It’s continuous motion with unfettered access to the bodies in play. We see everybody’s faces. We see their arms, their legs. That’s not true in any other sport. You wanna see human disappointment? Watch a team blow a defensive coverage.
I met Dan Woike, I’m pretty sure, in a scrum. Or just after a scrum. He and/or I cracked a joke. It was the season after the Raptors won the title and Dan, then covering the league at large for the L.A. Times, was in Toronto with the Clippers and more notably, for Kawhi Leonard’s first time back to the city since he left. The mood was decidedly charged, I remember a lot of riffing and back-and-forth zings between media but also team staff, arena staff, security, everybody. This is my ideal atmosphere. Now, I know, this is also a perfect atmosphere for Dan. He’s able to balance levity and the gravity of any given moment, he’s curious, he’s incisive but he’s also kind. A great mix for a journalist, better for a friend.
We talked about Dan’s career trajectory, and how he was sure he’d wind up covering college sports. We also talked about the biggest learning curve switching from covering the Clippers to the Lakers, when athletes get mad at you, what it’s like covering a team that revels in a certain quality of instability as much as the Lakers do, and giving people — athletes especially — grace.
Plus: Chris Paul as the catalyst for Dan’s Sliding Doors moment, agents calling you “nice”, the different basketball ecosystems you enter when following a team on the road (Dan was talking with me from Dallas), the Lob City Clippers, when you get news wrong, the day Magic Johnson quit the Lakers, the Donald Sterling scoop he didn’t break, and an extended NBA fashion opinions outro.
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