Today we had some time off, so John Edwards (My current teammate who has played for the Hawks and the Pacers) and I went over to see some sites here in Istanbul, Turkey.  The coolest one to me was the Hagia Sophia Mosque.  For one thousand years, it was actually the largest Christian Cathedral in the World.  Then, it was taken over by the Ottoman Empire (I learned all of this from our guide today!) and converted into a Mosque.  Today it is a museum!  So it's been a Christian church three times (Replaced once then burned down a second time, finally rebuilt a third time),  a mosque, and now it's museum!  How cool is that!  The Muslim emperor at the time of conquest ordered that the many Christian mosaics not be seen in the Mosque.  But instead of destroying the incredible mosaics, it is said that perhaps his appreciation of art caused him to cover them with plaster instead.  Now, that it's a museum, Istanbul has peeled off the ancient plaster and many of the mosaics are fully intact and incredible.  All of the Islamic and Christian influence can be seen in the building!  Then we ventured down to a giant underground water tank (Cistern) that was like a mini reservoir to hold water for those many times when Istanbul was attacked and seiged over the centuries.  It was awesome!!

I am very excited about our team this year.  Gerald Greene Jr. one of my new teammates here is an amazing talent.  Obviously he is the slam dunk champion from the NBA from last year, but he does so much more than that.  His energy is huge for our team and he's vocal.  His three point shot is good and gets better every day.  Sebastian Telfair game him the perfect alley oop pass the other day in a game and when I saw Gerald go up and catch that ball it was in a place that only a few NBA players could get to. 

Juwand Howard has been a great addition to our team.  He's really a guy who has kind of done and seen most everyting in the game of basketball.  He's a guy who kind of talks to everyone on the team, 1 through 15 and helps them know what they can do to help the team.  The fact that he can shoot the ball from deep differentiates him from a lot of other "bigs" in this league. 

OK, I'm out of here and off to try to sleep.  I'm not sure...I got one hour of sleep only two nights ago so I definitely need some rest!!  Maybe it was the jetlag!

Trivia:  From Wikipedia: 

Hagia Sophia is featured in the 1963 James Bond film From Russia With Love where Bond's lover Tatiana Romanova slips Bond small blueprints of Istanbul's Russian consulate where Bond needs to steal the Lektor communication device. The Hagia Sophia is also seen in background shots in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough.

Today I got the unimaginable news that Kevin Garnett was traded to the Boston Celtics.  Being out here in Minnesota and hearing this news was interesting because it is the most talked about thing in almost every circle in which I move.   Friends from out of state are emailing me about it.  A non-sports radio station "wished Kevin safe travels to Boston" tonight at 10pm while I was driving home.

Here are a few memories of the Kevin Garnett that I know.  This is the side that the public doesn't see every day.

One Cardinal rule in our locker room is this: Never wear gear from another NBA team.  So when our new assistant trainer from Oklahoma had a Dallas Mavericks screensaver on his cellphone, Kevin Garnett found it and enforced the penalty.  When I say penalty, Kevin made him sprint two hundred yards from our team bus to a pickup truck parked in the distance and then yell out “I love the Timberwolves!” three times.  

When Craig Smith came into practice wearing some Golden State Warriors practice shorts, Kevin brought out the entire team and had Craig go to center court and hold up the shorts and say “I will never wear these shorts again,” while he held the shorts up and walked around three times.   Everyone was laughing.  Craig was laughing too.  KG loves Craig on and off the court.  I’ve never seen a rookie big man like Craig come in and win over the trust and confidence of Kevin so quickly.

Our offense calls for two “big men” to be on the court at the same time and it takes quite a while to learn all of the defensive rotations.   Kevin Garnett expects nothing short of perfection on defense. Mark Blount is one of the smartest veteran centers in the NBA and he and Kevin read each other all the time.  Where I have been impressed with Craig is that he's beyond his years on defense.  On offense, he’s been tearing up the other team’s interior and scoring in bunches.  But in some ways he’s been even better on defense.

But getting back to the theme of this blog.  I never thought Kevin Garnett would be apprehended by our own locker room fashion police.  But it did happen a few months ago.  It all started after practice one day when a few of us got into the locker room to shower and get ready to go home.  KG was still down in the weight room lifting weights.   Rashad McCants went over to Kevin’s locker and pulled out his shoes and put them out for everyone to see.  “What the heck are these?” Rashad said as he pointed to Kevin’s shoes.  As everyone looked down to Kevin’s locker we were shocked to see that his shoes had the words “Portland Trailblazers” alongside the Trailblazers logo!  All of this was of course in Trailblazer red and black colors!  

I’ve never seen so many guys so excited to bust Kevin’s chops.  When Kevin finally got up to the locker room he walked in and saw his shoes out for everyone to see.  Kevin busted out smiling and yelled out, “Who was in my locker!  I don’t know who was in my locker!”  Rashad stood up and called out, “I peeped it out when you walked in here this morning!”  Trenton Hassell was having a field day.  “Throw those shoes in the trash” he yelled out.  It was my job to take the shoes and stomp on them and then take them to the garbage can.  Kevin was laughing so hard.  I guess Adidas had sent out a bunch of walking shoes to Kevin and the shoes all had logos of different NBA teams.  

Kevin told us how he had gotten up that morning and tried on the Portland shoes and that they had looked good.  So he asked his wife “What do you think?  Can I wear these in to practice?”  

“Well Kevin, I don’t think so.  I mean, the Trailblazers are in your conference and you play against them, right?....”  she said.  

Kevin decided to wear the shoes in anyway and explained how he “had pushed his jeans down over the Trailblazers logo and walked into the locker room really quickly.”  He even showed us how he had pushed his shoes way to the back of his locker area under his chair so that none of us would see the shoes.  Well, nothing gets past Rashad fashion wise.  We had a good laugh that day.  But the story didn’t end there.  Trenton Hassell called out:

“Man I’m going to use those shoes…..I’m getting them out of the garbage can.  I’ve got my guy in Chattangooga Tennesse and he’s 6’10” and wears size fourteen too!”

-----------

Back to a serious note.  Kevin Garnett is one of the mot loyal individuals I have ever met in my life.  We're all gong to miss him and we all wish him well.

Last week I lost one two teammates and I gained one.  As I scrolled through ESPN.com last week, I saw the breaking news that Justin Reed and Mike James were being traded to Houston for Juwan Howard.  I guess this is the really hard part of the business of NBA basketball.  When you go to battle with the same guys every day you get close to them.  I'm going to miss Mike and Justin.  Clearly, Houston loves Mike James and almost signed him last summer.  I think that Justin Reed is only really lacking the right opportunity.  It seems like he played really well here for us, especially when he got extended minutes.

Today, I was in Rochester Minnesota giving a "Life in the NBA" talk at Rochester Athletic Club.  I can't remember how many times people asked me if Kevin Garnett was going to get traded, but it was a lot.  I really think that there is not going to be any trades involving Kevin Garnett.  I sure hope not.  I know for a fact that Kevin loves Minnesota and he likes the guys in the locker room.  But I'm also aware the realities of professional sports and that from a business standpoint, anything can happen to anyone.  The thing about Kevin is that he makes everyone around him better.  Three years ago, Sam Cassell had an all-star season, Sprewell had a great year and many other guys on our roster had career years.  When you have someone like Kevin Garnett on your team, everyone is going to benefit. 

Warriors versus Utah Jazz Playoff Series

I played with Derek Fisher for three years while playing for the Lakers and he is one of the most professional people I have ever met in any field.  When I got to the Lakers Derek was going through a very serious foot injury and was on the injured list for some time.  One time while he was injured we as a team were playing terribly.  Before one of the games, Derek gave an impassioned speech while in street clothes and really tried to encourage the guys to take up their level of play a notch.  Everyone in the locker room from Shaq to Kobe to Slava Medvedenko was all ears.  Afterwards, Phil Jackson referred back to Derek as the emotional leader of our group. 

Derek was always working on his jump shot.  There were so many days when Derek would be there early at the gym with his brother feeding him passes and giving him feedback on fine-tuning aspects of his jumper. 

Later that same season in the playoffs Derek had a monster game against the San Antonio Spurs and hit something like seven or eight three pointers in a blowout win for us.  A few days later when we were watching the game film in our "warrior room," Phil Jackson commented on how Derek had played so very well, and yet Derek did not get involved in any kind of self-promotion, or on-court antics that are so popular in the game today.  Phil Jackson rarely was impressed with individual accomplishments, but he was keenly appreciative not only for how well Derek played, but how Derek Fisher carried himself while playing so well.

The Warriors vs. Jazz series is a great one.   I was so happy for how well Derek played tonight for his team.  I actually want the Warriors to win because I grew up about 30 minutes from Oakland and I know the Warriors team pretty well.  Don Nelson was the coach of the warriors when I was in high school and I even worked at the "Don Nelson Basketball camp."  But above all, I'm just so happy that Derek Fisher's daughter is doing well after her surgery.  I hope that Dee Brown's injury is okay and I hope that he's able to make a full recovery.  Detroit is my favorite to win the title. 

Trenton Hassell told me that if he was an NBA General Manager he would rather have the 2nd pick in this year’s NBA draft instead of the first pick.  When I asked him why, he said, “Because you can’t go wrong with the 2nd pick….I’d hate to be the GM that had to choose between Greg Oden and Kevin Durant.”  

When NBA teams are getting ready to make a draft selection, nothing is left to chance.  Teams will fly groups of players in to work them out and match them up against each other to see who is toughest and who competes hardest.  A lot of teams administer the same written, multiple-choice psychological survey.  I must have seen the same survey four times from four different teams.  One team (Chicago Bulls) actually brought in a psychologist to administer a whole set of unique tests.  One of the sit down interviews in Chicago may have been a type of IQ test.  I’m still not sure.  

They test your strength in the weight room, your body fat, watch how you interact with the equipment manager and trainers, and seem analyze everything you do and say.  Then, a lot of teams will have you sit down with the General Manager for an interview.  I still remember my interview for the LA Lakers.  “Do you drink?”  They asked. “No,” I said.  “That’s the first time in years we’ve interviewed two players in a row who both don’t drink,” they replied.   The player before me was a UCLA player who has ended up having a very nice professional basketball career.  

Mitch Kupchak (Current LA Lakers GM) asked me an interesting question during the interview process.  “Who is the best [current] college player you have played against?”  I knew right away.  “Jaron Rush,” I said.  I still think he was the best I played against in college.  I ended up playing with his brother Kareem Rush for the Lakers for a year.

Mitch probably got some good information from all the people he interviewed.  What better way to try to assess the draft class and future drafts than asking the people who have grown up playing against each other in high school, AAU, pickup games and college games.  

Over the course of years, I’ve probably spoken to well over 10 different NBA general managers.  I asked one with a pretty nice draft history “How do you know who to draft each year?”   His exact words to me were: “It’s a crapshoot.”  

Then it clicked.  There are just too many unknown variables that are impossible for GM’s to predict.  If every GM was perfect, then there’s no way that Kevin Garnett and Kobe would have been selected as low as they were in the draft.  There would never be any draft “busts.”

But someone has to make the decision and that’s why the GM’s go to great lengths to get as much information as possible.  When Brevin Knight was a senior at Stanford, the rumor circulation around campus was that there was a private investigator going around campus asking questions to verify Brevin’s very high personal character.  We were told that for the top 10 projected picks, private investigators came around asking questions.   

When they make a great pick, they are hailed as “great talent evaluators.”  When they mess up with a pick they are labeled by the media as “out of touch” or “can’t see the obvious.”  To the GM who ends up with the 1st pick in this years NBA draft I say “good luck.”  

UCLA made a great decision when the hired Ben Howland to become the new coach of the UCLA Bruins.  As a "Pac-10" guy I watch UCLA very closely as well as the rest of the Conference and in two years Howland has been in the NCAA Finals and in the semi-finals.  As one who played on a Final Four team myself at STanford, I can attest that it is not easy to advance in the NCAA tournament.  To get the the Final Four two years in a row is incredible.  But the thing that impresses me most about Howland is his graciousness in defeat.  I just finished watching the interview with him and all I can say is that Ben Howland is a complete class act.  He was the same way last year also.  He complimented Florida and gave them all of the credit even though inside we all know he was really hurting.

Tonight we play against the Miami Heat once again here at home.  They key to beating Miami is trying to find a way to slow down Shaq.  I use the term "slow down" because there's no way to stop Shaq from having an impact on the game.  He is too talented of a player.  Tonight you can expect us to double Shaq a lot with our smaller guards to make him throw it out and put someone else in a Miami uniform in a position to try to beat us. 

Our last two games have left us with a bitter taste in our mouth.  From blowing a huge lead against Seattle to losing in Utah, we really felt like we were in both of those games.  We should have won against Seattle, and we had a real shot at spoiling Jerry Sloan's 65th birthday when we played Utah a few nights ago. 

If the MVP ballotiing were today and if I had a vote, I would have to go with Dirk Nowitzki.  He's just done so much this season and the Dallas Mavericks are the best team in the NBA.  Although you have to give Kobe and Steve a look too.  To me, no one else in the league has been as outstanding as those two.  If you had to look at an impact player though, Chris Webber has been maybe the biggest difference maker in the league when he signed with the Pistons a few months ago.  Chris Webber is one of the most skilled passers to ever put on a uniform in this league.  When you play against him, he's like Garnett.  He boxes you out with his hands.  Both those guys have the strength to hold people off with one hand and then be there for the rebounds. 

Two of my friends said they got their picture taken with Jack Nicholson last night at the Lakers vs. Timberwolves game.  Jack Nicholson is a regular at the Lakers home games and he travels on the road a lot to watch his team (The Lakers, of course) play.  But my other friend said that he was a "Nicholson Impersonator" and that it really wasn't him.  Well, I wrote about all of this in yesterday's blog right here on MarkMadsen.com/blog.   Then tonight I go to my email inbox and my webmaster has forwarded me an email.  Here is what the email said:

 

Mark,

'Jack' was at the game last night.  I know because that was me.  In fact, since Jack shaved his head, I look more like Jack than Jack. 

I am a Nicholson impersonator and will be attending the International Celebrity Impersonator Convention the end of May in Vegas. 

It was a lot of fun last night being Jack but it hurt me to clap for the Lakers.  Because of my role as the Lakers number one fan I needed to fulfill the role.  You guys did an incredible job though.  Congratulations.

Best Wishes

John

Now before all of you tell me that I'm dumb to believe a random email into my inbox here are the facts:

1) The email was sent from a verified email address of a major fortune 500 company:  (i.e.  johnsmith@target.com--of course it was not Target though) as opposed to an "anonymous email" like @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com.

2) John's email included a link to his bio which is publicly accessible on his company's website.  (i.e.  www.target.com/johnsmithbio/ )

3) John is a major executive at his fortune 500 company.

4) His photo showed up on the Fortune 500 company website and here it is.  You tell me....does John have a chance at the Vegas convention?  I think he's the favorite!

John, I would love to accept your invitation to go to lunch sometime.  Maybe I will bring someone from the organization andwe can have some fun with this in the media guide.  I hope that you have a great day and I hope that you guys continue to keep the capital markets going strong!  (I guess we all should have known something was up when our Jack Nicholson impersonator was sitting about 15 rows up.....the Real Jack is always courtside....even on the road games).