Shortly after I registered here, I answered truebluefan's "call to arms" and volunteered to write for Sportstwo. Shortly after that I volunteered to help with editing the articles of other writers. Currently, the feature writing thing is sort of a "Lone Ranger" deal. Trueblue is working on this. I try to write at least one feature each week. The Bulls' forum is my home base, my Sportstwo community, so I'm going to lean on you guys. Articles I write on the Bulls will have this forum as their point of origination (e.g., the James Johnson article). For some articles where timeliness isn't critical, I'll use this community as my "sounding board" as I have with "Advanced Stats" series. I'd also appreciate any ideas you may have on articles you'd like to see (e.g., Hey! Someone should write an article about..."). Is any of this important? Truth is, I don't know. Sportstwo would like to be a place where smart sports fans want to visit, and ideally hang around a while. The high-quality discussion you provide is an important part of the draw. We'd like the main page to be a draw as well. Any help you can provide would be appreciated. And if any of you want to try your hand at writing an article for the main page, let me know via PM. I can help you with grammar, syntax and all that other stuff. I've been impressed with the quality of the posters on this site, but more quality volume would be welcome. Thanks in advance for your help.
Transplant, I can't tell you how nice your contributions have been to the forum. I'm not ready to contribute anything of that sort. But I'll definitely use this thread to toss out ideas for articles that you or others might consider discussing. My first idea is one that I imported here from BBF, and that is my thoughts about what make a good basketball coach. I started from what seemed to be a common idea that the best coaches know how to make silk purses out of sows' ears -- that is, they get nobodies to perform together as a team and win the State Championship, like Hoosiers. But I proposed an alternative criterion - that the best coaches, the ones you really look for, are those who know how to help stars get better. I used this criterion as reason for support for Thibs' hire back when. Generally, that idea has been dismissed as too simplistic, whatever. But you, as a former coach, if I'm not mistaken, might be able to take my silly, naive and amateurish idea, and turn it into an interesting discussion. I relinquish all rights.
Good Hope, Thanks. The coaching idea is a good one and one I have fairly strong feelings about. They may not be in line with yours, but that's part of the fun...just a preview, but I've always felt that NBA head coach is a lousy job primarily because your "direct reports" can get you fired in a heartbeat. All of us wannabe coaches can talk all we want about Xs and Os, the development of younger players or the ever-present player rotations, but in the end every NBA head coach's future is ultimately dependent on their players' willingness to do what they're told. I'd like to say Scott Skiles is a great NBA Head Coach, but the truth is that, despite the fact that what he tells his players to do is right, his track record suggests that the players stop listening. Yeah, it's a good topic.
