This is where it all started. Right here on this blog. It started as a twitter joke that Bo and I made. It was funny at the time. Bo said "Hey this would make a great blog name!" "Yeah it would, totally stealing that when I finally start blogging". Well 5 min later the site Clutch Jeans was born and the first place I ever wrote about basketball was born. This happened last summer and it's seriously one of the greatest things to ever happen to me. When I started blogging I set a goal for myself that I thought impossible. I decided that one day I would write for SB Nation and/or True Hoop network. These were the two most respected blogs as far as I could tell and I wanted to write for them. A lot has changed in that time in my life but there have been a few consistencies in it and that is the people who helped me achieve this goal. Without any of them none of this would have happened. I guess I should start where this all began.
Sociology class, 2012 trade deadline, spring semester at Brevard Community College. There I was sitting in class bored out of my mind with my professor talking about god knows what. This class was pathetically easy but I had to attend or my grade would suffer because there was an attendance grade for this class. I had my computer with me and I was checking ESPN very frequently just waiting for news on Dwight Howard. Every Magic fan knew this was the day where we would find out if he was going to stay with the Magic or be traded (oh god it got so much worse for Magic fans but that's another post, another day) and I was refreshing like mad. All of a sudden I see on the NBA section of the site "Chat Now!". Wondering what kind of chat ESPN was doing about the trade deadline I clicked on the link. It was there that my love for basketball and terrible jokes/photoshops was born. It was there I discovered what is still one of my favorite entertainments today, Daily Dime Live. Known as DDL for short I joined and posted a question about Dwight, I then realized my question didn't show up. Oh it's one of those modded things! My question is never gonna get answered like oh hey it actually got posted. It was then I came to know the moderator of this site Zach Harper. Harper was a funny guy who seemed to laugh at the jokes people made at his expense and had an obsession with bacon. This chat was hilarious, fast paced, and everybody on there seemed to love basketball just as much as I did. When class was over I went home and sure enough the chat was still going on, funny and fast paced as ever. Every hour or two I would check back on the site. These hours turned into minutes. Those minutes turned into logging onto the chat every time they had one. Every game was talked about, no team bias, no player bias, no narratives just pure and fun basketball.
The season is almost over and this means DDL will probably be over soon as well. However there's this guy Bo in the chat who always has these hilarious photoshops. He advertises his twitter page. Thinking "Eh, I don't use my twitter for anything else" I follow him. Fast forward a few weeks and the season is over. With nothing to do until summer classes approach I get on my twitter and find out about some sort of Maloof News conference. Turns out the dickwad owners of the Kings were trying to sell their team in the worst possible fashion. I clicked on the hashtag and who do I see? Why Zach Harper making his jokes. I of course follow him. I then follow some other people. And more people. And more...and more....and more...eventually I'm tweeting non stop and cracking jokes and howling with laughter at these people I've never met before except on the internet. Except they weren't scary guys in their basements. They aren't nerds with no lives. They're people like me and funny at that.
So back to Clutch Jeans. Bo and I start this blog and I get a lot of positive praise. Then this guy Colin Means offers me a position at his blog "Oncourt Onslaught" (I'm sorry I didn't write as much as I could have Colin) and it was a fun gig. Then this guy who used to mod DDL all the time Andrew Lynch followed me. Andrew was always a cool guy and it made me excited that he followed me. Next was this Sean Highkin dude. These guys were awesome. They taught me about stats and wanted nothing but to see me succeed. It was them who helped my writing improve to the point that I was offered an open spot at the SB Nation site Rufus on Fire. Ben gave me a chance to reach half of my goal. He gave me edits and feedback and continued to make my writing improve. Then, about 2 months later the big bomb dropped. My friend Bo had become the main editor at the TrueHoop network site HawksHoop. He had a spot open and he gave me the spot that I wanted. My dream had been realized. True Hoop network. ESPN. The Big one. It was finally there. When he sent me a DM saying I was one of the two he picked I actually got up and ran around my house. To think in just over a year I've gone from DDL commenter to True Hoop and SB Nation writer. I never thought I would reach this goal and I'm seriously so happy I just wrote a huge blog post about how happy I am just to thank people.
Big thank you's to Colin Means for giving me a shot. To Zach Harper for making DDL so damn hilarious I had to come back. To Blake Potash who is one of the first people I followed and still RT's my writing all the time. To Matt Moore who puts up with my horrible jokes. To all of basketball twitter for being basketball twitter. A thanks to Ben Swanson (@CardboardGerald)
Gigantic thank you's to Trevor Rumsey, Bo Churney, and Ian Dougherty you're the best twitter bro's a guy could ask for and your #FF campaigns got me started on twitter.
A huge thank you to Sean Highkin and Andrew Lynch. You guys were the first real bloggers to follow me and you've mentored me, guided me, and helped me with everything. I would not be the writer I am without your help.
Thanks twitter. Thanks DDL. Thanks everybody. You're all amazing and you've helped me achieve a dream I never expected to come true.
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