Plan for Simply Ballin 2025-26 Season

What to expect here at Simply Ballin for the following season

It’s that time of the year when we are beginning to get close to the NBA season starting. I must say, this off-season felt like the longest off-season in quite some time. I don’t remember an off-season feeling this long.

As always, I do like to make a post setting out my goals and expectations for my content and coverage, especially now that this will be my second year doing it fully on Simply Ballin Substack. That’s both for myself(to keep myself accountable and have some goals to strive for) and for my readers.

I’m doing this quite earlier than usual because I’m having a real itch to create content. I now have my life as sorted as I can, and I do have some more guilt-free free time, so that means I’m ready to dive back into all of this — the break has been good, but now the withdrawal symptoms from creating content are kicking in.

Back in March, I had a PSA about this newsletter and how I go about making content and covering the Miami Heat. TLDR: It was me basically going away from all kinds of commitment, not covering the team, and taking on fewer responsibilities doing so.

That is still the case for this upcoming season, and a lot of that is because of just life and other commitments that would make covering the Heat impossible.

So, this means that there is an entirely different approach and plan around Simply Ballin.

The first difference will be that this newsletter will only focus on the Miami Heat(I already basically did just that throughout the season in the end). This time, I don’t want any other commitment or expectation to watch other teams for content. Some discussion pieces may pop up here and there, but there won’t be any other content focused on the league like it was with Around the Arc, season previews, or awards.

There won’t be any confusion with what this Substack is about — it’s about the Miami Heat.

The next major difference will be the volume. That will be significantly down. All of this will have to be considered with a full-time job at a bar, and that alone complicates a lot of things with the schedule and the amount of free time that I may have. As much as I would love to write 3-4 pieces a week or 25k words in a few days, it will not be possible(maybe?).

That does then mean the coverage will also be different. I am scraping all of my previous content strategies.

I mentioned in the PSA that despite my attempt to lower the volume, I basically didn’t, and I was still fully fixed to the schedule, had so many things to consider, did game takeaways, game notes, big picture trends, big season-long breakdowns, and so much more — and that was meant to be a side thing.

There will not be any weekly content. There’s no more The Culture Report that will look to cover the games, have discussions, have film breakdowns, and anything else that caught my eye. There will be some things to substitute that, but in a more feasible way.

This is what I meant by going away from covering the team to simply creating content around the Heat. Almost every post and idea will be a standalone thing. There won’t be any content that hinges on anything to take away that dependency on needing to stick to a particular schedule. This is simply to give me as much flexibility as possible and to keep this a side thing. I need to have a strategy that would allow me to seamlessly increase and decrease the content, however life dictates.

The way the content will work is that it will be a mix of everything because each idea will be separate on its own. There will be more of an emphasis on individual game breakdowns because that is just one game to watch and breakdown, which decreases the workload but still gives me content to put out — taking inspiration from the best team writer, Caitlin Cooper, which you can check out on her blog at Pateron, Basketball, She Wrote.

I will still likely have too many things that I’d love to talk about or highlight, so there will be a kind of notebook-type piece that will let me do just that. This won’t be The Culture Report where I go through each game or do takeaways. This will be a collection of anything I’ve had saved or on my mind or anything. This also won’t be weekly but just a regular.

That’s basically it for what to expect. The overall plan for this Substack is to still grow it and after many seasons of being on the fence on how to go about it, I have finally decided to fully lean into just being the Heat guy.

I realised that attempting to keep track of a team in such a way is already too much. Because even before the content is made or thought about, there is still watching and rewatching all 82 games. It’s still doing multiple rewatches of certain players. It’s doing offensive trackers. It’s getting clips. It’s keeping track of all stats. There is so much prep that comes with it that it adds time to the schedule.

That kind of prep(which will be available to all) is my only non-negotiable here. If I have not watched all 82 games and gotten all of my usual notes and clips, I will have failed my one main goal.

Now, with there still being some time until the season starts, I will look to up the content because it’s time now. There’s stuff happening, and that will create ideas for me to do. We’re past the dog days of the off-season. We’ll soon have training camp, pre-season, and everything else will ramp up then.

I also want to make a note here for myself. I currently have 161 subscribers and 379 followers. Let’s aim for 500 subscribers by the end of the season.

Last year, I also had 71 pieces and 249,639 words written. That’s not going to be matched by any means(maybe). But I can still look to put out a piece at least weekly, and if that is consistent throughout the season to start, let’s up that to two pieces on average. That’s my goal.

And that’s everything for this announcement and plan for the 2025-26 season.

If you are a returning reader/subscriber, then I hope you’ll continue to subscribe and enjoy way too many Heat breakdowns. If you’re a new reader, I hope you’re here to stay and don’t get sick of Heat breakdowns, and hopefully, you get more knowledgeable about them!