There is no better vantage point to observe a college basketball game than press row at Cameron Indoor Stadium. It’s a place from which you can experience the sights and sounds of the game in a way that can’t be duplicated by watching on television at home or attempting to report from the rafters where members of the media have been exiled by most big-time schools.
At the same time, there are certain hazards that come with the privilege of sitting less than an arm’s length from the court. Beyond getting covered with flakes of body paint and occasionally hit in the head by members of Duke’s legendary student section bellied up to your chair behind you, you’re always close enough to become part of the action.
Through the anticipation of trouble and dumb blind luck, I managed to avoid that fate for the majority of my three-plus decades of covering games at the Blue Devils’ homecourt.
But on the night of March 1, 2016, my good fortune finally ran out.
It happened with 26 seconds remaining in Duke’s 79-71 win against Wake Forest. With the game all but decided and my deadline for the Wilmington Star-News rapidly approaching, I was paying more attention to the column I was writing than Grayson Allen pulling down a rebound and dribbling up the sideline in my direction.
By the time he caught my eye, the Blue Devils’ star had already been fouled by the Deacons’ Rondale Watson and it was too late to react.
Despite being an All-American and a talented all-around player, Allen is best remembered for his general cockiness, along with his penchant for tripping opposing players and embellishing contact – traits that put him right up there with Christian Laettner, JJ Redick and Steve Wojciechowski among the most hated Dukies of all time. On this occasion, he chose to sell the light contact he received from Watson to the officials by flailing his arms into the air and launching himself onto press row before landing with a thud on my laptop.
It’s a moment immortalized by a photo that ran in newspapers all across the country. Which is more than can be said for my column. The impact of a muscular 200-pound athlete in full flight landing on my computer shattered its screen, making it look like the inside of a kaleidoscope, rendering it unusable and making it impossible for me to file my report.
But that was the least of my worries. As an independent contractor working on a freelance basis, I was responsible for providing my own equipment. That meant it would be up to me to buy a replacement computer, a financial commitment that would have been a hardship at the time.
Not knowing what else to do, I took out my phone and in a fit of desperation, fired off a Tweet that read: “I will gladly take donations toward a new computer. Seriously. This is an absolute disaster for me professionally.”
I was only half serious when I wrote it and didn’t expect anything to come of it. But when I woke up the next morning and checked my timeline, there were more than 30 replies – most from Duke students – offering to help me out. I was absolutely blown away by the generosity of those young people. But even though their gesture literally moved me to tears, I couldn’t in good conscience take their money. As a parent of two college graduates, I knew they were eventually going to need every penny to pay back their student loans.
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I continued to receive expressions of support and help as the day went on, some from people I knew, most from those I’d never met. The most incredible of those came from Laura Parkinson, the community relations event coordinator for Lenovo USA.
Apparently one of her co-workers, public relations director Milanka Muecke, is a Duke fan who was at the game.. When she saw Allen go crashing onto the courtside press table, she first worried that everybody was all right. She then wondered whether all the computers came through unscathed.
They didn’t, of course, and when Milanka saw the picture I posted on my blog of my broken machine and realized it was one made by her company, she took action. I first thought the tweet from Lenovo saying that the company would generously provide me with a replacement laptop was a snarky joke. That is the way things work on social media, isn’t it?
Not this time.
The offer was serious and within 24 hours a car painted with Lenovo markings drove up to my front door and out stepped another representative with a new top-of-the-line computer with a red bow on the box. The laptop was much better than anything I would have been able to afford on my own and they got it to me in time to cover the next night’s Duke-North Carolina game at Cameron.
I was blown away again.
But that left me with a dilemma. How do you thank all those people who went so far out of their way to help me when I needed it most? While words have been my livelihood for my entire adult life, I strangely found myself unable to adequately express myself at that moment.
When I first started covering games at Cameron in the mid-1990s, I made it a point to befriend the regulars that sat behind me on press row. I’d bring them cookies and a stat sheet from the media room at halftime and it helped us all get along and respect each other’s space. They called me “Cookie Monster” and upon their graduation, a group of them gifted me a signed rally towel and made me an honorary Crazy. I still have lunch with one of them at the ACC Tournament every year.
Unfortunately, my connection with the students began to wane as time went on. So when I returned to Cameron for the UNC game, I was determined to introduce myself to all the regulars who sat behind me at the games and express my gratitude to them personally. Only before I could, they beat me to it.
When I arrived at my seat, the table in front of it was surrounded by a makeshift cardboard barrier adored with the words “Do Not Enter: New Laptop.” On the back side was pasted a letter, signed by “Your Friends (as long as you never root for UNC), the Cameron Crazies,” thanking me and my fellow reporters for putting up with them while doing our jobs covering their team.
It was a moment that reminded me of one of my favorite movies, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
There’s just something about George Bailey’s selflessness, as difficult as it is to watch at times, that strikes a chord, especially when his neighbors repay his generosity by coming to his financial rescue in his time of need.
I can’t say that I was anywhere near as deserving as the character played by the great Jimmy Stewart in Frank Capra’s Christmas classic. But in an unexpected way, I now have a better understanding for how he must have felt during that climactic scene.
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