After Labor Day, as always, NBA training camps are dribbling into view

We've also got more travel tales to share while we manage the wait for camps to begin

The day after Labor Day, as we like to say around here, is a bit of a holiday unto itself in the modern NBA.

It's the day that players — not all but some ... especially those on the younger side — begin to return to team practice facilities to start getting ready for the official tipoff of training camps at month's end.

Established veterans tend to trickle in at their own pace, but Labor Day generally signals that the NBA summer is over (or at least ending) and that work will be starting anew soon. Monday night's newsy tweets about veteran sharpshooter Dāvis Bertāns auditioning for Golden State in hopes of landing a training camp invite from the Warriors add up to a handy illustration of the increased activity that will start to percolate now at team facilities leaguewide:

There is still plenty, however, that we haven't shared yet from our recent European excursion (Romania, Slovenia and England). This Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza, then, has been turned into one more Travelogue before it's time to start getting super serious again.

More NBA shopping abroad

Monday's edition of This Week In Basketball featured a shop dedicated to NBA and basketball gear in Bucharest. Here is an array of NBA jerseys, as a follow-up, that I found on offer later in the trip at a Lids in South London (click on each pic to see them in full):

My kind of hotel nostalgia

NBA writers have been obsessed with staying in Marriott hotels since the early 1990s and for years routinely wound up in properties that featured a Champions sports bar.

It has been a while since I've come across a Champions on a Stateside trip but the JW Marriott in Bucharest features the most ornate Champions that I've ever seen ... with a dedicated stairwell and everything.

Check out these pics:

Amusing sidebar: The hotel bar at the Slovenia hotel that housed the participants in the Goran Dragić Retirement Game — not a Marriott property — was called Winners. Many, many good conversations with NBA luminaries took place in that bar.

Here is a picture of Winners' entrance and an advertisement featuring the same fish dish that will be recorded as the first meal I had on Slovenian soil:

Surprises in Serbia

I only passed through Belgrade's main airport on the trip from Bucharest to Ljubljana because there was no direct flight between those cities ... but two memories will stick with me from the brief stopover:

1.  On the flight from Bucharest to Belgrade, I was actually asked by a flight attendant if I wanted a newspaper. So giddy to get that question, I asked for every one they had despite my inability to read Serbian.

2.  I stumbled upon exactly two NBA items at a video game store called ComputerLand in the Nikola Tesla Airport. The pics:

Oasis is back!

I'm not much of a music correspondent but I've certainly been swept up in the hype of Oasis' comeback, which not surprisingly is a 24/7 storyline in England these days.

Brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, of course, also happen to be the most famous Manchester City fans in the world — Noel especially. I started making annual trips to Manchester in the mid-1990s to see the Blues, when the only things world class about the club were its incredibly loyal fans and the Oasis front men.

So I am absolutely entranced by their reunion after a split of nearly 15 years. And flirting with writing more about them ...

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This newsletter is dedicated to …

One of my all-time favorite Clippers: Rob Raichlen.

Devastating news hit the NBA last week when Raichlen, one of the kindest gentlemen in the public relations profession, tragically passed away.

Raichlen was a longtime communications officer for the Clippers during the very difficult pre-Steve Ballmer days until he left the league after nearly 20 years with the long-suffering franchise to try to find a job that afforded him more time with his family.

Robey, as he was known to those around the team when he started out, began working full-time with the Clippers beginning with the 1994-95 season ... mere months after I had started as the team's beat writer for The Los Angeles Daily News. The Clippers got off to an 0-16 start during Raichlen's (and my) first full season, but the constant losing never affected his tremendous professionalism or helpful demeanor when working with reporters who weren't always a pleasure to deal with.

He was so young — just 52 — and working at Loyola Marymount. I can't imagine what his wife Amy, their sons Jake and Cody and the family at large are going through right now. All I can do is join the chorus expressing heartfelt condolences and reiterate what so many friends and colleagues and fans of Robey have told the Raichlens on Facebook: Dad was respected, admired and very much loved throughout the NBA.

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Numbers Game

🏀 64

The Hall of Famer Al Attles died last month at age 87. His 64-year association with the Warriors included 11 seasons as a player, 13-plus seasons as head coach and a stint as general manager. My fellow Substacker

Mark Whicker

wrote a wonderful tribute to Attles here:

Al Attles wasn't just an upper-case Warrior

🏀 35

On Aug. 26, Clippers guard James Harden turned 35.

🏀 42

The broken foot sustained recently by Memphis' GG Jackson, when such have injuries have happened in-season, have sidelined players for an average of 42 games according to data maintained by In Street Clothes' Jeff Stotts.

🏀 26

Trivia Question: Twenty-six teams have made at least one trade this off-season. Can you name the four that haven't?

🏀 2003

After holding a major broadcasting role with the Spurs since 2003, play-by-play announcer Bill Land recently announced his retirement. Land kept working last season even after announcing that he had been stricken with a rare blood cancer (multiple myeloma)

🏀 1983

Something Bill and I inevitably talk about almost every time I see him: He was also a play-by-play announcer for the Tulsa Roughnecks, who improbably won a North American Soccer League championship in 1983 in the original NASL's second-to-last season.

🏀 1975

History lesson: The Roughnecks began as the San Antonio Thunder in 1975 and also spent a season in Hawaii before winning what is still regularly billed as the only championship won by a major league pro sports franchise based in Oklahoma.

🏀 27.3

Quite a stat from Hoops Tonight podcaster Jason Timpf: Boston's Jayson Tatum shot 49 for 179 (27.3%) on ISO jumpers during the playoffs.

🏀 16

Also from Timpf in the tweet that's embedded in this sentence: Tatum shot less than 50% from the field in 16 of the Celtics' 19 playoff games.

🏀 4

Trivia Answer: The Celtics, Bucks, Cavaliers and Lakers are the only four teams that have not consummated a trade this offseason (per Hoops Rumors research).

🏀 7

The Knicks, by contrast, have made a league-high seven separate trades ... headlined, of course, by their blockbuster acquisition of Mikal Bridges from Brooklyn shortly before the June 26 draft.

🏀 3,200

Want to read about the more than 3,200 triple-doubles in NBA history? I certainly do and my fellow Substacker

Justin Kubatko

has predictably done the research to deliver a piece on exactly that:

Triple-Double Toil and Trouble

🏀 29,395

Set a new personal steps record on my first (and only) full day in Romania. (Please don't tell me, as my sons are prone to announce, that step counters on phones are wildly inaccurate. Let me believe I almost walked 30,000 steps in a single day.)