Gregory '98 leaps to other side of the press table

"I've gotten ledes in the shower. In the middle of the night. While playing pickup basketball. I've gotten ledes staring at my computer at a blank screen."

Thus leads the story of Sean Gregory '98, who as a dynamic sports journalist for Time magazine has interviewed everyone from legends Andre Agassi and Shaquille O'Neal to rising stars Maria Sharapova and Dwyane Wade.

"The best advice I ever got was to think of a lede — if you sat down at a bar with a buddy — as the first thing that you'd tell to your friend over a beer," Gregory said. "The surprising thing, the first thing, get it out there."

Gregory's cachet as a reporter, however, does not end with his "bar theory of ledes" or his impressive rolodex of contacts.

His trump card, which he rarely pulls out during an interview, may be the fact that he once stood on the other side of the line, playing ball instead of writing about it. At Princeton, Gregory spent four years as a forward for the men's basketball team.

"I am a better journalist because I was a basketball player than I otherwise would have been," Gregory said. "You can relate to what goes into being an athlete. You can ask the right follow-up questions. You are part of a team, so you know how team dynamics work, how coaches put demands on you, what strategies are involved, what makes them tick, what practice is like."

Being an athlete at the college level also taught Gregory to choose his own words carefully.

"What you write has an impact," Gregory said, recalling an incident from his senior year as a Tiger, when Gregory was the subject of an article himself.

Toward the end of a game against Brown, Gregory drained a three-point shot to bring Princeton to 90 points and an easy win.

"It was a nice play," Gregory said. "The center dribbled over to me, I stepped back and hit a deep three — something I could do and we'd done it in practice."

The next day, Gregory stood at the counter of an eatery on Nassau Street and read a recap of the game in The Times of Trenton.

To some embarrassment, Gregory recalls exploding into a string of expletives when he saw that the reporter had characterized his team's win over Brown as so easy that even "sub Sean Gregory chucked a three-pointer at the end."

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As a player who endured the transition from high-school hotshot to self-described benchwarmer to a senior who "finally had a clue how to play and was comfortable in the offense," Gregory took a lot of pride in getting in the game "and doing good things."

"I was really mad," Gregory said. "To portray it like it was a chuck — a lucky shot — really got me going."

Attuned to the sensitivities of competitive athletes, Gregory has portrayed his own subjects carefully.

"That experience taught me that even if it's a person used to having shots at them, only do it as long as it's fair shots," Gregory said. "Don't be lazy about it, don't be flip. You have to balance between the story and the truth because you never want to be mean to the subject."

Gregory didn't go straight into sports writing after Princeton, deciding instead to follow a crowd of his peers to Wall Street. By his third year at Morgan Stanley, though, Gregory was using his free Sundays to put in full days of work freelancing for Sports Illustrated.

"Luckily, I knew relatively soon," Gregory said, "that I was not very happy [on Wall Street]."

He went on to Columbia for a graduate degree in journalism, secured an internship with Sports Illustrated and was subsequently hired by Time. In his four years at the magazine — over the course of which he has racked up a total of 178 bylines, including four cover stories — Gregory has had plenty of opportunities to take the easy story line. He prefers, however, to search out "engaging personalities" and difficult topics.

When he finished a story about the New York Mets this past October, his friends told him he must be living the dream, getting a chance to meet the Mets. Gregory didn't see it that way.

"As a journalist, it all becomes about the story," Gregory said. "You just want the best story. The best story doesn't necessarily come from the biggest names."

In fact, before conversations with certain stars, Gregory worries about whether his subjects will have anything insightful or interesting to say.

"A lot of sports is programmed," Gregory said. "A lot of athletes want to steer away from edgy topics."

Gregory praises those players and coaches who do not dodge the tough bullets. In anticipation of the Georgetown men's basketball team's march to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament last month, Gregory wrote an article on the racial stereotypes that go into different styles of basketball. Coached by former Tiger John Thompson III '88, the Hoyas imported the pass-happy Princeton Offense — traditionally associated with white players — to a majority-black team.

"Most impressive to me was that the Georgetown players did not duck from this stuff," Gregory said. "Coach Thompson isn't doing this for social reasons ... he just wants to win games. But it's a byproduct of how they play that they're breaking this perception."

Another career highlight Gregory recalled was a 15-minute phone interview with Maria Sharapova last summer. Afraid Sharapova had been coached on how to speak to reporters, Gregory nonetheless broached such controversial topics as her relationship with her father, the jealousy she faces from other Russian tennis phenoms and a trash-talking incident with Serena Williams.

"She took all the questions head on," Gregory said. "She was smart, funny, mature ... [The best stories come] when you think it's going to be a disaster and it works out."

In his efforts to relate to players, Gregory does not make a point of stressing his past athletic experience. He typically does not mention that he played basketball for Princeton.

Gregory does, however, remember an interview under time pressure with the current coach of Team USA, Mike Krzyzewski, where that small fact injected a completely different feel into the conversation.

"Once I mentioned that I played basketball, I just felt like he was a lot more open," Gregory said. "Going forward I should definitely [mention] it with basketball folks ... Princeton hoops has opened so many doors."

Behind each one, there is a new lede waiting to be found.