4 Ways to Survive the NBA Offseason

It's time to correct a falsity permeating the business I'm in: there is no offseason when you cover the NBA. Period. Now having finished covering my fourth season writing about the NBA - and more specifically the Portland Trail Blazers - the furthest notion from my mind is taking the summer off. After attending nearly 41 home games, roughly 1,968 minutes of basketball, writing around 200 stories over the last sixth months, using a couple packs of AAA batteries and inhaling pregame meal after pregame meal, you'd think I'd be due for a break.

No such luck.

There's a two good months of the Playoffs to consume, Pre-Draft Camp in Orlando, individual team workouts, the NBA Draft, free agency, summer league, more free agency and finally preseason previews to knock out. And then you have to write endlessly about those aspects which means early and late nights on deadline. But besides that, there's nothing going on for me this offseason.

Beat writers don't have that kind of work load to handle. This much I know. How do I know? Because those guys (the chosen ones who cover the league for a newspaper) assumed I'd be taking the summer off as they sat around discussing where to spend their vacation time. I finally had to set them straight on my offseason agenda.

I didn't even mention the other side of the story to them: I'm a S.A.H.D.

That's an acronym for "Stay At Home Dad" for those not in the know.

Being a S.A.H.D. is an inherent responsibility with the joyful reward of being at home with my daughter daily and seeing life through her eyes. Man, God is good.

And now at 16 months and enamored with anything electronic and buttons, she's even taking in the Playoffs herself. It's crazy. She'll walk over, grab the remote and turn the television on. I must confess: I help her scroll through TiVo and offer suggestions on the finer points between Spurs vs. Suns or a couple innings of the Seattle Mariners. But the watching and cheering part is all her (my wife Emily is going to kill me ).

Now if I can just get Piper to knock out 700 words on the Blazers solving their salary cap issues and how they should be in the market for a point guard this summer.

So where am I going with all of this?

Back to work apparently planning and juggling my offseason agenda in between episodes of Sesame Street, trying to convince Piper "Kid's World" at the gym really is fun (she's not buying it) and making mid-day Starbucks runs (for Emily, did I mention she works from home too? And that we live in a minuscule two bedroom apartment? Talk about too close for comfort).

But like many facets in life, a work-life balance comes down to time management.

I'm not talking about Hugh Grant as Will Lightman in the opening scenes of About A Boy, explaining his life is broken down into units of time - each unit consisting of 30 minutes. That's bollocks if I've ever heard it.

Obviously Grant's character was neither a S.A.H.D. or discussing the finer points of multi-million dollar athletes putting a leather sphere through an iron cylinder while watching the minutes tick closer to the end of nap time.

Then again, the heart of his argument was still about time management.

Brilliant.

So without further ado, here are the top four ways -according to someone who is consumed by the NBA for half the year - to survive the NBA offseason:

1.Turn The Page: Even though my writing schedule hasn't lightened up, I can officially tackle the stack of books that has piled up during the regular season. There's nothing better to improve your writing than reading. And if you're looking for a couple solid reads, look no further:

Paul Shirley's Can I Keep My Jersey: 11 Teams, 5 Countries, and 4 Years in My Life as a Basketball Vagabond is a chuckle filled running diary about Shirley's hardwood excursions from the NBA to the CBA and everywhere in between.

Next up is Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob by famed NBA referee Bob Delaney. It chronicle Delaney's thrilling prior life as a New Jersey state trooper and details how he goes inside the complex working of organized crime.

Jack McCallum's Seven Seconds or Less: My Season on the Bench with the Runnin' and Gunnin' Phoenix Suns is one of those books you'll cruise through on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I can recall McCallum grabbing material for this book at what was then Continental Airlines Arena in New Jersey while I was covering the Nets the 2005-06 season as he was chronicling the Suns season, and it was interesting to see how it all came together. Seven Second or Less, is one the one book every writer wishes they had written.

2. Watch And Learn: Once you finish a quick read, grab a hoops based DVD and enjoy. First showing? Red Hot and Rollin': A Retrospection of the Portland Trail Blazers' 1976-77 NBA Championship Season w/DVD, by Matt Love. It's the best of both worlds - an amazing book with a fascinating documentary - Fast Break by Don Zavin on the Blazers and Blazermania in Rip City. It's worth it just to see Bill Walton on a bike peddling the back roads of the Oregon Coast.

Other recommended basketball movies/DVD's: Hoosiers (of course), Glory Road, Pistol: The Birth of a Legend, Hoop Dreams, White Men Can't Jump, Finding Forrester,Whatever Happened to Micheal Ray?

3. On The Road Again: Now is the perfect time to get away from the rigors of work, particularly for a guys weekend. Every year my father-in-law takes his two sons (now both in their late teens) on a Major League Baseball park tour. It's what ever son dreams of with their Dad (or Dad-in-law), and vice versa. And who has received the honorary invite for the second time? This summer's baseball park tour starts with the Kansas City Royals, before heading to see the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros. A five day road trip, three baseball games, hotdogs, beers and hanging with the family? Priceless. It's time to drop the pen, back away from the computer and step away to recharge yourself.

4. We Are Family: If you cover the NBA for a paper, magazine, website or are even directly involved in a respective organization yourself, chances are your family gets the short end of the stick during the season. You're gone. They're at home. You're working. They're playing. But now is your time to recoup lost time with your wife/husband, daughter(s)/son(s) and re-invest in some sweet family time.

Nothing speaks love to your family more than uninterrupted family time. And that can come in many ways, regardless if that means heading to church and out to nice long brunch, a morning outing to the zoo, and afternoon excursion to the beach or even just lounging and doing some light reading with the little one.

Salvage those moments.

I plan to.

Let me take it a step further, with the intent of giving myself a pep-talk over the next six months thanks to the folks at MindTools.com and their "Time Management" section.

The piece, "teaches you personal time management skills" and "practical techniques that have helped the leading people in business, sport and public service reach the pinnacles of their careers."

There is no mention of S.A.H.D., but I'm all over the "leading people" in "sports" part.

In the end - speaking from personal experience and knowing my own writing habits and parenting ethics - managing my time over this summer will come one day at time with two goals of success in mind:

Make it through the offseason and fun along the way.