Thread by @NekiasNBA, I've told my "story" a few times on here, wouldn't hurt to [...]

I've told my "story" a few times on here, wouldn't hurt to do so again in light of [waves arms wildly at the market].

I got my start on Facebook, as silly as it is. Was just a kid that loved basketball that didn't have many people to *really* discuss it with. So, I went online.

I found "NBA talk" and started commenting. Random "who's better" arguments, jokes about players, comments about signings/trades, the usual stuff. Around this time, i really fell in love with writing. So my comments got longer, more detailed.

I wanted to be an admin of the page. i think they had something like four different ones at the time. Started a "campaign" to become one, which gained steam because I had gained a bit of a following at that point.

My first real shot at writing was a Finals series preview. Stats, key matchups, stuff that a 15 or 16 year old really had no business formulating, especially on Facebook lol. That page never allowed fan posts, so for me to even get that was shocking and encouraging.

My real *in* came during the free agency period that summer. At that point, nobody really knew who Woj was, so i was feeding admins FA news well before other NBA pages were getting them (because everyone was waiting for Stein and other then-ESPNers).

that was enough to convince the admins i was an asset.

(in hindsight, them being more impressed w quickly getting signings vs actual basketball breakdowns should've been some sort of sign lol)

At any rate, I became an admin and worked my butt off to become the best one on FB.

Signings, with analysis. Trades, with analysis. Trivia. Season Previews. Series Previews. Game recaps. Stat leaderboards, even shot location-based stuff -- I was doing mid-range shooting tracking by position via @bball_ref lol.

My following (and the page's following) grew.

I eventually transitioned to Twitter since ... that's what my friends were doing, honestly. But i continued tweeting an unhealthy amount about basketball while also doing the FB things here. My following grew here too, but most came from people that found me on FB.

Eventually, I was found by @MP2310 and @MarkAGunnels when they wanted to start up a
site. They wanted me to run their NBA section.

And so I did that for a while. First time ever writing from a site.

And this is when I reveal that 98% of my work to that point -- on FB, on Twitter, on that site -- was written from my cell phone. Didn't have a home computer/laptop, so I had to do what I had to do.

But I went from that site (Full Scale Sports) to another (TheHoopStuff) -- unpaid of course, but I was just happy to have a platform lol -- before @KellyScaletta put me in contact with @Bulls_Jay at FanRag.

And that's how/when I landed my first paid writing gig.

It was per-article, and it was *not* much, but it was a blessing either way. i turned FB blogging into money.

I turned FB blogging into a real following, and that following has kept growing into the platform I have right now.

i have put literal thousands of hours into getting to where i'm at right now. i've written for B/R, for SB Nation, for Dime and have had my work or voice featured a ton of other places. I'm proud of it, and there's still work to be done.

But to bring things full circle, it is *incredibly* frustrating to have that sort of unorthodox path, put in that kind of work, and then read the "this isn't open mic night" quote from that NYT piece on Simmons.

there may not be many with my exact path, but there are plenty of people like me -- who look like me -- that have put in an incredible amount of work, and have the requisite skills to *at least* have a seat at the table.

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