Welcome to Prada's Pictures!

Same NBA breakdowns you love, just now (and maybe always) in a different place.

Let’s start with the short version. My name is Mike Prada and I’ve covered the NBA in some capacity for SB Nation for more than 13 years. I thought I’d work there forever – and technically I still could. But I was recently furloughed, as were most of the talented writers and editors that made SBNation.com a daily essential for the last decade plus. For at least the next three months (and possibly forever), this will be the new home for the in-depth NBA breakdowns I’ve made my specialty since 2012. I hope you’ll join me.

The longer version is … well, I’ve typed 700 different versions of this and hated every single one, so here goes nothing.

I’ve been doing this basketball blogging thing since before basketball blogging was a thing. In 2006, I was a Wizards fan and aspiring writer that wanted to connect with fellow Wizards fans while going to college in Boston. So I started Bullets Fever, which became Bullets Forever after I agreed to join a fledging collection of up-and-coming team-centric communities. (They bought the wrong domain name. It was the best thing that ever happened to my career).

Three-and-a-half years later, SB Nation added a national site to its growing list of team offerings and needed an up-and-comer who specialized in editing and writing about the NBA. I somehow convinced them that I should be that person.

What a decade it’s been. I’ve worked hard to carve out a space for intelligent, fun, fan-centric NBA coverage. I’m proud that SB Nation has been an incubator for some of the industry’s best young scribes, and I can’t believe how lucky I was to help so many creative people find their writing voice and go on to bigger and better things.

Best of all, I found my writing voice as well. I knew there was an audience for actual basketball breakdowns, and I believed that it could be done in a way that was fun, appreciative of the skill required to succeed, and tailored to normal fans instead of fellow experts. Thus, Prada’s Pictureswas born, first as a written column built around still images, then as a video series, and then again as a multimedia experience weaving text, annotated screenshots, GIFs, and video together to tell a story.

That brings us to a few weeks ago, when Vox Media elected to furlough me and most of my amazing colleagues for three months amid the coronavirus pandemic. The future of SB Nation – and by extension my future at the only place I’ve ever known – is up in the air. We’ve been told that nothing is guaranteed once the furlough period ends. We’ve been told that the company cannot afford to pay the site’s employees if they don’t have live sports to cover.

I disagree, and I hope you do too. That’s why I’m moving Prada’s Pictures here for at least the next three months, and possibly for longer. I hope you will support me by a) signing up for free and b) becoming a paid subscriber if you really like my stuff.

The current plan is to at least keep this running for the duration of the furlough and see what happens over the next three months. For starters, all subscribers will receive:

• One Prada’s Pictures deep dive a week.

• One Limited Upside podcast with my friend and co-host Ben Epstein. That’s right, we’re finally bringing the pod back! More details to come on that.

That will be the free offering for now, but the plan is to eventually add additional features for paid subscribers. Those may potentially include:

• Additional breakdown pieces.

• Shorter blog posts reacting to the news cycle.

• Additional podcast episodes.

• Other community features that I have to think about. (If you have ideas, let me know!)

You can support my work for just $10 a month or $100 for the year. If you sign up to be a paid subscriber between now and May 15, you’ll get half off your subscription.

So tell your friends, follow me on Twitter, and join me here if you love the NBA and want to be a smarter fan.

Stay tuned for our first free breakdown over the weekend, which will show how Scottie Pippen’s emergence broke the famed Jordan Rules.