Growing up in England with 4 television channels, I didn’t get to watch much basketball.
The first game I ever saw was during the 2001 NBA Finals when I worked as an assistant for Agence France-Presse in Los Angeles, taking disks from the photographers and keeping the editors happy with beer.
Allen Iverson was darting all over the court for the Philadelphia 76ers. I was mesmerized by his energy and acrobatics and quickly became hooked on the game. With its breakneck pace and emphasis on rhythm over rules, it was instantly more attractive to me than reading through ‘The Complete Idiots Guide to Baseball’ and ‘American Football for Dummies.’
I’ve photographed every subsequent NBA Finals as basketball trickles its way across the Atlantic.
There are now three British players in the NBA — Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, and Ugonna Onyekwe, all on the Chicago Bulls — as well as a smattering of talented players at U.S. colleges and Spanish clubs. They add up to the first-ever remotely competitive British basketball team at the London 2012 Olympics. Former NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman even played last year for my hometown Brighton in the British Basketball League.
First stop for the 2007 NBA Finals is San Antonio, Texas. First challenge is to carry most of my camera equipment onto the plane as hand luggage.
Fortunately U.S. airlines don’t yet weigh hand luggage, so I walk past the boarding gate pretending my bags don’t weigh more than I do and then find someone to help me lift them into the overhead bin.
Then, straight to the arena to set up remote cameras.
These finals orbit around Cleveland Cavaliers player LeBron James. The U.S. media are crowning him King James and hailing him as the next Michael Jordan. If Cleveland wins — or even if they don’t — the Reuters photo report will be heavily weighted with pictures of LeBron, so shooting multiple angles of him in action with remote cameras makes for a varied edit.
On an overhead catwalk I mount a 400mm lens which I will trigger when players jump for a rebound via a button attached to one of my hand-held cameras.
Dallas-based Reuters photographer Jessica Rinaldi holds a focus card.
Photographer Mike Blake set up an overhead remote during the recent NHL playoffs with a Canon 5D camera and a USB cable attached to a computer running the Reuters Paneikon editing software. I decided to try the same thing so that the editors could have a live feed instead of having to wait until the late-night end of the game. We used Paneikon for the first time at an NBA Finals with Gary Hershorn, Peter Jones, and Mike Blake editing from New York, Toronto and San Diego respectively, and everything ran really smoothly.
The Canon 5D, 400mm lens and pc computer set up with a Sprint card & Paneikon.
The story of Game 1 was how the Spurs’ Tim Duncan dominated LeBron James and the overhead camera came through with a good illustration of his aggressive defense.
The NBA only allows one camera behind the glass for the finals (in addition to the NBA & Sports Illustrated cameras), so Reuters, AP, Getty, EPA, and AFP take turns to set it up and we pool the images. We shoot Game 2, which produced a photo of finals MVP Tony Parker.
San Antonio Spurs’ Tony Parker goes up to score during Game 2. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
I was shooting with the new Canon Mark III cameras for the first time and they were pretty impressive in low light. This is a crop of a third of the full frame of LeBron James sitting in a dark corner waiting to be interviewed, which I shot at 3200 ISO.
This finals was one of the dullest, most unemotional I’ve seen. It ended abruptly in Cleveland as the Spurs won four straight games with a defensive lockdown on LeBron James’ magic.
The only spark came from Tony Parker, the diminutive point guard from France, who energized Game 4 as he became the first European player to earn the NBA Finals most valuable player award.
I always read your blog in high spirits. Thanks 🙂