You’ll probably notice a trend with  the archive posts from this week and next week. Heavy on the Q&A; also, heavy on a lot of strange Q’s. This one, which we conducted with the entertaining Paul Shirley and ran Feb. 16, 2006, is among our favorites.

Paul Shirley is living the dream. He has played professional basketball overseas and, in limited stints, for three NBA teams. During his time with the Phoenix Suns last year, he started writing a blog about NBA life on the team’s website, a blog which gained substantial following. That turned into a writing gig on ESPN.com called “My so-called career,” which led to a book deal and a green light from Fox to shoot a sitcom pilot based on his life as an NBA benchwarmer. Between projects, he chatted with the Star Tribune.

Q. Why do you think so many people latched onto that initial Suns blog?

A. I think there is a yearning, if you will, to read about people who seem normal — and maybe I seem normal, even though I’m pretty unstable. But I think I’m a good liaison to the average soul. I had a middle-class upbringing in rural Kansas and can relate to a lot of 25- 35-year-olds with similar backgrounds. But I’ve also had a window into these very bizarre worlds and have been somewhat shocked by what I see, and people can relate to my confusion.

Q. Most athlete blogs tend to be pretty generic. But in yours, you’re breaking down your love life, talking about teammates, pretty much anything goes. Is that something you do intentionally?

A. It’s intentional in that I hate interviews with athletes and the general cliches spouted forth. My general personality is to go against that. But I generally just write how I think.

Q. So what it’s like to sit on an NBA bench night after night?

A. I’m hoping they all break their legs — just kidding. Last year in Phoenix, I truly liked my teammates and wanted to see them succeed. Steve Nash (below) and Shawn Marion are good guys and it’s a functional organization. But it’s tough sometimes to be at the cusp and not play when all your life you’ve been in the game.

Q. Did the Suns hate what you wrote?

A. Well, I haven’t been back in the NBA. I don’t know. At first, I thought they were all for it. But the NBA is a very conservative body as a whole, and I doubt they enjoy anyone rocking their collective boat, so I don’t know if it really helped me. But our lives are too short to really care about the repercussions of things like that.

Q. OK, the sitcom and book deal. Where are those at?

A. Fox has given us the go-ahead to make the pilot. We are in the process of putting together the cast, and we have to have it shot by the beginning of April. I’m learning this as I go, but the network will decide in mid-May whether it will become a series. It’s exhausting. I worked like 11 hours the other day. I’m used to two hours of basketball. … The book is basically a collection of the same sorts of stories I wrote for Phoenix, only from my first few years. It’s possible it could come out this fall. We might try to put it out the same time as the sitcom, if that happens. (Laughing). It’s a whole multi-media experience.

Q. You’re 6-10 and have scored 33 points in 18 career NBA games. The hoopshype.com scouting report on you is, “Has some post moves and good shooting touch near the basket … lacks strength.” How would you assess that report?

A. It’s a little false, mainly because I don’t get close to the basket anymore. I stand outside and shoot. One’s career will be much longer avoiding the bruisers.

Q. You played college ball at Iowa State, only a few hours from here. How would you rate Ames as compared to other exotic locales in which you’ve played?

A. It’s one of the least exotic places I’ve ever been. Ames makes Minneapolis look like Madrid, Spain. After having been to a lot of other places, Ames is pretty boring. I kind of get the shakes when I drive on I-35 now.

Q. OK, so what’s the best story you have from life in the NBA?

A. Man, you can’t ask someone that. It’s like when someone at a party says, “Oh, I have the best story,” and then it turns out to be not very good.

Q. But how else am I supposed to get at it? Your whole bit, your blog, is based on the crazy things that have happened to you.

A. OK, fine. This is “a story,” but maybe not the best story. When I first reported to training camp with the Lakers out of college, I walked into the locker room and saw Shaq. I said the hell with it, and went up introduced myself. I said, “I’m Paul Shirley,” and he said, “Yeah, I know who you are.” I almost fell on the floor. I don’t think he really knew who I was, but because he was really one of the most genuine down-to-earth guys I’ve met, he made me feel welcome.

Q. See, that’s a good story. It’s not like I asked you and you told me about some time you brushed your teeth. Why are you selling yourself short?

A. It’s just a lot of pressure. And for the best stories, I would have to trash somebody. I’m still trying to get back in the league.

Q. With the blog, the sitcom and the book, is that realistic?

A. I don’t know that it will happen this year, but I don’t see that my career is over necessarily. It’s hard to tell. I don’t try to predict. I was just getting back from playing in Russia a year ago. I could be huddled in a cave with a 3-foot beard in a year.

It started as a throwaway line at the end of a post yesterday, but you, the reader, said you wanted us to follow through. So we fired an e-mail to Freedom Williams — majority owner and VP of the CBA’s Atlanta Krunk and formerly a vocalist with chart-topping C+C Music Factory. He responded just a few hours later and said to give him a call. We did today, and even though we caught him in the middle of lunch, he was gracious enough to answer our questions about the Krunk, new head coach Kenny Anderson and a bunch of other nonsense that he probably shouldn’t have had to put up with but did. Ladies and gentlemen, Freedom Williams:

RB: Kenny Anderson – how excited are you to have him as a coach?
FW: I’m extremely excited about Kenny. … I call him the crossover king. I grew up with him, and I’ve known him for years. It was the perfect opportunity. He was a wonderful guard. He traveled in the NBA, he’s a stickler for the game and he’s a student. The CBA needs that type of boost right now. It needs Kenny to really galvanize things.

RB: How much cred does he still have in Atlanta from his Georgia Tech days?
FW: I think he has a tremendous amount of credibility. He took them to the Final Four. He got Steph [Marbury] to go to Georgia Tech. Atlanta is really excited about having him.

RB: How much flat-out fun is it to own a basketball team?
FW: For me … it’s extremely exciting. Now, I also do entertainment for the NBA — New Jersey, Cleveland, Houston, Phoenix, a lot of halftime shows. Being involved in the CBA, being a majority owner, is just another step.

RB: A player comes late to practice and he’s smellin’ like perfume. Is that something that makes you go, “Hmmmmmm?”
FW: (Laughs) Absolutely. You have to wonder about that. But that’s Kenny’s job now.

RB: “Gonna Make You Sweat” and “Here We Go.” Both awesome songs in their own ways. Compare and contrast.
FW: They’re different songs but they have the same rhythm. … We wanted a similar song and we didn’t want to move the bar too far. [He said something in here about Babyface that we didn’t quite catch]. It’s a technique that a lot of artists use.

RB: What are you working on right now outside of this hoops project and the other things we’ve talked about?
FW: I have a wonderful artist Alkebulan, an incredible singer. She does most of the anthems when I do halftime shows. She’s just an incredible artist. … We just shot a video, and BET picked it up. She’ll also be the voice of the Krunk.

RB: I went to your myspace page. Is that the real Al B. Sure among your friends?
FW: Yeah, he’s my buddy. He’s a good guy.

From time to time, we like to look back into the vault and find some work we were pretty happy with at the time of publication. The following is a Q&A we did with Joe Mauer, which ran July 20, 2006. We’ve been doing a weekly Q&A for about 18 months now, and this one is among our top five favorites, if not No. 1. Keep in mind, some things have changed — he’s not seeing Ms. Cooley anymore, for instance, and it’s also been written that the batting champ and MVP are no longer roommates — but it’s perhaps worth your time as a temporary distraction from the much heavier and important news from Virginia Tech on a Tuesday morning.
Joe Mauer is learning that as he continues to get a good piece of the ball, more people want a good piece of him. The 23-year-old Twins catcher, batting .376 going into Wednesday, was a popular figure at last week’s All-Star Game. Before Monday’s game against Tampa Bay, he sat down for an interview with Sports Illustrated — part one, as it turned out — and looked a little weary when approached by the Star Tribune. Still, he was kind enough to answer some questions that sometimes deviated from a regularly scheduled path.

Q - It seemed that right around the All-Star Game, your media exposure level was pretty high. Are you officially overexposed at this point?

A - I feel like it right now. There were so many questions, especially in Pittsburgh. If you would have done everything, you would have been doing something from the time you got off the plane to the time you left.

Q - You handled it in what people call “typical Joe” fashion. What is “typical Joe” in your mind?

A - I’m more of a laid-back guy. I try to play behind the scenes and be one of the guys. It seems like I couldn’t really do that the last couple of weeks. But I’m just trying to go out and do my job.

Q - When you’re trying to keep a low profile, is dating a former Miss USA (Chelsea Cooley) the best way to go about it?

A - Yeah, we tried to, but everything you do is kind of out there. Hey, she’s bigger than I am. She has a lot of stuff going on. We’re just hanging out. We didn’t meet that long ago. … I think most guys, with their personal life, would prefer to keep it personal. She’s a friend of mine, and I’m starting to get to know her a little bit.

Q - I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but I’ve heard you’re from St. Paul. Is that true?

A - (Laughs). Yeah, I grew up in St. Paul.

Q - Seriously, does that ever get old? You seem to handle it really well, but I’ve talked to other athletes from here, and it goes both ways. Some say it’s hard to play professionally in their hometown or that they wouldn’t want to do it with all the ticket requests and demands around them. How do you handle it?

A - Well, it’s really all I know at the major league level. It’s fun having Grandma and Grandpa at every home game. Mom and Dad are at most of them. There’s definitely a lot of support. But like you said, sometimes the ticket requests are a little out of hand, or doing little things like going grocery shopping are tough. But it’s fun. People come up and recognize you. They’re genuine people, and that’s really cool.

Q - Can you tell me, definitively, right now, if you’ll hit .400 this season?
A - I try not to look at the numbers. It’s a long year, and there’s a reason people haven’t hit that for a while. And being a catcher kind of wears on you. But you never know.

Q - Do you still live with Justin Morneau?
A - Yeah.

Q - Have you ever thought about getting your own place?
A - Well, it is my place. He’s living with me.

Q - Has he ever thought about getting his own place?
A - I don’t know, he might have. But we get along really well. We’re opposites. We both like to have fun, but I’m a little more quiet and he’s more outgoing. He gets me to go out a little more, and I get him to stay in a little more. It works out.

Q - Is there any cooking that goes on there?

A - Mostly takeout. A lot of Jimmy John’s, Davanni’s or Cossetta’s. After games we try to sneak into Bellanotte before the kitchen closes.

Q - With you being so laid back, do you think that bugs people? Do people do things to try to get you to be “not Joe,” to draw you out?
A - I don’t know. I just tell people I’m like any other 23-year-old. I like to have fun. But I’m in a great position here, and I don’t want to do anything to mess that up. I go out and have fun, but during the season you don’t have a whole lot of time.

Q - There’s a website that — and I don’t know why they did this — made an “all-handsomeness” baseball team and named you the starting catcher. How does it feel to have someone in cyberspace selecting you for a team like that?
A - Wow, that’s the first time I’ve heard that. It’s, um, kind of weird. But it’s kind of cool, too.

Q - How would you define “handsomeness?”
A - Oh, I really don’t know. I guess you’d have to ask whoever made the web page.

Q - One of the photos they linked to was of you wearing glasses while stretching out in a hammock. Do you remember where that’s from?
A - Yeah (laughs). That was my first modeling job for Perry Ellis down in Puerto Rico during the last offseason.

Q - Did you catch some flak for that?
A - I did, but I don’t really care. I had a really good time down in Puerto Rico and got to stay a couple extra days.

Q - I read you bowled a 265 with a custom ball. Do you like to bowl regularly?
A - I like to go every once in a while. A couple of guys on the team have their own bowling balls. Punto, Morneau, Lohse, Cuddy, they like to go.

Q - Have you ever bowled with Gardy?
A - No, he’s too good for me. That 265 was a one-time deal.

Q - Do you think you could bake a delicious cake with just four ingredients and no recipe?
A - No.

Q - Do you think there are some Twins fans out there who maybe think you could?
A - Well, I don’t know. Maybe.

Q - Because a lot of people kind of think you’re Superman. You know that, right?
A - Well, I just try to do what I can, and that’s me.