Moving On

Hi guys. Hope you all are having a splendid week. I'm pretty sure everybody's still celebrating the Lakers' 2020 Championship run. Or having a relaxing bye week like the Raiders after a huge win over the Kansas City Chiefs and gearing up for Sunday Night against the Buccaneers. It's nice to have a week off and reflect on some things and so on and so forth.

I wanted to make this announcement on Sunday, but I've been super busy wrapping up one half of the Fall Semester of my Masters program. And now that's out of the way, I have time to effectively announce my future and the future of this blog. To say I'm "retiring" is not the word I want to throw out there. It's more like I'll be going into a long-term hiatus. I don't know when I'll come back and post content. It could be a year from now. Two years from now. Five years from now. Or maybe fifteen years from now. That's up for me to decide. But, I have decided after witnessing my Lakers' run to the NBA Championship this season, I am effectively moving on from this blog at the conclusion of the Raiders' 2020 NFL Season. 

To be honest, I contemplated about this for a couple of years now. My endgame was that either the Lakers make it to the NBA Finals, win or lose, or the Raiders make it to the Super Bowl, win or lose. Having both scenarios happen would be a plus. But, once one of those scenarios happened, I was going to move on from this blog. When the Lakers won the 2020 NBA Championship, I felt really satisfied and reflected on the 10 years that I've had this blog. I covered what was nearly a decade of mediocrity with both the Raiders and Lakers failing to win championships. Of course, there are a few bright spots like when I recapped the late Kobe Bryant's final game when he dropped 60 points over the Utah Jazz or when the Raiders went 12-4 later in the same year, covering all those come from behind wins. But other than that because the Raiders and Lakers have been terrible through all these years, it has been nothing but pain on this blog. I've been typing out the same regurgitating stuff about what they can do to get better or if certain players or coaches need to get cut or fired. I'm thankful the Lakers got good again with LeBron James and Anthony Davis as I reached my "twilight years" of posting on and managing this blog. And when the Lakers won it all this year, it was right and then and there that this is the decision I wanted to make. 

I made this blog undergo a lot of changes since I first started. I was just beginning my junior year of high school and I lost a lot of writing material because my previous laptop failed and I didn't have a backup drive to save them. I had aspirations to be a writer and the day I lost all of my writing crippled my drive to write again. Starting this blog after that incident in August 2010 was like a haven for me because it was a way to keep my writing style alive. Writing and blogging about my beloved Raiders and Lakers came out of the blue because sports is a consistent topic to blog about.

When I first started, I was actually covering three teams: the then Oakland Raiders, LA Lakers, and the San Jose Sharks. My high school was very religious about Sharks hockey and yes, I do like the Sharks as well. But, I didn't have much knowledge about the NHL or hockey as I did with football and basketball. By the time I transitioned over to college, I dropped the Sharks (still rooted for them though) and stuck to what I knew best and that was Raiders football and Lakers basketball. And that's pretty much when I rebranded this blog as True Raider Laker. By 2013 after doing three years of short recaps and stats highlights, I expanded my posts to share more of my knowledge about the games with the quarter-by-quarter (Q by Q) reactions and full recaps. I just typed what I saw in the games from my perspective. I'm not an expert or anything. It was all subjective on the pluses and minuses after the games.

In 2015, I synergized my YouTube channel, MechG2994, with this blog, starting up TrueRaiderLaker Productions where I simulcasted my hype videos on my channel and on this blog. My 2015 "New Generation" Raiders video caught the eye of a prominent Raiders YouTuber. You may have known him somewhere as "Donkey Lips." But we all know him as Mikey Raider. I was able to drive traffic to my channel, but I missed a big opportunity to drive traffic to my blog. From my 2016 Lakers Hype Video onward, I started watermarking the URL to my blog. I stopped at my 2019 videos because I assumed most of my viewers were annoyed by it. 

2018-2020 was like a "jumbo" era for this blog. I immediately cut off the real-time Q by Q reactions. And as a Raider fan, I pretty much lost my sanity when Jon Gruden infamously dealt Khalil Mack to the Chicago Bears before the season started and eventually Amari Cooper to the Dallas Cowboys in the middle of the season. And of course we had the following year with the saga of Antonio Brown the Clown and the Raiders losing their last home game in Oakland against the lowly Jacksonville Jaguars. Time will tell if Gruden and Mike Mayock rebounded from that mess. There's still a lot of issues, but the Raiders are off to a solid start in their inaugural Las Vegas season. On the Lakers front, it was not as bad, but still bad as the organization couldn't get a plan together and decide if they want championships now or hold onto the young core for long-term sustainability. Rob Pelinka definitely proved naysayers wrong after Magic Johnson resigned, trading for AD and putting a "Plan B" championship team with quality veterans and young players who understood their roles. Like I said, I'm thankful the Lakers got good again to bring some positivity to this blog. By my later years, I started to care less about this blog, but the Lakers' resurgence this past season gave me something to hang onto by a thread.

2020 man, this year has been a year of unpredictability. Kobe Bryant's tragic death sent this world into a tailspin. The following months, all sports have been suspended and we all locked down to contain the spread of COVID-19. And of course on a personal note, I lost my dad overseas and pretty much I have to step up now as the new man of the household. If the NBA continued as planned and the Lakers still won, I would've announced this in June and I wouldn't be around for the first 2020 Las Vegas Raiders season. But life works in mysterious ways. The NBA restarted in July in a bubble setting. The NFL went on as planned with limited to no fans. The Lakers were crowned champions this month, but the Raiders are just getting started. I'll still hang around since football season is current. But like I said, after this season, barring an improbable Super Bowl run by the Raiders, I am moving on to oversee new projects I want to groom and take care of some personal stuff.

I had a great time managing this blog and sharing my fandom for the Silver and Black and the Purple and Gold. But, all good things must come to an end at some point. As I mentioned, I wouldn't say I'm retiring. I won't be around on this blog or post content as much as I used to. However, my TrueRaiderLaker Productions content will hang around as long as I have a visual idea. But, they'll be taking a back seat going forward. I'm thinking about dispersing another niche on my YouTube channel and letting that grow as something new and independent. I'm not gonna close down this blog after this incumbent Raiders season that's for sure. This blog and all of its posts will live on. After all, what happens on the Internet, stays on the Internet. I'll see you guys later.