Thu, Jun 14th 2007, 16:21
What’s up everybody? It’s been a busy week for me and things are only going to get more hectic.
Workouts are still going well- I can feel myself getting stronger in the weight room. Our track workouts are keeping me in great shape and I’m really enjoying Pilates. I did Pilates three times a week during my senior year at Duke so I’m really glad to be able to get back into it this summer.
My week got off to a great start on Monday. Jeff Burton, a NASCAR driver, came over to our practice facility and we played a game of D-A-Y-T-O-N-A. I won, naturally. Jeff wasn’t half-bad though. He surprised me by hitting a couple clutch shots. I’ve never been an avid NASCAR fan, just a casual observer. However, after spending some time with Jeff and learning how big of a Duke fan he was, you can count me as a Jeff Burton fan. The guy is a class act. He invited me to come to any race I could make it to. Hopefully, my schedule will allow me to get to a race sometime this summer. I know it would be a great experience.
On Tuesday, I spoke once again at a Magic camp. Before I start my Q and A session with the kids I always lay down two groundrules: 1. Don’t ask me about my salary. 2. Don’t ask me to dunk. Inevitably, the first two questions are always “how much money do you make?” and “can you dunk it for us?”. While I don’t answer the money question, I always try to throw down a couple dunks for the kids. I even did an alley-oop dunk for them on Tuesday.
Yesterday, I got the chance to meet with our new coach, Stan Van Gundy. We sat down for about 30-45 minutes in his office and chatted about a few different things. All in all, I came away from the meeting energized and excited. I can tell right away that he has a great passion for coaching. There’s definitely an opportunity for me to be a part of the rotation this upcoming season. It’s up to me to continue to work hard and make the most of any opportunity I get. I think our team will be more exciting to watch next season. Offensively, we should be more of an uptempo team. Management has some decisions to make this offseason in terms of possible trades and free agents. I can’t worry about those things though. They’re out of my control.
I’m going to be out of Orlando for the next week. My older sister is getting married this weekend in North Carolina. I’m so excited for the wedding and the chance to be around my family. My little sister and I haven’t seen each other since Christmas. We both have been really busy with basketball. After the wedding, I’m going to head back to my hometown, Roanoke, VA. I’m helping my high school coach with a basketball camp to raise money for my high school’s boys’ basketball team. I had Nike print a bunch of camp t-shirts and all the kids are going to get two autographed items and a picture. I haven’t been home since August so it should be fun to see a lot of people I grew up with.
Ok, to finish this blog I’m going to include several quick facts about me:
Favorite Meal: Pulled pork bbq, mac and cheese, fried okra, and sweet tea (I keep myself on a strict diet so I’m only able to eat this meal about four or five times a year haha)
Favorite Movie of All-Time : Swingers (Vince Vaughn’s early work. If you haven’t seen this movie, go get it now!)
Favorite Movie of the last year: The Departed (Great acting + great script + great directing= a great movie)
Favorite Superhero growing up: Captain Planet (who doesn’t love that theme song?)
Favorite Suit: All of my Ermenegildo Zegna suits (Italians make the best suits!)
Favorite Sneaker of All-Time: Jordan XI (the ones with the patent leather)
Who I’m listening to right now: The Kooks, Lil’ Wayne, and Jay-Z (Wayne and J are staples in my ipod rotation)
Oh one more thing- I sometimes peruse the message boards on jjredick.net and there are a couple things I want to clear up:
1. I was supposed to be on One Tree Hill but they wanted to shoot it during the season and I couldn’t make it up to Wilmington because of my schedule.
2. I was not in Durham on Duke’s graduation weekend.
3. Although I still write poetry on a regular basis, I am not working on a book.
I guess this was a little bit longer of a blog, thanks for reading it and have a great rest of the week.