It was in the late 1980s when Bill Davidson, the late owner of the Detroit Pistons bought his team its own plane, which was christened “Roundball One.”
For years, NBA teams knew it would be a big advantage to be able to fly out of cities immediately after games. Not only did it lead to help with sleeping, it kept players off the streets, out of the clubs and in the air in the time from after the game to past closing time. And it even gave teams more control of their players’ diets. It was inevitable some team would do it and we all knew as soon as one team did it, the others would have to follow suit.
You play, you hop aboard your plane, you get to the next city and check in, and there’s time for uninterrupted sleep, rather than going to bed late after a game, then getting that early morning wakeup call the next day to fly to a city where you have to play a game the next night.
This doesn’t even include the bonus of having a plane customized for the size of your players and the traveling party. The luxury of it all.
Soon, other teams were jumping on the bandwagon — with free agency around you had no choice. Travel is a big thing to players. Well, teams weren’t all buying their own planes. That’s still rare. But luxury charters became the rule, to the point where you can’t remember it being any other way. My goodness, can you imagine trying to get Shaquille O’Neal or LeBron James through the crowds of an airport? Well, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson did it.
For the beat writer, though. The charters were extremely bad news. I was lucky, my time covering the Trail Blazers was pre-charter, for the most part. And they were some very, very good times.
Not only was the team on board, but all the other personnel was, too. Talk about a traveling party. I was covering the players so while I got to know them very well, I didn’t become overly friendly with them. It was my job not to do that. But the team trainers — always your best friends on the road – became dear friends to this day, as did people like Dave Twardzik, Geoff Petrie — guys who have gone on from broadcasting jobs to do pretty well with their lives.
You get to know people like that pretty well when you travel for days on end with them and share all sorts of experiences. On other days I will share some of those experiences — at least the ones I can talk about.
I was blessed. The travel agent for The Oregonian was the same one the team used. My reservations always matched the team’s arrangements — so I was always on the same flights. There’s nothing quite like gobbling chili dogs in Houston’s old Hobby Airport with Caldwell Jones, I might add, at 6 a.m. Or discussing the news of the day during a crowded wait for a late airplane with Kiki Vandeweghe. Some golden moments.
Watching players deal with everyday travel aggravations in those days — things like delayed or cancelled flights, early wakeup calls, bad food on planes, all of it — was educational. And I think it was for the players, too. The guys in those days had a much better idea of what the real world was all about than the guys of today.
Players in the league now don’t even see the inside of airports. They know nothing of long lines at security checkpoints. They arrive at a smaller venue, park their cars near the plane, do a quick security check and walk right onto their plane. Luggage and such things are handled for them. Food is delightful and plentiful.
For a beat writer, though, there’s nothing like the old way. Writers today travel commercial, by themselves mostly, and stay at different hotels than the team. It can be a very lonely existence and one I wouldn’t care for. In the old days, I even rode the bus with them from the airport to the hotel. And to practice, too. Oh, that’s right. No closed practice in those days, either. I went to every single practice for seven seasons. Watched the whole thing.
I do believe we didn’t need coaches to tell us who screwed up in those days. If you went to practice and paid attention, you knew who was supposed to be where on certain plays or defensive schemes. You got a basketball education, if you wanted it, from the likes of Jack Ramsay that college or high school coaches would have died for.
If you watched close at practice, you knew at games who was in the doghouse and who wasn’t. And you saw who could coach and who couldn’t.
It was all right there for you. But now it’s gone.
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Tags: Bill Davidson, Caldwell Jones, Detroit Pistons, Dwight Jaynes, Jack Ramsay, Kiki Vandeweghe, Larry Bird, Lebron James, Magic Johnson, NBA, Roundball One, Shaquille O'Neal
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