OT: What is the history of RealGM?

[JRoy]

We finna start talking bout RealGM?

[Teen Girl Squad]

The other posts nailed it. RealGM was (and to a degree still is) a popular basketball message board before there were a lot of options. Back then it was either ESPN/network sites (which were as bad as you imagined them to be) or homer fanpages. Forums like this were a good place for fans of the sport to congregate. RealGM also had a reputation for being a higher caliber of discussion than other message boards, which is why its been able to endure (while some might argue the level of discourse is lower, I'd argue its more the overall expectations of discourse rising over time). RealGM was one of the first sites to have some more advanced data like salaries, the trade checker etc... Even NBA players/personnel posted back then (though not openly) as it was the way to gage what more informed fans think.

With the rise of social media platforms and Reddit, the userbase of RealGM has gotten relatively smaller overtime as its basically just a message board relying on rep and a better format that Twitter/reddit/etc... to have discussions.

[Harry Garris]

The GB used to have better discussions years past, not the 90% Hot take attempts like it is now.

The PC board is the only place for serious NBA discussion anymore.

For all its faults the GB is more serious than the PC board.

It's also less serious. You get both extremes here.

[ropjhk]

I remember when quick reply was first introduced. It was a game changer.

[GSWFan1994]

Early 2000s, there was no social media, just forums. ESPN had their own which was the most popular. Fans from different teams were fighting eachother all the time, it was glorious. Then they shut them down for what I presume to be costs because they had quite literally millions of posts. Realgm filled that void quickly and has still remained popular, which is hard to do in the age of Twitter and Reddit.

there was usenet before that

Sent from my Nokia 3210 using RealGM mobile app

And Skynet after that.

[dlts20]

I was on ESPN and used to just follow realgm but never really posted until after ESPN went down for awhile. I actually used to like ESPN. Idk why they took theirs down

[Doctor MJ]

I migrated over here from the old Sportstalk boards after espn bought them. That was over 20 years ago egads.

I'll piggy back off this from my understanding, though I wouldn't discover RealGM for a few years after that.

Sportstalk - co-founded by Chad Ford - was bought by ESPN. The Sportstalk boards become the ESPN boards - and Ford starts writing for ESPN - and with the influx of the people from espn.com, more serious basketball fans sought an escape.

RealGM was then at the right place at the right time. They had a hook - the trade checker - and they had message boards, so soon RealGM's message boards started taking off as one of the big places to talk basketball outside of ESPN.

[AussieCeltic]

Shams got his start reporting for RealGM.

You hear that, Pharmcat?! You could be up next!

Imagine watching Pharmcat and Stephen A Smith go back and forth about who is more exposed between Steph Curry or James Harden.

[Doctor MJ]

I've been meaning to ask this for a while. Obviously, if you scroll down to the about us link at the bottom you get a very basic description of RealGM but I am looking to go deeper. Mods, admins, OG's etc I want to know: What is the history of RealGM? Who are the people in charge of this site? Did Howard Mass start RealGM? Does any of the leadership post in the GB? I think it would be nice to hear from some people about the beginning of RealGM and what it was like then and how it compares to now.

Howard did not start RealGM. From the current About page:

The RealGM Team

Ryan Hoak, President and Chief Executive Officer
Michael Benbow, Chief Information Officer
Todd Essman, Chief Operating Officer
Christopher Reina, Executive Editor and Chief Marketing Officer
Howard Mass, Forums Administrator
Michael Haegele, Senior Developer
Andrew Perna, Quality Control
Derek Johnson, Senior International Basketball Consultant

My understanding is that Hoak & Benbow started the project with Essman coming on soon after.

Howard was someone who, I believe, started off as a poster early on and later got put in charge of the forums themselves.

In my experience as a mod has virtually all been through Howard, with others stepping in very rarely.

[Doctor MJ]

prerak

And for those who don't know, there was once a poster named Prerak who dominated these boards. He posted TONS in seemingly every community to the point that there was a running gag where he wasn't a "he" but a team of people paid to take shifts.

Prerak's most significant thing though was probably founding Draft City with Jonathan Givony - which at one point was tied directly to the Draft message board (then called Draft City as well).

Then Draft City got threatened with a lawsuit based on something reported pertaining to a draft prospect. That site shut down, the RealGM draft board got renamed losing all association with the other site, and Prerak - to my knowledge - never did anything ambitious with basketball again (I believe he was about to go to med school when he made this decision).

Givony would then form Draft Express, which originally looked almost exactly like Draft City but with a different name, and continue to grow the site until going to work for ESPN. He made a specific splash in recent years being one of the most vocal proponents of LaMelo Ball at a time where Ball's prospect stock had really taken a tumble.

[Yoshun]

I was reading RealGM for about 10 years before I started posting in it. The conversations always just seemed more interesting and, honestly, stuck to basketball.

[Capn'O]

Thinking about it... I'm surprised RGM never jumped on the fantasy sports wagon. I'm sure there's a story behind that but it seems like a major opportunity left on the table.

[Tracymcgoaty]

The history of Realgm is they won against the french. And the rest is history.

[xAIRNESSx]

NBA execs would legit use the trade checker to ensure they could satisfy any cap requirements.

[Egg Nog]

As a side note, I remember back then forums like RealGM were the only place that athletes would really see criticism from fans and not from the media (tv, newspapers, etc.)

Nowadays, athletes can go on Instagram and Twitter and see a bunch of bad comments toward them, but back in the early 2000s a lot of them were blind to the fan criticism. You'd only get rare instances like that one time Juan Dixon found a RealGM thread called "The Amazingly Sucky Juan Dixon Thread" or something like that, and it motivated him to have a big game.

I did some digging into this...check this out
The original thread

ALSO...I can't believe I was able to find this...a single Archive.org link to this mp3 file exists, from some random who posted it to a long-since-gone comcast site...
Juan Dixon interview after the game

[Winsome Gerbil]

I like to break it down into two eras:

The Pre-WG Era full of cave people with low foreheads scratching themselves and throwing their poo at each other, and the vastly superior Post-WG Era full of the tinkling sounds of sophisticated laughter and enlightenment.

<----------------- You can see the date the true modern site was born right there.

[Tim Lehrbach]

prerak

Prerak - to my knowledge - never did anything ambitious with basketball again (I believe he was about to go to med school when he made this decision).

Law school. He would later -- and I swear I'm not making this up -- go on to serve as chief of staff for Ted Cruz.

[Fencer reregistered]

I like to break it down into two eras:

The Pre-WG Era full of cave people with low foreheads scratching themselves and throwing their poo at each other, and the vastly superior Post-WG Era full of the tinkling sounds of sophisticated laughter and enlightenment.

<----------------- You can see the date the true modern site was born right there.

Yes, you are associated with tinkling.

[Tim Lehrbach]

The first non-admin user to register was Saxon. He had a solid career of posting dumb trades with silly thread titles before anybody else was doing it. Then he got banned for trolling.

[DeBrick]

anyone remember when Johnathan Tjarks from RealGM asked Westbrook a question? I forget his response but it was funny