Jack Tame: Going nuts for asking the obvious

Opinion

It's not every week you go viral for questioning somebody's testicles, but at the very least I have a new quote to headline my CV. "There are those who claim the media doesn't serve the public interest, but Tame is proof some journalists still seek out information people truly care to hear."

My thanks to the Guardian. No biggy, though. My grandparents and journalism tutors will be delighted and, with a bit of luck, no one will bother examining the context.

We were waiting for the OKC Thunder to invite media into their locker room.

It's an odd phenomenon where reporters and cameramen pile into teams' post-match changing areas just as players emerge from the showers in various states of undress.

But the Thunder players were buzzing. We could hear whooping from the showers and having just gone 2-1 up in the NBA Western Conference Finals, everyone was keen to speak to the Rotorua kid.

Steven Adams took a blow halfway through the second quarter. You must have seen it by now, a blatant kick, purposeful or otherwise, square below-the-belt. The American sports media were already debating whether Adams' opponent deserved to be suspended for a game, but when it came time for Adams' locker room media scrum, no one confronted the issue straight-on.

I hadn't given much thought on how to phrase the question. I didn't think it was too sensitive, or by Kiwi standards, too crude.

Oklahoma is a religiously conservative place and tipoff doesn't happen in Chesapeake Arena until a church leader comes out and leads a stadium-wide prayer, but it hadn't struck me that directly questioning a player would cause such a flutter. I had no idea we'd end up on CBS or Fox, or that a Vine loop of our interview would be replayed however many hundred thousand times.

When the other media moved out of the locker room, Adams and I had a few minutes alone and I opened with the obvious.

"How are your nuts?"

Jack Tame is on Newstalk ZB, Saturdays, 9am-noon.