Free Darko Says Goodbye, And The Internet Misses Them Already

The guys at Free Darko have decided to close things down, and even if you’ve never read that site, yourself, their farewell post is worth checking out, if only to see what you’ve been missing.

And what, exactly, have you been missing?

Well, let’s see... Dinosaur mock drafts, an entire week of loving tributes to Hakeem Olajuwon, a Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History, lots and lots of pictures that had nothing to do with anything and were never explained...

...an entire series dedicated to an imaginary tournament of ‘21’ between United States presidents, a post made me obsessed with John Wall long before anyone caught on ( He was “like LeBron if he hadn’t been made in space and was crossed with Chris Paul”), 100 hours of podcasts, strident defenses of supposedly indefensible characters like Bonzi Wells and Michael Vick, lively debates about cornrows and integrity, thoughtful dissections of Kevin Garnett’s twisted intensity, fake stories about Michael Jordan, real stories about Ricky Rubio, and just for good measure, a beautiful essay about Manny Pacquiao and boxing.

They gave us art in a literal sense,

and a metaphorical sense,

and then brought in Tom Ziller to drop science.

Of course, if you’re still reading this, you probably already know that Tom’s with SB Nation now. Eric Freeman works with Yahoo! Sports. Bethlehem Shoals, the principal force behind the Free Darko movement, works pretty much everywhere at this point. Together, and with the help of Big Baby Belafonte, Dr. LIC, and a handful of other awesomely pseudonym’d basketball addicts hard-wired for weirdness, Free Darko created a monster whose tentacles have stung every corner of the basketball media and beyond.

Over the past five years, they reminded us of sports’ fundamental absurdity, then reveled in it and took it a step further. At the same time they stretched us intellectually, they expanded our imagination. We got smarter, but it was fun. That’s writing’s best-case scenario.

Now, look around the internet, and you’ll probably see many of FD’s writers, and many of their ideas, thriving on bigger stages. So we’ll miss them, yeah, but whatever happens here, the movement moves on. And in the end, other than forever upstaging the biggest NBA Draft bust since Sam Bowie, isn’t that the ultimate testament to Free Darko’s legacy?

Everything any blog hopes to be, Free Darko was.