And in case I don't see you: Good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight (or: some personal news)
No sense burying the lede:
One month shy of four years after joining up, and with something like 570 columns, features, blog posts, and blurbs in the rear-view, today's my last day at The Ringer. Barring some unforeseen Friday afternoon news, my final piece will have been about the Knicks' best-laid plans not quite panning out the way they intended. Let it never be said that the basketball content gods don't have a sense of humor.
I'm grateful to have spent four years sharing a masthead with some of the best writers on the Internet, and to have carved out a niche on what I've felt was, pound-for-pound, the best NBA team in the business. I'm grateful I got to co-host a podcast with two great friends for a while, to everyone who took the time to listen to it, and to everyone who said (and still says!) nice things about it. I'm grateful to have gotten the chance to be part of the Ringer Union, and to have played a small role in trying to make a company I loved a little more fair and equitable.
I'm grateful to have gotten the opportunity to grow and develop as both a writer and analyst. I feel like I'm better at this job than I used to be, thanks in no small part to the freedom and support I've enjoyed. I'm grateful to everyone, past and present, who has made The Ringer the sort of place where someone like me could level up.
I'll still be writing about the NBA on the Internet. (And talking about it into a microphone again, too.) I'll say more about that soon. Right now, the only thing I want to say is: thank you.
Specifically, I want to thank some of the many people whose names never showed up on the things I published, but who were indispensable to every one of them—and, beyond that, to so much more of what The Ringer makes. As much as this company is about the on-air personalities on your favorite podcasts, it's also about the literal scores of people who bust their asses every day to try to make sure we're making the best stuff we can.
It takes a lot of people to make us look good. Here are the names of the ones who helped me.
MY EDITORS
Nobody edited me more often than Matt Dollinger, Justin Verrier, or Chris Almeida—three very different dudes, but all patient, professional, and kind, despite the sheer tonnage of words I dropped on their heads. Many thanks also to culture czar Andrew Gruttadaro (without whom the Stevie Nicks' Fajita Roundup and Pete & Pete pieces wouldn't have happened), Aric Jenkins, Ben Glicksman, Chris Ryan, Danny Chau, Donnie Kwak, Justin Sayles, Mallory Rubin, Megan Schuster, and Riley McAtee for pinch-hitting over the years. I'm sorry I never once hit a word count. I hope it all still hung together OK.
THE COPY DESK
I can't stress enough how comforting it has been to know that everything I write will pass through the hands of copy chief Craig Gaines and his crack team of copy editors and fact-checkers. It never ceased to amaze me that they would routinely and graciously take thousands of words about, I dunno, the Pelicans defense, and treat it like it mattered, and make sure I didn't sound dumb (or, at least, any dumber than usual).
Mil gracias to: Abou Kamara, Amaar Burton, Analis Bailey, Charlotte Goddu, Chris Grismer, Damian Burchardt, Dan Comer, Daniel Chin, Isaac Levy-Rubinett, Iza Wojciechowska, Jack McCluskey, Jacqueline Kantor, Jordan Ligons, Julianna Ress, Julie Kliegman, Kellen Becoats, Kjerstin Johnson, Lex Pryor, and—last alphabetically in this group, but certainly not least—Shaker Samman.
THE ART DEPARTMENT
One of the fringe benefits of working here has been knowing that, when my post is ready to go up, I'm going to get to see whatever rad thing David Shoemaker and his team have crafted to put up at the top of it. (Pro tip: If you write a long enough thing to get the feature build, they give it the bigger and wider art, which looks even friggin' cooler, IMO.) It's a true delight to know that, even if the words aren't all that good, the pictures will be. Thanks to David, Alycea Tinoyan, Matt James, Neil Francisco, and Jonathan Bartlett for making sure that's true.
THE SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM
I know, this sounds crazy, but apparently it's not always easy to get audience members excited to read a bunch of words about, like, the Spurs' bench? And yet, the perennially underappreciated and over-yelled-at-on-the-Internet social team never stopped working to find ways to do it. Shouts out to Alex Stamas, Amelia Wedemeyer, Bridget Geerlings, David Lara III, Jomi Adeniran, Julie Phayer, Keith Fujimoto, Kiera Givens, Logan Rhoades, Nicole Bae, Pat Muldowney, and Rubie Edmondson for tirelessly running up that hill.
AUDIO/VIDEO
Isaac Lee and Steve Ahlman produced Heat Check, and they were absolutely wonderful to work with every single week. So were Bobby Wagner and Jim Cunningham when they got spot starts with me, Gonz, and Haley. Isaiah Blakeley, Jessie Lopez, Jonathan Kermah, and Sasha Ashall were always great when I popped up on other shows, too.
Jason Concepcion and Jason Gallagher put me on NBA Desktop twice, including once when they encouraged me to say the phrase "step your pen game up, you word-broke motherfuckers," which stands as one of the proudest moments of my career.
I didn't do much other video stuff here, but when I did, I greatly enjoyed working with, learning from, and joking around with Cory McConnell, Dylan Berkey, J. Kyle Mann, Jackson Safon, Mose Bergmann, Richie Bozek, Ronak Nair, and Sean Yoo. (I haven't yet crossed paths with Aleya Zenieris, Chia Hao Tat, or Donnie Beacham, but they're getting thanked, too. It's a thank-o-rama.)
And, one last thanks:
ALL OF YOU
I'm not sure what I've done to deserve the kind, considerate, passionate, and conscientious readers and followers I've accumulated over the years. All I can do is promise to try to keep doing it, and to try to reward your time and attention a few times a week.
Thanks for sticking around. See you again soon.
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Okay, so I wanna talk about Juneteenth real quick!
Don’t know what Juneteenth is? Understandable! I had no idea what it was until a few days ago, my mom is super happy because she gets a day off, she thought that it was day Slaves were freed.
And she was partially correct, actually it’s in celebration of a federal order given by this guy with an epic beard.
This is Major General George Granger, an Army Officer and Union general who is most well known for his work during the Battle of Chickamauga, it was the first major conflict of the war fought in Georgia, sadly, the Confederates won the first battle, but as we all know, they lost the war, Granger was commanding the reserves and during the second day of battle he reinforced the struggling XIV Corps on Snodgrass Hill against the confederates, he wasn’t ordered to, he determined that they couldn’t hold back the enemy force by themselves, so he sent two brigades under his command to assist the XIV Corps, this action kept the confederates back until dark, which then allowed Federal forces to retreat in good order helping Major General George H Thomas earn his nickname, the “Rock of Chickamauge”, which THEN led to a later battle where Thomas earned his next nickname, “Sledge of Nashville” in the Battle of Nashville where he fought the Army of Nashville, effectively deafeating them due to a rather embarrassing strategical error made by General John Bell Hood, who wasn’t even that good of a General, he seemed to favor fighting his enemy head on, which resulted in the death of about 23.500 of his 38.000 troops. (I love reading about warfare, many of my family members are military, sue me...besides, we don’t talk about Union soldiers enough in my opinion, you always hear the orchestra of whining whenever a bunch of people yank down a confederate soldier statue, but you never hear people talk about Union soldiers that much.)
Anywaaaay! Now that I’ve gotten through all the boring stuff, Juneteenth marks the day in 1865, the civil war has been effectively over since April, since the defeat of the Confederate states, and the Emancipation Proclamation had formally freed slaves two and a half years earlier, Texas was extremely remote and doing it’s best to hold onto their own slaves, there was also an extremely low presence of Union Soldiers, the enforcement of the proclamation was slow and inconsistent, Major General Granger was assigned to a Command in Texas on June 19th, 1865, Yes, Major General Granger, on his first day of work at his new post, declared that, Yes, as a member of the Union, you WILL follow the Emancipation Proclamation, you WILL free your slaves from the chains of bondage, and that, Yes, the former slaves have the same absolute rights of equality and property as everyone else.
TL:DR: Major General Granger shows up to command the district of Texas, and on his first day, he informs the ENTIRE state of Texas that they have to follow the law, because this is a country of freemen and all men are equal under the constitution of the United States, and it truly, honestly marked the end of legal slavery, the day was then celebrated year after year in Texas, known sometimes as Jubilee Day, Liberation Day and Emancipation Day.
Make this a national holiday, America, do it.
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for context in the shooting of david mcatee in louisville, kentucky in the early morning of june 1, 2020. the starting point of this (walking) map is 6th and jefferson. this is where the protests took place - by the courthouse, by corrections. the red destination marker is 26th and broadway where david mcatee was murdered by lmpd and his body was left in the street for upward of twelve hours. of course none of the officers had body cameras on to show their alleged series of events.
david mcatee died protecting his niece. he died in a predominantly black neighborhood twenty blocks to the west of where the protests were happening. about four blocks south and twenty blocks to the west. you’re likely not from louisville and you don’t know our geography. the west end is a predominantly black area. twenty-sixth is pretty deep into the west end. the protests were happening at our courthouse downtown at sixth and jefferson. there was some movement downtown between first and sixth and broadway.
they weren’t dispersing crowds from the protests.
they were twenty blocks to the west.
you want to know what’s twenty blocks to the east? white neighborhoods, including (give or take a few blocks) the highlands where they WERE protesting. there was a police and national guard presence there too. no one got killed. no shots were fired.
say his name. remember where he was murdered in context to where the protests were. don’t let anyone say this was justice or that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, because he was in HIS neighborhood and his crime? talking to his friends after curfew in a black neighborhood.
fuck lmpd.
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