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Ira
Posts: 24692
Alba Posts: 0
Joined: 8/14/2001
Member: #91
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This is a great read. Here's the link and his initial post.
http://www.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=456992
Wow. What a night to be a ballboy eh? I will now recap experience with these brief paragraphs:
My family and I arrived at the entrance promptly at 6:00 and were escorted into the arena during a pre-game warmup. The escort sat my family right infront of the hoop while i went to get changed. In the tunnel, I passed Antonio Davis and Amare Stoudamire. I got my honorary ballboy shirt, threw it on, and I was ready to go.
Next, I was brought down onto the court to get ready to rebound while they finished up their drills. I wound up getting clocked in the head with a ball and someone blurted "Way to use your head." That sucked. Qyntel Woods seems to be a good locker room guy and was cracking jokes with everyone during warmups. All of the rookies were out on the court as it's NBA protocall to have the rookies at the arena before everyone else. Some random things heard were:
"Ah that's gay."- Channing Frye ater missing a lay-up during warmups.
"You guys are a**holes"- David Lee after getting teased for missing two dunks.
"In the game, if that's what coach sees you'll be grabbing some pine with me."- Assistant Coach to Nate Robinson after being stuffed by rim on attempted dunk.
They began to shootaround after a while and I was just rebounding and passing back when needed. Channing was working with Mark Aguirre the entire time while Jackie Butler worked with Herb Williams one on one. (Herb whooped, suit him up). AD was playing one on one with his son as well. Nate and Lee grabbed a seat where the advertisements roll. Later on Steph came out to shoot around, but we weren't allowed to pass back to him, we had to pass to the assistant coach who passed it to him. Along the way I met some of the guys and shook hands with them and what not.
When that was over, the other ballboy and I were taken back through the tunnel to the room with all the food. On the way, we met Walt Frazier and said a few words to him. We ate some dinner with occasional interruptions by radom people to get some dinner themeselves. The only coach to enter was Mark Aguirre. We talked to him a little about his progress working with Channing. He said that Channing's been playing real well, and he's definately going to be a real good player. I told him that he definately isn't soft as some people labeled him early on. He agreed, and said he dosn't know where that came from. Right then, a commercial on MSG came on saying "Later on, we talk to assistant coach Mark Aguirre." I asked him if that was weird, seeing himself on TV like that, but he replied that he had gotten used to it.
The game was about to start. We came back out, and began to rebound for the players before the game. Amare Stoudemire was standing in street clothes, and I shook hands with him and asked him how he was feeling. He simply said he felt alright. The song "Oh Baby" came on and Nate sang every word of it in a high pitched voice while dancing. During warmups, Qyntel Woods and Nate had a dunk contest. Nate definately won after throwing down a through the legs off the glass dunk, but Qyntel was real good as well. After every dunk the crowd erupted with an "ooooh!". Channing put up a layup and screamed "Layup, oooooh!"
After that, we went to half court where we were introduced to Nate Robinson and our names were announce on the PA system. We took a picture with Nate which will be sent to my email shortly, and we went back to rebound. During the starting lineup announcments we got to stand in the line and slap fives with everyone that ran past us. There, I asked Q how his back was and he told me that he was feeling good, he should be getting back soon.
The game started and we found we didn't have to do anything. The entire game we sat in the best seats you can get and didn't have to do anything. We were next to the bench and were still able to here what they were saying however. Qyntel and Trevor played this game where you give the other guy a pressure point in th side while he's not looking, and Quentin kept looking up at the jumbotron to see highlights of himself. At one point there was a "Know Your Knicks" question asking which celebrity Channing Frye wanted to meet most would be. When the fan chose Halle Berry, Channing gave a big nod to one of his teammates and said "Oh yeah!" and then had a nice chuckle.During halftime, I warmed up with the Suns, and got to pass a few to the Nashanator.
Some other things I was able to hear was Marbury yelling at the ref's, saying "No man, you're wrong about that one. I swear to G-d, I saw it. You check it after the game and see what I'm talking about." I also heard a lot of Larry Brown yelling. A lot at the refs, and after Jamal threw up an unnecessary three he yelled that he wanted good shots. And that they needed easy shots.Halfway through I realized that the man sitting diectly behind me was no other than James Dolan, so I began to listen in to his conversation. He was easy to identify by the way he never clapped when the Knicks did something well. And he's famous. The one thing I did hear from him, while reading over the stats quarter-by-quarter, he was very pleased by David Lee's play. He was real impressed by him and was raving about him for a little while. He also talked about how they never call walks in this league anymore, and that was about all that I could hear.
After the amazing win, I went back to my family. And we began to leave the stadium with everyone else. All in all, it was definatley the best experience with basketball I have and will ever have. I will always remember this, especially with what kind of game it was, and I'm lucky to have gotten a chance to do this. It's quite the blessing. And what a night to be ballboying.
Sorry for writing such a long post. I hope I gave you guys a nice insight on how the experience went.
Last edited by NYK613 on Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:08 am; edited 3 times in total
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1/13/2006 6:20 PM
