Just One of the Guys: My Trip Into the Nets’ Locker Room and Beyond
I approached the P.R. guy one more time and asked him who I could talk to, and could I please talk to them now. He said he’d find a few guys. I felt good. So, I spoke with MarShon Brooks, Mirza Teletovic, and Josh Childress. They were all great guys. Really. Friendly and happy to answer questions that were clearly not things they had been thinking about; they did their best to answer and be diplomatic. But the answers weren’t that revealing, at least, they weren’t that revealing about them personally. I felt like I understood more about Josh Childress when I saw him concentrating on Words With Friends than I did when he told me that he listened to rap and hip-hop before going out for a night on the town. I felt like I understood more about Mirza Teletovic when he grinned and talked about his two little kids and his wife and how they lived in Weehawken than I did when he struggled to come up with an answer for what he was superstitious about before game time. And when I talked to MarShon Brooks and he told me that why he was excited about playing in Brooklyn was because of the fans’ energy and excitement, I learned a lot more about the mentality of all the players when one of Brooks’s teammates (who shall remain nameless) started laughing and sing-songing Bullllshit, Bulllllshit as MarShon explained to me why he was happy about being in BK.
Bullshit. Although I don’t think the answers any of these guys gave me were bullshit, it did make me think more about the nature of what they’re doing here in Brooklyn and what they’re trying to accomplish. These players are going to start off their season in a $1 billion dollar stadium in the biggest market in the country. All eyes will be on them and they want to win. They’d want to win if they were still in New Jersey and they’d want to win if they were in Queens. I don’t know how they’d feel if they were playing in Staten Island, but that’s irrelevant because there will never be a professional sports team in Staten Island. And as great as all these players seem to be as people—and, seriously, they were uniformly friendly and outgoing with reporters and fans alike, plus they seem to have a lot of fun with each other—their focus is on the game, which is pretty much exactly where it should be.