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Show There's lots Of Travel If You Play In The MBA The team pays for the rooms but any long distance phone calls, which is a favorite item especially for the married players, play-ers, are paid for by the players. PLAYERS ARE quick to point out their hectic schedule for the road. Any road trip, whether it be for one night or ten. always seems to start out early in the morning. This means the players have to find their own way to the airport and be there by 7.30 a.m. for their flight. Suppose they are playing in Kansas City that night. Their flight would arrive around 12 noon. Then they face an hour bus ride to their hotel. They just have time to check in and then report for the pre-game meal. Game time is at 7:30 p.m. so players must be at the arena by 5:30 p.m. for taping and shoot around. The game gets over around 10 p.m. They shower, dress and hop on the bus for the ride to the airport for a 12 midnight flight back to Salt Lake City. "BY FAR the worst trips aren't the real long ones because be-cause there you play maybe five games in ten days. The ones that get to the old body are the ones where you play three games in three days. Like head to Phoenix, then San Diego and finally up to Denver, De-nver, all in three nights. Those flights start to get to you." noted Ben Poquette. While on the road the players play-ers have some free time to themselves but they also have practices and shoot arounds. If they have a game that nighl . they go to the arena and shoot for about an hour, if no game then they have a full two hour practice session. ALL THE time On the road the players are responsible for their own luggage. Lose that and they're in trouble. The players also have their own road uniforms with them, two set of them. Being on the road in some areas, is like being at home. It a player misses a plane then he simply has to pay for the ticket to get to wherever the team is going. Miss a game and w hi .ire fined one eighty-second of your salary. Miss a practice and the coach thinks of the fine. Utah has the player buy dinner for the entire team anil coaches. While on the road all the coaches say when the bus leaves for the arena it leaves at the exact time, the bus waits for no one. THEIR FREE time is theirs to do with as they want. Some visit friends of relatives, others just sleep in their room. Then there are some, like Ben Coquette, Co-quette, who have become soap box opera addicts. These guy s don't miss a thing on those shows, year around they watch them. Still sound like fun on the road. Well. Mr. Poquette sums it up this way. "It really gets boring day after day. It's a different dif-ferent life style all together. You have a different bed every night, live out ol'a suitcase anil never get home meals." INDEED PLAYING the actual games around the country coun-try would be fun. but all those airport meals at 6 a.m. would tend to give the old stomach problems. How many steaks would it take to get sick of them'.' Jet lag would have to come into play showhow. . Doesn't sound like fun to me to play in New York one night and Washington the following afternoon. Travel is just one side of the NBA that all those college guys don't think about. They think they travel a lot now w ith a 25 game schedule, wait until they get into a league where they play over 80 games. By DAVE W1GHAM Eldton Note: This is the last part of the Ave part aerief dealing with life in the NBA. To the young man play ing in junior high the thought of playing play-ing basketball throughout the country seems ideal. Even to those in high school, and college col-lege the idea of playing in such places as Dallas, Kansas City, Phoenix, San Diego and New York is great. HOWEVER, according to some of those w ho do just that for a living, the actual travel involved gets old after a w hile. All those restaurant meals, hotel lobbies, early flights and different beds each night tends to wear down the players in the league. These players by no means suffer when they hit the road. Truth of the matter is that under the rules set forth by the league all travel is done first class. Some players may turn in their ticket for a economy seat but the teams are required by the NBA to furnish first class arrangements. Once arriving at their destination the bus company takes over, taking tak-ing the players to and from the airport at the arena they will be playing at. ALL OF the arrangements are taken care of by the teams traveling secretary . In the case of the Utah Jazz Dan Sparks doubles as traveling secretary and the trainer. He works through a local travel agency during the summer to make sure everything will run smoothly in January. As soon as the league gives out the schedules then the secretary gets together with the agency and formulates all their road trips. Each team in the league has their own bus line and hotel. The Jazz use the Hilton, the league insists on first class again. That way they use the teams name for advertising and the visitors get special team rates which is the same when the other team goes into their city. AS FOR their meals each player is given $32 a day by the club. All the money is given to them at the start of the road trip. If they are gone for their annual ten day trip to the east then Sparky gives each player $320 at the start of the trip for his meals. To some this may seem like a lot of money but the players are quick to point out that if they want to stay in their room and call for room service that even a hambruger can cost up to $5. "The prices in Utah are pretty fair but get to New York and some of those other places and the prices are rkhcutous" noted one Jazz player |