HAPPY MEDIA DAY

Today marks the NBA’s First Day of School: Media Day! Players and coaches are all available for photo ops and interviews in preparation for the season. It’s a hopeful day: everyone’s happy to be back, nobody’s wearied by the season yet (except maybe Markieff Morris).

That includes me. The Nets might not be promising championships any time soon. But as you know, we’re not affiliated with the team in any way beyond covering them. And we’re committed to bringing you the championship-quality updates, analysis, and general malarkey that’s been The Brooklyn Game’s brand since we launched in October 2012.

How are we going to do that? For one, I just want to run more. I want to get my articles up with tempo, making sure the central thesis or idea bounces around every corner of the post before it goes up. I want to keep my reader off-balance at all time, not sure where things are going next, until they see all the points at once.

I didn’t mess around this summer. I locked myself in a dingy basement, typing away fervently until I got up 100,000 words per day. Thanks to my intense workouts, I’ve gained 15 pounds in each of my typing fingers. All muscle, no knuckle. That increases my typing agility fivefold.

Professional publishers have marveled at my words-per-minute increase over the summer, and my TPA (Takes Per Article) projects in the 95th percentile this season in isolation (at home), posted up (at a cafe), spotting up (stealing someone’s WiFi Hotspot), and in transition (on my cell phone in the back of an Uber).

I can also now switch between checking Twitter, The Brooklyn Game, and watching an actual basketball game up to 150 times per minute, a 30% increase from last year. Beyond that, I’ve developed a technique by studying the parables of ancient Seattle that allows me to inject black coffee directly into my bloodstream.

I can’t guarantee anything this year. But we want to be great. And the great thing about every website, every publication: when the first ball goes up, everyone starts at 0-0 — zero words, zero pageviews.