Bright Side Starting Lineup changes to announce!

With a week to go before the 2016-17 regular season starts and another Suns offseason in the books, we here at BSotS have undergone a bit of a roster touch up ourselves.

Being that contributing to this blog is a labor of love (and certainly not a labor of money), it’s understandable that our core group of contributors will shift on a seasonal basis as priorities and opportunities change. We all have lives outside BSotS, and sometimes those lives lead us away from volunteering hours a week to writing for this here website.

The Tom Chambers route

You’ve probably all realized that contributors like Sreekar and Scott Howard have gone the Tom Chambers route of fading inexorably into the sunset but still hanging around the fringes of the franchise on other ways outside BSotS.

These days, you can find Scott and Sreekar’s thoughts on the postgame show twitter, clouded more often in a drunken haze than you might think.

The Tim Thomas route

After working for next to nothing here, Kellan Olson and Bryan Gibberman took the money and ran in free agency. Gibby and Kellan, along with erstwhile editor Kevin Zimmerman from ValleyoftheSuns.com, now earn the big bucks at ArizonaSports.com where they are trying to make their Empire of the Sun blog bigger and better than anyone’s. Best of luck to you guys, seriously! Any time you can do this stuff for livable wages is great. BSotS readers - you’d be smart to check these guys out on ArizonaSports.com.

Kellan is not disappearing from BSotS entirely though.

Kellan is also now running a cool daily Suns podcast with former Suns player Eddie House on the Locked-On network. That’s totally independent of Bright Side, but we’re scratching each others’ backs cross-promoting each other because I just love the whole idea of a daily podcast where I don’t have to do any work to make it happen. ;)

You can also hear Kellan and I on a podcast 1-2 days a month to give our inside thoughts on the Suns, and Kellan will rep BSotS at a few Suns home games this year.

The Steven Hunter route

Some our greatest contributors back in the day have mostly reduced themselves to 140-character hot takes, but unlike Scott and Sreekar some of our alumni are always available when called upon.

Former BSotS luminaries East Bay Ray, Mike Lisboa and Jim Coughenour stay in touch with the crew and often contribute to round tables, player previews and road game coverage. I really appreciate these guys picking up the pieces as needed!

The Leandro Barbosa route

Some writers never had a huge role on BSotS, but have always been great bench contributors and will continue to come and go, sometimes dropping huge numbers out of nowhere.

Geoff Allen, Austin Elmer, Kat, Owen Sanborn and Sam Cooper give us great firepower off the bench and are always welcome to take on larger roles if they ever want to come back with a vengeance.

The Jared Dudley route

A sage veteran who now makes big money (on a regular job with benefits!), can come back to his home town team and get a starting role whenever he wants it.

Sean Sullivan has lots of responsibilities outside Bright Side, but he will help me out a bit on home game coverage, and the occasional contribution to things like round table and player reviews/previews.

The Offseason acquisitions

With all these defections and reductions to part time roles, how will Bright Side continue to function?

Last spring, we jumped ahead of the competition and snagged Deadpoolio from the BSotS commenter ranks. Dead’s been a HUGE contributor since late spring, posting feature articles on a weekly basis and contributing in myriad ways on top of that.

And now, we have also added long time commenter Rod Argent to the writing fold! Rod’s been sharing his thoughts on comments and fanposts for a while now, and has offered to start posting a weekly Center of the Sun post to wrap up the week that just ended and set the stage for the week to come.

From the young writer ranks, we drafted a hotshot named Brendon Kleen. Brendon has a great future in sports journalism and contributes to lots of sites around interwebs, including Upsideandmotor.com and SB Nation’s Pelicans blog thebirdwrites.com, among others. Brendon will help BSotS out in a variety of ways, on occasional feature articles, a weekly post and news and game coverage.

And just recently, we added a new pair of voices to our podcast rotation. A couple times a month, you’ll hear the banter of Justin and Paul - both long, long time Suns fans - dishing on the Suns latest developments.

The NEW BSotS Starting Lineup

For the 2016-17 season, we’ve got a great starting lineup on BSotS to bring you the best Suns coverage anywhere.

• Of course, I will still be anchoring the unit like a late-career Steve Nash as the blog’s managing editor
• Keith Scheessele stays in our starting lineup this year alongside me, covering breaking news and any other interesting tidbits around the Suns world on a daily basis
• Mike Lisboa is back with the weekly Madhouse entry for off-topic convos
• Deadpoolio posts a weekly feature on Tuesdays, going in depth on one topic or player to bring you closer to the game
• Brendon Kleen joins the team to bring a weekly Player/Play of the Week post
• Rod Argent jumps in to post a weekly COTS to recap the prior week and preview the next
• Podcasts! Kellan and Eddie House do their Locked On Suns every Monday-Friday for 10-15 minute shots, while Kellan/Dave and Justin/Paul post something longer (30-60 minutes) on most weekends.
• Home game coverage: That’s mostly me (Dave), with occasional backups among Sean, Owen and Kellan so we never miss a game!
• Road game coverage: All 14 of us will conspire to make sure no road game is missed
• Bench roles: As mentioned above, the list of part-time contributors is long and varied. You’ll see cameos from most of our former heavyweights all season long.

It’s a new season with some new faces, but it’s the same old Bright Side with great Suns coverage every day of the year!

Coming Soon

Bright Side will be bringing you our second annual Bright Side Night! We will raise money from you, our readers, and the writing staff to send underprivileged kids to their first Suns game!

Last year, we raised enough to send 700 kids to a game. This year, we are shooting for more than 1,000!

You’ll see more on this in the coming days. Keep your eyes peeled and credit cards at the ready. For the mere price of a lunch out, or a couple lattes, you can make a kid’s whole year a little more memorable.