I'm on the road today, with a whole mess of rookies who are having their pictures taken (all day -- it's a lot of pictures) for their rookie trading cards.
We all met up bright and early for a breakfast buffet in a cavernous hotel ballroom north of New York City. Omelettes to order, fresh fruit ... but bleary eyed rookies were mostly opting for bagels.
Then it was a half-hour bus-ride to the Knicks' training facility where the photo shoots are taking place. On a bus crammed with draftees, I got to sit with Kevin Love, and I picked his brain about all kinds of stuff. Here is some of what I learned:
- When money becomes no object -- he'll be getting himself a big place on the Oregon coast. "You can quote me on that." I point out the water on the Oregon coast is cold, but Kevin says that when it's 95 degrees that doesn't matter. In the meantime, his off-season home will be the carriage house at a friend's place in Los Angeles.
- When he was training with Joe Abunassar, Love was eating specially prepared food that arrived in a bag every day. That's all he ate. He has given himself the month of July off of that regimen. He didn't really go into detail as to why, but you can imagine that eating food by the bag every day could get a little old.
- Although his ankle was a little screwy and he didn't really get to play, Love enjoyed coach P.J. Carlesimo, who is coaching the USA Basketball Select team that has been squaring off against Team USA. I asked him who looked good in scrimmages and he laughed, cocked his eyebrows, and kind of nodded in that you-know-what-I-mean kind of way as he said: "Kobe Bryant."
- We talked a little bit about some of his new teammates. He knows Sebastian Telfair a little from Portland. He met Chris Richard and Corey Brewer at Summer League. He shares an agent with Al Jefferson. I mentioned that I thought Rashad McCants could be the kind of guy who could really make a difference -- last season, it seemed to me, he was the guy who could score when the team was having trouble. Kevin said: "Mike Miller. Al Jefferson, all those guys ... I don't think we're going to have trouble scoring"
