Batum blog March 6

Part 1, from a few weeks ago

link

via www.basketsession.com

[continuing from part 1] Afterwards, we were at Amare Stoudemire's restaurant, which is right next to the stadium.  A good little restaurant.

via www.basketsession.com

Afterwards I participated in a clinic for kids at the Jam Session.  Each Adidas player was there and we put the kids through exercises, shooting, and we played with them.  And then afterwards each player signed autographs.

Next I was at Boris Diaw's place who organized a poker tournament for charity.  I didn't play because it started at 1 and finished at 5, and I got there at 3:30.  I don't remember who won, there weren't just basketball players there.  In any case, TJ Parker went very far in the tournament.  The prizes were nice: two pictures made by a painter, one of Tony [Parker], one of Boris, and Tony's shoes from the All-Star game were sold in an auction.

via www.basketsession.com

Saturday night I went back to the stadium to watch the contests.  Well not really the crappy ones, with the old players, the Bill Laimbeers.  In fact, I didn't really watch, I went to get myself food.  I've realized my fantasy!  When you're on the bench and you see people coming down with big trays of food, you really want some too.  Since the start of the year I've really wanted to do that.  So I left to get myself a sweet tray of food: nachos with cheese, chicken nuggets and lots of things.

And what was awesome Saturday night was that when you went to get yourself something, you ran into George Gervin, Magic... And best of all Scottie!  Finally!  I was happy.  But impossible to go meet him.  I didn't dare.  I was blocked.

But I went to see another old player that I talked quite a bit with: Gheorghe Muresan.  We were together in a suite reserved for foreign players.  We talked about Pro A, we talked about Pau-Orthez.  He still follows the team, he's sad for Pau.  His son who's already 4 feet tall [1m30?] at 2 years old was there... Alright, I'm exaggerating, he must be 12 or something, but he's already pretty tall.

Otherwise I still followed the other contests.  There was the Point Guard contest where Parker choked a bit. :) On the other hand, for the three point contest, I had made a little bet with Antoine Le Roy [from Canal Plus, which followed him for the program "Intérieur Sport]: I bet on Danny Granger and he on Kapono.  On the other hand, for the dunk contest, I'd made a bet with George Eddy [again, from Canal Plus] and I went with Nate Robinson.  George had chosen JR Smith.

The dunk contest was pretty close.  The dunk over Howard, not bad...  Robinson is impressive.  There was also my teammate Rudy Fernandez.  He wasn't laughable, it went well.  What was too bad for the second was that in practice, he had done it passing himself the ball all by himself, and with a small windmill behind.  I don't understand why he did it with Gasol, since he managed it all by himself in practice.

I know that he also had a second idea, which was to put a mask of Dwight Howard on Pau Gasol.  He didn't dare do it, but it would've been awesome.

The next day, slept in.  After that I did some spots for Adidas TV, which will be on the site [I assume here, but nothing is up yet].  And after I went to the game.  It wasn't bad, but the Rookie Game was better.  Except of course for Shaq, who was totally unreal.  Absolutely awesome.  And there was Britney Spears... who's better live :)  But the game was below the rookie game.  Afterwards I ate, then had a calm evening because the weekend was pretty intense and I had to leave Monday morning.  Had to get back into regular season mode.  Because the All-Star Weekend really is something else.  Besides, it's exactly what we needed.  With 53 games played, it's good to have a break in order to better restart.  Personally, I really needed this break.