Friday, May 10, 2013

It's Official

This shouldn’t come as any big surprise, since it’s been more than two months since we last posted on this site. (Life happens.) But given that tomorrow is the 7th Anniversary of the launch of the DCBasketCases, perhaps this is a fitting time to make it official: The BCs are now retired from the basketball blogosphere.

It’s been quite a ride! When we published our first post on May 11, 2006, we didn’t really introduce ourselves to our readers because, quite frankly, we weren’t sure we would ever have any. We certainly never anticipated that – in time – the two of us would come to be known collectively as “The BasketCases.” We never expected our blog would be mentioned in the Washington Post or on ESPN.com. And we certainly never anticipated that our blog would allow us to make the acquaintance of so many wonderful people . . . fans, coaches, GMs, journalists, readers near and far, and disembodied heads of former mascots. That was the best part.

The DC BasketCases blog originally grew out of our desire to share our enthusiasm, our humor, some information, as well as, on occasion, some serious opinions about something we both loved, women’s basketball. Before the blog, there were message boards, but not many other options for communicating with those who shared our interest. There was relatively little coverage of women’s basketball in the print or broadcast media, and that hasn't changed.  But in 2006, the social media that we now take for granted mostly didn’t exist. Facebook was literally in its infancy and Twitter was introduced to the cyber-world the same year as the BCs.

Early on in the evolution of our blog, we recognized that many readers were starved for information about their favorite teams. So even in some of our wackier posts, we always strived to pass along accurate reports of games, players, recruiting, human interest stories related to the sport – either things we found written or things that were shared with us by reliable sources – that we then shared with our readers. Now, however (thanks to the advent of social media), teams, coaches and players are able to post information or links about anything that’s happening. Fans no longer need to rely on the Washington Post, or WJLA, or even on the DC BasketCases for news of their teams or favorite players.

In the seven years of our blog’s life, we averaged one new post every other day! That’s a lot of writing, linking, arguing with each other, editing . . . that's a lot of work. Believe it! But sharing our mostly upbeat, usually (but not always) light-hearted take on our two favorite teams with others who cared about them as we did, that was truly enjoyable. And having readers tell us in comments or in person that they liked what we wrote . . . that was always appreciated. We loved that (and will miss it); it never got old.

But, unfortunately, we are getting old. And the cyber-world has changed so much since we launched in 2006 that now, we believe, is a good time to step away from our keyboards. So thank you readers! You’ve made this seven-year-stretch special in a way we never anticipated. And though we won’t be basketball bloggers, we still are, and expect we always will be, women’s basketball fans.

So Thank you, Terps. Thank you, WNBA. Thank you to all the wonderful people (especially our loyal readers) we’ve met along the way. And to quote a famous Looney Tunes character, That’s all Folks.