▸ Lakers’ D’Angelo Russell maturing, evolving into leader Lakers need. Luke Walton sees it. D’Angelo Russell admits it. Anyone watching the second-year point guard play recently can see it—there is a little something different about him the last five games. It’s sort of there in the stats—20.8 points per game, 39.7 percent shooting from three, 5.2 rebounds, 5 assists, and 1.4 turnovers per game in his last five—but it’s more than that. There is a maturity to Russell’s game that is growing, a confidence as the game slows down for him and his ability to be the floor general the Lakers have counted on comes to the fore.24
▸ Hideki Matsuyama needs the Masters to be in February: Thomas might have won, but Matsuyama kept his belt as the hottest player alive with another epic performance. In his last six events, Thomas is the only human who has defeated him on the golf course. His Masters odds are plummeting. Matsuyama has finished in the top seven at Augusta each of the last two years. He is an outrageous talent who has seemingly found his own formula for contending every week in any tournament. Beware, PGA Tour, we could be in for the Year of The Hideki.25
▸ The Rams continue to hurt themselves with penalties. The Rams drew eight flags for 43 yards. Several were holding calls on left tackle Greg Robinson, but he wasn’t the only one who set the Rams back with miscues. Tackle Rob Havenstein was cited for holding and a false start. Tight end Tyler Higbee, receiver Mike Thomas and defensive tackle Aaron Donald also were among those flagged.26
Here is Dochterman’s alternative story on an early-season college basketball game between Iowa and Savannah State.
IOWA CITY, Iowa—With only two upperclassmen in uniform Sunday, Iowa’s men’s basketball team wanted a crisp, clean game that involved several players.
As expected, it wasn’t perfect. But the Hawkeyes (2–0) rotated 12 scholarship players in a 116–84 win against Savannah State (0–2) at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The bench scored 76 of Iowa’s 116 points, the most under coach Fran McCaffery and seventh-most in school history
WHY: Iowa overwhelmed Savannah State with 18 3-pointers, topping the school record of 10. Six different players hit at least two 3-pointers. Overall, Iowa sank 18 of a school-record 43 3-point attempts (41.9 percent).
WHAT IT MEANS: McCaffery weighed redshirting one of his five scholarship freshmen before the season began, but ultimately the Hawkeyes have played all five in their first two games. It was a difficult choice for McCaffery—he wanted to space out the classes but guard Maishe Dailey wanted to play. It’s an interesting situation for Iowa, because with so many young players, determining each one’s season-long trajectory is challenging. Dailey scored six points in 13 minutes Saturday.
WHO STARRED: Backup shooting guard Brady Ellingson was in a first-half shooting zone. He connected on 4 of 6 3-point attempts for a career-high 21 points in 14 minutes—before halftime. Ellingson finished with 23. Freshman forward Cordell Pemsl added 18.
WHO STUMBLED: It requires effort to call anyone’s performance “a stumble” in a 32-point victory. But starting point guard Christian Williams scored just 1 point in 19 minutes. He did, however, add 4 assists and 4 rebounds without a turnover.
WHO WAS THERE: University of Iowa President Bruce Harreld attended the game. The arena was filled with veterans, who were honored with applause during a media timeout.
WHO IS NEXT: Iowa plays host to Seton Hall (2–0) at 9 p.m. ET on Thursday in the second annual installment of the Gavitt Games, an annual challenge between the Big Ten and Big East conferences.
Scott Dochterman,
Landof10.com
www.landof10.com/iowa/recap-iowa-throttles-savannah-state-sets-school-record-for-3-pointers
Chapter 3 Getting the Most Out of an Interview
ESPN’s Wright Thompson was chatting with some golf writers in a bar near St. Andrew’s, host course for the 2010 British Open, when he heard an unusual story.
Apparently, golfers took boats to play on a course at Daufuskie Island, an islet along the South Carolina coast that is nearly abandoned except for a few employees and some Gullah, direct descendants of African-American slaves. More than a hundred people a day were once drawn to the majestic course, where Spanish moss hangs thick on trees, big waves crash onto fairways, and raptors soar overhead. Three scenic holes run along the Atlantic Ocean.
But bad times had come to Daufuskie Island. Somehow, a course that once lured a former president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and golf’s elite had gone into bankruptcy proceedings. But the course’s pro and groundskeeper had found a way to keep the course from falling into disrepair. So, golfers continued to skim across Calibogue Sound on tourist boats to play 18 holes on the remote island, set midway between Savannah and Hilton Head midst swamps and woodlands.
Intrigued, Thompson called the course’s golf professional two days later.
Soon after that, he traveled to Daufuskie Island to investigate the story behind the golf course—a bizarre one, he learned, that involved voodoo curses, a financial meltdown, and a struggle to stave off the inevitable crushing power of nature.
Thompson revealed this story in a piece on ESPN.com, “Staying the Course,” that serves as a testament to scrupulous research, meticulous observations, and exhaustive interviewing.
This story reveals how reporters ought to perform, particularly when it comes to asking questions. Interviewing, in some ways, is an art. On the other hand, asking questions should be as natural as saying hello to someone or as routine as soliciting information about a party from a friend. We ask because we are curious—and sometimes, so we can later tell these stories to friends, family, and colleagues.
Interviewing is sort of like public speaking—which it really is, although on a much smaller scale—where comfort is the key. The more one speaks publicly, the more fear fades away into proficiency. That same ease is also true of interviewing, where experience breeds success.
The best interviewers are those who are curious and who desire to know as much as possible, even about basic elements, such as what a person was wearing (acid-washed jeans, skinny jeans, or apple-bottom jeans?), the setting where a story took place (a soft breeze, strong enough to tousle someone’s long hair and cold enough to evoke goose pimples?), and the specific details connected to a story (did the protagonist eat linguine, penne, or angel hair pasta? Was the sauce marinara, pesto, or arrabbiatta?)
“I want to know everything,” Thompson says. “I want to go back and report the interiority of scenes. I want to know what something smelled like. I ask about everything.”
Details breathe life into features and profiles like “Staying the Course.” Approaches to interviews for these types of stories vary a great deal from game stories. Feature and profiles emulate short stories, in that they should all have developed characters, a clear setting, a primary conflict, and a plot. In “Staying the Course,” golf pro Patrick Ford and golf course superintendent Nick Bright struggle to preserve two golf courses until someone saves the Daufuskie Island resort from bankruptcy, even though they do not have money to buy new equipment, must creatively fend off pests like mole crickets by mixing honey and poison, and eventually, do not receive power to the main building. For 18 months, these two tireless men work to stave off nature, insects, and weather, so the course does not fall into disrepair before someone can purchase it.
In features, you’ll need to ask for information not offered in documents, learn what motivates people, gather stories that help explain or clarify, learn people’s interior thoughts, and drill deeper into the primary conflicts.
There