Just who the hell is this Matt Watson guy anyway?

1. I prefer blue. The only Joe I can speak for is my dog, and he goes bare-assed.

2. I’ve heard rumors.

3. Not yet. Weird story: I wanted to be my grandpa for Halloween when I was a little kid. I was really young, and he just died, and my mom kept telling me that he was in heaven and didn’t need his body, so I thought it would pretty cool if I could use his head for Halloween. I asked at his funeral, but they said no. I was pretty annoyed, but after a couple of years I got over it.

4. A few years ago, myself and a couple of relatively famous blogger-types you might recognize briefly considered starting a kind of media consulting company for athletes, helping them shape their brand / get their story out without having to deal with the media on their terms. But then Twitter blew up, so there goes that. But so many athletes are either misunderstood or tone-deaf when it comes to their image — I actually think I could help a lot of people learn how to engage their fans, change the conversation, etc, without looking like a self-absorbed robot. Can you imagine how much trouble LeBron James could have saved himself in the last two years if one sane person in his entourage had his ear?

5. I’m easily overwhelmed by math, so I’d be a horrible GM. (Although, by the looks of things, maybe a solid handle on math isn’t a prerequisite …)

Long version: I moved to St. Louis for a job in 2004, but I moved back to MI after just nine months — there were several reasons, but mostly I was homesick and I knew I wanted to get engaged to my girlfriend. (I did, we got married in 2006. Yay!) But when I left, I left behind a full-time, salaried job as a fantasy sports editor/writer. I stayed with the company a bit longer doing contract work working remotely, but I was officially a full-time freelance writer.

Blogs were starting to get really popular in 2005, and I’ve always been a bit of a nerd in terms of technology, web design, etc, so I thought it’d be cool to start one — not just to learn about the technology behind it, but also because as a self-employed writer, I suddenly had extra time on my hands.

I decided to write about the Pistons for a few reasons: 1) the Pistons were always my favorite team growing up, and they were coming off two trips to the NBA Finals; and 2) I spent years writing about NFL/MLB for my fantasy sports job, and I wanted to excuse to write about the NBA, which I had never really done before even though it was always my favorite sport; 3) I bought the domain name detroitbadboys.com during the 2004 title run and wanted to put it to use.

What’s funny is that at the time I thought I was behind the curve in terms of launching a blog; in hindsight, I was way ahead of it. Either way, I started posting several times a week, and eventually caught the eye of some other popular blogs at the time, including YAYsports.com (anyone remember that? It was basically the premier NBA blog at the time) and TrueHoop.com (which was still an independent project run by Henry Abbott, not yet affiliated with ESPN).

It took a good year or more of steady writing before an actual community developed in the comments (and even then it was tiny compared to now), but once that happened, there was no turning back. The collective community is so much smarter than I’ll ever be — anytime I write something now, I fully understand I’m simply starting a conversation that will get 10 times more interesting after all of you have a chance to weigh in.

In response to Shiny’s questions, I said the Buddha and Bynum interviews were among my favorites. Another one that stands out, though, was Antonio McDyess after being eliminated by the Celtics in the ECF. It was a pack interview with dozens of reporters surrounded his locker, but he answered each and every question even though you could tell he was devastated and his eyes were welling up with tears. It had to be one of the most frustrating moments of his life, but dealing with the press was part of the job and he manned up and did his thing like a pro.

That same night, Rasheed Wallace hid in the shower area the entire night. All the reporters waited quietly by his locker waiting for him to finish, and after all of his teammates had faced the media and left, he finally came out wrapped in a towel, grabbed some clothes, and went back to the shower area to get dressed (which players never do), telling the media something like “ya’ll can go kick rocks,” basically meaning there wasn’t a chance that he would talk.

That was part of Sheed’s mystique, I suppose — extremely emotional, has no use for the media, etc — but it was selfish. As an internet writer it didn’t really make my job harder one way or the other (can’t say the same for writers with print deadlines), but he copped out by making his teammates face the press without him. Everyone says Sheed was loyal to his teammates, but facing the music when the shit hits the fan is part of the show, part of the reason players make big bucks. I lost respect for him that night.

1. Every other person I’ve met my entire life.

2. Donate it to amnesty Charlie V’s contract.

3. I never really thought we’d lose the entire season, there was just too much money at stake. Probably more so than any other league, the NBA can afford a shortened regular season — casual fans always complains it’s too long in the first place. The playoffs are where the league’s iconic memories are made.

4. Frodo Baggins.

1. I love beer, but I don’t consider myself a true beer nerd — I can’t riff for hours on different styles, etc. Mostly, I just like trying different Michigan beers and supporting local businesses. My favorite brewery is Wolverine State Brewery in Ann Arbor — they specialize in lagers, which tend to be good session beers, and my current favorite is their District 16, an amber. But my favorite changes all the time. I’ll drink just about any Michigan beer — Short’s and Founders are awesome, Bell’s and New Holland are obviously great — there’s too many to list. (As for non-Michigan beers, I must say Schneider Aventinus is perhaps the best I’ve ever had.)

2. Albert’s On The Alley? I lived in Garden City for a couple of years, and that was maybe a mile from our house. I’ve only been there twice, but it’s pretty cool — I’ll see if I can swing by on Friday.

3. Jason Segel. He’s not a red-head, but he’s almost tall enough with an appropriately sick sense of humor. Had a chance to meet him when he was in A2 filming a movie — cool dude.

4. You can’t use “Jim” — that’s cheating!

5. No and no. I only looked at the Google Reader once — I prefer a standalone RSS reader app. But I wasn’t impressed. As for new Twitter, it’ll rope in more new/casual users, but it’s annoying that it now takes something like three clicks to get a direct link to a specific tweet. The new layout just feels … heavy.

6. I’m a full-fledged Apple fanboy these days, so I check out Daring Fireball multiple times a day. Same with SplatF, though maybe less so now that it’s slowing down (its editor got a full-time gig at ReadWriteWeb). I also dig The Verge, but that’s an SBN/Vox Media property, so it sounds like I’m being a company man when I say that.

7. I fire him the moment he walked into my office saying, “So yeah, we’re re-signing Tayshaun, right?”

8. For context, I’m guessing Packey is asking why so many of my emails to him are sent at 4 a.m. I keep the strangest hours — I flip-flop between regular business hours and the night shift for SB Nation depending on the day of the week. But even aside from that, I tend to drift nocturnal — I’m just a night person, can’t explain it. It’s so much quieter / easier to get work done when everyone else (in my house, on the internet) is sleeping.

1. Guessing you meant HS basketball coach — I’m still embarrassed over the fact I didn’t play varsity hoops, since everyone assumes I did. But I was always taller than I was talented/athletic, and my school was relatively competitive in that most of the starters got athletic scholarships, whether it was hoops or another sport. I was a year ahead of Chris Young, for instance, who went on to play for Michigan. (I played in various church leagues, etc — I’m not a complete fraud!)

2. Hmm. Other writers would probably say I’m not as witty/entertaining/clever, which I’d admit. I like to think I have a good sense of humor in person, but I’m rarely “laugh out loud” funny as a writer. I read guys like that and get real jealous. Also, whenever I try to hard to write something, I get massive writer’s block, which makes everything I write that much more dry. Dealing with constant writer’s block is what’s pushed me more into the editing/managing/planning branch of media — it’s stressful as hell when your job is to produce words and you’re never completely happy with the words you produce.

3. “You write about sports on the internet? The fuck’s the internet?” asks Matt from 1989.

4. “You should have moved to Hawaii sooner,” says Matt from 2039.

5. “I don’t really know exactly what he does, but he doesn’t visit enough,” says my mom.

1) Ha — they’re cool with it. And considering how much I goofed off in college, I don’t think anyone really expects I’ll go back for another degree.

2) Honestly, writing and editing sports is all I’ve really done. Before I launched DBB, I worked for a (sadly defunct) fantasy sports site called RotoTimes.com from 2000-05. Early in that span, it was bought by a larger company called CDM Sports (which, after I left, was purchased by Fanball.com), which, among other things, produced all the fantasy sports content for USAToday.com and put out a couple of print magazines a year previewing the fantasy baseball and football seasons.

My column actually appeared on USAToday.com before I officially graduated. (I took two years off during undergrad to work. Never intended to take that much time off, but you know how things go — one semester turned into two, which turned into four. I finally went back to finish the last semester and change before moving to St. Louis, where CDM was headquartered). So basically, I was five years into a professional career writing/editing sports before I got into blogging in 2005. But what’s funny is that it was my blogging — something I simply did on the side because I was under-employed for a few months — that caught AOL’s eye when they launched FanHouse and helped me land my old freelance gig with HoopsWorld. One thing led to another and boom, here I am. (For those who don’t know, my day job post-FanHouse is helping run SBNation.com)

FanHouse started as an uber-blog, but it definitely evolved into something more mainstream. Before AOL pulled the plug, I was the NBA Editor, directing all of our coverage and managing a team of really talented pros like Sam Amick, Chris Tomasson, Brett Pollakoff, Shoals, Ziller, Matt Moore, etc. So while some know me as a “blogger,” my experience goes a bit beyond that. If I was born a generation earlier, I probably would have gone the more traditional route of working in print first, but I came of age just when it became possible to get my start online.

I’m happy it worked out that way, because the internet isn’t going anywhere, so while some folks struggle to adapt their experience in print to pixels, it’s all I’ve ever known. And like I said in another answer, I’ve always been an early adopter when it comes to technology, so I hope I can remain ahead of the curve. (For instance, at FanHouse, we were among the first of the big media outlets to really start using Twitter, etc.) We’ll see.

That said, competition is enormously stiff in sports media, and in NBA blogs in particular. When I started DBB, there wasn’t even a consistently updated blog for every team, so the guys who started early and did it well earned a lot of recognition and opportunities (ie, myself, Shoals, J.E. Skeets, Kelly Dwyer, Ziller, The Big Lead, even Henry Abbott, etc.) when companies like AOL and Yahoo started paying people. It was harder for guys who came a year or two later, and it’s extremely hard for guys starting out just now, especially since networks like SBN and the True Hoop network are all filled up. I used to be able to read all the notable blogs every day — now it’s impossible.

I’m lucky I came up when I did, but I also worked my ass off and was willing to sacrifice as a full-time freelancer for years. A lot of people have dreams of blogging full-time but aren’t in a situation where they’re willing/able to “quit the day job” to make it happen. Even after you get the full-time gig, the money doesn’t compare to a lot of “real” jobs.

3. I love living in MI because of my friends and family (and I live for UM tailgate season), but if could I pick up everyone and force them to live elsewhere, I’d seriously consider Hawaii. Went there on my honeymoon and fell in love, and it’d be awesome to watch sports in the day instead of night. I’d miss going to games, but in this dream scenario perhaps I’d be able to afford back several times a year.

Man, I’m wordy. I hope no one fell asleep.