Few people on earth travel as often as professional athletes. With On the Road, the GQ Sports Travel Questionnaire, they’re weighing in on everything from room service to flying comfortably to their favorite chain restaurants.
To be a modern NBA reporter is to be intimately familiar with life on the road, which means not just the radiant sunshine of LA and Miami but also less glamorous locales like Milwaukee and Denver. Malika Andrews, one of the faces of ESPN’s NBA coverage, has gone everywhere from the pandemic bubble to post-championship champagne celebrations.
With so much back and forth across the country—sometimes at the drop of a hat—Andrews likes to be as prepared as possible. A self-described planner, she names Hotels.com as an essential travel resource for her on-the-go lifestyle and recently appeared in their Perfect 10 video series. Once she’s actually checked in, her eyes go directly to the window, where she often employs one of the NBA’s trademark sleepytime moves.
I live in the ESPN NBA studios in Los Angeles. [laughing] I actually keep a pillow and blanket in a little corner nook by my desk in case I need to catch a 20-minute nap. I do spend most of my time in the greater LA area, and I try to see every team as they come through here. I’m only usually bopping around once-ish a month, and then it really ramps up in the postseason.
The only thing about that is questioning how I need to pack. I’m such a carry-on girl. I fold my socks and put them inside my shoes. I’m a professional packer. Lay out all the outfits. Lay out all the extra pairs of workout pants, just to encourage myself to work out, even though I usually don’t. I’m very much a planned packer, and then I play Tetris to fit everything in. My sister [ESPN reporter Kendra Andrews] is an over-packer. She has a whole suitcase just for shoes.
When I’m teetering on the edge of needing to check a bag if the series goes long enough, that’s when sometimes I feel a little bit uneasy. Other than that, I find it exciting! You’re going to pretty cool cities, and going to wherever the story is has always been exciting for me. This is what I was hoping my life would look like. When you’re hoping and dreaming about something for so long and then you finally get it, you have to remind yourself to be grateful, even in the midst of the next red eye you’re taking.
Yes, 99.9% of the time. The only time I don’t is when it’s delayed or I’m delayed, as in full-speed running for a plane. I still find a bit of thrill in bouncing around and going to different cities. I lived in Milwaukee and covered the Bucks, so it’s always fun to go back there and see the people I started in this industry with. My best friend lives in New York City. My parents live in Northern California. I have friends in Texas. I get to maintain all of these friendships with people that I maybe wouldn’t get to see as often [in a different line of work]. In a world where we’re texting all the time, I actually get to have dinner with these people. There’s something special about that.
I was counting this the other day! There’s still a couple I have not been to, but I think I’m up to 26. I haven’t been to the Magic’s arena, but I’ve been to the city of Orlando because I lived in the bubble for 107 days. Four months, 107 days. We counted every single one of those days and took a Wilt photo with a piece of paper that said 107.
One time I was in Milwaukee and got a call that I needed to be in Toronto the next day. I wasn’t planning to go there, so my passport was at home in Chicago. I had to drive two hours after the game back to Chicago—you’re done writing around midnight—and got the passport. The flight was at 5 or 5:30, really early. I got to the airport, running through O’Hare. I was going to make it! I was through the line and the TSA agent was like, “This is the wrong airport.” I needed to be at Midway. So, I missed that flight.
The sinking feeling in my stomach…I was so upset with myself. I put in all the effort, was going to make it, and O’Hare is farther away!
I like going to San Francisco because it’s home. But my favorites are New York—I love Madison Square Garden. I really love the food scene in Toronto. The theme for me is going back home. It’s funny, some of my colleagues will be like, Ugh, we’re going back to Milwaukee. I kinda like it there! That’s where I started! Oh, we have to go to Portland. I kinda like it! I went to college there.
Uhh, yeah. Giannis [Antetokounmpo] was in LA a few months ago and I went to see him at shootaround. We were joking around about not seeing each other much anymore. I was like, “No, I see you when you come to LA!” He was like, “No, no. You have to come to Milwaukee, and it has to be the middle of January. That’s how I’ll know you still care about your roots.”
I’m surprised more people don’t say Miami. For some people, that’s a thing. I also always enjoy a quick New Orleans trip. Two days in New Orleans is the perfect amount of New Orleans. You get a beignet, you get some étouffée, charbroiled oysters are my favorite. Two days there is perfect.
Right now, we’re in the process of planning a safari in Zambia. I’m really, really excited about that. It’s a plan-16-months-ahead type of process. It’s not a last-minute getaway.
I try to go somewhere different every summer, because we only get those couple of weeks to try and span the globe. However, my aunt and uncle live in London and have a house in Spain. Every summer growing up, that’s where we would go, about an hour outside of Santiago.
I find my place. I stay in the same place. When I was living in Chicago and going up to Milwaukee all the time, I stayed 72 nights at the Milwaukee Marriott. I knew the staff’s names and they knew my name. It was a fun, familial thing we had going on. It was my little home away from home.
After we go to Africa, Thailand is very, very high for me. Thailand and Singapore. I’m really interested in traveling a little more around Asia. My grandfather is well-traveled in that area and would always come back with these wonderful stories. I’ve only ever been to the part of Turkey that crosses over into Asia. I’ve never been anywhere else in Asia. The culture, the food, I travel based on where I want to eat! So, Japan is also high on the list because my favorite food is sushi.
When I close the blinds, do they actually close all the way, or is there a gap? If there’s a gap, I go to the closet and get the hangers, and use the clips to make sure the gap closes. If you’re covering the NBA, you know the pregame nap is essential. Sometimes your sleep is kind of funky. You’re up late, or you’re up early for shows. You want to catch that 20 or 30-minute nap in the middle of the day. If there’s a gap in the curtains, we have the hack—but when I don’t have to employ the hack, that’s a good hotel. It’s also the first thing I tend to notice.
It’s an NBA thing. In fact, when Hotels.com asked me what my hack was, they said [Lakers’ guard] Austin Reaves said the same thing. We didn’t talk about it! But it’s the secret in the NBA that’s spread everywhere.
I try to find a cool restaurant, but I do love a room service burger. A room service burger, medium, is a safe and solid choice. Shrimp cocktail can be a little more hit-or-miss. I’m on the burger side of life.
Water pressure is a good thing, my fellow curly girls know. I bring my own shampoo, conditioner, and six products that have to go in after that. I’m big on pillows. I like a nice, plump pillow. That is also important.
I do use a neck pillow on flights. There’s a closet in my house where I have nine or 10 neck pillows stacked up on a shelf because I’ve forgotten them before and they’re so essential! I will head to Hudson News and make sure that I purchase another one.
I do find myself struggling to remember. That’s why I actually keep the key card in the sleeve with the number written on it. Always ask for two key cards. If I’m just staying there for one night, there’s no chance I remember. If I’m staying there for a week, by the end of the week I can usually remember. For some reason, I’m also always turning the wrong way [in hotel hallways]. I’m the person going in a circle.
I am a Shake Shack girlie. At JFK, I know exactly where the Shake Shack is. Delta Terminal, I’m headed straight there. The dilemma is always when to open the Shake Shack, because you don’t want to be that person eating food on a plane that you know has a fragrance. But this is just a burger, fries, milkshake fragrance. No fish.
