MSL to NBA: Class Choice Puts Hersey Grad Woike on Path to Chronicling History
LA Times Lakers' Beat Writer Witnesses LeBron Break NBA Scoring Record; Has Unique Connection to Rookie Max Christie
Dan Woike was getting ready for his freshman year at Hersey in 1995 when a particular class piqued his interest.
“I was a little lazy so I saw a class that said Journal Writing,” Woike said. “I thought, ‘How easy is that. You get a notebook and write down some of your thoughts every day.’”
Woike laughed because it turned out the class was Journalistic Writing with longtime Hersey newspaper advisor Janet Levin. Little could he have known his attempt to pull a fast one, and Levin’s early guidance, would put him on a long road to witnessing and chronicling sports history nearly 30 years later in Los Angeles.
The veteran NBA writer and current Lakers beat man for the Los Angeles Times had a pretty good view of LeBron James breaking the NBA scoring record of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Tuesday night. Here’s how he described it in his Lakers’ newsletter:
LeBron James came to topple history on Tuesday night, and while the Lakers lost the game to the Oklahoma City Thunder, their star absolutely delivered, breaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s career scoring record late in the third quarter with a 14-foot fadeaway jumper.
James passed Abdul-Jabbar with 10.9 seconds left in the third quarter. Following Tuesday’s game, he has 38,390 career points — more than anyone to ever play in the league.
The moment it happened came on a signature move, one James had perfected by watching Michael Jordan become perhaps the best midrange player of all time. James looked as if he was going to drive down the lane from the top of the key, but then took a step back and knocked down a 14-foot fadeaway shot.
But Woike didn’t just show up without doing his share of preparation. He took an excellent look that went beyond the numbers in LeBron’s path to history through the lens of some of the biggest moments of his life and career.
“I’ve been working on that, and what you want to do to make it special, and make it something people want to hold on to has been a really fun process,” Woike said during the Lakers’ road stop in Indianapolis a few days before LeBron broke the record. “Obviously it’s not about you, but it’s great to see it and be around it in a way that very few people do. I’m going to work tonight and watching a basketball game. That’s not lost on me.”
Woike, who played varsity basketball at Hersey and worked for the Daily Herald in the early stages of his career, said he gets along pretty well with LeBron because “he’s got 20 years of practice” in dealing with the media spotlight.
He also has a unique perspective and relationship with a 19-year-old rookie in Rolling Meadows’ Max Christie since they went to high schools in the Mid-Suburban League that are separated by only 5 miles. Like Christie, Woike also went to Michigan State for a year. Unlike Christie, Woike didn’t go pro and instead finished his college education at Eastern Illinois.
They have a lot of connections even though Woike graduated from Hersey before Christie was born. John Camardella was a teammate of Woike’s who coached for Prospect against Christie. Dave Hess, another Woike classmate and teammate, is an assistant at Hersey and he was also on the Stevenson staff when current Knicks standout Jalen Brunson was starring there.
Christie will talk about how good the Hersey girls teams were coached by Woike’s homeroom teacher Mary Fendley. Woike can talk about how he played against Rob Garnes, the Meadows’ career scoring leader before Christie, and had Mike Lipnisky, who led the school to the Elite Eight in 1990, as a camp counselor when he was 12.
“It was funny when I first told him and weird,” Woike said. “It’s pretty incredible and pretty random. Talking to Max, it’s a crazy thing. Guys who coached with Max and coached against Max are guys I played with and against in high school. We talk about Camardella and Brunson and Hess. Those are people I’ve played basketball with since I was 11. It’s kind of funny to have that connection and great to talk about some of that stuff.”
Woike said he joked with Christie about advancing in the state’s 3-point contest as a junior to Meadows and being gutted because he never shot well there with the background. Obviously that wasn’t an issue for Christie en route to breaking the 44-year-old MSL scoring record of Buffalo Grove’s Brian Allsmiller.
Woike admitted he had some “hometown bias” about a player from the MSL East being a first-round NBA pick. But he’s been impressed watching Christie’s rise from high school to the pros in two seasons, where he is averaging 3.6 points, 2.1 rebounds and 14.5 minutes in 34 games while shooting 42.6 percent from 3-point range.
“They are funny stories and weird things for an NBA locker room, but it levels the playing field to have that connection,” Woike said. “He’s playing really well and he’s going to be an important player either with the Lakers or with someone else in the league. He’s going to have a career.”
And Woike said “it’s wild to see some of the people involved” that he’ll cross paths with during his NBA travels. Chris Jacobs, who played for Hersey’s 1995 Elite Eight team, is in charge of basketball programs for the Atlanta Hawks and his younger brother Erick was one of Woike’s best friends. Retired Hersey administrator and coach John Novak’s son Andrew, who played at Prospect, is the manager of scouting for the Timberwolves.
Woike joked that he did get some grief for regularly gravitating to a Chicago guy like ex-Simeon star Talen Horton-Tucker when he was with the Lakers. When he covered the Clippers for the Orange County Register he would often commiserate with head coach, Maywood native and Proviso East legend Doc Rivers about the struggles of their White Sox. But when ex-Marshall star Patrick Beverley found out Woike was from Arlington Heights he shouted to him, “that ain’t Chicago!”
“It’s a little world,” Woike said.
It’s not all just focusing on history and local connections since the Lakers rank in the top three teams of interest among LA sports fans with the Dodgers and USC football. He covered the Clippers during the tumultuous time where Donald Sterling was banned for life from the NBA in 2014 for racist remarks. Less than 48 hours after LeBron’s historic night, his attention was on the Lakers saying goodbye to Russell Westbrook and Beverley from a team that includes eight-time all-star and Chicago native Anthony Davis, but is now in its third consecutive year of struggling since its last NBA title.
But someone who grew up in a family that read the newspaper every day and loved watching Chicago-area high school legends like Corey Maggette and Kevin Garnett wouldn’t have it any other way.
“The serendipity of being someone who wanted to write about basketball and grew up on the Jordan Bulls,” Woike said, “I don’t think you could do this if at your core you didn’t love the game.”
A lot has changed for Woike since he used to arrange his schedule at Dick’s in Arlington Heights around covering local sports for the Herald. After a year covering Ole Miss for Rivals.com, he came to LA to cover the final two years of USC football’s Pete Carroll era for Rivals thanks to the help of mentor and prominent national college football writer Bruce Feldman.
He joked that he was “the shortest tenured hockey writer in history” when he came to the Times to cover the Kings but switched beats when the Chargers announced their move the next day from San Diego. He also covered the Angels and Dodgers and one of his favorite stories was talking to White Sox TV analyst Steve Stone, who started the 1980 All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium, about last July’s return of the mid-summer classic to Chavez Ravine.
LA is now home but there are plenty of other Chicago-area connections since he met his wife Amanda, who is from the south suburbs, there. Woike’s sister also lives there now and so does Hersey classmate and longtime friend Andy Garms, who jokes that Woike’s two sons, 3-year old Cameron and 1-year old Logan, were named after ex-White Sox’ Mike Cameron and Boone Logan (they were not). Woike still stays in touch with Fendley and enjoys talking to retired boys head coach and current assistant Don Rowley when he sees him.
“I was thinking about it the other day, if you had told me when I was a freshman at Hersey I’d be going to 100 basketball games a year I would have said that’s the greatest life ever,” Woike said. “A lot of days I mostly agree with that but the responsibilities of life change that a bit, too.
“The bad moments are far outnumbered by the ‘it’s so cool to be here’ ones. It’s cool to document this stuff and to go back and research and look at old newspaper clips and think maybe someday it will be like that for someone else. It’s been a crazy career and I’ve been really lucky to do the thing I’ve wanted to do. I say it not to let it be lost on me that this is actually pretty rare. I’m incredibly fortunate and incredibly lucky.”
Ha - that's too funny! So you're saying Waubonsie ain't Chicago?
The next time P-Bev tells Dan Arlington Heights isn’t Chicago, Dan can ask him where he was living when he started his HS career at Waubonsie Valley.