Welcome to Simply Ballin

I’m John Jablonka and I’ve been creating basketball content for over four years now.

It all started with me writing blogs on my phone on a basketball app called, Hardwood Amino. It was then in 2018 that I found the love for writing and talking about basketball. That interest grew gradually over time when I got my first opportunity to write for All U Can Heat to attempt to cover the Miami Heat in 2019. That’s when I started to look at this as something that I wanted to do. I was playing around with the idea of journalism or whatever I thought it was. That continued for a while with me writing for AUCH and also Hoops Habit covering the Los Angeles Clippers.

Then I had the most common idea of starting my blog.

Simply Ballin.

At that time, it was simply meant to be a platform that was not an app on my phone where I could grow as a writer, explore different ideas, be creative, and have fun talking about basketball with no pressure. Seeing as I was only talking about the Heat for AUCH, I wanted the freedom to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted simply for fun.

That was a mess, though. It was my first attempt creating a website on WordPress, then making it more professional on Webflow, trying it on Substack(the first time), and eventually moving it all to Medium.

I was also fairly inconsistent with keeping it up on there. That was mainly with deciding to focus solely on covering the Heat. That’s where over the last two years, I began to take this more seriously. It went away from doing this for fun with no expectations or goals. I started to see this as the thing that I wanted to do. So, that ended up with me posting a lot of content on Twitter with my game threads, breaking down every game, and eventually writing for Miami Heat Beat where I was the last two years.

And now, we’re back at Substack.

I want Simply Ballin as a whole(on YouTube, on Substack, on social media, and other platforms), to be a place where I can create, compile, and share any basketball content and put all my effort into growing this. This won’t just be articles on here that will be the focus. It’s content across the board.

Where the goal is simply to create the best possible content that you can learn about the NBA by focusing on the actual basketball, the Xs and Os, breaking down film, looking at individual plays and actions, going through stats, creating tools, databases filled with everything you may need. Everything that has to do with on-court stuff. The goal is to cover basketball in so many ways.

Being a Heat fan first, a lot of the content will be primarily Heat-related. That is what I know the most. That is what I enjoy the most. And that’s where I think I can offer the most…by providing the best possible Heat analysis. But this won’t be solely a Heat page. This will still have everything else. This is a basketball space. Anything and everything to do with basketball in some form or the other.

So, this was a quick intro to me and what my idea for Simply Ballin is.

What you can expect

As for what content you’ll see here is pretty much open to anything. Right now, the commitment is two weekly/semi regular round ups, The Culture Report and Around the Arc, once the season starts.

The Culture Report is a semi-regular round up of my thoughts, discussion, and analysis of the Miami Heat wherever they may be(this will include my coverage at AUCH). This is the place for you to get up to speed with everything that’s important, interesting, or simply fun — whether that’s news, specific games, box-scores, actions, plays, signings, trades, trends, financials, schemes — and digging deeper into the how’s and why’s through film breakdowns, stats, and analysis.

Around the Arc is pretty much the same thing but non-Heat related, where it’s thoughts and discussion about anything that is going around the league whether it’s trades, free agency, or anything I found interesting enough to just talk about. Here, I’ll be looking further into what’s happened and provide that extra context, analysis, and stats, and simply dig a bit deeper into what’s happened.

Both ideas will also end up having a long-form video on Simply Ballin YouTube. That will be the content for all of the analysis, with the article complementing it. That will be the case for almost all content here. The focus will be on video content on the YouTube channel in the future with articles as the addition with some extra thoughts or act as more of a collection of content that exists everywhere else.

There will be some standalone pieces and videos that may be going through a specific idea, player, or team in much more detail. On top of the individual ideas, there will be two pages at the top “Culture Report” and “Around the Arc” where it will have a few extra ideas, such as my threads, game notes, stats, and anything random. You can see those pages as the home page for the two main ideas.

So, that is everything you need to know about me and Simply Ballin!

This is all free and requires no subscription to access anything on the site, but if you do want to donate a monthly subscription for however long you want, that would be much appreciated.

I hope you’ll enjoy all of the content and appreciate any time you read, share, and support any of this!

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