A few weeks ago, my main man Sekou Smith, the Hawks beat writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, called my cell phone early on a Sunday morning. I usually turn my cell phone off at night, but I’d been up late the night before and had set my cell alarm for around 11:00 a.m. — not around 9:00 a.m. Still, I saw it was Sekou and I answered, because Sekou’s always fun to talk to, and because he always does all the talking anyway.
About ten minutes later, after I’d managed to wake up and turn on the coffee, we started talking about the Hawks, and Sekou mentioned that he was going to be traveling to this weekend’s Hall Of Fame induction ceremony with Dominique Wilkins and his family. I told him that would probably make for a good story: seeing people react to Nique on the streets, going through airports, etc. Sekou stopped me right there — there would be no airports involved. Nique, his wife, his kids and his mother were driving from Atlanta to Boston in an RV. And Sekou was going along for the ride.
The story it generates should be awesome, but even more fun is that for the last two weeks I’ve been able to send emails to Sekou asking him to make sure he knows how to change a tire, reminding him to use diesel fuel, asking him to get “Wilkins Family Vacation” shirts printed up.
And now they’re on the road, with more updates to come.
(I just left Sekou a message on his cell reminding him to make sure he sets out flares along the highway if he has to change a tire, and also to, you know, just be careful at any truck stops.)
