In Reply to: You got it. Michael Miller. posted by money on April 13, 2025 at 16:45:15
Here is his history:
MichaelAMiller posted on 10/19 3:21 pm Email this Message | Reply
I Guess I'll Start The Story...
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Hopefully, all of this early stuff won't bore everyone to tears (have plenty of kleenex on hand, or maybe a good comic book instead til you get past the first paragraphs):
You really have to go back to my childhood to get a handle on this from my end. For some reason, maybe because it was because John Wooden was the UCLA bb coach, I became a bb nut at an early age. Like, the age of 3. My parents both went to UCLA and we would drive out an hour from El Monte to each home game and then drive back at 80 mph so we could watch the replay at 11 pm. I first spoke to Wooden when I was 4 and I cajoled my father into taking me to a Wooden Coaching Clinic (remember, this was a clinic for college and high school coaches) when I was 6. I asked my first question at the clinic the next year and it was a long, involved question on teaching post defense and after I asked the question I answered it and I remember that everyone was staring at me and Coach Wooden told me "You're a very interesting young man." Of course, I still don't know if I got the question right...
Anyway, flash forward and I'm 12 and already in h.s. and have bike, will travel. I discover not quite so nearby Pasadena High School and Coach George Terzian, whose teams reminded me a lot of Wooden's teams. I see Greg Goorjian of Crescenta Valley come into Muir High's gym and score 69 of his team's 72 points in a 74-72 loss, despite the fact that Muir started double-teaming Goorjian when he had the ball in the backcourt. Then I see Pasadena with future disgraced Pasadena Mayor Chris Holden and somewhere back on the bench a young Michael Holton take on the nation's #1 team, Verbum Dei, in the CIF Finals (no state finals in those days). Verbum Dei was so ridiculous, they had a 6-6 PG, a 6-7 SG (Marquis Williams, USC), a 6-7 SF (Cliff Pruitt, UCLA), a 6-7 PF (Leonel Marquetti, USC) and a 6-8 C, and their top two reserves were two future pros, Kenny Austin, 6-9 and UCLA's Kenny Fields, 6-7. Pasadena wins 45-44 at the buzzer on a reverse slam off a rebound on a play that was so spectacular I won't describe it because half of the readers will die of heart attacks and Tracy and Greg will lose all of their hits...
Anyway, from there I'm hooked on h.s. bb. Can't get enough of it. So flash forward: I've by this time spent about 12 years watching over 100 h.s. games per year, going to all of the local summer events, here and in Las Vegas, wondering who that Dinos Trigonis guy was and whether Dave Benezra would ever remember my name ("Who is that weird little guy who always shows up wherever I am?") as well as then eagerly following the careers of those h.s. players in college and then the NBA and spending my free time making up endless lists of these players and comparing them by various methods and facts, both statistical and non-statistical, objective and subjective, trying to figure out why so and so made it and that other guy didn't, etc., etc. That's how I got my kicks.
It's September 1996. Mikey decides he's through with being an impoverished screenwriter and takes a job as veep of legal affairs at Fox (corporate entity to be witheld). Lo and behold, the day I start, the guy working next door walks in and says, "Hey, you've got a modem in your office." Mikey: "So. What's a modem?" As you can tell, Mikey's missed a lot of current events while filling his head with arcane trivia and writing unsold screenplays about Joan of Arc and William Shakespeare (hey, I did it first!) and giant spider-shaped robots (don't ask, but it's getting produced). "You can get on the Internet!" "Really. What's that?"
He showed me. Naturally, after 2 minutes, I signed off on the official site for the Smithsonian Institute and looked for all of the UCLA bb sites I could find. I found Rich Meyer's UCLA bb site, among others. I liked Rich's site the best, but it really sucked in one regard. Rich was trying to answer questions about players UCLA was recruiting that fall and spring (like Baron Davis and Billy Knight and Travis Reed) and much of his information was wrong. I also looked up some recruiting sites, ALL OF WHICH WERE PAY SITES, and when I saw some free samples, I realized that Rich was getting his info from these sites. No wonder he was wrong. Meanwhile, of course, I'd gone to see Baron, Billy, etc., play about 15-25 times each by this time, so I started doing just what I'm doing right now: Writing really long messages on Rich's message board, sending in detailed scouting reports of any players that other people on the board were asking questions about. After about a couple of months of this, Rich asked me if I would write a regular "recruiting/h.s. bb" column for his site. Sure, why not? It was all just for fun; Rich was running the site from an internal UCLA computer science server which was also used for sensitive research contracted for by the Department of Defense and the CIA, among other people (does anyone know if Rich is still alive? Haven't heard from him for awhile, I wonder if they finally... nah, probably just lost my number).
In April 1997, on the first signing day, my column on Rich's site triggered so many hits it crashed the server. After several portentous calls from Washington DC and Langley, Rich somewhat abashedly told me that he'd been asked to move the site to another server. At the same time, Rich suggested that there appeared to be enough reader interest in my column to possibly support (financially, as well as spiritually) a separate web site devoted exclusively to west coast h.s. bb and college bb recruiting.
Thus, in 1997, West Coast Hoops was born, and Fox lost their VP of legal affairs only 9 months after he started (yeah, think they'll ever offer me another job? Actually, they did, and they have. Idiots.). FWIW, there were about 12 Pay Sites in existence when West Coast Hoops went up and a year later only Clark Francis and Dave Benezra remained standing. I received some hate mail from certain prominent recruiting experts who will not be named until at least tomorrow. I get the impression that Rich and I started a trend. Actually, I think we just proved the maxim that information on the Internet is only really valuable if it's given away for free. Tracy Pierson joined our merry crew. I'm trying to remember how I met Tracy. I must have been on painkillers at the time, because I'm blanking out. He keeps reminding me we're old friends, but I don't know. If anyone who knew me prior to 1998 can recall seeing me with Tracy or mentioning his name, please e-mail me. This is really starting to bug me.
The good news was, we had a blast with WCH. I think that was the most enjoyable time of my life, though I suspect that time will be eclipsed by the birth of my first child in April (no, I'm not the one who's pregnant!). The best part was getting to know the players and their parents on a personal level, sometimes a very close personal level. It was great to be around young people all of the time, I think that re-energized my interest in creative writing (though some people suspect that my scouting reports are fairly creative, but just not very factual). Although many of you may not believe this, I found very ready acceptance with pretty much every college coach in the country, but especially in the west, and to all appearances my views and recommendations tended to be appreciated and valued, which might have something to do with the fact that I'd basically been training to do a job like this for over 25 years, and I made a lot of friends. I even had the horrifying experience, repeated exactly 11 times, of having a college coach calling me and saying, "Mike, we're ready to offer so and so, but we wanted to check with you first before we make our final decision." Talk about pressure. Needless to say, very few of those coaches are still employed (no, not because of my advice, but because they had to ask for it in the first place, you...).
The bad news was, it was really, really hard work, especially with all of my so-called friends (the b*stards, they deserve to be 2nd assistant coaches for their whole lives!) asking me questions and bugging me while I was trying to watch the games and scout the players. Sitting on all of those bleachers finished the job on my back that an auto accident started in 1990. Eating all that junk food they serve in those gyms inflated my weight from 145 to 174 and my cholestrol level from 188 to 386 (I'm now down to 138 and 152, respectively, if you're curious). Writing about player's SAT scores and grades made me feel awful, though I still think it's a fair part of the job description, especially since players often actively sought me out to get scouted and provided false SAT scores and grades in the hope I'd put it up on the website. Finally, the advertising revenues Rich, Tracy and I hoped would support the site proved rather paltry, while our expenses were somewhere in the range of sky-high. I personally lost about $20,000 on WCH, which doesn't include what I could have been earning as a lawyer or screenwriter at the time. Of course, it wasn't about the money... until I needed the money. Which I did, very badly, at that time.
Which is right about when I sold "Joan of Arc" and suddenly I had a writing career again. So, with health detiorating and debt rising and Hollywood calling, I left WCH and scouting and writing about h.s. bb behind forever...
OOPS. Never say never. In 1999, Tracy called me on the phone and said, "Hey, I'm doing a UCLA bb site for this company called Rivalnet. And they want you and me to do a site like West Coast Hoops. Interested?" "Nope." "They PAY you guaranteed money." "Okay, when can I start?" Just so you folks know, the money was a really small amount, not enough to live on. But I really missed doing this stuff. So, while still working as a Hollywood writer, with deadlines and stuff, I also tried to do the bb gig again. While my back was getting progressively worse. Nope. Didn't work. I just couldn't keep it up (Viagra, anyone? Frank?). Anyway, that's why I eventually bowed out of Pac-West Hoops. To do this job right, you pretty much have to go to bb games every week all year long except maybe in August. And you have to travel all over the greater LA area by car for hours and fly up north or down south and travel to cities like Las Vegas and Seattle and Portland (which are all nice places to visit (except for Vegas, what a hole), but it's the getting there that gets you, well, there ... or right here ... well, you know what I mean). And you have to get abused by players, parents, aau coaches, high school coaches, college coaches, etc., who all complain when you write something bad or don't write something, as if you're supposed to have ESP and know about every player in the country and also as if you can be twelve places at once. And you have to write something new EVERY DAY. Just in case anybody thinks this job is easy or that Tracy and Greg are just making this stuff up as they go along while they're home watching "Xena" re-runs ... wait a minute, I'm the one who watches "Xena" re-runs. Can you believe they cancelled "Xena"? That sucks. I might have to pay attention to the danged election now...
Anyway, that's my end of the story, or epic saga, as the case turned out to be.
So, Tracy and Greg: Care to chime in here anytime?
Readers: Anybody want to take on the job? I'm sure that Tracy and Greg are looking for qualified applicants. Just furnish them with your name, e-mail address, a writing sample and the name of your psychiatrist...
Previous | Next | New Post | Top of Board
TP/GH/MM: How Did You Guys Get Involved? - CoastToCoast 10/19 12:35 pm
I Guess I'll Start The Story... - MichaelAMiller 10/19 3:21 pm
So to arouse your ire.... - JaztheUclan 10/19 10:24 pm
Goodness gracious! - barrya 10/19 7:06 pm
Oh, no... - Fandango 10/19 4:03 pm
re: I Guess I'll Start The Story... - Bruin85 10/19 3:47 pm
El Monte? - HackettIsCool 10/19 3:36 pm
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