As I entered the Seattle SuperSonics’ training facility a week ago, I felt like I was out of place. I saw a number of media types I recognized from TV, radio, or the papers. There was Frank Hughes standing in the middle of the Sonics’ practice court talking to Steve Kelley (at least that’s how I remember it now), Blaine Newnham and Percy Allen near tables the Sonics had set up on the far end of the court, and various TV guys setting up to tape footage near where I entered the room and was now standing. As for me? Well, I was just standing there hoping someone who would have no idea I had been granted permission to attend media day didn’t ask me why I was there.

Sure, I’ve had some practice interacting with the professional media last season while attending Storm games at a press pass (and, thankfully, through that I knew some of the junior members of the Sonics’ PR staff, one of whom I said hello to soon after entering). Still, I was pretty sure that none of the other members of the media there had hurried over to the Center after completing their Info Systems class, and entirely sure that none of them were getting picked up by their mothers.

After a couple of minutes of waiting silently, the Sonics roster slowly began emerging from the door that leads to their weight room and, eventually, the locker room. As the players filed out, I got my first surprise of the day when I caught a glimpse of Miles Simon walking amongst the players. Having not read the morning’s Times, little did I know that Simon had been added to the roster. Seeing that he was in camp was exciting for me. Call it a stupid bias, but I can’t help but pull for guys who were college stars in the NBA. Give me Lonny Baxter and his consistent NCAA production at Maryland, and you can have the ‘potential’ of Chris Wilcox. Simon, of course, was the undisputed leader of Arizona’s 1997 National Champion squad, but thus far has only l9 minutes of NBA playing time to his name, something that I think might just change here in Seattle.

As the contracted players followed the camp invites out, some were immediately grabbed by reporters. Newnham took Vladimir Radmanovic aside for a lengthy interview that has yet to be used in a column, while Rashard Lewis and Brent Barry were naturally mobbed. Conspicuous, but unsurprising, in his absence was Gary Payton.

As the camp invites filtered towards the line for their headshots, I still found myself alone. I wandered around a little bit, looking for someone all by themselves, before deciding to speak to the Sonics’ PR director, Marc Moquin (to whom I am indebted for having allowed me to attend media day). After thanking Moquin, I asked him whether there were any rules about when I could talk to players. “It’s organized chaos,” he replied, a phrase I would hear repeatedly throughout the day.

Soon enough, the non-roster players finished their brief photos and headed towards the tables, with no media over there at all. Since I had already planned to focus on these players, the guys I -- and presumably SonicsCentral readers -- didn’t know very well, I figured this was a perfect opportunity for me to begin my career as an interviewer. My first choice to interview? Reggie Evans, of course. I’ve been praising Evans for four months after arguing in a column at Hoopsworld.com that the Sonics should select him last June.

After politely inquiring whether I could interview Evans, I sat down and began. Fortunately, Evans is a guy I already knew plenty about, so I had some questions in mind, notably discussing his reaction to going undrafted and why he chose the Sonics. What was readily apparent as Evans began speaking was that writing notes on everything in my legal notepad, as I had planned, was going to be impossible. I got down what I could while still trying to maintain the eye contact I had been taught to maintain. Things did not go as smoothly as I had hoped; while writing down Evans’ answer to one question, my mind went blank and I was unable to think of the next question. Embarrassed, I flushed and apologized to Evans for my difficulties. I persevered, however, finished the interview, thanked Evans for his time, and moved on. Things went much more smoothly with Ronald Rollerson and Jonathan Kerner. Then I moved on to Eric Chenowith. During the course of this interview, I made my most embarrassing mistake of the day. Though my question about what happened with the Knicks this summer (they cut him before summer league action, something I honestly wanted to know about) seemed to connect, I then asked him about the Knicks cutting him last year during camp before he informed me that they had cut him before camp. Oops.

Looking around, I didn’t see any veteran players obviously alone and ready to be interviewed. I locked briefly on Howard Schultz, but before I got a chance to make my move, the cameras descended on him so Schultz could make the angry public comments about Payton that made the headlines. Moving on, I focused on Rick Sund. All summer long, I’ve been intending to ask Sund whether, after having made comments last summer about not wanting to be in the middle, he felt the Sonics were there now. After waiting for him to take a picture, I got my answer: “I think we’re closer to the top than the bottom.” Sund and I then went on to discuss the Sonics’ future off the record but, for obvious reasons, I can’t repeat that here.

Returning to the invites, I had a brief conversation with Jameel Watkins, who got to the point quickly. “I’m not a scorer. I know my role,” he answered when I asked about how he could help the Sonics with defense and rebounding, and that was it. The matter of fact style made for an efficient interview, but not a long one, so I moved on to Sean Colson, who was sitting all alone. Colson seemed very happy to have someone to talk to, and we really seemed to connect during the course of the interview. I scored some points by mentioning how everyone expected him to return to Houston last summer (yes, I actually did know that; thank goodness for The Rocket Guy’s reports). I really felt like Colson was particularly honest with me, going so far as to criticize his agent for convincing him not to stay in Houston.

After talking to Colson, I walked around a little bit, watching the other journalists work, while waiting for Simon to finish his discussion with Chenowith so I could talk to the former. I finally barged over and had a good, if uneventful, discussion with Simon.

I finished and finally found Schultz open. Now was the time for me to make my journalistic mark! Well, maybe not quite. After Hughes came back to mention a couple more things to Schultz, I lobbed him a softball about his expectations for the team. I then discussed the decision to pay the luxury tax, getting what I felt a pretty interesting quote -- “A player like Rashard Lewis at 23 comes along once in a lifetime.” Then I got the subject we both knew we had to discuss, Payton. Here he stopped me in my tracks and caught me off guard by asking who I wrote for. Hesitantly, I answered, “An unofficial website, SonicsCentral.com.” That information in hand, Schultz gave a fairly diplomatic reply, emphasizing that Payton was expected to play out his contract. Not really having the time to dig deeper, I moved on.

By this point, we were over halfway through the event, and some of the players had already begun heading into the locker room after finishing their photo obligations. I began catching up with the players as they headed in that direction, beginning with Peja Drobnjak. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Drobnjak’s grasp of the language. He repeated the main focus of my question in an effort to make sure he understood and did misunderstand me on one question where I wanted to know about his role and not the team’s goals. Other than that, however, I thought it went pretty well.

Next off the court was Lewis. He seemed fairly tired of talking and ready to get the day over with, but was still gracious enough to talk to me. As a result -- and this was the case with most of my interviews -- I tried to keep it fairly close. A couple of questions and then move on. I then waited for Joseph Forte, who I really wanted to ask some stuff about the transition from Boston to Seattle. I really felt like I connected well with Forte, and he gave me some good stuff.

After Forte, I found there were only a handful of players left running the media gauntlet -- Barry, Desmond Mason, and Jerome James. Also answering questions was Nate McMillan, who had been busy throughout the day. I was able to catch up with James as he waited between two picture stations. Sensing he had an inexperienced interviewer, James decided to have some fun, telling me he had spent his summer, “on the catwalk.” Then I had to pause as James and Mason laughed about some joke I’m not entirely sure of, allowing me time to get a solid final question about working with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

I figured Mason was going to sit and wait in the same place James had, so I asked if I could talk to him while he waited. The PR employee flanking him informed me that he still had one more photo station to go to, after which I could talk to him. By this point, Barry and McMillan had gone to the far end of the court for some TV interviews, leaving me with nothing to do but wait on Mason. After finishing the station, he joked with some Sonics employees before the team photographer walking around asked for some pictures. I waited a fair distance away, certain I was this close to getting my time with Mason. Then, however, Allen cut in after Mason was finished. I started to get a little upset, but how could I? Allen’s doing this as a job; I’m just screwing around.

So I waited for Allen to finish . . . and waited . . . and waited. Things were slowly but surely winding down as 6:00 drew near, and I knew I couldn’t wait too long since, as I mentioned before, I was waiting for my mommy to pick me up. Mason finally came free, and I knew he was absolutely dying to get out of there. However, he was still nice enough to answer a couple of quick questions. I thanked him and then had perhaps the strangest experience of the day; he not only thanked me, but added, “I appreciate it.” Man, some guys are a little too polite, you know?

After that I waited around a little longer, hoping for a chance with McMillan. He disappeared when I wasn’t looking, which was unfortunate since I had a lot of tactical questions from the boards for him. Nevertheless, I left the training facility feeling like I knew a lot more about the Sonics and, more importantly, feeling like I actually did belong.

Kevin Pelton has served as beat writer, columnist, editor, copy editor, and webmaster for SonicsCentral.com since its inception. He also writes a weekly column for Hoopsworld.com and is a student at the University of Washington in his spare time. The Candid Corner is updated every Monday. Kevin can be reached at kpelton@sonicscentral.com. All opinions expressed in this column are solely the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of other columnists or the SonicsCentral.com staff.

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