WEISS AND STEVIE maneuvered through a sea of Minicams and still photographers who were milling around at the end of the court in the small area where they were allowed to be. An unsmiling NCAA official was standing there, warning them not to step over the line of tape that had been placed on the court as a stop sign.
“What happens if someone steps over the line?” Stevie asked Weiss.
“One of two things,” Weiss said. “They either lose their credential or they’re hung by their thumbs from the roof of the building.”
Judging by the look on the NCAA guy’s face, Stevie suspected Weiss wasn’t joking.
They walked along press row—there were actually three rows stretching the length of the court—in the direction of midcourt. Stevie could see that Krzyzewski was talking to Jim Nantz and Billy Packer of CBS, who were seated in what would undoubtedly be their seats the next day.
“The coaches have to spend a few minutes with the CBS guys,” Weiss explained to Stevie as they walked up. “Most of them are like Mike; they get it over with early.”
“Why do they have to?” Stevie asked.
Weiss laughed. “I can give you about a billion reasons why,” he said. “As in, CBS is paying the NCAA a billion dollars for the TV rights and they want their announcers to be able to say ‘When we talked to Coach K yesterday, he told us …’ ”
Stevie nodded his head. He did hear announcers talking about what the coaches had told them the day before a game, all the time. And Vitale was always talking about having lunch or dinner with them.
Several other people were standing around trying to listen in on the conversation between the famous coach and the famous TV people. Two of them, Stevie noticed, were Bill Brill and Susan Carol Anderson. As Stevie and Weiss walked up to the group, Krzyzewski excused himself from Nantz and Packer and walked a couple of steps to his right, to where Brill and Susan Carol were standing. Stevie could see he had a broad smile on his face as he approached them.
“Well, Brill, I see that the quality of reporter you’re hanging around with has improved considerably,” he said, shaking hands with Brill and then with Susan Carol.
“This is about as close as I’ll ever get to being a writing-contest winner,” Brill answered. “Being a tour guide for someone who can actually write.”
Susan Carol was blushing. Stevie worried she might put a hand to her forehead and keel over in a dead faint when Krzyzewski said, “It’s nice to see you again. Congratulations.”
Brill apparently saw Weiss and Stevie coming, because he pointed to Stevie and said, “Here’s our other contest winner now.”
Stevie felt his stomach churn just a little as Krzyzewski, still smiling, turned to him and Weiss. “Hey, Hoops, how’s it going?” he said, shaking hands with Weiss. He turned to Stevie, put out his hand, and said, “I read your story on the Palestra in the USBWA newsletter. It was terrific. I love that place.”
Now it was Stevie’s turn to feel a hot flash across his face. Oh God, he thought, I’m blushing like a girl! Ever since winning the contest, he had fantasized about going to Krzyzewski’s press conference and being the only one in the room with the guts to stand up and say, “Coach, do you ever feel guilty about getting all the calls all the time?” Or “Coach, why do you think the referees let you get away with murder?” He knew Duke was good, but it seemed like the Blue Devils got all the breaks in close games.
He had envisioned the angry look on Krzyzewski’s face, had pictured him saying, “Who asked that question?” and him standing to say, “My name is Steve Thomas and, unlike the rest of these guys, you can’t intimidate me.” He would be the talk of the Final Four, the kid who stood up to the mighty and evil Coach K.
Now the mighty and evil Coach K was standing a foot away from him, a friendly smile on his face, telling him how much he enjoyed his work. Stevie was searching for his voice, knew it had to be somewhere inside his throat, but couldn’t find it. He finally managed to squeak, “Thanks, Coach.”
Everyone seemed amused by his clear discomfort. Brill jumped in to help. “You know, Mike, Steven’s a Big Five fan and a Big East guy. He’s not a Duke fan at all.”
“Why should he be?” Krzyzewski said. “When I was growing up in Chicago, I barely knew what the ACC was. I was a Big Ten guy all the way.” He gave Stevie a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Don’t let anyone tell you who to pull for.” He paused. “Of course, I know when you actually write about us, you’ll be fair, like all good reporters are. Right, Brill?”
Now everyone listening was having a good laugh. It was Susan Carol who jumped in at that point. “I think Mr. Brill is always fair,” she said.
“Absolutely,” Krzyzewski said. “So do I. Now, Roy Williams might have a different opinion.…”
“I get along just fine with Roy,” said Brill, who had now joined the blush parade. “He’s a good guy.”
“For someone from Carolina,” Krzyzewski said, as if finishing the sentence for him.
A whistle blew behind them. Krzyzewski shook hands all around again, saying to Stevie and Susan Carol, “You two have a great time this weekend. Watch these guys work, because, seriously, they’re the best at what they do.” Then he turned directly to Stevie. “And you come down and visit us at Duke sometime. Cameron’s not as old as the Palestra, but it’s pretty cool. Call my office and I’ll set you up with seats right behind our bench. Anytime.”
He turned to join his players, who were assembling in a circle at midcourt. Weiss put an arm around Stevie. “Really bad guy, huh?”
“Well, I mean … Do you think he’s serious about those tickets?”
“Completely serious,” Weiss said. “Come on, let’s sit down and watch practice. You look like you need to catch your breath.”
Stevie had never seen a college basketball team practice before. In fact, the only practices he had ever taken in were the ones he took part in at school and in summer camp. This was light-years different. In Stevie’s practices at school there was one coach and ten players. Duke’s practice had more people involved than Stevie could possibly keep track of. There were, by his count, fourteen players in the blue-and-white practice gear. Then there were a bunch of people in sweat suits like the one Krzyzewski was wearing. Three he recognized as assistant coaches Johnny Dawkins, Chris Collins, and Steve Wojciechowski. There were no fewer than twenty others roaming around the court, including one group who were clearly managers. Every time a player fell or anyone got tangled up, several of them would sprint to the spot as soon as play went to the other end of the court and feverishly towel up any sweat that might have dropped to the floor.
“Who are all these people?” Stevie asked Weiss, once they had settled into seats marked NEW YORK TIMES and CHICAGO TRIBUNE that were located not far from the CBS people. Stevie tried to picture himself actually sitting in one of those seats during a Final Four game and became dizzy at the notion.
“There are twelve managers,” Weiss said. “They actually have to interview to get the job. The seniors interview freshmen and then pick them. It’s a big honor.”
“To wipe up sweat?”
“There’s more to it than that. You get to be inside a great basketball program. The best coaches have had managers who go on to be coaches in a lot of cases. Lawrence Frank was a manager for Bob Knight at Indiana. K’s had several managers become successful coaches, too.”
Stevie was slightly amazed at the thought that Lawrence Frank, who coached the New Jersey Nets, had once wiped perspiration for basketball players at Indiana.
“The older guys are the team trainers and doctors and their sports information people,” Weiss went on. “Big-time college basketball teams are a traveling circus. Today you’ve got a ringside seat.”
No kidding, Stevie thought. He glanced around and saw TV crews eagerly taping the practice from different angles. Dawkins, who Stevie’s dad had told him once played for the 76ers, thereby making him a good guy, was talking to someone who was scribbling notes as he spoke. In the corner, up on the little riser that was their set, Stevie could see the ESPN guys. Vitale was speaking and Digger Phelps and Chris Fowler were listening. Or perhaps, Stevie thought, not listening.
Stevie noticed that the scoreboard clock had just ticked under forty minutes. “Isn’t fifty minutes kind of a short practice?” he asked.
“They’re not really practicing here,” Weiss said. “Watch, they won’t do anything very serious. They’ll all go practice someplace private later in the day once they get through with their press conferences.”
Hearing Weiss mention the press conferences made Stevie remember that he still had to come up with a story before the end of the day. He glanced down at Susan Carol, sitting a few seats away, seemingly enthralled by the Duke practice. He was, he realized, very jealous of her. She had already written her story, so she could just sit back and enjoy the day.
“When’s the first press conference?” he asked Weiss. “I need to come up with a story.”
“As soon as Duke finishes. They go first, then the other three schools come in after them for thirty minutes at a time.”
“Do the players go in to talk or just the coach?”
“Coach and two players. The other players have to stay in the locker room to be available during that same time period. Actually, you’re probably better off in there than in the press conferences. You get pretty boring, generic ‘We’re just glad to be here’ stuff in the press conferences. In the locker room, if you can find a guy who isn’t a star who has a story to tell, you might get lucky.”
Stevie’s hope to write something about Chip Graber seemed unlikely now. Graber wasn’t just the star of the Minnesota State team, he was the rock star of the team. He would certainly be one of the two Minnesota State players brought to the press conference, and each of the thousand reporters there that day would want to talk to him. “I guess writing about Chip Graber is out of the question,” he said.
Weiss laughed. “Well, if you want to write the same story that every non-basketball columnist in America is going to write, you can write Chip Graber,” he said.
“Non-basketball columnist?”
“The guys who don’t cover basketball all year and then show up at the Final Four. Listen in the Minnesota State press conference. You’ll know who they are. They’ll be the guys who ask questions like ‘Chip, what’s it like to play for your dad?’ As if he hasn’t answered that question a couple thousand times since October. They’re what we call ‘event’ guys. They come because this is an event, not because they know anything about basketball.”
Stevie certainly didn’t want to be an event guy. Especially at his first event.
“I think I’ll write about someone else,” he said.
“Good thinking,” Weiss answered.
When the buzzer went off, signaling the end of Duke’s time on the court, a lot of the writers and camerapeople who were courtside began making their way back under the stands. Krzyzewski and his players were waving at the cadre of Duke fans as they walked off; the managers were gathering up towels and water bottles in the players’ wake. Weiss stood up, signaled Stevie to follow him, and they began walking toward the tunnel, where they were joined by Bill Brill and Susan Carol Anderson.
“Wasn’t that great?” Susan Carol panted.
Stevie had to admit—to himself—that it had been pretty impressive. There must have been ten thousand people watching inside the massive Dome, and he had been sitting a few feet from the court watching a Final Four team practice. Even if Weiss insisted it wasn’t a real practice, it had looked pretty real to him—especially the dunking contest the players had put on at the end.
“It was just a practice,” he shrugged, trying to sound as casual as possible.
For the first time since they had met that morning, Susan Carol got a look on her face that indicated something other than complete pleasure. “I guess in Philadelphia you get to watch college teams practice all the time,” she said, with a little bit of sarcasm in her voice, even though “time” came out of her mouth as “taam.”
“No,” he said, more defensively than he would have liked. “I’m just saying, it was only a practice.”
“I’ve had coaches tell me that one of their great thrills is walking on the floor for Friday practice at the Final Four,” Brill said. “There are practices and there are practices.”
“And then there are Coach K’s practices, right, Brill?” Weiss said.
“Well, yeah, of course,” Brill answered, smiling.
They walked underneath the stands and followed signs directing them to the interview room. Like everything else he had seen so far, the interview room was about ten times larger than Stevie could possibly have imagined. The interview room in the Palestra was slightly larger than his bedroom at home. But this wasn’t even really a room; it was a gigantic open area with blue curtains running down each side to give the impression of being a “room.” It was longer than a football field, with giant TV monitors in several places around the room so that those in the back could see.
“Goodness,” Susan Carol said when they walked in.
“Yeah,” Stevie said, forgetting that he was being cool.
“Just like the Palestra, huh, Steve?” Weiss said.
Stevie grunted in response. Up front, a moderator was droning on about the schedule for the afternoon. No one from Duke had arrived yet.
“Once we get started,” the moderator said, “we’re going to take questions first for the student-athletes from Duke. The student-athletes will answer questions for fifteen minutes and then will return to the locker room. Once the student-athletes are dismissed, the coach will take questions for fifteen minutes. While he is answering questions, the student-athletes from his team will be available in the locker room to answer questions there. Please do not attempt to interview any of the student-athletes while they are in transit from the interview room to the locker room.”
“Think you missed one,” Weiss said. “I had five.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Stevie asked.
“ ‘Student-athlete’ references,” Weiss said. “The moderator has strict marching orders from the NCAA to always refer to the players as ‘student-athletes.’ It’s in the official handbook that they have to read beforehand. Most of the moderators are such puppets that they go crazy with the ‘student-athlete’ references. This guy is off to a flying start.”
“Who is that guy?” Brill asked.
“I think it’s Tim Schmink from the Hall of Fame. Apparently he gave a blood oath to say ‘student-athletes’ no fewer than a hunderd times before the end of the weekend.”
“Only ninety-five to go,” Susan Carol said, surprising Stevie. In five minutes she had shown a hint of sarcasm and now humor.
Krzyzewski was walking onto the podium, followed by two of his players, J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams.
“Okay,” Tim Schmink said. “We’re now ready. Coach Krzyzewski is here with student-athletes J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams. We’ll take questions for the student-athletes first.”
“Ninety-three,” Stevie and Susan Carol said together.
They both laughed. Damn, Stevie thought, she’s really kind of pretty. He wasn’t pleased with himself for thinking that.