Heating it up in Dallas

DALLAS — The heat is on in this Texas city where the temperature is soaring to typical Manila summer highs. And it’s uncanny that the visiting team the host Mavericks are trying to dispose of in bidding for the National Basketball Association (NBA) championship is the Miami Heat.

The mercury read a low of 74 and a high of 99 degrees Fahrenheit the other day, making three weary Filipino travelers feel at home. We couldn’t be more used to this weather. Solar Sports vice president for production Erick Tam, broadcaster Vitto Lazatin and I walked around in shorts and tees to get comfortable under the sun, walking half a mile from our hotel to the nearest convenient store—in a gasoline station—for phone cards.

Ours is one of two hotels where the NBA has billeted hundreds of media "hounds" from different parts of the world to cover the best-of-7 title playoffs. There are foreign commentary crews from Italy, Russia, England, China, Japan, Germany, France, Spain, Greece, Holland, Poland and the Philippines in town to chronicle the events—in 12 languages—leading to the crowning of a new champion.

We’re staying at the 518-room, 30-storey Renaissance Hotel on the Stemmons Freeway, only 15 miles from the international airport. Its elliptical pink granite tower stands as a landmark against the Dallas skyline. The hotel’s centerpiece is its world-renowned chandelier with over 7,500 individual crystals spiraling through three storeys.

The closest place to go for eating outside the hotel is a Denny’s which is about a 15-minute brisk walk away. The nearest mall, North Park, is pricey and is a $30 taxi ride from our hotel.

The NBA has set up workrooms on the fourth floor where three desk computers are available for free use with internet access. The workrooms are stacked daily with printouts of statistics, quotes from coaches and players in league-organized interviews and other information related to the Finals.

Erick, Vitto and I were given all-access passes which allow us to enter even the players’ locker rooms.

Our broadcast booth is high up in the press box level of the American Airlines Center which has a seating capacity of 19,200. The level is not accessible to the general public and is exclusive for media. A shuttle bus takes the accredited hotel guests to the arena in 30-minute intervals three hours before a game. The bus ride is about 20 minutes.

Our booth has two TV monitors, one showing the game as beamed to the Philippines live via satellite and the other displaying player and team stats updated almost within a split second as they are produced on the court. There are three headsets hooked to a console with settings to listen to both local and international feeds. The press box level is in the Center’s nosebleed section but its exclusivity makes life easier for broadcasters and reporters who aren’t bothered by screaming fans.

The Mavs’ home was inaugurated in 2001 and is on the northwest shoulder of downtown, in the middle of a 70-acre spread earmarked for entertainment, retail, residential and office space. The Center comprises five concourses and 142 suites. It is considered the most technologically advanced sports and entertainment venue in the US. Under the building is a superhighway of fiberoptic cable that reflects the high-tech thinking of Mavericks owner Mark Cuban whose multi-media internet network called broadcast.com was bought by Yahoo for $5.7 Billion in 1999.

Dallas’ professional sports teams include football’s Cowboys and hockey’s Stars. The Mavericks joined the NBA as an expansion franchise in 1980 under coach Dick Motta. Cuban bought the team from one-time presidential aspirant Ross Perot for $280 Million during the 1999-2000 when the Mavs were the league’s favorite whipping boys with a lowly 9-23 record.

Cuban, 47, offered Perot a deal he couldn’t refuse. The price tag was 125 percent over what Perot invested in buying the team from Don Carter in 1996.

One of the sights to see in Dallas is the downtown Sixth Floor Museum at the corner of Elm and Houston. It’s open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Dealey Plaza floor is where Lee Harvey Oswald was perched to shoot John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. The museum displays nearly 400 photos, films and artifacts detailing a black hole of facts, rumors and half-truths concerning the infamous assassination.

The museum is in the red-brick Dallas County Administration Building, formerly the Texas School Book Depository. Visitors are equipped with a Walkman-like apparatus that narrates the numerous videos and photo displays.

There are other tourist attractions like the Dallas World Aquarium, the 66-acre Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Dallas Zoo with more than 1,500 mammals, reptiles and birds.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to see any of those places. Following the Finals is a full-time job and it’s a consuming passion.