Fox Sports Southwest’s Mavericks Day Experience

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : http://www.fwweekly.com/2016/09/28/sports-rush-fox-sports-goes-to-mavs-media-day/

photo courtesy Hutton Harris

The entire Dallas Mavericks roster hit the court in full uniform for the first time Monday. I’m here to provide you some exclusive insight into how their season will go based on what I saw. When you’re watching games deep into April and beyond next year, you’ll think about what you learned in this blog post.

Now, unfortunately, today’s insight doesn’t involve how well the players shoot, dribble, pass, foul, dunk, travel, flop, move the ball, defend the three, or draw illegal defense calls. It has to do with how they did on their Fox Sports Southwest liner reading.

The work they performed Monday will indeed affect Mavs fans all season. Having signed a multi-year deal with the franchise to carry most of the team’s games, the network – unlike a player – can’t get traded or placed on the inactive list. So count on seeing the recordings they made of the Mavericks’ smiling, surprised, or dancing faces on the air all season long.


Yes, I said dancing. Fox Sports Southwest producer Stephen Hill got several of them to at least attempt a dance move or two. Their female counterparts at the Wings seem to always be moving in rhythm. Hill told Dirk Nowitzki of his teammates, “They all said they don’t dance.” The Big German could only shrug. If Hill manages to put a promo together, you can judge their shimmying acumen for yourself.


The day consisted of each member of the roster visiting various stations around the American Airlines Center to get photographed or interviewed. For the most part, the players at the Fox emplacement in the Jack Daniels Old No. 7 Club needed to say lines to camera for various creative video projects.

My crew’s gig involved setting up the green screen, lights, and video cameras. The Barea-to-Mejri height variance of an NBA team makes for certain challenges in camera placement. Director of Photography Dave French came up with the idea of using a tall speaker stand and a robotic camera control so that he could focus and pan at normal-person height while the Panasonic cam remained level with the player’s face.


We started with the team broadcasters. Jeff “Skin” Wade showed up with a change of clothes, avowing that he could not get out of his suit fast enough. Skin was also relieved to discover said suit did not contain any green that might make him green-screen unfriendly.

Wade, Mark Followill, and Derek Harper cruised through their liners pretty quickly, because they’re, you know, professional broadcasters.

Most of the uniformed personnel, beginning with Justin Anderson and concluding with Qunicy Acy, handled their scripts pretty well, too. I’ve had colleagues from overseas tell me they believe American athletes are better on camera than those from other countries, perhaps because more of them have had at least some post-secondary education or because they just get more chances. In this case, the players needed to inform viewers about important facts like that FSSW is the TV home of Mavericks basketball, that MFFL (Mavs Fan For Life) parties are the best, and something about the network offering viewers a free Pomeranian puppy if they watch a certain number of games (okay, I might have made the last one up).


Anderson was especially animated and Andrew Bogut’s Australian enunciation added a unique element. Devin Harris, a veteran, didn’t even have to wait for Hill to finish giving him his “Only on Fox Sports Southwest” line – he’d done these media days before. Rookie A.J. Hammons, on the other hand, had a great smile but required a couple more takes. He’ll be fine once he’s got a few more of these under his belt.

The best chance for self-expression came as the group did the promos for streaming Mavs games via the Fox Sports Go app. The players needed to hold a mobile device and pretend to watch a game on it. Harrison Barnes pretended to exhort his teammate to “Make a shot, Dirk!,” while Wesley Matthews added some self-serving play-by-play : “One more pass – you don’t see Wesley open in the corner right now?!”

By the way, Dwight Powell delivered an emphatic “Get Fox Sports Go.” line to camera. If you don’t have the app, you WILL immediately download it after the big power forward instructs you to do so.
The most ambitious shot of the day consisted of French perched on a chair with a camera on a gimbal to get what will hopefully be a cool angle on Nowitzki’s signature fadeaway. Actually, we already consider the move a success since the DP didn’t fall off the chair.

So now you know the scoop on the 2016-17 Dallas Mavs. The advanced stat geeks have yet to weigh in on whether a successful media day can build momentum for a big season. But if the Mavericks go on a deep run, we’ll happily take the credit – and watch these promos extend their airdates for a few more weeks.

Disclosure : As you might have guessed, Fox Sports Southwest paid me to help with their production on Mavs Media Day


Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.


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41-Love : Dirk Nowitzki's Tennis Event

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : http://www.fwweekly.com/2016/09/21/sports-rush-41-love/

Charity sporting events seem to usually possess an interesting mix of competitive energies and laid-back attitudes. One always wants to win, and to play well, but the outcome usually falls lower on the priority list than maintaining a chill vibe.

Sunday’s Dirk Nowitzki Pro Celebrity Tennis Classic offered donors a chance to play doubles alongside pedigreed names from the worlds of sport and entertainment. The mix felt just about right. The players played hard, everyone laughed a lot, and the group left the SMU Tennis Center as friends.

Nowitzki already counted many in the draw as buddies, but he hadn’t met quite all of them in person before the event. His Mavericks teammates Harrison Barnes and J.J. Barea played (and Dwight Powell, Rick Carlisle, Donnie Nelson, and Michael Finley made non-playing appearances). Actors Ben Stiller and Boris Kodjoe (the former a newcomer to the game and the latter a former college player) represented the entertainment sphere. The tennis world filled several slots, including the top-ranked American man, John Isner, current tour players Benjamin Becker and Mitchell Krueger, and the last American to win a singles title in a Grand Slam tournament, Andy Roddick.

Stiller noted at the pre-match press conference that the “pro celebrity” event seemed heavily weighted toward world-class athletes and away from guys like him who had been in lots movies but only took up the game at age 45. A handicap system aimed to address the potential imbalances, and the team with a lower handicap could take a point or two for themselves any time before match point in the 10-point tie-breakers that made up the round-robin pools. Implementing that strategy usually consisted of taking away a pro’s service point, because who wants to return an Isner or Roddick serve if you don’t have to?

By the way, if I played against Isner in an event like this, I would ask him to rip a serve at me full speed. I would want to know what it felt like to try to return it (or maybe even just see it).
Nowitzki jokingly called obviously “in” shots “out,” but perhaps the best competitive, yet fun, element came via the non-serious trash talk that cropped up every so often. Barea began it in the pre-event media session when declared that he likes to come to his German teammate’s home in the offseason and “whoop his butt” on the tennis court. In the championship match, Kodjoe and Roddick engaged in some spirited banter. Roddick told his partner not to take it easy on Kodjoe because he was ugly (I’ve been informed by certain female experts in such things that the [married] thespian is anything but unattractive). Kodjoe remarked that Roddick’s partner, Tonya McKinney, might have difficulty seeing around the former ATP star’s allegedly sizable posterior when he crouched as she served. And when Kodjoe and his partner, Alberto Lombardi, took their handicap point, Roddick incited the crowd to boo because they would now be receiving “less tennis” for the price of their donation.

Roddick’s team came out on top anyway and he will no doubt display the plate he received next to his 2003 U.S. Open trophy. The event wasn’t about winning, of course. It was about the charitable purpose (raising money for the foundation Dirk and his wife Jessica administer) and about having a really unique and fun experience. Even for the pro tennis players, it wasn’t a typical hit-and-giggle, as they got to mingle with NBA stars and other famous faces.

The biggest giggler was Dirk Nowitzki, who no doubt took great joy in the combination of tennis playing, fundraising, and fellowship. The Mavericks forward seemed perpetually jolly through the previous evening’s pre-party and all the way through the day Sunday when he stopped through the workroom to thank the event staff. Roddick commented that “We’re all huge admirers of Dirk and what he has done for Dallas and what he continues to do for Dallas.” Indeed the big German-now-Texan deserved his weekend full of smiles.

Video
Mitchell Krueger interview – Fort Worth native Mitchell Krueger is a pro tennis player looking to great into the upper echelon of the sport. He got to participate in the Dirk Nowitzki Pro Celebrity Tennis Classic and talks about his experience there and his goals for the rest of 2016. 

Dirk Nowitzki Pro Celebrity Tennis Classic highlights – My company put this together for the event with the help of Ludisian Legion Entertainment.  

The Event Pre-party – This is the only video of the event pre-party, held at Dallas’ Joule Hotel. The elegant affair featured a performance by Ben Harper and appearances by Nowitzki and some of his Mavs colleagues, as well as Ben Stiller. 

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.

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When He's Not Acting In Blockbuster Movies, He Plays Sports

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : http://www.fwweekly.com/2016/09/13/sports-rush-playing-for-the-crowd/

Burton Gilliam has contributed his acting talents to lots of films and TV series, including memorable roles in the likes of Blazing Saddles, Fletch, and Honeymoon in Vegas. The former Golden Gloves boxer also has a great passion, however, for a sport we probably wouldn’t associate with a lot of his rough-around-the-edges on-screen characters. In this video interview, we discuss the sport he enjoys and how he pursues it in a way that benefits charitable causes. 

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

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What A 9-Year Old Wants to Know About The Olympic Experience

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : http://www.fwweekly.com/2016/09/07/sports-rush-winging-it-to-rio/

Dallas Wings guard Erin Phillips left the team for a month earlier this season for a trip to a popular vacation destination. Phillips didn’t take a holiday and she didn’t spend her time sunning on the beach. She went to Rio de Janeiro to play hoops for her native Australia in the Olympic Games.

Sports should inspire kids, and they often look up to pro athletes. Indeed, driving young people to participate in physical activity is ostensibly one of the Games’ most important purposes. So for the interview about her Olympic experience, I sought the input of one of those aspiring athletes – someone who might draw inspiration from how the 5’8” Phillips has succeeded in a sport where she often looks up at taller players. My 9-year old niece Eva (who herself stands a bit over four feet tall), came up with these interview questions (with a little guidance on phrasing from Uncle Rush) and supplied them to me to ask while she was in school.

Eva: Who inspired you to want to be an Olympic athlete?
Erin: I wouldn’t say there was any just one particular person. There are a couple of specific moments in an Olympic event that I thought, “Wow that’s pretty special.” There was one where Cathy Freeman won gold (Freeman won the 400-meter dash in Sydney in 2000). Another strong athlete, Kieren Perkins, who won gold, I think, was in the 1500 (Perkins won two golds and two silvers swimming in three Olympics). Those I remember vividly just, well, how inspiring, that must be really cool to win an Olympic gold medal.

Eva: Did you feel special pressure when playing because it was the Olympics?
Erin: Yeah, there’s always an extra element of pressure, but I wouldn’t say was anything off-putting. It was more inspiring, I guess. I think it was more use in a positive way than a nervous way, but I think getting butterflies before a game is really good. It just obviously means that whatever you’re about to do is pretty important to you.

Eva: How was it different from any other basketball games?
Erin: Just the world’s watching you. That’s about it. It’s the pinnacle of the sport to be in the Olympic Games and being an Olympic athlete, so, like I said, there’s an extra element of just how important it is and just the amount of attention that the Olympics gets itself. So, yeah, it’s definitely different.

Eva: Which adjustments did you make to get better during the tournament?
Erin: When you start off at any tournament, really, you do some warm-up games pre-Olympics and you really want to take that momentum and carry it through to the Olympics, because you can’t just start okay first game, you haven’t played for a while. So we’ve got to make sure that we’ve played, we’re in a rhythm. And then every team that you play, that’s why, again, it’s unique, is every team that you play is different. It’s a different country. It’s a different style of basketball that you’re playing against, from Japan, who is just unbelievably quick and fast, and then you have a team like Turkey, who’s more half court. So you kind of just adjust and evolve with every team that you play against. We make adjustments when we watch film postgame and watch some things that we needed to be better the next game and we will go on and generally practice and get ready for the next.

Eva: Did your family stay with you the whole way through (meaning, did any of them physically go with you, or if not, how did they support you)?
Erin: My family stayed at home. We kind of found out pretty late that we were in the team. I generally don’t like it when they come to foreign countries, because it’s like I feel like I worry about them a little bit, so I wasn’t too fussed. Of course, I’d love them to have been there, but at the same time I felt like they were in a way, because they were at home every game now watching live. I was getting phone calls and texts from them of support and so they would take pictures and videos of my nieces and nephews wishing me good luck writing cards and things like that. It was cool.

Eva: Did you keep up with other sports, and if so, which ones?
Erin: We tried to. We couldn’t get out to many sports because of our crazy schedule, but I followed the swimming pretty closely, the men’s basketball – obviously, we have a close attachment with them. I liked the cycling, the soccer, well, the football, as they call it. Anything that I could try to get to and watch and support, I tried to do it and it was a good way of taking the focus off your own kind of agenda.

Eva: What team activities did you do in Brazil other than just playing?
Erin: Really nothing. It’s really like you live in a bubble for basically two weeks and you’re just completely focused on what you’re there for. I’d say the only thing that we really did was Australia does a really good job of having an outside entertaining area away from the village that families can meet the athletes in a neutral spot, because, obviously, they’re not allowed in the village. It was called The Edge, so we got out to The Edge a couple of times and they had, like, a virtual golfing range. They had table tennis. They had a barista coffee machine, which was a very popular thing. So we got to spend a little bit of time there, but really it was all business. 

Eva: Did you try any new foods, and if so which ones? And if not, why not?
Erin : Unfortunately, I’m actually pretty close to being a vegan, so my diet is – it was extremely difficult at times over there. I spent a lot of time eating plain rice and a lot of vegetables and fruit, but actually the one thing I did try was star fruit. It wasn’t really great, but I tried it because it’s obviously native to Brazil. They have a good amount, so I was, like, okay, I’ll give this a try and maybe I got the wrong one. So I’m not going to say don’t eat star fruit, just don’t let me choose it for you.

For the record, Eva is generally on board with trying new foods and might well be inclined to take bite of carambola, aka star fruit, if presented the opportunity. The jovial Phillips told me she has seven nieces and nephews of her own.

Phillips already owns a silver medal from 2008 in Beijing. Her team fell just short of the medal round in 2016, losing to eventual runner-up Serbia in the quarterfinals. She’ll play in the Wings’ final home game of the season this Sunday afternoon at UTA’s College Park Center. Eva will continue her after-school tennis program.


Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.


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From Struggle, Softball Success

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : http://www.fwweekly.com/2016/08/31/sports-rush-from-struggle-softball-success/

When you’re the “all-time winningest” at anything, you have clearly accomplished a lot. A lot of times, you’ve also had to get past all sorts of obstacles. Guyla Smith, the only softball coach West High School in West, Texas has ever had, and the winningest coach in the history of Texas high school softball, knows about getting through the difficult times. Her school and town were rocked by an explosion a little more than three years ago, but she found a way to keep her kids playing softball and this past season, she achieved something remarkable.

In this interview, we find out a bit about what her team did and why they were able to do it.

If you’d prefer to read the interview instead of watching it, here’s a transcript:

Rush: I’m Rush Olson. I’m with Guyla Smith today. Now, Guyla is the head softball coach at West High School in West Texas, or West Comma Texas, as they like to say. What’s really amazing about Guyla is she is the all-time winningest softball coach in Texas high school history. The cool thing that happened this year, though, is West won the state championship. Why was this championship so special?

Guyla: Well, again, we’d been there, the state tournament, the sixth time it took me to to win it in 25 years of hard work and had a great group of kids to get it done.

Rush: What did it mean to you winning your first state championship after having been with the program as long as you have?

Guyla: It just was awesome. Those kids all the whole time were wanting to win it. said that, you know, from the first practice they wanted to win state. That was their goal, you know. I’ve tried to tone it down where “Let’s get district, let’s go one game at a time after that,” and then, hey, winning it was awesome. But they had that little list – win state every time they broke it out it was really, really neat at practice every time. 

Rush: Now all of Guyla’s wins have come at West High School, because she started the program here. What is it about the West kids that enabled them to come through the tragedy that happened 2013 with the fertilizer explosion and get to the point where they’re having so much success in athletics?

Guyla: They’re just resilient. They, you know, we’ve had success before that and we just keep it going. Just keep that routine going. After the explosion, we wanted to keep the routine, and we did the best we could, and then we continue that and continue to do small things that make big things happen. That’s how it happened
this year.

Rush: So what then is your level of enthusiasm coming into this year? How are you going to follow this up?

Guyla: Well, we’re excited. You know, those kids have already talked about, “Hey, we’re going to again. We’re going to be like the boys.” You know, there’s a little competition now. The boys did it, so the girls going to do it. So we’re going to try. We’re going to have our little ring ceremony here September first and then we’re going to have a parade, a Westfest parade. We won the thing and then we’re going to that’s, you know, old news. We’re going to start new news and begin for the next year and start our weight lifting and running and getting after it.

Rush: And Guyla was referring to the baseball team who won back-to-back state titles as well. Her team will go and try to duplicate that feat this year. Guyla, thank you for joining us.

Guyla: Thank you.

Rush: With Guyla Smith, I’m Rush Olson for the Fort Worth Weekly.



Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.


RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

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