If you are a sports fan in the tri-state area then you’ve probably heard of Dave D’Alessandro. His words have been in The Star-Ledger for some time now covering the New Jersey Nets. He’s seen a lot in his years, and he was gracious enough to take a few minutes from his busy life to answer a few questions for Hoops Addict.

Hoops Addict: Let’s start with the beginning…Where did the famous Dave D’Alessandro grow up and what did he grow up loving? Favorite teams? Players? Moments in sports?
Dave D’Alessandro: The ‘famous’ Dave D’Alessandro actually grew up in Utica and went to Syracuse before he went on to become CEO at John Hancock – nice guy, I met him once at a Celtics game. The more infamous version (that would be me) is from Jersey and grew up rooting for the Holzman Knicks and Muhammad Ali. And the only sports epiphany experienced after May 8, 1970 (Willis out of the tunnel) was the one in which I realized I’m not really much of a sports fan – aside from a brief obsession with the Parcells’ Giants – and that I just like basketball.

HA: Did you grow up wanting to be a writer? How did your career take shape over the years?
DD: I only became a writer in high school and college, when I realized that my talent for extemporaneous speech wasn’t advanced enough to land a job in radio. That was when you actually had to sound professional and erudite to land a job in radio, but no such requisite exists anymore. So I wrote for student publications at Fordham, got an invaluable internship at Newsday, an entry-level job at the Bergen Record covering high schools, got the NBA beat in my fourth year, and I’ve been at it pretty much ever since.

HA: Have you always been a basketball fan? Or was this a beat that you were handed and grew into being a fan of?
DD: It was the only sport I ever wanted to cover. And still do.

HA: Who are the writers that you grew up admiring and reading? Who are the writers now that you still find yourself going back to read?
DD: I can’t list the sportswriters I admire because I’ll just leave out a friend or two and it will leave him or her very grumpy. But I really don’t read much sports. My preferences are crime fiction and political biography and news websites.

HA: What is a typical day like for a beat writer during the season? I’ve always read/heard that the hours are gruesome and it’s not a job for everyone. Do the days just sort of blend together? Was there every a moment where you thought maybe you couldn’t do this?
DD: It’s like anything else, Michael: The more you do it, the better you get at it. It takes a while to learn the routine and ride in the tube, as the surfers say. But now that online responsibilities have actually surpassed print duties, a typical game day can be exhausting if you’re new at it: It consists of shootaround at 10, blog at noon, early story/notebook filed by 7, running gamer filed at the buzzer; write-throughs about an hour after the buzzer; and a late blog when you have some good stuff left over at midnight and you couldn’t fit it into your late notebook. The thing that takes the most getting used to is writing 60 inches on some days before tipoff. But this is the only way to cover the league, really: You can write columns and features, which I do regularly, and ask to be relieved of game coverage. But you tend to lose touch with a team and its culture if you don’t travel with them and aren’t in the locker room every day.

HA: Through the time you’ve spent covering the league, has there been a time or an instance where you almost want to pinch yourself? Like, ‘Wow, I get to watch basketball for a living?’
DD: Not when I come home from a 10-day, six-city trip that consisted of nine flights and five wakeup calls that went off before 5 a.m. Otherwise, it beats working.

HA: What has been the best player to interview over the years? The worst? Is there a team that you see on the schedule that you can’t wait to talk to?
DD: I don’t really do interviews or ask questions, really – I have conversations. There’s a difference. The guys I like to converse with are the ones who are so at ease with themselves that they can talk about anything in a one-on-one setting and not be self-conscious or guarded about how it comes out. I’m talking about guys like Ray Allen, Buck Williams, Allan Houston, Julius Erving, Ro Blackman, Jason Kidd, Charles Oakley, Magic Johnson, Terry Cummings, and Eric Snow. The thing I usually welcome most is when a Jersey guy comes to town, because they’re smartest and most voluble. Sorry, that’s my parochialism showing.

HA: What’s your thoughts on the direction the Nets are taking? Everyone heard the whispers of Carter being moved, and now he is finally no longer with the team. Did you think it was a smart trade for the team? Thoughts on the selection of Terrence Williams?
DD: It may not be a smart trade for the Nets, but it probably was the only move they had. It was obvious back in December that Vince’s departure was inevitable, and you had to get expiring contracts and a promising young talent in the deal. So with the aims being pretty narrow, mission accomplished. I don’t know much about Terrence’s game yet, but I like the kid personally, and I hope fans give him a chance to grow into his job. But I can already hear the moans when he goes 6-for-29 his first three games.

HA: What do you think of the moves some of the other teams have made? Have the Spurs caught up to the Lakers? Was it smart for the Cavs to bring in Shaq?
DD: The Spurs have undergone a significant upgrade, getting two starting-quality forwards – though isn’t it odd that Pop didn’t ask for a ‘trade committee’ to review the deal in which he stole RJ? But their success in May and June will be predicated on the same three things that come up every May and June: 1. Tim’s health; 2. Tony’s health. 3. Manu’s health. If those three are all OK, they’ve got every necessary piece to win the West – though they could be one big shy of being whole. As for the Cavs, they didn’t give anything up to acquire Shaq, so it’s not much of a gamble. He’ll help. But after the last postseason, I expected them to get fed up with their perimeter corps and make a move there. Sure you have to keep Mo Williams, who was horrid for much of the postseason, but Boobie Gibson might have outlived his usefulness.

HA: On the topic of the Cavs, what’s your stance on 2010? Do the Nets have a shot at one of the big three (Wade, LeBron and Bosh)?
DD: Not likely. Guys at that level want to win now and win often, and all things being equal ($$$$), they’ll go where they can win.

HA: Are we ever going to see the Brooklyn Nets?
DD: Nice thing is we won’t have to ask that question after Dec. 31. We’ll know for sure by then. But put a knife to my throat, and I’d say probably.

HA: Off the topic of the NBA and onto journalism: What’s going on with journalism these days? Is it scary to see what is being made of newspapers? What’s your stance on blogs and the Internet? Is Twitter going to eliminate the media?
DD: Journalism has essentially been replaced by prattle, which is unfortunate, but that’s what a society gets when it doesn’t value newspapers. No hard feelings, that’s just a fact. And that doesn’t mean I’m against everyone and his brother expressing an opinion, because they’re as valid as some of the rubbish you read in some newspapers. But people lose sight of an important distinction: Blogs differ fundamentally from newspaper work – they reflect the taste, interest, and prejudices of their opinion-holders more than that of a typical columnist, who must find a compromise between his skill and the standards of a newspaper. If we can apply some kind of community standard to the members of Bloghistan, by all means let them in the locker room. But some of it is not very readable. As for twitter, it’s not for me to decide whether the world needs another ego-massaging, social-networking time drain, but speaking personally, I really don’t give a damn if Charlie Villanueva is going out to lunch.

To read the great work that D’Alessandro does, please visit his blog.

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