I wrote my first post for Raptors Republic on July 21, 2009. In the six-plus years since, I’ve shifted from being a regular contributor to a part-time one, to a nearly full-time one, to one who did a lot of the organizing behind the scenes, to one who wasn’t, by contract, allowed to write for the site anymore at all. I’ve made hundreds of posts, covered tanking teams, covered playoff games, and was once the victim of a two-seasons long losing streak where any game I was assigned to was a guaranteed loss. As far as team blogs go, there’s little I haven’t gotten to experience at RR, save for, you know, the whole playoff success thing.
I’m really excited to announce that as of this morning, I’m taking on a much bigger role with RR as the site’s Managing Editor.
From the reader perspective, not much will change here. Zarar and Sam and everyone else will still be around and writing for the most part, the podcasts will remain the same, and nothing will change about the forums. We lost William Lou, which is a far more devastating than the loss of Lou Williams, but we’ll try to endure. The main goals of the change in title/role are more content and a quicker reaction time to news. We’ll be around the Raptors and Raptors905 some, and we’ll work to find original angles the team’s (terrific) beat writers and (equally terrific) blogs don’t or can’t tackle. We’ll have someone on “the desk” for the most part so we’re on top of anything breaking, big or small. For the most part, nothing will change, except that there will be more of everything. You’ll also notice a redesign of the site (at some point today), which we hope is a positive (Zarar does great work).
We have exciting plans for the season to come, a season that will include roughly 44 wins, a playoff series, a potential extra lottery pick coming the Raptors’ way, and the 2016 NBA All-Star Game.
But, to put on the cheesiest of site-runner hats, we also want to know what the readers want. We now have more man-hours at our disposal, and while we think we have a good handle on how best to use them and keep pushing RR forward, we want to get as much feedback as possible. I’m going to provide a few means of contacting me at the end of this post, and we’d love to hear what you want to see, now or throughout the course of the season. Question for a player? Curious about something at the Raptors’ staff level? Want something Xs&Os broken down? We can’t promise we’ll be able to do everything, but we’ll genuinely try our best to incorporate any feedback and push the content in the direction that readers want. I don’t write just so I have something to read, and I want the awesome RR community to be satiated.
That’s about all for now. The season starts Wednesday and we’ll have some preview content rolling out over the next couple of days. It’s pretty much here, and while the Blue Jays provided a nice reprieve from the usual October preseason malaise, I couldn’t be more excited for 2015-16 to start. Let’s go Raptors.
Contact
Email: eblakemurphy1@gmail.com
Twitter: @BlakeMurphyODC, @RaptorsRepublic
