Warriors Media Day Roundup

My second Media Day was a bit different from the first. Having done it
before I had a better idea of what to expect and how the process would
work, so I thought I’d also have a better plan worked out to get as
many people as I could. It almost worked perfectly.

The first group consisted of Stephen Jackson, Marco Belinelli, DeMarcus
Nelson, Dion Dowell and Rob Kurz. Obviously, Jackson was going to be
the most popular one of that group among members of the media so I took
advantage of it by getting everyone else done first. I’m sure I missed
a few big questions for Jackson but I still think I got about ten
minutes of stuff even after finishing with everyone else. The questions
I asked the others were a little generic but from our perspective I
think we want to know a little more about the rookies, invitees and
younger players. The media’s focus is on the bigger names first.

The second group consisted of Ronny Turiaf, Anthony Randolph, Richard
Hendrix and Anthony Morrow. This was the one group I messed up my
timing of enough to miss out on Morrow entirely. It got started a
couple minutes late and by the time I sat in on stuff for Turiaf and
Randolph and did a quick interview with Hendrix, Morrow was already off
to another area. It’s a little too bad because I would have liked to
ask him about his hot shooting in the summer league and things like
that. I didn’t get the chance to ask Turiaf or Randolph anything
because of those four the media stuck around them for obvious reasons.

The third group featured Corey Maggette, Marcus Williams, C.J. Watson
and Kelenna Azubuike. Again, Maggette and Williams ended up being the
main focus, though Azubuike had a few people around him at all times as
well. I did get to interview Watson.

Finally, we had Andris Biedrins, Al Harrington and Brandan Wright.
There was no chance to ask them anything for a couple reasons. First,
Harrington was finishing up some photos so everyone huddled around
Biedrins and Wright. I got what I could from those tables then most of
the people moved on to Harrington so I got whatever I was able to there
as well.

In between, I snapped photos of players giving interviews, plus a few
of them at various other stations. This isn’t just a 30-minute
interview for each player and they’re gone. Around that they’re doing
promos for the radio, pictures that will be going into the magazines
sold at the games, other TV spots for various commercials, plus some
sign jerseys, basketballs and other items to be given away or auctioned
off during the season. It really is organized chaos in that sense.

The mood of Media Day this year was considerably different than the
first one I was at. That’s not really a surprise considering the
expectations last year’s team had compared to the uncertainty of this
year’s roster along with Monta Ellis being on the shelf for who knows
how long. In general, people just don’t know what to expect from this
team right now. Some things will be figured out during training camp
and the preseason, but there’s only so much you can learn before
playing the games that count.

At one point someone asked Randolph a question about Ellis and he said
he couldn’t answer it. It could be because he’s new, but he could have
been told not to say anything. Others did talk about Ellis along the
way when asked, but some of the answers really depended on the
questions being asked.

In general there was the feeling that the team has the potential to do
some good things and some people like Jackson have that mentality of
“We want to win a championship” no matter what, but it could be a long
process in seeing how this group fits together. Going into the season,
only seven players were with the team last year (not counting Ellis)
and just three had what you could consider a large role on the team
(Jackson, Biedrins and Harrington). The other four (Watson, Azubuike,
Wright and Belinelli) will be question marks in terms of what they’ll
be able to contribute this year. On top of that, only time will tell
how people like Maggette, Turiaf and Williams fit in along with rookies
like Randolph, Morrow and so on. With Ellis out, the team could be in
for a rough start.

On behalf of Warriorsworld I think it’s important to thank Raymond
Ridder and the organization for allowing us to have a presence at Media
Day, no matter how small the role is. The primary members of the media
have jobs to do and the focus is properly on them first, but there are
spots where someone from a blog or fansite can get a few questions in
as well.

Got a bit of a surprise and a change from last year. I decided not to transcribe anything this time because it just took way too long before. I was working on it late into the night and I wanted to do something faster. Since I bought a digital voice recorder the other day that I can move files to the computer from, I can bring you all the audio so you can listen to whatever you want. Most of them are just from the group sessions but I did get a few one-on-one interviews. Some came out better than others but I’m pretty sure there are things I missed that I didn’t think to ask.

The longest ones are from Stephen Jackson and Al Harrington and they’ve both got some good stuff. Corey Maggette’s was pretty entertaining as well. Anthony Randolph’s is in two parts mainly because I was going to go to another table but I changed my mind and had to start a new file. Many of these are joined “in progress” but the quality came out pretty well. All are in an mp3 format and when added up there’s about 70 minutes of audio here.