When I first took over The Friendly Bounce in January after former editor Jack Maloney took a job with the NBA’s digital arm, I did a lot of thinking. Jack and his predecessor Andrew Lynch (who I have become very good friends with along our blogging careers), had built this site up just an idea into a success. My job became not just to make sure the site kept running smoothly, but to make sure it kept growing as well. With that in mind, I read over the first post ever on Friendly Bounce, where Andrew and Hardwood Paroxysm Basketball Network father Matt Moore explained the point of the site. And as I did that one line really stuck out to me.
"It’s refreshing, really, because I think too often we forget that our favorite professional athletes are people, going through the human experience just like the rest of us."
After a while, and some talking with HPBN editor-in-chief, Ian Levy, it hit me. The way to grow Friendly Bounce was to get away from chasing page views by posting every fun dunk and pass and block a night. While there is certainly a place for those things on the site, the best way to grow Friendly Bounce is to focus on the stuff that no other blog was completely focused on. The fact that “our favorite professional athletes are people.”
And so that is our plan. While old favorites like the BAE Index will continue, starting this month we have shifted our primary focus to the players, not the play. We want to help fans really understand their favorite players and we have plenty of ideas on how to do it. Our plan is to let you hear things directly from the players, in as many ways as possible.
A player does something funny on social media? We will highlight it. A fun anecdote lost in a giant profile? Expect a post. The story behind a third string point guard’s pre-game ritual? We will try to get it right from their mouth.
With that said, we need some help to get there. As so often happens, life and other circumstances have caused some of our former contributors to move on from the site. So we need some help. If you have some experience and interest in joining the site please send an email to thefriendlybounce at gmail.com with some links to your writing and a short bit on why you think you would be a good fit for the site.
Either way we thank all our loyal readers a ton and look forward to continuing to make you as happy as Dirk Nowitzki and Boris Diaw make us.