Just One of the Guys: My Trip Into the Nets’ Locker Room and Beyond
- Deron Williams via Twitter
- Andray Blatche and Reggie Evans in the Nets locker room.
I think I expected the Nets locker room to be more like a high school locker room—steamy and wet, slick tiles underfoot. Instead the Nets locker room looked like the lobby of a W Hotel, all grays and dark wood and luxe, but without too much personality. But that’s okay, I think, because what I’ve come to realize a little bit, is that too much personality can be distracting for an athlete. The focus is the team and the focus is the game and that’s what the best athletes really care about, that’s why they succeed, because of that focus.
So, there I was, standing in the locker room, me and all the grizzled and not-so-grizzled male reporters, wondering, but not knowing, how on earth I could go over and talk to anyone. I quickly realized that, well, I couldn’t. Another Nets P.R. guy explained to me, probably sensing my distress and tentative steps first toward and then away from where Kris Humphries was sitting, that most of the players won’t talk to reporters before games. And that, of the ones who will talk to reporters after games, most only want to talk about the game that was just played. Which, when I thought about it, made perfect sense, but I was on a mission! I had to find out what Brooklyn hotspot Joe Johnson was most excited to visit!
But I also knew I had to play it cool. I thought about one of the movies I saw the most as a child because of the frequency with which it was shown on TBS in the tri-state area, Just One of the Guys. This 1985 movie is all about sports journalism and sexism and when I thought about what the main character had to go through to prove her worth as a journalist i.e. posing as boy in a rival high school and almost losing the love of her life in order to get the story, leading to one of the better breast-baring scenes in modern cinema, I paused, and said to myself, Don’t ruin your opportunity here, Kristin, stay cool.