11/14/2007 - 11:18
Welcome to My Blog
by Tyson Chandler

Hey this is Tyson Chandler and I'm going to be blogging with you the whole year. I'm very excited about this. It gives me a chance to speak to the fans directly, after the games, about my life, about what's going on here in New Orleans, and just about my NBA career as a whole. I'm glad that I can do this blog, because I can say what I want to say.

NEW ORLEANS
I made a couple of trips out here to New Orleans during the summer. I came out here during the Essence Festival, because I had to look for a house and get myself situated. I found a house and then I came back for good on September 5th. And I've been here ever since then, getting the house straight, getting ready for camp, working out with the guys. There were about six of us back at that time. I like to get in a little earlier and get comfortable.

But my family hates it, because they say I'm always one of first players back. My wife and the rest of my family are still trying to get in a little vacation and I'm already in the work-mode.

Luckily for me, my wife has roots here. Some of her family is from here and still lives here. And my brother-in-law went to Southern University and so I have a couple of friends through him that are out here still.

So, I when I came out here, I had guys to take me around, show me all the hot spots, where to look for clothes at, where to buy groceries at, and all the good stuff ... the malls and all that.

It's really weird to come back here to this city. From the surface, everything looks OK. You walk through the French Quarter and you're like, "This is like, almost false advertisement." You walk through there and you're like, "Oh, everything's back and running." All the bars are open, music's playing, the food is back.

And then you wander outside of that tourist area and you see the devastation. You still see the houses that are caved in. You still see houses that haven't started construction yet. You still see neighborhoods that were once there, that are no longer, and it's just a porch. A concrete porch was the only thing that survived the hurricane, with nothing behind the porch.

And you just walk through these neighborhoods and you're in disbelief, because I couldn't imagine if it was my old neighborhood and nothing was left but my porch and just land. You know, all these memories are lost. So, it gives you a sense of disbelief. You can't believe this is going on here.

HELPING OUT
My wife put together a charity where she's helping families with the smaller things. You know, some families are back in their homes, but they're still not living a normal life. The small things that we take for granted, TV's, stoves, microwaves, all that stuff that we take for granted, they don't have. So, my wife put together a drive with some of the other wives of my teammates, and we got them TVs, refrigerators, stoves, pots and pans, all of the little things.

6-2 START
We're looking real good as a team. I knew coming in that if we all stayed healthy, we could make a nice little run here. But that's the key thing, us all staying healthy. Realize, last year for us, we never had our full team out there.

And then this year, going through training camp, it was almost like we were trying to understand each other out there. We had really never played with Peja. We obviously never played with Mo Pete. So, adding those two guys to the starting lineup was a little difficult for us at first. We had to gel a little bit.

So we're still actually going through that transition of learning each other and we're able to still get some wins here, which shows you that we got a chance of being a pretty good team.

I feel like I've been playing well. I want to be a consistent double-double guy. There's a couple of games where I felt like I lacked because I got in foul trouble early. That took me out of my rhythm and took me off the floor. And I gotta realize that I can't get in foul trouble early, because my team hurts when I'm not out there, and I just can't do it.

So, I'm looking forward to tonight, playing against a young Philly team that's aggressive. It'll give me a chance to get out here, be aggressive and hopefully have a big night.

I just want to let you know that this is gonna be a great opportunity for me to connect with the fans out there. I love this blog, because I'm able to say exactly how I feel and you know it's coming from the heart, rather than just answering questions.