This site has come a very long way in a very short time. Especially considering that there are only two people who produce it.
The Internet is a very powerful communication system, so powerful that people who produce and post content to the world wide web are continuously developing their content and their editorial scheme. The guy behind the Quest is a creative and perfectionist type person, which means that he is always coming up with new ideas (most of which are quickly rejected) and that he is never completely happy with whatever the current Quest editorial strategy is. Therefore, it is no surprise that a decision was made recently to once again revamp the editorial strategy of the Quest.
A BRIEF HISTORY
The editorial scheme of the Quest started out very simply in late 2006: the site started out as "Nuggets 1," and was to be a simple basketball fan site for the Denver Nuggets. In the first two years, the size and the scope of basketball reports grew by leaps and bounds.
By early 2008, we had already outgrown the simple one-team fan site concept. The outgrowing of it was rapid, and the rapidity was due more than anything else to the amateur way the Nuggets were managing and coaching their team when Allen Iverson was on it. So by early 2008, the myriad mistakes of the Nuggets franchise were getting on our nerves, and also by then we realized that merely being a fan site for one particular team was not going to be enough for the long term. Not enough from a basketball perspective and not enough from a worthwhile web site that can generate good traffic perspective either.
As you can read about in detail elsewhere in the User Guide, the mission expanded to become a dedication to discovering and reporting on how basketball games are won. Since if you win more games than anyone else you win a Championship, and since in the NBA at least you are awarded a very sharp looking ring if you are a Champion, we decided during the summer of 2008 to drop the "Nuggets 1" name and to adopt the name "The Quest for the Ring."
Furthermore, it was decided during the summer of 2008 that we would compromise between on the one hand being a site for just one team, and on the other hand being a site which tries to cover the entire League. The former is too narrow and the latter is too broad.
If you are covering just one team, you can discover and report things that even the Coach and/or the managers of the team don't seem to know or understand, but by definition you can not know very much about other teams, nor can you do much true analysis of the League as a whole. If on the other hand your site is for the NBA as a whole, you can seldom if ever get detailed enough to be truly useful to readers who are trying to learn about exactly how and why basketball games are won.
So the objective, which at first we were thinking was more of a dream than an obtainable objective, was to compromise between the two editorial positions. Eventually, persistance showed that it is possible to compromise and avoid the two extremes.
It was considered a truism that if we attempted to cover every team in the NBA, our reports would have to be watered down and thus less useful. In other words, the reports would not have the detailed accuracy needed to help players, coaches, and managers to win basketball games, a detail that can only come if you limit the teams covered to no more than three.
So in early November 2008, we decided to cover two teams: the Detroit Pistons and the Denver Nuggets.
In October 2008 the name of the site officially became "The Quest for the Ring." However, the site remained, and still remains at this writing, located at the original Nuggets 1 blogspot web address. We plan to migrate the home page (including every report) to here in the summer of 2009, but the nuggets1.blogspot address will always of course link to the new address, and we may post the reports on both addresses for about a year.
TEMPORARY SUSPENSIONS OF PRODUCTION
As you can read about in detail in the 2008 Site News and History postings in this User Guide, there was a virtual suspension of production of reports during 2008, from April through September to be exact. This was due primarily to the real estate crash; that crash forced us to put in far more hours than we would have put in otherwise in real estate projects that were absolutely mandatory to achieve. Starting in October 2008, the site, now called The Quest for the Ring, sprung back into life. During October and into the first half of November or so, content that actually had been produced during the suspension was posted.
At the very beginning of March, 2009, we published the first ever Real Player Ratings (by Team) that included a statistically valid adjustment for "hidden defending," for another words defending not tracked by scorekeepers such as man to man defending.
Three short weeks after that milestone, a technological disaster, and simultaneously the necessity of completing another large-scale project, forced a suspension of production again. For the second year in a row, the suspension was at about the worst possible time during the year: just before the playoffs were to get underway.
The 2008 suspension was for 6 months, though content was actually being produced during 4 of those months but not posted to the site until October, as already explained.
Now, the 2009 suspension has been for 7 weeks, a little less than two months.
We apologize to readers for the suspension, particularly to any regular readers out there.
In 2008 we promised that, as we were then doing, we would in the future, whenever we were forced to temporarily suspend operations, always come back stronger than ever. As you will see, we really meant that!
NEW EDITORIAL DESIGN OF THE QUEST AS OF MAY 2009
Of course we are making no changes in the mission or the primary objectives of the Quest: to discover and explain exactly how basketball games are won and lost, and how teams and franchises are successful or unsuccessful. But we are making smart changes on how best to achive the mission and the objectives.
We are making two major changes. First, although we are continuing the two team specialization plan, the amount of freedom we have to choose which teams to specialize in is being reduced to very little. From now on, we will be covering the defending Champion and whichever team is considered (by basketball people we believe in including our self) to be the most likely to challenge the Champion in the next Finals.
However, we decided to, given that Kevin Garnett is not available to the Celtics, to technically violate the new rule for the few weeks between the beginning of new editorial policy and the 2009 finals. Starting in October 2009 and in each subsequent October, we will specialize in whatever team won the June Championship, and whichever team is considered most likely to challenge for the Championship in the next June.
But the other major change is even bigger, and means that the particular teams chosen for specialization will be somewhat less important than before, because we are increasing the overall League focus even more so than we did in the fall 2008 changes.
Now we will be dividing the year into two parts:
MID APRIL THROUGH MID DECEMBER
The playoffs will be broken down in detail. There will be reports on every single playoff game. The reports for the first round, which is really just a washout round, where a big thing which happens is that the teams with injuries are washed out, will probably be limited to mostly "Ultimate Game Breakdown" type reports, with Real Player Ratings being the most important component. We are planning to make the breakdowns even better by including with the Real Player Ratings key team statistics that you can not find in box scores, such as team offensive and team defensive efficiency and turnover analysis for the individual playoff games.
For second round (Conference Semis) third round (Conference Finals) and for of course the NBA Championship, we will be producing both the Ultimate Game Breakdowns and written article reports on each game.
In other words, we have decided to give the Quest a virtually unique detailed focus on NBA playoff games, the games where the best players and teams play.
In summary during this period from April to December, we will be spending much of our time on going over in great detail all of the playoff games that were played from Mid April through mid-late June.
MID DECEMBER TO MID APRIL
During this 1/3 of the year, the focus will shift to the regular season, and mostly to the two teams we are specializing in, as described earlier.
ANOTHER WAY TO EXPLAIN THE NEW PLAN
To make sure this is clear, let me describe the new editorial plan in a different way. From Mid April until Mid December, we will be focused largely on individual games, playoff games to be exact.
At this point we have decided, quite frankly, that analyzing regular season games in great detail is sort of a waste of time, assuming that you don't have enough time to do detailed breakdowns of every playoff game and some, many, or all regular season games of one or more teams, which you don't unless you have at least 60 hours a week. If and only if you have a staff of multiple part time writers, or at least a 60 hours a week full time writer, could you possibly do quality breakdowns of every single playoff game and also quality breakdowns of many or all of the regular season games of even one team.
So, given what we are working with right now, we have realized that it is much smarter to reverse the usual pattern of basketball sites. Almost all, and it honestly seems all, other basketball sites, including ones that have multiple writers, are making the mistake of over covering the regular season and under covering the playoffs. The breakdown of effort is backwards: too much stuff is done for the regular season and not enough stuff is done for the playoffs.
Instead of most of the writing and breakdowns being focused on the regular season, most of the writing and breakdowns here at Quest will be focused on the playoffs. Only from mid or late December until mid April will we be focused to any extent on the regular season. But even during these four months, we will seldom be doing game breakdowns of regular season games. Rather, we will be producing team reports for the teams we are specializing in, which will be the defending Champion and the most likely challenger, as explained above.
As before, these team reports will look at individual games to some extent, but will mostly look at what the team and individual players are doing right, and what they are doing wrong, with respect to the objective of winning playoff games.
In other words, the team reports during these four months will focus on the regular season itself only to what extent what is happening in the regular season matters for the playoffs beginning in April.
In summary the focus of the Quest for the Ring will always be on the playoffs up to and including the Championship. This will be the World Wide Web's best "NBA Playoffs Site". From mid April until mid December, the focus will be on the actual playoff games that were played from mid-April until mid to late June. You will not be able to find out what exactly happened in those games in greater detail anywhere else other than right here. Then from mid December until mid April, the focus will be on how well teams, especially the teams specialized in, are preparing for the upcoming playoffs.
We hope you agree that this is by a good margin the best idea yet for the editorial plan for the Quest for the Ring. This was one creative brainstorm that should not and did not go into the trash can.
At this time we plan to maintain the new banner design indefinitely. At all times in the Quest banner, the banners and most important players of the teams we are specializing in will appear.
You Can Post Your Response to Anything on Quest Here
