The phone – yes, an actual house phone – rang on a Saturday morning in 1998 and it was a call you could never expect as a beat reporter covering an NBA team.
It was David Stern, phoning out of the blue. We had become business-friendly through the years, particularly in the seasons when the Rockets won their NBA titles in 1994 and ’95.
But getting a call from one of the most powerful men in sports tends to throw you for a moment when you aren’t expecting it.
It turned out that Stern was calling to brief me on the Rockets’ incoming president, George Postolos, who was on Stern’s staff at the NBA office.