Yes, it turns out people who have played and/or dedicated their lives to professional basketball are better at it than the people who cover it. Who knew!
The coaches basketball-mogged the Valkyries reporters on Saturday, 107-23 at the practice facility in Oakland. The game was at 8:00 a.m., and your fearless Valkyries Beat reporter landed in Oakland from Los Angeles around 6:35 a.m.
So I brought my luggage (three bags) all the way to the facility, changed into my Gyrados Pokémon jersey, and picked up a basketball for the first time in at least two years.
Shoutout to Matthew Walter from The IX for literally showing me how to hold a basketball and shoot it, in case you were wondering how that went.
Overall we actually did better than we expected, and Eric Apricot had a great scouting report for each of us in his story. According to him, I “showed hustle” which is fair.
I shot 0-for-1 and was blocked by assistant coach Landon Tatum (“We strongly encouraged that,” Natalie Nakase said) and got one rebound.
In the fourth quarter I completely wiped out chasing after a pass from Kevin Danna, who wrongfully assumed I was fast enough to chase it down. I have a gruesome knee bruise I will spare you all from and a little purple dot bruise under my chin.
Nakase did say I “showed toughness,” so I will take it.
Friends will know that I have a tendency to sign up for random sports and activities. In the past three years I have played at least some level of softball, dodgeball, kickball, flag football, soccer, volleyball, basketball, sword fighting, pole dancing and cycling.
I’d say the only thing I am GOOD at is softball, so I can’t wait for that media game someday where I can hit some line drives.
At my last publication, I did the media tryout day for the Oakland Ballers minor league baseball squad where coach JT Snow told someone that I “wasn’t the worst one there.” I am not sure if that was true about basketball on Saturday.
“You guys all impressed me,” Nakase said. “I thought it was very impressive.”
Of course, on Sunday’s media availability, when I asked about if Juste Jocyte would be available on this road trip, Nakase said, “I don’t know, all I know is 107-23.”
But my biggest takeaway, as a reporting nerd, was actually how much it helped me understand some of what happens on the court. At Valkyries home games, reporters sit pretty high in the stadium so it’s hard to get a feel for what is going on.
In some stadiums, like LA, Seattle and Vegas, the media seating is close to the floor and it’s always valuable to hear some of the communication on the court and from the bench.
That’s not even close to what Saturday felt like.
Nakase guarded me when I was on the floor, so when offensive transition would start for her, she would yell out, “I got Marisa,” and then be totally all over me.
They pressed us from moment one, which Nakase said was for them to practice that, and even threw out some of their regular in-game defenses.
“Oh yeah, we knew we were gonna press you guys,” she said. “We got to work on our stamina, too.”
Sure, we all know that playing professional basketball is hard, I think we all knew we would be sore the next day, but actually seeing the level of communication they were all shouting out on their defenses in real time was a good experience.
Shoutout to Nathan Canilao, Jane Kenny, Morgan Ragan, Walter and Danna who all knew how to play basketball, that carried us.
My highlight was actually when I was going for a pass behind me and Kasib Powell (6-foot-7) just took it away without even jumping and PR’s Morgan Randolph laughed, that made me legitimately giggle. Also, it was very nice of Nakase to bring us all Gatorades at halftime.
Back to the pros playing basketball soon.