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Road Blog, Denver: Friday, January 25th By Matt McQueeny, NJNets.com Rocky Mountain High The game against the Warriors was a tough loss for the Nets, one that was subject to sweeping pendulum-like swings of emotion. The Nets showed a lot of fight to try and stop a six-game losing streak. And on this road-trip they were looking to bounce back from consecutive blow outs – in Sacramento and Phoenix – and an overtime defeat to start the trip in Los Angeles against the Clippers. They led early in the fourth before the Warriors responded with gaping 22-0 run in just under four minute’s time. New Jersey went from up nine to down 13 in the blink of an eye. But again, they showed intense fight, shooting off a 20-4 run of their own and taking back a three-point lead with 1:23 left in the game. But they could not sustain as the Warriors closed strong and stung the Nets with their seventh straight loss.
After the game - which was made longer by the national TNT telecast and by the Warriors tactic to purposefully foul Josh Boone late in the third quarter, slowing the game to a crawl - we all made our way through security, which was placed about 100 feet outside of the Nets locker room and right in front of the entrance to our two awaiting buses. We were all screened and once on board, our traveling party made its way to the airport where the charter was awaiting. The players and management, in the front bus, made their way on to the plane first. Once they were on, we of the media bus, unloaded and walked up through the rear of the plane to our seats, which are towards the back.
We were in the air for somewhere in the ball park of two hours. The tough thing about going from Northern California to Denver though is the fact that you lose an hour in transit, going from the Pacific Time Zone to the Mountain Time Zone. Then in Denver, the airport is pretty far from downtown. It felt somewhere around 30 minutes. It was the early morning hours, there was nothing but open space on all sides of the highway and it was basically just the two-bus Nets contingent rolling through the mountains.
We reached our hotel in the three o’clock morning hour – that’s the five o’clock hour back home in New Jersey – and players, staff, and Nets traveling media grabbed their envelopes containing our key cards and the information will need on the trip. There were also media packets for us. The staff at this hotel was nice enough to leave out large buckets of Gatorade, water, and snacks. Players snatched up armfuls of everything. It’s hard to imagine how hungry they must be after a game. Everyone made their way up to their rooms. Some of us returned downstairs to pick up our bags outside of the lobby. Once upstairs, I took care of all the post game stuff from the Warriors game. With how quickly we get out of the arenas following the games, there is very little time to fully update the site. So, I take care of all the writing and quotes on the plane and when we get to the next city, I take care of all the web uploads – HTML, mp3’s, photo cropping – which takes about an hour. After taking care of that, bedtime beckoned at five am Denver time.
I worked on the site this morning, updating the normal morning tasks. After that, I went to the hotel gym to get in a quick lift and run in the lunch hour. Center Nenad Krstic was also down there getting in a workout, along with a few Nets staffers. The hotel gym actually had a little basketball court constructed from what looked like a one-time racquetball court. Krstic was in there doing abdominal exercises while I was shooting a little bit. He took a couple of shots as he left but didn’t seem to like the court. |
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