Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Introducing: THE 910 CONVERSATION

The long, dead summer is over. Now, we at The Black Converse like us some baseball–Charlie T the still-in-it Phillies, me the disappointing Red Sox. But, we got into this to blog about a mix of the NBA and music. Or to blog about them independently when the mix isn’t working. Kind of like Chris Cornell and Timbaland. Or Chris Cornell and the RATM dudes. Or Chris Cornell and short hair. Or Chris Cornell and anyone but Soundgarden or a home 4-track*. Whatever. The point is: The Black Converse dry season is over and NBA Opening Night is next week.

Which makes a fine segue into introducing THE 910 CONVERSATION. (Or 910 Converse-ation, if you're into hyphens and overselling the pun.) 910 because it's the 09-10 season. Conversation because obviously we, the Converse, will use this format to discuss the season. It's essentially a team-by-team criteria we've concocted for talking about the upcoming season, unique to each team. We're fully aware just how genius the title is. It took us a mere 20 minutes to come up with it. Give us a half hour and we'll be pulling Pulitzers.

See, we’re not hoop experts or statisticians, so we don't venture into the usual sportsblogger predictions. And we’re not hyperfans, so we won’t be breaking any news or giving any ultra in-depth insights or talking about how this offense doesn't suit that player or how this matchup should dictate that lineup shift. Please. We can admit to our limitations as normal NBA fans and, frankly, think that that’s what makes us readable anyway. We are the Chauncey Gardener/overweight sitcom schlub/Everyman of the hoop blogging world. Even if saying so seems pretty pretentious. Moving on.

True to the iChat roots of this blog, we've spent the past month or two IM’ing about every team- angles, new players, drama, degree of our interest, media oversaturation, stars, off-court life, and more. Eventually, for each team, we settled on (some would say compromised, others might say surrendered to) a storyline that we’re inclined to follow this season. Some teams (Bucks, Nets) interest us so little that we’ve chosen purposefully obscure non-stories that may only surface once all season. Other teams will get more regular coverage. And two teams (Jazz for me, Los Heat for Charlie T) will get the unabashed personal bias and unrepentant skewed focus of fans (There, I outed us. Now all the Carlos Boozer posts make sense. I feel a huge weight lifted.). We're hoping that THE 910 CONVERSATION will give us one thing that many NBA predictions don't have: accountability and legs. So many writers make predictions only to a) ignore them when it's convenient (aka: wrong), b) remind us of them when they're right (aka: rarely), or c) revise them when bandwagons and/or hype machines dictate.

Charlie T will introduce you to our Central, Southeast, and Southwest Division storylines and I’ll introduce the Atlantic, Pacific, and Northwest (incidentally, my favorite parts of the country) Division storylines. After that, we’ll both be posting whenever the spirit strikes us. So, just like every other sports blog, let's roll out the 2009-2010 preseason stuff.

NOTE: All of these storylines will be searchable by the following tag: “(Team) 910”


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