Former local sportswriter gets hoops dream: playing in Obama’s pickup basketball game on Election Day
Posted by: Baller-in-Chief in Articles(From the New Mexico Independent Online)
Former Albuquerque Journal sportswriter Andy Katz, currently a college basketball analyst for ESPN, was asked to join President-elect Barack Obama’s team Tuesday night. It wasn’t a cabinet position for Katz, but a chance to play alongside Obama in a pickup basketball game while the senator from Illinois waited for election results to come in.
Katz, who was a Journal sportswriter covering the University of New Mexico men’s basketball team from 1990-95, gave an interview on a syndicated sports talk show Wednesday about hooping it up with Obama just hours before the Chicago Democrat was elected the country’s 44th president.
Katz said the invitation to the game was “Obama making good on a campaign promise.” Turns out Katz had interviewed Obama in October for a story he was doing for ESPN.com on Michelle Obama’s brother, Craig Robinson, the coach at Oregon State. Katz said that after the interview Obama mentioned he organizes a pickup game before every election he is involved in and that the presidential election was no exception. Then Obama asked Katz if he would be interested in playing. Katz said “yes,” of course, but also said in Wednesday’s interview that he never really expected Obama to follow through.
But Obama made good on his word and Katz got an e-mail Monday telling him he was on the list and to show up at an arena in Chicago for the game Tuesday.
Katz said Obama was “calm, cool and collected” while playing. He said the only time everyone realized that in just a few hours the guy in the sweaty Texas Longhorns t-shirt was about to walk out of the arena and become the president-elect was at the end of the two-hour game.
“He looked at his watch and said, `OK, I gotta go,’” and that was it,” Katz said. “That’s when it hit us.”
Katz also got to ask Obama one reporter-type question during the spirited game. He asked the Illinois senator how long, if he were elected president, before the White House got a basketball court.
“He said, `very quickly.’”
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