New Roster and Some Programming Notes

Regular readers here at PRS know that it’s been a year of transition for the blog. In the months since I took over as the owner and publisher, life has done what it does. Our former editor, Andrew Tonry, is sunning himself in Los Angeles, drinking at the great Happy Hour in the Sky for former hoops bloggers. He is joined by many others of his ilk. Opportunity and necessity has come calling for our other contributors, whose work you’ll no doubt see for a long time yet. In short, it was time for the blog to turn a new leaf. Today, we’re taking the first step.

I’m thrilled to announce approximately one million new contributors to the Society, who. I’ll introduce below. They hail from far and wide, Blazers fans and NBA agnostics, X-and-O wizards and hoops newshounds. To my everlasting chagrin, there is a Duke graduate. They are united in a love of hoops and an unfashionable intense desire to share it. Without further adieu, they are:

Cole Patty: Cole was lucky enough to sit on Muhammad Ali’s lap as a little kid, and he knew at a young age his life wouldn’t get much cooler than that. When it comes to specific team fandom, he is as lost in the NBA as Bon Iver is in the woods. When it comes down to it, Cole enjoys watching the entire NBA. Then he enjoys writing and talking about the league during his free time.

Mark Levesque: Mark is an Portland native and soon to be graduate of the University of Oregon. A life-long sports fan, Mark was the guy in high school who figured out how to stream March Madness games into the classroom which may or may not have have contributed to a deteriorating relationship with his history teacher. He aspires to one day follow in the footsteps of Duke basketball legend, Brian Zoubek, and open a cream puff shop.

Joel Gunderson: Joel grew up a die-hard Blazer fan; he even locked myself in his room after the 2000 Western Conference Finals for two days. He’s not ashamed to admit it. Nowadays, he lives with his wife and daughter in Gresham, where he is pursuing his degree in journalism. He is devoting his life to covering sports, because lord knows he wasn’t good enough to actually play them.

Sunny Ahluwalia: As a self-diagnosed hoops addict, Sunny has been fortunate enough to contribute here, log video for Synergy Sports, and cover British Columbia basketball for northpolehoops.com. While his background is in economics, his passion is unequivocally for basketball and specifically for Xs and Os.  He’s located just outside of Vancouver, BC and he travels to Portland often as it’s not only his favorite city, but also the closest NBA town.  He apologizes in advance for his spelling of the word centre…it’s apparently a Canadian thing.

Joe Swide: Raised in Southwest Portland, Joe has been a Trail Blazer expat living in Seattle since 2006. He graduated from the University of Washington in 2010 and since then has been making vintage athletic clothing for Ebbets Field Flannels. His interests include the 1998-99 Blazers’ bench, Plains Indian history, and tacos. He once high-fived Jake Voskuhl.

Grady O’Brien: Grady’s biggest love is human professional basketball. He went to Duke University where he majored in History and Music while also playing roughly 10,000 hours of pick-up basketball at the gym (imagine a 5’10”, 140-pound version of Rip Hamilton). He feels compelled to tell you that he has an obsessive love of chocolate.

There will be other contributors. From time to time you will see Jeremy Conlin, a contributor to TrueHoop Network blogs ClipperBlog and HoopSpeak, and the work of Jacob Schraer, a freelance Portland scribe who has written on the Blazers and on books for the Mercury. As you can see, PRS now boasts a tremendous depth of talent and character, and we aim for nothing less than to become one-stop reading for all things Blazers.

More changes are coming, but it’s time to get to work with the new team. Don’t be shy about dropping us a line at portlandroundballsociety [at] gmail [dot] com if there is something more you want out of your Blazers coverage. We hope you’re as excited as we are.