It was about 18 years ago that I fell in love with the NBA in general and the Seattle SuperSonics in particular. I had the great fortune to jump on the bandwagon the same year that Shawn Kemp was making the transition from what essentially amounted to high school to the NBA, the year before Gary Payton arrived to complete the duo that would lead the Sonics to the heights of the Western Conference.

The nearly two decades since then have been, as they are for any professional sports team, a roller-coaster ride. The upset loss to Denver in the first round of the 1994 playoffs took away my innocence as a sports fan, never to entirely be regained. Two years later, I was at an NBA Finals game against arguably the greatest team in the league's history, the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls (ignore for now the fact that the Sonics lost that game 108-86).

Six years after that, I was interviewing Kemp, by then with the Orlando Magic, in the visiting locker room at KeyArena. After a year and a half of writing about the Sonics on the Internet, including starting fan site SonicsCentral.com, I was lucky enough to beat out many deserving applicants for an internship with the Sonics to write for SUPERSONICS.COM and storm.wnba.com.

During my nearly two years as an intern, I had a blast. In addition to Kemp, I wrote about many of the basketball heroes of my youth, along with older players I've come to respect as I've learned more about Sonics history. Somewhere along the way, I apparently impressed people enough that, after finishing up at the University of Washington, I was hired on full-time. Officially, my title is Interactive Marketing Coordinator, but unofficially, I've served the last three years as a beat writer for both the Sonics and Storm, covering the teams daily when they are in Seattle.

In that role, I like to think of myself as the eyes and ears for fans. You can't attend practices or get in the locker room, but I'm lucky enough to have that opportunity. I want to use that access to answer the questions I know I'd have as a fan.

I'm sure that many of my readers would consider this position the opportunity of a lifetime, and so do I. The best compliment I've ever received was that my writing reflects my love of and respect for the game of basketball. Hopefully that shines through in everything I do for this site.