I freelanced a story for the Deseret News (of Salt Lake City) out of Game 2 of the Lakers-Jazz series on Wednesday night.

I’ve written for other newspapers hundreds of times. No exaggeration. But this might have been the first time that I wrote about a team that was playing against a hometown team.

It takes more concentration than I expected. It wasn’t as if my head were about to explode, but it wasn’t the usual “watch home team, write about home team, file, go home” schtick, either.

I’ve written for other newspapers before. Usually at big events with broad interest, such as the Olympics or World Cup.

This or that paper wouldn’t have a staff writer at an event, and I was working for an organization (Gannett, most of my career; LANG, from 1999) that had sent me specifically to see to it that the local-local needs of other newspapers were met.

Thus, at the Sydney Olympics I went to a U.S. water polo match specifically to see what Tony Azevedo was up to — since he is local to the Long Beach Press-Telegram. At Nagano, I wrote about people for specific Gannett publications. These are stories I knew would not appear in my hometown paper but might get big play in a newspaper I would never see.

But that all is fairly easy. You’re already looking at one team, whether it is the U.S. team or the L.A. team. You just pay a bit more attention to a certain athlete and make sure you talk to that person after it’s over. It’s not as difficult to adopt as “local” someone from whose perspective you were likely to see the event, anyway.

Doing a story for another newspaper from another region … when that team is playing “your” home team, in its home arena. That’s quite a bit trickier. Imagine being an American who wrote the “Miracle on Ice” from the Soviet perspective. Utterly different story, right?

Instead of looking at Wednesday’s game from the Lakers perspective, which I have been doing for 40 years, I made a concerted effort (and it’s good that I did) to flip that to the Utah side.

Who is covering which Laker? Who is subbing in? Who is struggling with his shot? Which calls are going against the Jazz?

What is going on in the Jazz locker room, before the game? What does Jerry Sloan have to say?

Typically, the other team is mostly background noise. They are not the story, no matter the final score. It’s a “Lakers write”, win or lose.

As I used to tell young writers going out to cover a game involving a local team — “If our team wins, you write that. If our team loses, you write THAT.” Whatever you do, don’t come back with an angle on the “other” guys.

So, yeah, some reorienting. I was now writing about the Utah Jazz, win or lose, and the Lakers were the background noise.

I checked in with the two Deseret News staffers at the game, and floated a couple of ideas, and when Carlos Boozer went scoreless in the first half to reinforce the widely held notion that he is, oh, killing the Jazz … well, that’s what I went with. An angle hardly noted in Los Angeles-area newspapers but probably a major topic in Salt Lake City.

(You can read that story here.)

Anyway, I always have had respect for the handful of guys who seem to make a living out of freelancing — on visiting teams.

There’s the planning: You look at schedules, see what teams are coming to town.

There’s the selling: Which papers are not going to have a reporter travel with the team … but have the money and ambition to pay for a story specific to their publication? And convincing some sports editor you don’t know that you are worth the hassle — and the money.

There’s the research: You can’t show up at an event with a casual fan’s knowledge of that team. You need to read all recent coverage, look at recent box scores, maybe check out a blog or two.

There’s meeting an odd deadline or writing to a certain length. For freelancers on the West Coast, that means filing early, almost always, because it’s later in the evening back East.

I’m not saying it’s rocket science, but it’s far tougher than people think. Even people inside the business.

Factor in covering the team you normally would be paying scant attention to …

It’s almost like speaking a second language. One you might lapse out of, if you don’t keep your focus.

I hope the story I did entertained readers in Utah. Looks like I’ll be doing another, if the Jazz comes back to L.A. for Game 5.