20 Second Timeout

Hitting the Links: A Partial Listing of Who Has Been Reading 20 Second Timeout

Since I started 20 Second Timeout in June 2005, literally hundreds of other sites have linked to one or more of my posts. Using Technorati and other means, it is not difficult to keep track of who is reading and responding to what I have written. Here are a few interesting links to 20 Second Timeout:

1) Wall Street Journal readers got a full dose of my writing on June 13 when The Wall Street Journal Online's "The Daily Fix" quoted from my NBCSports.com article about Game Three of the NBA Finals in addition to posting a link to that entire article and a link to a 20 Second Timeout post about the NBA Finals (the link to 20 Second Timeout initially appeared on the front page of that edition of "The Daily Fix" but has since been pushed back by other more recent blog posts about the Finals).

2) Via BlogBurst, USA Today readers are able to keep up with 20 Second Timeout posts here (click on the link and scroll down to "Other voices from the Web"). 20 Second Timeout has consistently ranked among the top 100--and usually in the top 30--out of more than 2500 blogs featured in BlogBurst.

3) Deadspin, one of the largest blogs around, has linked to 20 Second Timeout a few times, most recently during the Cavs-Nets series.

4) The L.A. Times' Lakers Blog includes a lengthy citation from my Why Blogging is Booming and Newspapers Are Scrambling to Catch Up post (yes, there are many layers of irony that a big newspaper like the L.A. Times now has a blog that is quoting from another blog talking about why newspapers are struggling). You can find the excerpt from my post by scrolling down to June 13, 2007 at 2:55 p.m., where "Pfunk36" cited what I wrote and gave a "shout out" to 20 Second Timeout, although he did not provide a working link. Scrolling past his entry, several other readers commented on my post, with my favorite line coming from "Tim-4-Show," who said, "That article left it all on the table. There's very little to argue there except 'but, but...' yeah, move your butt and go blog somewhere else man..."

5) The National Court Reporters Association placed a link on their front page to my post that discussed Toni Christy, the court reporter who typed up press conference transcripts for ASAP Sports during the NBA playoffs.


6) Nets Daily Links, which is part of New Jersey's official team website, includes a link to 20 Second Timeout. Also, Nets Daily Blog linked to my post containing an interview with Julius Erving that I did after the NBA Cares Program in Cleveland during the NBA Finals.

7) Legends of Basketball, the official website of the National Basketball Retired Players Association, regularly reprints my articles from various websites, including my 20 Second Timeout post about Scottie Pippen's legacy and my NBCSports.com article about "The Legacy of the ABA."

8) I rank as the number one NBA blogger at Yardbarker.com (under the username "Doc319," a tribute to the one and only Dr. J and a number from his career statistics that a Julius Erving fan should not have trouble recognizing).

9) Last but certainly not least it should be noted that I am one of the 2000 bloggers (I do not know the person who started this project, nor did I submit 20 Second Timeout for inclusion but I certainly appreciate any and all readers that this additional exposure has brought my way).

One place that used to link to 20 Second Timeout on a semi-regular basis but no longer does so is a certain blog that now resides at the self-proclaimed "Worldwide Leader in Sports." I'd never heard of this blog before I discovered that a link to my site had been posted there, so I have no idea how the site's proprietor found 20 Second Timeout--which was relatively new at that time--nor do I know why 20 Second Timeout has completely dropped off of that site's radar (I also don't understand why a blog that is contained at a huge corporate website spends at least as much time linking to articles from said website that can be easily found anyway as it does to outside material). I do know that 20 Second Timeout contains unique commentary that cannot be found anywhere else, so I suspect that when readers don't find what they are looking for in the way of NBA analysis at the big corporate site that they will make their way here, either on their own, or via The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and some of the other venues listed above. Interestingly, in Lowpost.net's most recent rankings of 220 basketball blogs, 20 Second Timeout is 24th (and rising), while the blog from the "Worldwide Leader" is 32nd (and dropping). "The Leader" has deeper pockets and garners more mainstream attention than just about anyone else but that is an interesting snapshot of the reading and linking practices of the internet's most diehard basketball fans.

posted by David Friedman @ 11:33 PM

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