The Final Score: Reconnecting with the Metropolitan Basketball Association, 16 years later

My head throbbed at 9:10 a.m. Functioning on just three hours of sleep, I felt no remorse. I was out all night, reconnecting to my broadcasting roots, reuniting with the team that took a chance on a newbie in 1998, plugging anew into the mad, trailblazing philosophy that pushed us into the vortex.

 

Over bottles of beer, we remembered the Metropolitan Basketball Association. The MBA. Oh the memories. The madness. The foolishness. The vision. The insanity. Covering the MBA was the adrenaline rush that lasted so long, yet ended too soon. 

 

The regional teams. The home-and-away format. A life on the road. Or, as Knicks legend Bill Bradley aptly described, it was a life on the run. We had to be on the go, always. We hopped from service vans to planes, to cabs, to ferries, back to cabs, to planes, and to service vans. The games served as welcome reprieve from the never-ending commute.

 

Yeah, critics lambasted the league, our league. They said the MBA was subpar. I understood where they were coming from. No hard feelings. Charge it to competitive fervor.

But I was out all night, laughing out loud, reminiscing the good, nah, the great ole days because there was nothing subpar about the level of talent in the room and the authenticity of the camaraderie we unknowingly fostered. 

 

I scanned the room. Their faces hardly changed. Producers. Anchormen. Analysts. Courtside reporters. I shared countless road trips with these men and women. We roamed the country like travel bloggers. The bond was real.

I swear, they looked the same, like 16 years flew by like 16 hours. I’m not sure if we didn’t age or if it was age showing its ability to turn recollection, especially the kind for keeps, into a bespoke reality. 

 

Maybe we see what we want to see. Or perhaps our shared experiencse kept us from growing old. 

 

To be always young: it’s a blessed state. Around my mentors, and they will always be mentors, I am forever the rookie courtside reporter. It’s an honor to be this team’s rookie courtside reporter for life. It means I’m never growing old. It means I’m forever learning from the people who gambled on a 23-year old neophyte. It matters less if the gamble paid off. It matters more that we all joyously took the gambit together.

 

The great Frank Deford once wrote about Bill Russell:

 

But then, too often when I try to explain the passion of Russell himself and his devotion to his team and to victory, I’m inarticulate. It’s like trying to describe a color to blind person. All I can say, in tongue-tied exasperation, is, You had to be there. 

 

That’s how I feel about the MBA and the people I worked with while covering the MBA. I can type 500 words explaining the magic of what it was like to go on a road trip that, based on the glee from last night and the hangover from this morning, is still ongoing. Magic explained might be magic lost. 

 

I figured the MBA, at least the version of the MBA experience that we remember, didn’t end too soon after all. Never mind churning out more words. My tired eyes or sleep-deprived body is proof enough. Just like old times. Even if we all had to grow up 16 years later, a life on the run keeps us forever young. — JST, GMA News