Before I come to terms with last night's acquisitions, I thought I'd offer a little transparency and explain why I've been sort of M.I.A. lately. The last 48 hours saw P&T doing big boy things like never before. Wednesday was Steve Nash's soccer event, which I got to cover for Ball Don't Lie. That meant putting on pants for the first time since April, facing the light of day, and hauling ass to the Lower East Side in the rain. It was cool. My photography skills notwithstanding, I was relatively pleased with my little recap (Note that Skeets only used one of my pictures. That was probably in his best interest. The others were mostly of Grant Hill's calves as seen from 40 feet away through a chain link fence). Upon returning from the Nash thing late Wednesday night, I was greeted with some startling news. Not only would I be credentialed for the draft (something that had been sort of up in the air until that point), but I'd be contributing a blog post or two to NBA.com. Oh. Like you guys mentioned, my greatest contributions to the sportswriting world are posting pictures of obscure rodents and relishing the pottymouth translation of Danilo Gallinari's nickname. Nonetheless, I was draft-bound.

I spent yesterday afternoon circling the Garden several dozen times. I was hoping to run into a P&T user, but realized that 1. You guys probably wouldn't recognize me, especially in what turned out to be a flock of Knick-loving jews. 2. I hardly had internet access and don't get Twitter updates on my phone. Anyway, that failure aside, I stuck my voice recorder in the face of many a Knick fan, got turned away by most, but managed to get a few straight answers from some kindred souls. It ended with this.

As for the draft itself, getting to snoop around for my first-ever visit was excellent. I spent most of my time watching Craig Sager demolishing bags of chips, but I did get to see the prospects take pictures, watch families file into the green room, and get a general behind-the-scenes look at the evening. I'm still not sure how much access I had to the players, but I doubt they would've appreciated my asking them P&T-style questions like "WHAT'S UR FAVORITE POKEMON LOL (vomit)" on the most important day of their li'l lives anyway. That's what training camp is for.

I wish I had better internet access throughout the evening so I could've participated in our epic draft thread, live-blogged the event for real, and maybe even broken the Brandon Jennings story (I noticed that he wasn't there during photos, but didn't really put two and two together). I suppose its appropriate that space constraints spat me and my SBN comrade up into the crowd instead of amongst the press. It was great to hang with the Israeli flag guys (I will find video of this, dammit), the guys who started pretty much every "Jeff-Van Gun-dy!" chant, and some real NBA fans, as well.

All told, it was a great occasion, and a worthwhile opportunity for me to attempt to balance being a slobbering, bloodthirsty Knick fan and a legitimate human being. If I earn the same access next year, I'll have the knowledge and wherewithal to make it a more accessible evening for you guys, and I'll hopefully join in the damn thread. Thanks to Tyler and Jim, the NBA.com guys, and all of you for making it an excellent night.