CHICAGO - Armel has one of the more lucrative part-time jobs at the United Center. He valet parks the expensive rides of Chicago Bulls players and VIPs during the course of an NBA season.
He doesn't get much for an hourly wage but his tips are overly generous. On a good day he takes home up to $800. Derrick Rose, who is known to hand out a couple of $50 bills to doormen at the Trump Tower where he has a condo unit, once gave Armel $400 for fetching his car.
Armel is just one of the many people I got the know in the 18 years that I've been covering Bulls home games as an NBA credentialed writer.
There's also Sharon and her crew at the media entrance on Gate 3 1/2 as well as the men and women who tend the media dining room and distribute the stat sheets at the end of each quarter of play.
With the NBA suspending its operations to help abate the spread of the deadly cornoravirus. these are the people that get hurt the most. Not the millionaire athletes.
Should the stoppage linger and team owners elect to apply a clause in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that allows them to dock players salaries, the damage would only be 1/92.5 of their game checks, which is nothing when you are Steph Curry and making $490,875 a game.
But for arena workers, who operate on a no-game, no-pay arrangement, the loss is immense and the impact is devastating.
Which is why its heartwarming to see how the NBA community that these workers serve are now coming to their aid.
Dallas Mavericks team owner Mark Cuban was the first to stand up and say he will set up a fund that would help American Airlines Center employees get through the rough times. Other facilities and players, most notably Kevin Love, soon followed.
While waiting to interview Rip Hamilton at the inner bowels of the Fiserv Forum in downtown Milwaukee last May, I made small talk to a security guard who was sitting by the loading dock that contained the satellite of multiple TV stations.
With the series tied at 2-2 and Game 5 about to tip off, I asked him his pick. He didn't really care much. Whoever wins wouldn't change his life, but he was pulling hard for a Game 7.
Why?
He's not in it for the thrills. He is in it for his bank account. A Game 7 guarantees another shift, another game check.
There are 17 games or 21 percent remaining on the Bulls schedule when the games were stopped. It may not be a lot, but it's everything for arena workers whose livelihood depends on those games.
The NBA, according to ESPN, is planning on a mid-June return.
And so we wait.
MY TABLE IS FULL. As of late, I found 402 "Friend" requests on Facebook from complete strangers, most them presumably SPIN.ph readers.
I'm at a point in my life where I have enough friends, so I'm going to summarily delete said requests.
Don't get me wrong, all of you deserve a seat at my table but I just don't have time to commit. And if I accept you just for the sake of "friendship" it wouldn't be fair. It will be a less than symbiotic relationship where you keep messaging me and I keep ignoring you.
But there will always be room in my small circle for the gorgeous Ivana Awali.
The ABS-CBN starlet is a great actress. Understated, elegant. I also like like her outfits, many of which are so skimpy they look like the tailor run out of cloth while making them. And don't get me started on the bikinis.
I don't know if Ivana is a sports fan or a SPIN.ph reader, but she will always be in my fantasy team.
MGM TO SHUT DOWN. MGM Resorts announced early this morning that it will temporarily suspend operations "due to the coronavirus pandemic" that "requires action."
The casinos will close on Monday followed by the hotels on Tuesday.
Among the 13 properties that MGM Resorts own in the Las Vegas Strip include the Mandalay Bay, which will host the highly-anticipated bantamweight title unification bout between John Riel Casimero and Naoya Inuoe.
The brawl is slated on April 20 at the Mandalay Bay Events Enter and while it hasn't been officially called off yet, this closure is a cause for concern.
Stay tuned.
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