Empty the Bench

The NBA Blogosphere has become a busy place these days, with quality new sites popping up regularly. Our friends over at the always solid, environmentally conscious Hardwood Paroxysm have put together a poll to determine which sites are the crème de la crème.

ETB is proud to be nominated for the Best Overall Columnist Blogger award:

You can vote for Empty the Bench here.

That’s category #11, and we also encourage you to write us in for category #15, the Rookie of the Year (this being our first full season covering the NBA). In fact, you should just write us in for the rest of the categories, too, but note that you’re not required to vote in every category—only the ones with an asterik.

Unfortunately, there will be no Swimsuit Competition in this season’s awards, despite multiple, strongly worded requests from ETB. Thanks for your support, and godspeed.

November 20, 2007, New York, NY – Empty the Bench, LLC is proud to announce a new partnership with Fantasy Sports Ventures (FSV), an integrated marketing and media company with a focus on digital/fantasy sports.

Founded in 2006 by Christopher J. Russo, formerly the Senior Vice President of New Media/Publishing for the NFL, FSV will work with Empty the Bench in the areas of commerce, marketing, and content distribution. Empty the Bench plans to syndicate its content for use on FSV’s portal site, FantasyPlayers.com.

As the latest sports blog to join forces with FSV, Empty the Bench is further establishing itself in the growing fantasy sports marketplace and serves as yet another example of the increasing influence sports blogs are having across the sports media landscape.

“Empty the Bench is a perfect addition to our complement of fantasy focused web sites and blogs,” said Andy Regal, Executive Vice President of Programming for Fantasy Sports Ventures. “We are eager to introduce this unique voice to the 5 million users who visit our network of sites each month,” Regal added.

Read the rest of this article »

After consuming a gluttonous volume of ribs and s’mores, ETB will be taking a brief mid-summer siesta starting tomorrow and lasting until Sunday. As you already know, Brian is lost without a compass somewhere in the jungles of southeast Asia. While awaiting word from Cambodian officials on his whereabouts I will be returning to my homeland of Minnesota. The break comes at a perfect time as the NBA offseason is in a bit of a lull, not much is happening in NFL Land and the MLB will just be awakening from its own mid-season slumber, so hopefully we won’t miss much.

Fear not, loyal reader, for I shall return this coming week with all kinds analytic goodness. Expect to see ETB’s Fantasy MLB Mid-Season Player Rankings hit the site early in the week and updates on all the various professional athletes who will undoubtedly have been arrested in the meantime (for drugs, violence, gun possession or some combination thereof).

I’ve got tickets to see my beloved Twins while in the heartland, so if you’re watching the games keep an eye out for me just behind third base- even if you don’t know what I look like. It’ll be fun, like Where’s Waldo.

Here’s hoping it won’t be Nick Punto’s ugly mug standing in front of me all game.

Take ‘er easy for all us sinners,

Andrew “Boom Boom” Thell

Just wanted to drop a quick update to you, loyal reader, about one half of Empty the Bench’s whereabouts. I’m heading overseas tomorrow for about 5 weeks, and will not be posting any content while away. Never fear–ETB is *not* shutting down. Andrew will be assuming full-time duties and gracing you with all kinds of memorable content that won’t soon be forgotten.

I’ll be back August 7; until then, please direct any and all questions and concerns to Andrew at andrew@emptythebench.com. With playoff baseball and new NFL and NBA seasons in the offing, late-summer on into the fall is our favorite time of the year. Empty the Bench looks forward to getting back to full strength in plenty of time to have it all covered.

Until then, I bid you a great July. Enjoy basking in the comedic, analytical stylings of ETB’s other self-made man, Andrew Thell.

Cheers,

Brian
brian@emptythebench.com

ETB Friends, Followers, and Readers:

Kickoff for the 2007 NFL season is still about 2 1/2 months away, but planning for the real reason we all keep up with the league–the fantasy season–is already underway here at Empty the Bench.

That also means we’re gearing up for the first-annual Empty the Bench Fantasy Football Invitational. It promises to be a grand olde time, we’d like you to be a part of it, and are now accepting applications.

Everyone knows that the key to a fulfilling fantasy season is that all participants stay engaged from draft day on through the playoffs. If you’re the kind of person who drafts Daunte Culpepper in the third round, inserts him as your starting quarterback in Week 1, then leaves him in there for another 10 weeks while he’s on the Disabled List, this league probably isn’t for you.

However, if you wake up on Sunday morning (after a sleepless night filled with nightmares about who to start at your W/R and W/T flex spots) and immediately scour injury reports, change parts of your lineup at least 10 times before 1pm, then spend the rest of the day clicking refresh on your StatTracker every 5 seconds, then you’re an incredible dork, just like we are. You’re the kind of person we’re looking for.

Draft day has not yet been determined, but will likely be on a weekday night after 8:30pm during the week of August 13 or August 20. Once the league has formed, we’ll propose a few dates and agree on an amicable one for everybody. We have 10 open spots in the 12-team league, as of course you will be competing against “The Twin Towers” of Empty the Bench, Andrew and Brian. Unfortunately, that of course means you are ensured of nothing higher than third place overall.

Silly Prerequisites:

- You must have participated in at least two prior fantasy-football seasons, preferably on Yahoo! Sports–that’s where we’re doing it. Your application scores bonus points if you have some trophies in your Yahoo! profile. God, I feel like a huge dork typing that.

- You don’t have to be a writer with your own website or blog to be considered, but we’d like as many as possible to join and will admittedly reserve at least a few spots for those folks. Oh, don’t bitch, it’s only fantasy football, you’re going to be in five other leagues anyway.

- No particular aversion to using the message board from time to time is a good thing, and so is responding to trade requests within a reasonable timeframe.

How to Apply:

- If you think you’re man enough to man up for the manly 2007 ETB Fantasy Football Invitational, email us at brian@emptythebench.com and/or andrew@emptythebench.com. Please include the name of and link to your website if you have one and, ya know, your name.

We’re not sure how many applications will flood our inboxes, but we’ll try to do it on a first-come, first-serve basis, with the above silly prerequisites in mind. Please don’t be offended if you don’t get a chance to participate this year. We hope to greatly expand the number of fantasy leagues run through ETB in the future.

ETB plans to cover the goings-ons of our league and share news and trends we see that could be of note for other players out there, as well as hold regular “roundtable” discussions about various issues in the NFL fantasy season throughout the year. We’ll also come up with some kind of *sweet* prize/trophy if any of you manage to beat us.

And, geez, we’d really love it if you could help come up with a better name for all this than “fantasy football.” It’s embarassing enough to actually be involved in it, but “fantasy” makes it sound like “football with a Dungeons & Dragons spin.” Okay, that’s actually what it is.

Cheers,

Your Friends at Empty the Bench

Last week Sebastian over at the great new NBA blog Three In The Key invited me to participate in a discussion about this, that, and the other in the NBA World. And wouldn’t you know it, the results are up already; please click here to find out what we think about the upcoming playoffs, the MVP award, and who our favorite NBA broadcast team is.

Here’s an excerpt; click on either link above to read the full transcript.

What is your final matchup, and who do you have winning?

Howie: Mavericks vs. Pistons. CWebb is doing magical things there; and Mavs can’t not be in this, not only because it’ll be a wasted season, Mark Cuban will go psycho on his blog. Finals Winner: Mavericks in 5.

Yours Truly: I think it’s Detroit and… ugh, Dallas I guess, though San Antonio is going to make it very difficult on the Mavs. Honestly, if both teams makes the conference finals, it’s pretty much a toss up. The Finals will be the same way; Dallas is the better overall team, but I can’t help but feel that (here comes the homerism) if the Pistons make it all the way there that they won’t lose their chance at claiming another title. Rake me over the coals if you must: Pistons in 6 or 7.

Ryan: I think that Detroit will meet San Antonio in the Finals and the Spurs will stomp all over the Pistons.

Sebastian: Well, here is where my Chicago Bulls bias comes in. The playoffs in my opinion are all about matchups. The Bulls are confident they can beat the Pistons, and I think they match up very well against them. I think the Pistons will beat the Heat, whenever they meet, and I think the Bulls will beat the Pistons. On the west side, the Mavericks will not be stopped. Mavericks over Bulls in 5.

Many thanks to my fellow panelists: Ryan at HoopsAddict, Howie at NBA Basketball and Other Unrelatedness, and of course Sebastian at Three In The Key

We just wanted to take a second to thank the “Blog of the Day Awards” for recognizing Empty the Bench this afternoon and naming us as one of their “Blogs of the Day”. Very cool, and we appreciate it very much. If anyone is finding us from the awards site, thanks for visiting, and please bookmark EmptytheBench.com as we have tons of scintillating NBA, MLB, and NFL coverage always in the works.

Cheers,

- Your Handsome Friends at Empty the Bench