Professional athletes have a lot to think about when it comes to traveling around the country for games, and even playing them in their own stadiums and arenas. During a recent B.S. Report podcast with Grantland’s Bill Simmons, Jalen Rose talked about some of the distractions that go along with playing on the road and at home.
While Rose did stress that the comfort level is much higher for a player at home, he said there are “miscellaneous” things NBA players have to deal with. One of them is making sure your wife and girlfriend are not introduced to one another.
“These guys are professional athletes,” Rose explained. “They understand how many tickets they’re gonna have. They understand who they want to have at the game. They understand their wife may be sitting in this section so you’ve got to get tickets for your girlfriend on the opposite side of the arena. These are things that are standard, man.”
Naturally, Simmons wasn’t going to let that go and simply move onto the next subject. When pressed further, Rose was happy to provide details.
“Normally the family section tickets are behind the bench,” he said. “Therefore, the miscellaneous section has to be on the total opposite side.”
And if Rose could give one piece of advice to young players regarding their wives and girlfriends being at the same game, it would be to not get too greedy.
“Just because you leave — whether it’s girlfriends or jump-offs or roadkill — tickets, you can’t leave them postgame passes,” Rose stressed. “That’s one of the mistakes that young players end up making.”
If you thought Rose was joking when he made the initial comment about separating wives and girlfriends, you quickly realized that this is a genuine part of life for some NBA players. Because of his enlightening appearance on the B.S. Report, there are likely more paranoid NBA wives today than there were a few weeks ago.
