A long way from home

Let me tell you something that probably you already know. It is a long, long way from Salt Lake City to Springfield, Mass., home of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. I left my house at 5 a.m. on Thursday for my seven o'clock flight. I flew to Detroit, where I had an hour-long layover and before continuing on to Hartford, Conn. I must tell you, however, that the folks at Northwest Airlines gave me a first-class upgrade for the last leg of the trip without me even requesting it and that made the two-hour flight seem shorter. Anyway, from the Hartford airport, it's a 30-minute drive to Springfield. I arrived at my hotel at 5:30 p.m. local time. Fortunately for me, there is nothing to cover until Friday morning at 10 a.m., when the Class of 2009 -- Michael Jordan, David Robinson, Vivian Stringer, John Stockton and Jerry Sloan -- is made available to the media for the first time. As my colleague Ross Siler noted earlier, the official induction ceremony begins at 4:30...