tell you that the Santa Cruz Warriors improved to
6-2 as a result, winning their second of three games on a five-game road trip.
But Kiwi’s night deserves more than that. This game – and
Kiwi’s performance – was so good and so memorable that I’ve known from the
moment that game ended that I would write a story on it. I’ll do my best.
I’m not going to give you Kiwi’s whole background story-
that’s not my story to tell (but for reference, Sam
Laird’s Mashable piece on Gardner at the beginning of the season – before
this game against Bakersfield happened – is a pretty damn good starting point).
So this is where and how I’ll start it:
I can’t honestly say I thought something like this was going
to happen the first time I saw Kiwi play in person; I didn’t think he was going
to make the Santa Cruz Warriors. Not because I had insider info or anything – I
clearly didn’t – but because my snap judgment of a guy who shrugged his
shoulders after a teammate messed up one of his dimes at a local tryout as he
was playing with dudes he was a million times better than was completely off.
After watching two minutes of this local Santa Cruz tryout on Oct. 6, 2013, I
sent a text to PR director Matt De Nesnera: No
way Kiwi makes the team, IMO. He hasn’t contested one shot (It was either
one or two jump shots in question, far from a realistic sample size. I guess I
was just trying to be Hot Take Kev. Also, De Nesnera did not respond and is not
culpable in any sense). I regret a lot of things I have said and done in my life,
but not so much from a professional standpoint. That text I sent to Matty Q
(our affectionate nickname for De Nesnera), however, is something I definitely wish
I could take back. I wish I could say I was on the Gardner hype train from
minute one, but that would be a lie. If Kiwi ever reads this article, my
response to him would be, “my bad, bruh.” I judged a book by a false cover, and
boy was I wrong.
Because the first thing you learned about Kiwi Gardner in
the locker room is that he’s one helluva teammate. From the first preseason
game, he was the first one off the bench to side-bump Seth Curry after one of
his three-pointers or high-five Cameron Jones after nailing a pull-up jumper
from 18 feet. The second thing you learned about Kiwi Gardner is that he plays
his ass off on defense. If you have
the ball, he’ll crowd you so hard that Catholic school teachers would tell him
to make room for Jesus. Some guys might not be happy that they’re in the
D-League, thinking that they should be in the NBA; Kiwi was THRILLED to be on
the Santa Cruz Warriors, like nobody I had seen before.
And, although he hadn’t seen the court a whole lot in the
first couple of weeks of the season, Kiwi had shown signs in the limited
minutes he had been out there that he could produce at the D-League level.
Kiwi’s first-ever field goal in a regular season D-League game came when he
successfully challenged the Reno Bighorns’ DeQuan Jones – a guy with 63 games
of NBA experience with the Orlando Magic in 2012-13 – at the rim and finished
over him for an and-1 layup. Yes, it was garbage time and the bucket was
meaningless, but it was still an impressive display of athleticism that let people
know Kiwi could do exceptional things athletically beyond the high school
level.
More meaningful minutes for Kiwi came in Santa Cruz’s next
game against Reno – in Nevada on the first game of that five-game road trip
that would later take the Sea Dubs to Bakersfield. The Bighorns could not miss
in their home-opener, exploding for 48 points in the second quarter and 76 in
the first half. Down large late in the fourth quarter, Santa Cruz head coach
Casey Hill inserted Kiwi into the lineup. The Sea Dubs didn’t really come close
to winning, but Kiwi scored eight points and dished out two assists in five
minutes off the bench and Santa Cruz ended up only losing by seven points in a
game that the ‘Horns thoroughly dominated. While Santa Cruz lost, the Warriors
outscored Reno 20-9 over the final three minutes while Kiwi was on the floor. Hey,
this Kiwi Gardner kid could be a real firestarter off the bench.
As the team was getting ready to head to Bakersfield a
couple of days later, word got out that the Memphis Grizzlies wanted to work
out Seth Curry. While this could mean more playing time for Kiwi as the No. 3
point guard option behind Curry and the veteran Moe Baker, the Oakland kid
appeared a little uneasy. As we all trudged out of the Lakers’ practice
facility (the team decided to stay a night in the LA area before driving to
Bakersfield), the team found out about the news.
“Hey man, Kiwi’s shook!” then-Santa Cruz big man Dewayne
Dedmon joked to Curry. “You gotta give him a pump-up speech or something!”
(this quotation, along with the following ones, is not 100 percent accurate,
but it went something like this).
“Yeah man, give me some words of encouragement!” Kiwi said
to Steph’s younger brother, I think only half-kidding.
“You’re good man, just do you,” Seth said and smiled before
heading into a different van to be taken to LAX.
That little vignette aside, any questions that may have
lingered about Kiwi’s confidence and readiness to step into a bigger role (Seth
ended up returning before the next game, so it didn’t matter a whole lot at the
moment anyways) were quickly answered the next day at practice in Bakersfield
when he brazenly challenged Cameron Jones, one of the best shooters on the
team, to a three-point shooting contest.
Apparently he had enough of his
teammates’ playful ribbing that his outside jumper wasn’t a strength of his, so
it was time to prove the guys wrong.
It was a pretty simple contest: Take five threes from the
right wing. Whoever makes more wins 50 bucks. Kiwi was first to bat.
He hit all five. Guys were going crazy with each ensuing
triple that Kiwi drilled.
Cam hit his first two shots before missing the third. Kiwi
subsequently ripped off his practice jersey and aimlessly ran full speed around
the Dignity Health Event Center in pure joy, shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Y’all thought I couldn’t shoot! What now?!” was more or
less the rallying cry from Camp Gardner.
Dedmon was egging him on all the whole time, as he had
become known to do in those days before he earned his spot in the NBA. “Yeah,
do you Kiwi!”
The rest of the team was doubled over in laughter, watching
Kiwi bounce around the place talking trash to nobody in particular. Hilton
Armstrong could hardly breathe he was laughing so hard before finally saying, “Man
I love having Kiwi on this team!”
Well hello again. For those of you who have been putting
your life on hold since my last post until now, you probably could have beaten
Wintermute from Neuromancer in a
wall-staring contest. But fear not, because I have returned to resurrect the blog
(for now, and probably for no longer than part of the summer, but hey, maybe
I’ll keep it going longer than the expected 12 minutes).
The reason I started Backpack Basketball was to make myself
feel like I was doing something productive in the midst of a quarter-life
crisis where I thought I shot myself in the foot career-wise. Didn’t look like
I was going to make much of a living in this sports media thang.
Luckily, my “the world is going to end” moment lasted all of
24 hours. Literally one day after my big proposal didn’t fly, I was offered a
blogging job for the Pac-12 official website (Sam Silverstein/Kirk Reynolds
’16: Change We Can Believe In). One month after that, I got hooked up with a
play-by-play gig for Serra HS football (what up, Alan Epstein?). Then I got a
weekly sit-down interview thingy with David Shaw for the football season a
month after that (all praise Bud Anderson, and Khari Jones for Deity while I’m
at it).
And then the big mama came- radio play-by-play for the Santa
Cruz Warriors of the NBA Development League (Kirk Lacob/Andrew Loomis, rock
on). Don’t get me wrong- I love every job that pays me and am grateful for all
the work I have been allowed to do, but for an aspiring radio play-by-play
broadcaster, this was the holy grail. I get to do at least 50 games a year of a
very high level of basketball? And I
get to spend a couple of weeks in Reno interspersed throughout the year???? Hell
yeah. I lucked out bigtime.
It’s my time in the D-League that has sort of re-spawned
Backpack Basketball. I have completed two seasons of broadcasting in the
D-League, and sometime during the second season, one of the many loyal Santa
Cruz Warriors fans suggested that I put my recorded halftime interviews online
(what’s good, Idris Nolan). I had also been thinking about putting other
interviews up there as well, so I was thinking I should blog it up again. And
hey, the D-League, to some extent, is Backpack Basketball- a bunch of
under-the-radar dudes with loads of talent (though I guess backpack MCs don’t
necessarily want to go mainstream or make it to the big leagues). So, why not
restart this bad boy?
So let me quickly backtrack in case you’re not familiar with
the term “backpack.” It refers to underground hip-hop artists, and from there,
definitions are amorphous. The best way I can put it is by using one of those
certain statements that I forgot the name to that they teach you in school: All
backpack rappers are underground rappers, but not all underground rappers are
backpack rappers (you have to be considered to be on some conscious tip to be
considered backpack, from what I remember). Honestly, I don’t even know if that
term is used anymore since I haven’t had a keen ear to the underground in a
minute, but I’ll use it here.
So, what shall you expect from the new Backpack Basketball? First
off, let me tell you what not to expect. I’m not using this blog to “make it
big” or “dish the scoop”. I may work in sports media, but I am far from a
journalist. Going to grad school in journalism, I know what a real journalist
is. It’s someone to be respected for doing a thankless and extremely difficult
and mostly low-paying job; trust me, I’m no journalist. My job is easy, really.
I don’t have to deal with people being afraid to talk to me or editors pressing
me to press a source for hard news. You want real journalism? Don’t come here
(I can see my Medill instructors shaking their heads in disgust).
I’m also not that negative of a person when it comes to my
opinions. My feeling is, and especially since I’m not paid to give critiques,
that I don’t really have much business criticizing an athlete or musician on
their craft when they’re about a million times the athlete or musician than
I’ll ever be. But hey, I’ll give you a little bonus for this post. Here’s my
Edward Norton bathroom scene in 25th
Hour list to satisfy the Negative Nancy in all of us:
San Jose being denied the rights to the
Oakland A’s by the San Francisco Giants: I’m actually fuming as I type this
sentence. Want to get me riled up? Just mention the phrase “territorial rights”
in front of me. This citizen of San Jose is not property of San Francisco, foo.
And here’s a personal guarantee: I will never pay for a ticket to a Giants game
as long as those territorial rights are in place (but the ballpark is nice as
hell, so I wouldn’t mind someone taking me out to one of those games provided
they pay for my ticket, my parking and my food and drink). ·People referring to San Francisco as “the
city”: Where else in the world is the second-largest city in a 50-mile
radius referred to as “the city?” San Jose is the 10th-largest city
in the nation, has well more than 100,000 more people than San Francisco and is
much bigger in physical size (#factsonly), but supposedly San Francisco is the
end-all, be-all. I know San Francisco has more of a downtown feel and more
“culture,” as folks like to say; whatever, base your rationale on esoteric
definitions (are you noticing a theme yet?). ·The Tuck Rule Game: 12 years have healed
a lot of wounds, but I personally felt wronged by that playoff game in Foxboro.
I know the date Jan. 19, 2002, as well as I know my birthday. ·The criticism LeBron James received for going
to Miami and “The Decision”: Don’t start with me. ·People who say LeBron James isn’t clutch when
he passes the ball in crunch time when it’s a better basketball play: Not
much else explanation needed here. ·The Shell gas station car wash: This
thing broke down midway through my wash that I paid $7 for, meaning it didn’t
do the air-dry thing and left all sorts of water streaks on my car. I was
supposed to meet up with my Lyft mentor so I could start getting paid to drive,
but these water marks made my car look disgusting so I had to get my whip waxed for $54.99 to
undo what this drive-through car wash did to the Civic. Weak sauce. I broke one
of my plastic cups in disgust in the aftermath. ·The Machine: Maybe one day I’ll rage
against it.
Here’s something else you shouldn’t expect from Backpack
Basketball: perfect grammar. I proofread and fact check every weekday and
whenever I have Pac-12 work on the weekends, so if I were to painstakingly read
through this thing prior to every post, I would quickly lose interest. I’m
trying to enjoy myself with this blog while somewhat providing a service, so
I’m not going to bother myself with doing extra work on something that I don’t
get paid for. Remember: I ain’t no journalist (full disclosure: I read through
this once just to make sure everything was Gucci). Also, this is gonna be super low-tech, so don't expect any fancy-shmansy stuff.
Ok… so what can you expect? Hopefully, if I don’t get lazy
during the basketball season (and, well, I probably will get lazy during the
basketball season on everything that isn’t calling Santa Cruz Warriors games,
provided I’m lucky enough to have the gig for a third year), I’ll post my
pregame interviews with coaches and halftime interviews with players. I might
even post some of my calls if something catches my family.
“But it’s not D-League season, Kevo. What are you going to
do?”
Glad you asked. In the meantime, I’ll post a reflection or
two from the past couple of seasons, do some music blogging, and whatever else
strikes my fancy. I have a couple of articles thought out already, but the
execution of them will take a bit. So yeah, a lot of underground music and
underground hoops (and maybe some above-the-ground stuff as well). Backpack basketball,
if you will.
And oh yeah, you can also expect a whole lot of
parenthetical phrases (it’s sort of a thing). I also like using capital letters in my heds, to the dismay of news outlets across America.
