The Off-Season

The WNBA has a ridiculously long off season.  It will be seven or eight months before we even see as much as a pre-season game.  The players are now in the process of fleeing to their clubs overseas; we might not see some of them back until the season starts (if then).

There's a saying that "idle hands are the Devil's workshop" and it's never been truer with me.  In the past, I've tried two things to try to pass the time.

1)  Cover Georgia Tech basketball.  The problem is that it's not only generally hard to get to a Georgia Tech game (Georgia Tech's in the city, same as the Dream), but it's cold.  I also got the impression that despite my single-handed efforts, no one really cared much about Georgia Tech women's basketball.

2)  Cover basketball overseas.  Even fewer people cared about that than Georgia Tech.  No sense in doing hours of work a week with virtually no feedback.  No writer wants to feel like he's talking to himself.

Now, if I wanted to cover Connecticut or Tennessee women's basketball, then bar the door! You'd definitely get page views if that was your be-all and end-all goal.  But UConn is too far away and really, so is Tennessee.  I really feel for these fans who love a team but live nowhere near it.

Therefore, I think I'll give girls prep basketball a try.  Why not?  I really don't know much about the scene anyway and it might be interesting to experience firsthand - to watch players at the prep level and see how they progress (or fail to) over the season.  There are lots of good schools in the area and I'm sure I can see lots of good basketball over the winter.

I once posted on Twitter about possibly creating a website dedicated to Atlanta Prep basketball.   A friend strongly advised against it, thinking that I was trying to create a scouting service.  He said that a lot of people who produce scouting reports for pay are okay, but there are a lot of people who are just in it for the wrong reasons (fame/power/influence) and he hoped that I wouldn't be one of those people.

To which I might respond.  "Yeah, but everyone knows that I don't know what I'm doing."  It's not like I'm trying to keep my overall lack of knowledge a secret.  Anyone who buys a scouting report from me is throwing his money away.

So you might be reading about my adventures of sitting on wooden benches over the winter.  One month (maybe) till prep season!