My Day At MSG

For everything Madison Square Garden offers, the wireless Internet provided didn’t allow me to post on my blog. I had planned to update once before the game and once after.
So here are the two updates I wrote with the times they were supposed to go up.

10:12 a.m.
This is a first
Outside of conference tournaments in college basketball, it's rare to see sporting events starting at this early juncture. But that's what we get today at MSG, where the Sun take on the Liberty.
It felt a little strange waking up at 7:25 a.m. at my buddy's apartment so I could shower, pack and make the subway in time to be here for media access at 9 with time to spare. Considering I'm always the one out of my friends with the strange hours — but the perks are, generally, getting to wake up late — fastening my tie as my friend was just rolling out of bed was a new one for me.
After a slight snag getting my press pass, things are going pretty well here. I just caught up with Ashley Battle — the details of that interview will be divulged in my next Sunday notebook — and now it's off to check out the breakfast spread.
Still waiting to see how 4,000 kids in the crowd affects the atmosphere. Hopefully, I won't walk out this afternoon with a terrible headache.

1:48
Interviews are all through, although I found myself chasing people a bit more than usual. That’s pretty common when comparing road to home games because you’re out of your element a bit.
My halftime routine, which usually consists of grabbing a bottle of water and maybe having seconds of the provided meal, was altered so I could be the halftime guest of Sun radio play-by-play man Bob Huessler. The news came as a surprise to me less than an hour before tip, but I always enjoy doing radio interviews.

As for my other thought of the day — by the way, the kids in the crowd were terribly loud and now I hate the person who created thunder sticks — watching Erin Phillips and Sherill Baker of the Liberty match up made me think of what the future of this rivalry might someday be. They are both talented rookie guards who come off the bench and the pair went at each other constantly when they shared the floor.
When I told Phillips of my thought, she didn’t seem too adverse to the idea.
“Why not?” she said. And maybe we’ll both be correct in our views a few years down the road.