What Was Your Welcome to the League Moment as an NBA Video Coordinator?
What Was Your Welcome to the League Moment as an NBA Video Coordinator?
It was my first day of practice with the Portland Trail Blazers.
Earlier that week, I had arrived in Portland, Oregon after a 4-day drive from Virginia with my sister Angie. I walked into the Trail Blazers Practice Facility in awe, where Trail Blazers Assistant Video Coordinator, Tim Grass, met me at the door to greet me. He gave me a tour of the facility. We went to the Video Room, the Front Office area, and then we walked down the hall and stopped to talk to Darius Miles in the weight room. It was surreal.
But things didn’t get really real until the team came back. I was quiet, a bit over my head, tried to stay out of the way, keep my head down, and get my work done in the Video Room.
When the team came back, I was sitting in the Video Room eating my lunch, likely because I didn’t feel comfortable yet eating with the staff in the lunch room. While taking a bite, the Trail Blazers Head Video Coordinator, Kaleb Canales, came bouncing into the Video Room with incredible enthusiasm, “Welcome to Portland Johnny!!!” I likely offered a nervous, “Hello.”
Kaleb walked me out to the practice court where I stood in the middle of 4 baskets at the scorer’s table watching the Trail Blazers warm-up for practice. Brandon Roy on one hoop, Greg Oden on another. It still didn’t feel real.
As I stood there, something was about to happen…
The Trail Blazers had an obnoxious buzzer on their practice courts that would go off loudly for about 10 seconds every time.
I stood at the scorer’s table alone, watching, while the others staffers rebounded for players and suddenly, the buzzer went off. Loudly. And it wouldn’t stop. I didn’t know yet that this was normal. As the buzzer continued, players started looking at the scorer’s table. I stood there in horror and started hitting buttons on the clock operating machine hoping it would stop but nothing worked… suddenly, one of the Training Camp Players, Chris Ellis, looks at me and threw his hands in the air and shouted, “He doesn’t know what he’s doing!” Double horror.
Eventually, the buzzer dies down and goes off (we wouldn’t get it replaced for about another 5 years but at least I knew what to expect moving forward).
The next day before practice, Kaleb walked me over to Coach Nate McMillan and introduced me, “This is John from Indiana, he’s our new Video Intern.” Coach looked at me and Kaleb and said, “Yeah, that’s the guy who f**ked up my clock yesterday.” (side note: I love Coach Nate!… he’s one of the best)
And that was my Welcome to the League Moment.
Afterwards
That night, once the players and staffers had left the building, I walked back out to the scorer’s table and practiced on it all night long. Maybe it wasn’t my fault that the buzzer had gone off that long, but I was going to make sure I knew that machine in and out. I went over scenarios, scoring situations, shot clock situations, I wanted to know how to run that clock, the scoreboard, and shot clock in every way… And for many years following, I was still sitting at the scorer’s table during practice, filming practice, and helping run the scoreboard, and shot clock alongside Bob Medina and Hersey Hawkins.
You never know what skills will come in handy when working with an NBA team, sometimes, it’s as simple as knowing how to turn a buzzer on and off.