A Quarter-Decade of NBA Existentialism

If you read NBA blogs, you're probably familiar with FreeDarko—a site that isn't about Darko and is technically free, but now accepting donations. It's one of the most unique and intelligent offerings in the NBA blogosphere, and it's been going strong for more than two and a half years, making it a relative old-timer in the world of sports blogs. I decided to run an unauthorized analysis of the past quarter-decade.

First of all, there are 15 different writers who have contributed FD posts, but the majority come from the core team. Here's a breakdown of posts by author by month:

Shoals is clearly the workhorse, contributing more than 60% of the total. The overall team was nearly twice as prolific in some of the early months as they are today, but with far fewer photos (which we now know take longer to compile than the words).

Another defining characteristic of FD is the comments section, which is consistently solid. Here's a monthly breakdown of the average number of comments per post:

Not too surprising to see a strong upward trend over time. Incidentally, the most-discussed post to date is 2006's Burning the Anchor.

I also looked at which players were mentioned in the most different posts, compiled using the Ballhype tagging engine. Take it with a grain of salt, because although we recognize that Mamba is Kobe and Agent Zero is Gilbert, some of the more esoteric nicknames and veiled references are lost.

1. Kobe Bryant
2. LeBron James
3. Allen Iverson
4. Shaquille O'Neal
5. Amare Stoudemire
6. Gilbert Arenas
7. Ron Artest
8. Carmelo Anthony
9. Kevin Garnett
10. Dirk Nowitzki

Finally, for fun, I compiled the following unauthorized FD video history which incorporates a few hundred of my favorite pictures from the site. Enjoy.

NBA

vote downundo vote up Jason posted 7/16/2007

• tykeenan

  +3

  I think we're all in your debt for putting that video together. Tremendous.

  Posted 7/16/2007 respond (flag)

• TheHype

  +2

  Uh-oh... here comes the "is basketball jazz?" debate again!

  Posted 7/16/2007 respond (flag)

• tziller

  +2

  Holy crap. The internet continues to amaze. Thank you, Al Gore.

  Posted 7/16/2007 respond (flag)

• PostmanE

  +2

  The definitive FD post. Thanks, Jason.

  Posted 7/16/2007 respond (flag)

• missgossip

  +3

  WHOA. I always thought all of the "authors" were really just alternate-personalities of shoals. Fascinating!

  Posted 7/16/2007 respond (flag)

• jamiemottram

  +2

  This is very good work, Mr. Gurney.

  Posted 7/17/2007 respond (flag)

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