ESPN The Magazine's Ric Bucher teases his upcoming cover story on Chris Webber. Here's a behind-the-scenes peek. Where's the beef? We'll post it on The Pulse next week.

The proofs of the CWebb photo shoot for my cover story arrived in the office the other day, and the women privy to such material went all jelly on us. That's just the kind of reaction that makes my job so difficult. I mean, Chris is a good-looking guy blessed with a damn near perfect physique, but why do women have to be so shallow? Shouldn't they look deeper before going all ga-ga?

Truth is, it takes a lot of work to make CWebb look good. There were no cameras around when he answered his door that morning, all pillow-faced and bed-headed in NBA-issue white socks, a pair of Sonics shorts (don't read anything into that) and a SeanJohn T-shirt. And while the wardrobe lady couldn't coax him into the floppy green Aussie hat or the red snake-skin jacket on hand, they kept him out of the stylish-but-boring gray and black suits he wanted to wear.

I should've known we were in for a couple of beefcake shots when Isabella, the photographer, walked in and marvelled at the musculature in his back, even rubbing her hand over it. As for the mega-kilowatt smile, I'm taking at least partial credit for that. Isabella, recognizing the rapport Chris and I have, asked that I hover behind her and talk to him while she shot. So I started cracking on him, saying with the suit he had on he could be in The Sopranos, or noting that we were shooting his back because his gut would be unsightly, or promising him that with enough airbrushing we could make him look decent.

I had about 15 minutes of material and the shoot took 45 minutes, so I started reaching back to the days I covered him as a newspaper beat writer, when he was with the Warriors and Wizards. I'm going to pay for this, I thought. He's going to get me back when we're in the Kings' locker room, with a significantly larger audience. But the next time I saw him, I knew I had scored at least one direct hit. "Man," he said, "I was doing sit-ups the very next day."

You can reach Ric Bucher at ric.bucher@espnmag.com.