Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy was once the Celtics beat reporter for the
paper. He wrote at a time when the team traveled on scheduled airline flights,
usually the first flight out to a city the morning after a game. Often, the writers would book the same flight, especially when there might have been limited non-stops to the arrival city.
Dan wrote when the team would stay at the Marriott, and the writers would hang with the coaching staff at the hotel bar.
Dan was the beat guy at a time in the NBA Finals when the Celtics or Pistons would hang out in the media hospitality room after practice and play Pop-a-shot.
On Sunday, he wrote: (see TL comments below):
We now have a bad connection
By Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Staff | May 25, 2008
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - I love watching Kevin Garnett play basketball. Bet you do, too. But I feel like I don't know a thing about the guy. Never will. And neither will you. That's just the way it is now.
I thought about this while reading a couple of great articles this past week. One was a piece titled, "Josh Beckett Won't Return My Phone Calls," written by Pat Jordan, which appeared on the website Slate.com. The other was a column by the estimable Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press.
Jordan wrote about the insular lives led by today's athletes - how they are shielded by publicists, agents, and lawyers. He remembered the old days when he'd play pickup basketball with Tom Seaver while researching a piece on the Mets ace. Albom's column described a walk with Joe Dumars through the North End of Boston when Dumars was playing guard for the Pistons in a spring series against the Celtics 20 years ago.
That stuff doesn't happen anymore and you, the reader, are poorer for it. Today's players are protected from the media by team publicists. There are too many people with media passes. Players don't need us. We are a nuisance - tolerated at best. Interview access is parsed out like a high school hall pass.
"Kevin Garnett will be available after the game."
To everyone. At the same time. At the podium. And Garnett will be polite and classy as always. But we won't be able to tell you what Garnett is really like. We'll never see him away from the court, away from the postgame interview room.
And it's not just the superstars. The Globe's intrepid Marc J. Spears tells me that he sometimes has to go through Rajon Rondo's publicist to get a quote from the Celtic guard.
Rajon Rondo has a publicist. Think about that for a second. I'm pretty sure Greg Kite never had a publicist. I know this because Kite was my neighbor when I covered the Celtics and we used to share rides to Logan. We both knew that Monday was trash day in West Newton.
"With me, it was Rick Robey," says colleague Bob Ryan. "Robey lived in Hingham and he'd pick up myself and Mike Fine [Patriot Ledger] on the way to the airport."
We were able to tell you a lot about those Celtics because we traveled with them. On commercial aircraft. On buses. In hotel lobbies and hotel bars.
We knew that Scott Wedman carried a half-gallon jug of spring water at all times (love to see him get that through security now) and that Rick Carlisle could play classical piano without sheet music. We knew that K.C. Jones and Jimmy Rodgers loved to argue about the best ribs in Kansas City - Gates or Bryant's?
Chris Ford was "Doc," Robey was "Footer," and Carlisle was "Flip." Jones could never remember Carlisle's first name, or his nickname, so he just called him "Carlisle."
We knew that Kevin McHale's bust-out Minnesota friends would be parked in a Winnebago outside the Milwaukee Hyatt any time the Celtics played the Bucks. We knew that Larry Bird drove only American cars and wouldn't drink beer out of green bottles (something about cigarette butts in a Molson bottle at a college party). Johnny Most was addicted to cigarettes, but Larry wouldn't let Johnny smoke on the team bus.
We knew that Cedric Maxwell would always have Dolph Schayes paged over the terminal intercom when the Celtics were waiting for baggage. Anywhere in America. Every trip. For years.
"Would Mr. Dolph Schayes please meet his party at carousel seven?"
One day in Salt Lake City, Dolph Schayes just happened to be at the airport and appeared at the carousel asking who was looking for him. Max loved that one.
We knew that Robert Parish liked to buy new shoes in Atlanta. We knew that teammates teased Quinn Buckner because he was the only NBA player with a larger waist measurement than inseam. We knew that Danny Ainge liked to play cards with his teammates even though Mormons aren't supposed to gamble.
"It isn't gambling against these guys," Danny would say. "It's a sure thing."
Our guy Spears comes closest to covering today's NBA the way we did in the old days. He has the advantage of being young (which I define as anybody not old enough to be P.J. Brown's dad), experienced (nine years covering the league), and 6 feet 7 inches. He's also a former college player, which separates him from the pack.
But he'll never know what we knew because he doesn't travel with the Celtics and he works in an age when players are conditioned to distrust and dismiss media members.
It's nobody's fault. And it's not a complaint. It's just the way things have evolved, and ultimately it erodes the connection between sports fans and their heroes.
***
My view? Fans get a different connection now. While the writers are nestled in a media work room frantically typing on deadline, the fans are watching the post game interviews on ESPN News. Then, they get some insight from a Sunday night conversation on ESPN or via behind the scenes footage on TNT Overtime.
They can watch Chris Bosh on YouTube or learn more about every player on the player's own web site.
In some cases, the access is severely limited and controlled. In other situations, it is coming through unfiltered. (Prime example is the ability to watch an entire postgame press room feed.)
I think some players are more guarded, but others will happily stroll to a North End restaurant if they trust the media person enough and have built a solid relationship.
The difference is time. Far more players are being 'burnt' in 2008 than they were in 1986. It is a matter of the "scoop," the high pressure of 'getting it first and getting the story.' ESPN puts a Miguel Tejada on camera, burns him, then expects the next player to agree to sit down after a production meeting. Would you?
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