Tina's Tales from Detroit
I love my job
by: Tina Cervasio
Wednesday, March 11th
Plane ride was a little bumpy because of the crazy winds and driving rain. Yes, this trip is a weather downer.
Since there's the back-to-back, there was no shootaround this morning in Motown. So I make my daily trip to Starbucks to help the economy and feed my caffeine fix, visit CVS to get some help for my allergies, workout, prep, and I'm off to the Palace at Auburn Hills.
Shout out to my A2 MASE, who is one of the audio technicians in a television broadcast. The audio in Detroit was awesome. The little things make me happy.
Our pre-game production meeting was cramped. The tables were all taken when our MSG crew got to the media dining area where we have our meetings, and Clyde was at another table. Yeah, we pushed the legend out of the cool kids table. We should all be banished for it. I laughed so hard, and so did Mike Breen, when Clyde brought it up during the game. He ratted all of us out! He should have. He's awesome, and it's such a honor and humbling experience to work with him.
I had a great chat with Rip Hamilton in the Pistons locker room before the game. But what didn't make the broadcast is that one of the Detroit writers was asking him about his clothes that day. Sort of making fun of his choices. Of course, Rip turned to the woman in the room to get my opinion.
He had some expensive threads on and I had to explain that to the writer. It was a military look, with a jacket, I think Louis Vuitton, dark blue denim pants ... the white button-down shirt had various hardware on the shoulders, but he also had on red sneakers, and a matching red Phillies cap. My favorite part of the ensemble ... the three-carat diamond earrings in each ear.
We did talk basketball. He had some great stuff to say about Antonio McDyess being a warrior (that was evident in his 20-20 game at 34 years young), but losing Rasheed Wallace was a big one for this team. Rip really drove that one home.
After watching the way the Knicks defended the Pistons in the 4th quarter and overtime, it was clear the Pistons could have used Wallace ... but Knicks fans don't care! What a game.
I'll leave ya with a tid bit you don't get to see on TV.
With one minute to go, I make my way over to Nick Brown, one of the Knicks public relations officials. He's my go-to guy to get walk-off interviews in the event of a Knicks win. We both didn't want to discuss which Knick I wanted to interview because the teams were trading baskets. We didn't want to jinx it.
Bernard, who is Basketball Operations with the Knicks, was there as well. This is all happening one row behind the Knicks bench. I said to them laughing, "I can't take this anxiety, these games going down to the final minute every night, and these last-second outcomes, the stress is aging me." They both agreed, we were all freaking out ... but THIS WAS FUN TO WATCH!
We were stressing ... then Larry Hughes goes to the line. Man ... he had ice in his veins. It was nuts. Then the Pistons inbound ... McDyess loses the ball out of bounds. The three of us exhale. I go back to my seat for OT. Oh ... the stress returned ... but again. Hughes in the clutch, awesome D, Q the unlikely hero, Nate playing like he's 7-8. THAT WAS FUN TO WATCH! I love my job.
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