THEY DOIN’ THE SHOOT-AROUND
The art of finding the right practice gym in Manhattan
There is an unmistakable rhythm to morning shootaround at Manhattan’s most exclusive basketball gymnasium. To start, orange cones are put down along 43rd Street, a bus-length from the corner at Sixth Avenue. Three security officials wearing earpieces then await visitors arriving at 1133 Avenue of the Americas — a 45-story building — by bus. One sentinel stands alongside traffic to flag down the driver as the bus heads north; he then radios to the others via a microphone wrapped around his left wrist. Cones are removed. A coach bus pulls in with a roster of millionaire NBA players and coaches. They come from The Conrad, Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton to a tower known for its limestone facade, artistic LED display in the lobby and top law firm. Equipment bags are unloaded. The driver flicks on the bus’ hazard lights.
“It’ll be good to walk in with a suit, your briefcase and just your basketball clothes in a backpack,” Atlanta Hawks wing Kent Bazemore says. “Keep it business.”
One by one, players enter, typically at 10 a.m. on game days. Some come in practice gear; others carry sneakers. They are in town to play the Knicks or the Nets, but the Garden and Barclays are occasionally booked at this hour, changing over the venue’s layout from a concert or hockey game. The collective bargaining agreement mandates that NBA players must be afforded rooms at high-end hotels, but there is no clause that they must shoot on game arena rims. Out-of-towners have long called ahead to New York Athletic Club, Baruch College, Basketball City and John Jay College of Criminal Justice to check on rim vacancies; the NBPA’s hardwood is the newest venue to gain popularity for its privacy. Open for use since July, players enter through a door behind Steinway & Sons, pass a loading dock and ride assigned elevators to the fifth-floor home of the National Basketball Players’ Association. Three rims and a court await down a hall. Reviews come in a block off Broadway.
“It’s dope,” Charlotte Hornets guard Kemba Walker says on a recent morning inside. “I might have to come back here in the summer for workouts.”
Players take the measure of the place that they voted to have built in 2015. The NBA court runs 94 feet long and 50 feet wide. This is 65 by 50. Half of the league’s teams have trekked through since the NBPA relocated from Harlem last summer, putting to use the space that was converted from an old recording studio. Many consider its best format to be individual drills. It is available at all hours.
“The court’s small so you gotta get really creative with how you do it if you want to have a real practice,” Lakers coach Luke Walton says after using it, “but it’s beautiful, just beautiful. It is always tough to find a gym here in New York.”
Even when they identify a workspace, professionals can be persnickety. Some claim superstition. Several decline to target rims not in actual game arenas.
“I’m over shoot-around,” Raptors guard Kyle Lowry says on a recent trip to the gym. “I understand it’s good to get things in, but I never shoot. This ain’t the rims where I’m gonna shoot. If you can shoot and play, you can shoot and play.”
Other players question why the court is not regulation size.
“Someone asked, ‘Well, why didn’t they make it a full-length court?’” Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry says. “Well, they could for another $40 million. You’re in seven digits already.”
Proximity to the team hotel is the highest priority for most when choosing a gym. They weigh rust-versus-rest dynamics as dog days are endured. In planning sessions, performance teams are consulted; traffic is considered and re-considered with most fearing the Brooklyn Bridge when going to Barclays Center. No teams stay in Brooklyn as no Brooklyn hotels meet lofty CBA standards. City colleges get called.
“You can get Indian food at 4 a.m. but you can’t always get a gym in Manhattan,” John Jay coach Ryan Hyland says.
To many, the trick to shooting around in New York is to know the best routes to private rims so as to never wind up betwixt and between. Even the Knicks alternate between putting up shots at the Garden and 20 miles north of the city in their Greenburgh, N.Y. facility on game days. The squeeze is evident on a February morning when Knicks guard Sasha Vujacic reports to the Garden at 9 a.m. The Cavaliers are scheduled take the court at 10 a.m. The scoreboard, which stands 15.7 feet tall and stretches 28 feet wide, is lowered to court level when Vujacic works his way around the perimeter, stepping in front of the scoreboard when need be. He cannot shoot from the top of the key because the scoreboard cuts off that space. Tipoff is not until 8:30 p.m. He shrugs. Only the Brooklyn Nets, new tenants in a refurbished Sunset Park warehouse this season, have guaranteed room to roam.
“I can fall out of bed and score 10 points,” Nets guard Sean Kilpatrick says. “Just give me a rim.”
Raptors coach Dwane Casey wraps up a workout, slips on a Canada Goose jacket and readies to depart the NBPA gym. He talks about losing players in hotels, rookies reporting to wrong conference rooms and the time that is lost to confusion.
“There goes 15 minutes right there,” he says.
Casey ambles to the elevator, enters and descends. He emerges on the ground floor, and is greeted by a security guard holding a door by the loading dock.
“Anybody behind you?” the guard says.
“All set,” Casey says. “I think a few of the Hawks are coming in later.”
lll “I don’t like shoot-arounds most of the time to be honest,” Clippers coach Doc Rivers says as he stands atop well-waxed hardwood on the sixth floor of New York Athletic Club. It is 11:30 a.m. and the court is marked with high school, college and NBA 3-point arcs. There is a backboard off to the side that hangs over a massage table. A note says “NO DUNKING.” “Sometimes you have to have them, but I hate them on the East Coast. This is a raaaaarity today. It’s because we haven’t had a practice. When you come west to east, you should never get your guys out of bed.”
Tradition traces back 46 years. In 1971, Lakers coach Bill Sharman was interested in getting his players out of bed. That included Wilt Chamberlain, who may have been out too late for his coach’s liking. The Lakers ripped off 69 wins, including 33 straight, that season and teams copied the plan. Plenty of current coaches plow ahead as Sharman did. Consider the morning of the most recent winter storm in New York. It is March 14. The Pacers are scheduled to play at the Garden and the Thunder will play the Nets. Indiana cancels its shoot-around at the Garden; the Thunder roll on, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge from the Four Seasons in Manhattan. A blizzard blows through Brooklyn while Russell Westbrook warms up.
“It’s actually easier because no one is on the streets,” Thunder coach Billy Donovan says. “Might have been a little quicker getting over here.” Westbrook nods. “It’s good to get out the bed, come to the gym,” Westbrook says as he wears a pair of sandals emblazoned
“Why not?” on them. “It’s not like very, very important. Sometimes I like to sit in bed and chill, but it varies. I jump out of bed each day, do some pushups, get my blood flowing, some situps. I gotta bring it.”
Coaches cannot always get the space they want. Erik Spoelstra prefers Basketball City at Pier 36 on South Street. There are 14 baskets spread out across seven courts that are closed off for the team, and Spoelstra notes that he always goes “where we can spend as much time as we want.” A favorite shootaround memory dribbles in. He was with the Heat out in Los Angeles under Pat Riley. They couldn’t get an indoor space so the equipment managers laid down tape on the top deck of a parking garage. The key and 3-point lines were put down for spacing.
“I always wanted to open up a big facility like this when I was younger,” he says. “Have guys come through.”
There are varying levels of what a coach wants to get out of morning sessions. Some demand a tapeyour-ankles intensity. Others are happy to keep players’ attention for 15 minutes. Bucks coach Jason Kidd hops in for a shooting contest with veteran Jason Terry and two others, the winner being awarded a championship belt like a boxer. Terry is 39 years old and in his 17th season. He is a superstitious shooter, unwilling to perform his regular routine on non-NBA rims at Basketball City. There is one shot that he will always take, though. Everyone on the roster, coaching staff and travel party is privy to attempt a half-court shot. The pool of money is accrued from “silly fines” — cell phone out in a meeting a certain time before a game or no jersey being tucked. Winner takes all. Terry has given thought to the best approach.
“I’m working on analytics to find the numbers that the shooting percentage of those teams that don’t shoot at home on the arena home court,” Terry says. “To me, as a shooter, it doesn’t make sense. Something we have to look at.”
Each coach knows of a road shoot-around gone wrong. Hornets coach Steve Clifford tells of the time Steve Francis hit a chandelier with a skip pass during a Rockets walkthrough at the Beverly Wilshire during a playoff series. Pieces fell.
“That was the wildest one,” Clifford says. “With these guys, the maturity level, you can practice well in tight spaces. It’s a little different in college.”
No one knows how to operate in taut spaces like the city’s prep coaches. Joe McGrane, the head coach at Xavier High on 16th Street, boasts two gyms, one that dates back to usage when the late Power Memorial visited with Lew Alcindor at center. McGrane mentions opponents’ gyms that were good to cause 7-8 turnovers on ball reversals alone, and corners where no 3-pointers could be attempted due to space limitations. An ‘X’ marks center court in his main gym, a subterranean space. He tells about the Washington Bullets coming in to work out. McGrane watched Rod Strickland kicking a ball for an hour. Chris Webber and Juwan Howard challenged 7-foot-7 center Gheorghe Muresan to hop over a ball without bending his knees.
“I can still hear him saying, ‘I can do it! I can do it,’” says McGrane, who hosted South Carolina for a practice prior to its Sweet 16 game at the Garden last week.
The Clippers are an interesting case study. Marksman J.J. Redick enlists an assistant to come with him to a gym on mornings that Rivers does not require it.
“I’m always just grateful to get a gym,” he says. “I lived in Austin for three summers, and UT was nice enough to let me use their facility. There were two weeks every August when they would redo the court. I drove all over Austin to the most random high school gyms. If you give me a hoop and a court that’s not slippery I can get work done.”
Rivers readies to get his rare session going. He calls to mind past journeys to run through sets and get off shots. The basement of The Water Tower in Chicago stands out. It was one basket, half court and narrow as a hallway. They were all down there walking through an offense in the playoffs with Bulls versus his Celtics.
“That was the quirkiest,” Rivers says. “F------ heaters. Quirkiest ever.”
He guffaws.
“We get through it,” he says. “The guys laugh at times, like, ‘What the f---?’”
There are rims that come with a view on the eighth floor of Building 19 in Industry City, site of the Nets’ new practice facility in Sunset Park. Six baskets are set up and sightlines for shooters at two of the baskets include a window view of the Freedom Tower, Brooklyn Bridge and Empire State Building. Sunbeams bounce off the court as traffic on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway slogs by. Nets coach Kenny Atkinson sits on a padded wall and recalls a playoff series between the Hawks and Nets when he was an assistant to Hawks head coach Mike Budenholzer. The Hawks wanted to make a quick trip to Barclays for shootaround. Traffic tripped them up.
“You could see Bud squirming in his seat,” Atkinson says.
Roy Williams, the University of North Carolina coach, attests to the road wrinkles. His Tar Heels were granted time at both Barclays Center and the training facility during ACC tournament preparations in March.
“They said it was just a couple miles but it took us 35 minutes,” Williams says. “We’re not used to that to say the least.”
They all manage. Atkinson can recall visiting Butler’s Hinkle Fieldhouse when preparing for the Indiana Pacers in 2012. Power forward Ivan Johnson shattered the backboard. The team was billed, and he knows there is a cost-benefit analysis to be examined with each club. He maintains that he is leaning toward Rivers’ approach, wondering when he can get away from shootaround yet keep his team in rhythm.
“It’s a torturous battle for a coach,” he says. “Looking for an edge, right?”
Atkinson considers the shifting landscape of the city’s gyms. He knows that visiting teams stick to Manhattan, but he is happiest honing his team’s skills in a converted warehouse with sweeping vistas. He watches a ball go through the net.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he says. “Don’t tell anyone. We like our space.”