Beginnings

Image Via http://stillanightowl.wordpress.com/

This is a blog born of necessity.

For nearly four years now I've been an ardent fan of the NBA. My love for basketball, though, began much earlier. When Hakeem dismantled the Knicks for the first of two Rockets titles, I was eight years old and was just beginning to expand my basketball horizons beyond the confines of my driveway. Through a few early years compiling a rather scant basketball card collection(Michael Finley rookie card, what what?) to my days cheering on Ronny Turiaf at Gonzaga University, my love for the game never waned.

On a night shrouded in mystery, I sat at my desk disconsolately browsing the internet for something to help me forget that the paper I should have been working on was due in less than eight hours. That's when I stumbled upon True Hoop, and forever broadened my NBA horizons. I won't claim that it was love at first sight. I didn't start reading True Hoop every day from then on, but it planted the seed of what would become a borderline unhealthy obsession with following NBA basketball.

Over the next year or so I continued to expand my basketball consciousness, bookmarking any blog I came across and devouring NBA information with the depravity of a drug addict. This obsession followed me to China my first go-around, as a student living in Beijing, and it hasn't left me during my  second stint in China.

Being an English teacher affords me enough free time to do what I want within my monetary and geographic confines. Being a young adult, though, requires that I(or at least compels me to) budget a large portion of that time to things that will create opportunities for me in the future. Simply reading about the NBA for hours each day doesn't create many opportunities outside of impressing(or disturbing) my friends with my extensive knowledge of NBA happenings.

I found myself at this crossroads mere days ago as I immersed myself in the build up to the NBA season--unsure  if I should create this very blog as an outlet for my NBA fandom or tone it down and spend more time studying Chinese. I confronted my demons, and… well one of us won, anyway. The People's Republic of Basketball is here, for better or worse.

You may find yourself asking "So what can I expect from The PRB?" Well, within the next couple days I will finish writing a purpose statement of sorts, explaining China's relevance to the NBA landscape and offering my view on the NBA's attempt to establish its brand in China.  In the next couple hours I will be posting my NBA team previews which will hopefully be a refreshing China-themed twist on every NBA blog's pre-season pondering. A regular feature will be "Chinese Pickup Tales," chronicling my experiences playing ball on the concrete courts with random Chinese folks. I will be watching NBA games on Chinese television and providing commentary on the commentary, if that makes sense. There will be news and analysis of any happenings involving both China and the NBA. There will be a random spattering of China-related links for those who would like to gain some insight into the workings of a country at a crossroads. Finally, there will be plenty of (unsolicited) NBA analysis. Hopefully that part won't scare people away from the other stuff The PRB has to offer.