An occasionally friendly columnist went to Sky practice Tuesday eager to make rookie Angel Reese’s acquaintance, pull her aside from the cameras and microphones and speak with her about being 22 and taking a huge bite out of life — new job, new city, happiness, homesickness, fears, dreams.

Columnists dream, too, usually about interviews that break beneath the surface like that.

Nowhere on the to-do list was relitigating any of the things Reese has said, done or been accused of saying or doing that have brought critics out of the woodwork and the worst of them out from under their rocks to sling vile and abusive insults and epithets — many of them straight-up racist — at her.