LIVE from Rome again

I was kind of mad because of the traffic in Rome at first and was like - why did I do this drive to Rome watching 30 minutes of practice? But now it is totally worth it. I got some fun stuff to tell.

First of all I must say that Mike Grange is a cool guy. I finally met him here in Rome. He is one of the few guys you might want to read every day and also consider a nice guy. For someone who is not familiar with the press guys - they all hate each other but try to be nice. I guess it is a very competitive market but hey, I am here for fun! Mike looks like he is here for fun too, but he actually does his job also.

I must say I do like the Raptors now. They are a very nice team - starting with the media relations director to GM. I wanted to talk to Luke Jackson, yes guys I wanted to and yes he is on a NBA team again. The Raptors media guy was feeling my head if I was sick or something for me wanting to talk to him but I had my reasons. I was on a team wit his former teammate from Oregon and I met him before, so it was nice to see him again.

I also wanted to talk to Jason Kapono. Yes, another one nobody wanted to talk to. But there is a reason also. Remember the press conference when Kapono said: “Maybe I would have been better off with my name being Vladimir Kaponovic ” or something like that? Well, BallinEurope was first planned to be named vladimirkaponovic.com ! What would you think of that?

What else happened? I got to listen to Maurizio Gherardini who is a very nice and funny guy. He was talking about Andrea Bargnani since 20 people asked him about Il Mago and at one point he said: “Andrea is like a German soldier! Always straight forward thinking and on his mission!” Now Mike Grange knew that I am German and told Maurizio which gave us all a big laugh. Of course he was nice and told me later that he did not want to offend me or something like that. No worries I got the joke.

Oh and Sam Mitchell doesn’t want to tell the press his starting five.