Hello everyone,

How’s it going? First, thank you for your continued support for ballaholic.

For a while now, here at ballaholic, we have been thinking of new ways to attend to fellow “ballaholics” around the world. Better ways to share with you, our dear supporters and friends, the ballaholic way — the various ways we enjoy basketball. Through conversations within our team, as well as suggestions collected from our extended ballaholic network from our “Ball on Journey” adventures, we have decided to present to you ballaholic Stories.

What is ballaholic Stories?

ballaholic Stories is an editorial storytelling space reserved for anyone who keeps basketball intellectually close. Here, we will use words to do the same thing we already do with our creations: convey the elements that invoke a reassuring sense of continuity with basketball — people, courts, cities, ideas, and moments that continue to shape our ballaholic basketball philosophy.

A space that tells stories about ourselves, our ideas, business ventures, and projects, as well as what we see, what we learn, and what we believe is worth remembering and honouring from our relationships, experiences, and inspirations.

For example, it could be a story focusing on an encounter with someone who plays every day, someone who travels with a ball, someone who loves watching the game, someone who studies the game, someone who teaches the game, someone who builds a place for it, someone who finds community through open run networks, or someone who sees a court and immediately feels reassured and at home.

Ultimately, this space will cater to the ballaholic mind. We hope it will nurture the intellect of those who enjoy the IQ of the game — a beloved area within basketball that is quite often overlooked, yet incredibly important for the growth of the sport and the mind.

Purpose of Play

As already hinted, we arrived at this desire after looking back on the ballaholic path we have been on so far, and felt that basketball has a way of bringing people together without too much protocol.

We all can attest to how a court can become a meeting point. How a pickup game can become a memory. We have all been on a trip where basketball has made it possible to connect with another city’s colour and rhythm. We all certainly know how to look deeper at a player’s style because it can tell you something more about where they come from: their defiance, resilience, resistance, and persistence — essentially, how they see the world.

All of this, for us, means putting effort into recollecting events, people, videos, photos, conversations, and memories and wrapping them into a series of stories that have shaped us and continue to shape us. Through the variety of publications we will share here, we hope to get to know you more and for you to know us a little bit better before these moments we have witnessed pass, change, fade, and become irrelevant or forgotten.

Expected Calls

Through essays, interviews, profiles, photo stories, video analysis, event recaps, travel notes, and reflections from inside our journey, workspace, archives, and wishes, the stories we will tell here will touch on identities, style, players, communities, events, product ideas, journeys, and the small rituals and details that make basketball meaningful. They will bring out the feelings, values, and connections we draw upon to grow the streetball movement within the broader landscape of basketball culture.

For example, some stories will introduce the roots of ballaholic. Others will (re)trace our steps as we follow the ball on a journey into new territories and communities, places we have visited or hope to visit. Here, we will convey our hopes and dreams for the future, and explain why basketball, streetball in particular, continues to matter to us; why we believe it can connect people across cities, languages, and backgrounds.

Ultimately, the purpose of this whole project is to share more about what the game has given us and continues to give us beyond competition: identity, discipline, friendship, imagination, and a sense of belonging. A place for stories to gather, be shared, and be carried forward with a reassuring sense of continuity.

At its heart, ballaholic Stories will be about paying attention.

To the court.

To the people.

To the mind.

To the ideas we manifest that keep us moving along with basketball.

Please continue to support us and enjoy this space with the same passion.