Steve Nash, Bill Russell and Chris Paul shared a few All-Star laughs on Thursday.
(Jeramie McPeek/Suns.com)
I almost missed out on a great photo op today.
With more than 100 All-Star events or player appearances throughout the Valley this week – yes, more than 100 – it’s been a challenge trying to put together our plan of attack for Suns.com. While we always work to bring you in-depth coverage of All-Star, we wanted to take our collective game to another level this year with the NBA’s midseason extravaganza here in our hometown. Still, we obviously had to pick and choose which events we were going to tackle.
Well, I didn’t pick or choose Steve Nash’s afternoon interview with CNN over at “Stoudemire’s Downtown.” Sounded kind of boring, to be honest. But after sitting in my dark office all day long (the giant adidas signage covering the north glass wall of US Airways Center is NOT see through), I decided to get some fresh air and see if I could get a photo or two of Nash arriving at the restaurant.
To my surprise, this wasn’t your typical interview, which I quickly realized when Hornets guard Chris Paul and Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell passed through the curtain to the back room. Nash arrived next followed by Grant Hill and Magic Johnson for a special All-Star round table, moderated by CNN host John King.
“I’m as happy as can be,” said King, a lifelong Celtics fan and now Wizards season ticket holder. “I grew up in Boston, so where I come from Bill Russell is god. But I think we’ve got a great mix. We’ve got Bill and Magic, and then some of the younger guys. So this is great for the show, but for me personally, it’s a great treat and an honor.”
Although there was plenty of basketball talk off camera, the topics during the 20-minute interview were of a more serious nature. The current and former All-Stars shared their thoughts on the country’s struggling economy, and discussed race issues, education, HIV, and the country’s first African-American President. And then, returning to basketball to wrap up their time together, they analyzed President Obama’s jump shot and defense.
“Most of the clips we saw of him, he was shooting the ball and it looks like he shoots it pretty well,” said Paul, who got a chance to hear Obama speak during a campaign stop in Indiana this past fall. “His ball handling could be fine tuned a little bit, but that’s something we can work on (laughs).”
Hill, who introduced Obama during a fundraiser in Orlando last summer, wasn’t about to critique the President’s game. But the Suns’ forward was looking rather presidential himself for the program. While Nash and CP3 were both sporting tennis shoes and some stylish jeans, Hill wore a suit and was the only one at the table with a tie.
“That’s the difference between Wake Forest, Santa Clara and Duke,” he laughed. “Nah, my wife asked me, ‘Why don’t you ever wear a tie?’ So I decided to put a tie on. You know, a happy wife is a happy life.”
All joking aside, Hill told me he was thankful to be invited to participate in the discussion (set to air Sunday morning on CNN), just as I was thankful to be welcomed in to watch the shoot.
“To sit around and talk about things that are different from what we normally talk about when we talk to the media, it was refreshing,” he said. “It was fun to get different perspectives from someone who is older like Bill Russell, who lived through the Civil Rights era, and what he endured and went through, his perspective on where things are.
“We probably could have gone on and on, and talked all afternoon. I was just kind of overwhelmed and thrilled to be a part of it. Hopefully I made some sense of what I said.”
