For the second straight June, Oakland native and ESPN producer Amina Hussein finds herself working an NBA Finals that involves the Warriors — the team she held close to her heart as a kid.

So does it feel “old hat” by now? Not for a minute.

“I still have to pinch myself. To come back home again for the Finals is just a really amazing, exciting — even surreal — time for me,” she says during a chat in an ESPN production trailer outside Oracle Arena.

Hussein, who stands 6-foot-1 in her stylish Air Jordans, was a jump-shooting hoops star at Holy Names High School — she calls herself the “original stretch-4” — and had a Run-TMC (the slogan inspired by Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin in an earlier era) in a poster on her bedroom wall.

Before landing at ESPN, she worked for Bay Area sports radio station KNBR, logging many hours at Warriors games. Now she serves as the coordinating producer for the NBA pregame and halftime shows on ESPN and ABC with host Sage Steele and analysts Jalen Rose and Doug Collins.

“My staff teases me because, if you walk through Oracle Arena with me, it takes a half-hour longer than usual to get from one side of the court to the other because I stop to visit a bunch of people I know,” she says. “It’s like a family reunion — people saying, ‘Hey girl!’ and hugging everybody.”

Like any seasoned Warriors fan, Hussein remembers the lean times — brutal memories that make the remarkable current success even sweeter.

“My brother and I had a huge laugh the other night recalling the team’s marketing motto back in the early 2000s — ‘It’s a Great Time Out,'” she says. “It was like: ‘Come see Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. Hear our band play. See our mascot.’ … We’re going to sell everything but the actual team.”

Hussein admits she has some difficulty maintaining her “journalistic integrity” during the NBA Finals and counts on her staff to keep her in check. One staff member, however, is an associate producer who was born and raised in Cleveland. It makes for some touchy moments.

“We don’t speak very much during the Finals,” she says with a smile. “We talk about the job at hand. During the games, we’ll glance at each other, but not say anything. It’s too emotional.”

Follow Chuck Barney at Twitter.com/chuckbarney and Facebook.com/bayareanewsgroup.chuckbarney.