"The magazine is now a monthly, and with the decline of the editorial print industry, assignments from it (and magazines in general) are few and far between, so it’s always a privilege to get the call for one these days and a change of pace from commercial work. Late last year, the folks at the magazine contacted me about a story they were working on. It had to do with the lost art of playing the low post in basketball. The sport has become dependent on speed, moving the ball around the perimeter, and three-point shooting. Getting the ball to a big guy in the middle has all but become a thing of the past. Or has it? It turns out one of its finest practitioners, former Houston Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon, was still teaching players about it on an individual level on his ranch outside of Houston, where he’s converted a barn into a full-sized basketball court; players come from far and wide to seek his counsel. A writer was being dispatched to witness a coaching session; would I be interested in documenting it and having Olajuwon sit for a portrait session afterward?
 

It was great to work with a legend, and it brought things full circle for me, career-wise. In 1995, I worked the first of many NBA Finals for Sports Illustrated, dangling out over the railings of the catwalks high above the court at the old Summit in Houston to hang studio strobes, and running the triggering system for the 32 remote cameras that SI’s three photographers used to cover the finals. The Rockets defeated the Orlando Magic that year. The series MVP? You guessed it. Hakeem Olajuwon."