Brandon Anderson 2017: Year in Review
Highlights from a year of writing, sports and otherwise
It’s been two years of freelancing now, a whole new world of independent writing and fundraising work. I’m not much for Christmas letters (and a little late too), but this is my version, looking back on some personal highlights from 2017 and some favorite things I wrote along the way.
I’m a math guy, so I ran a few numbers. Turns out I wrote 254 articles totaling over 600,000 words last year! Whoa. That’s the equivalent of eleven 200-page books and would take approximately 36 straight hours to read (not recommended). I doubled my Twitter count, tripled my Medium followers, and tallied 3400 likes and claps. Human beings spent over 10,000 hours reading stuff I wrote in 2017... crazy!
I went through my 2017 below, highlighting two or three favorite pieces I wrote each month like I did in 2016. I tried to pick diverse and evergreen stories from sports, pop culture, and life, so there’s something for everyone. At the bottom there’s a few ways you can support my work. Thanks for reading!
January
I started the year helping launch NBA site 16 Wins A Ring as lead strategist and consultant. That was a new exciting project, an opportunity to collaborate with a talented team of writers and creatives. I wrote 20 pieces in two months and helped with brand management and site formation in a great crossover experience on writing, sports, and consulting. My favorite piece I wrote was about Steve Kerr, the true leader of the Golden State Warriors.
January also saw the inauguration of a new president, and ABC’s Black-ish had a powerful episode reflecting on the differences of the Obama and Trump elections. I wrote about hope and lemons on Inauguration Day for Extra Newsfeed.
I said goodbye in January to my time with Sports Illustrated’s The Cauldron, where I published 37 articles in ten months. What an incredible opportunity they gave me, the first major site to publish me and the first to pay me for my work! In one of my last Cauldron pieces, I did some hard-hitting investigative journalism reporting on the NBA’s spelling problem with All-Star voting.
February
February was a time of transition as I moved on from opportunities at 16WAR and Cauldron. I studied LeBron’s insane minutes load over his career and still cringe every time I see him post 40+ minutes in a meaningless regular season game, but LeBron is an alien, so what do I know?
I always catch up on a lot of TV after football season, and I reviewed some old seasons of Survivor for Movie Time Guru. February also saw the news of a 48-team World Cup (maybe then, we’ll qualify!) and wrote for Howler Magazine with a few proposals of how I’d fix and format a messy new cup.
March
March is one of my favorite times of the year because of March Madness. I wrote an opus previewing every team and matchup in the bracket, then led my Bracket Wall contest wire-to-wire before losing in the national championship game for a second straight season. Sigh.
In March I also made my first ever podcast appearance with the guys at The Flagrant 2, where we talked about a series I did on the best nicknames in the NBA with serge. March was also #TryPod month, and I wrote about 15 of my favorite sports podcasts and 20 non-sports podcasts I adore.
April
April means NBA awards season with the playoffs tipping off. I always love the end-of-season numbers, and last season’s were particularly absurd with the incredible triple-double numbers from Russell Westbrook and James Harden. I studied the odd MVP race and what we can learn from history on the times we got the MVP wrong.
April also brought the Chicago Cubs ring ceremony. It was the only game I could afford this year after splurging on last year’s World Series experience, but it was totally worth it.
Later in the month with Mitch Trubisky and Deshaun Watson shooting up NFL draft boards, I considered behavioral economics and the optics of drafting an early quarterback. I concluded that it’s a bad idea to invest in an early QB, and then Nick Foles, Case Keenum, and Blake Bortles made the NFL final four.
May
Still stuck on the bracket thing (always), I did a May bracket evaluating the 16 worst nicknames in the NBA. I’m still partial to Bean Burrito (Nick Young) and Armadillo Cowboy (Joe Johnson), personally.
I also helped consult and launch my second publication of the year, a Chicago Cubs site called Wrigley Rapport, with Austin Hutchinson and Craig House. I’m not as well versed on baseball as other sports but have enjoyed writing occasionally for the site as I follow my Cubbies. When Starlin Castro returned to Chicago with the Yankees, I wrote about the Cub we forgot to celebrate.
May marked the release of Aziz Ansari’s brilliant Netflix show Master of None, season two. It was the best thing I watched all year and I wrote about its portrait of modern romance, loneliness, and nuance for P.S. I Love You.
June
June brought Warriors-Cavs III and a lot of deserved talk about the greatness of LeBron James. But there’s one thing Michael Jordan was that LeBron can never be: INVINCIBLE. That didn’t stop me from having a little fun at SportsPickle writing about LeBron’s optimism that he may still be able to lose at least five to seven more NBA Finals someday.
June also brought my first year intensely covering the NBA Draft. I put together my extensive NBA Big Board with a full top 40. I nailed Jordan Bell and OG Anunoby in my top ten but had Donovan Mitchell way too low, and it’s been fun comparing results with draft experts like Jonathan Tjarks, Cole Zwicker, and Kevin O'Connor at Win the Draft.
One of my favorite players in the draft was Jonathan Isaac. I got to work with college hoops legend Seth Davis on a piece about Isaac’s unique package of length and upside for Seth's Draft House. That piece also led to my first radio appearance on an Orlando show!
July
July means time for a personal update. I continued consulting work on various projects throughout 2017, much of that backloaded into the fall semester. Summer brought a new roommate and a new church, then sent me home for extended time with my family Brianne, Jody, and Curt where I celebrated my birthday, Father’s Day, and our family reunion. Later in July I made an East Coast trip to visit the Rucker family, where I got to spend a couple weeks as a part-time dad and youth pastor.
July was mostly a writing break, but that didn’t stop me from watching 80+ NBA Summer League games and writing my annual 19,000-word manifesto for Arc Digital on all of my favorite summer NBA prospects.
August
Back to the grind in August, with everything ramping up for the impending NBA and NFL seasons. I wrote about fantasy football for The Unprofessionals and did a silly piece on the greatest eclipses in sports history for Sports Raid.
Most of my fantasy football work this year was published at Fantasy Football Calculator, a great tool for fantasy players. I did a big average draft position series early on, then wrote a few pieces a week all season. Recently, we launched Lineup Calculator, and I’ve been doing NBA fantasy pieces too!
August also means my biannual NBA redraft with Jonny, Rob, Luke, and serge and led to one of my most popular and controversial sports pieces of the year, when we ranked the 25 best players in the NBA right now. That top 15 still looks pretty good to me!
September
September is always busy with NFL starting and NBA getting close, and it also meant the beginning of semester-long consulting work with Indiana Wesleyan University and Corban University.
As the NFL season kicked off, I tried to find this year’s worst-to-first team for julian rogers and The Hit Job. I settled on my guy Carson Wentz and the Philadelphia Eagles, so I guess that one worked out alright. Of course, later that month in my first piece for The Unbalanced, I picked the Cleveland Browns as the 0–2 team most likely to make the playoffs. Can’t win ‘em all.
I also watched a lot of early morning EuroBasket games and scouted likely 2018 NBA #1 pick Luka Doncic, Lauri Markkanen, Kristaps Porzingis, and others. I watched around 60 games and wrote 7500 words of Euro scouting analysis for Eric Spyropoulos and The 94 Feet Report.
But the coolest project I did in September was my first paid piece for Medium Staff! I worked hard a couple years ago and lost 50 pounds, and Medium let me write about 50 little things I did to lose that weight. There’s a lot of little things you can do, and I hope this piece helps you on your journey.
October
October brought the heart of the NFL season and I continued to write weekly fantasy football pieces at The Hit Job and FF Calculator and began a weekly Vegas odds pick’em column. I finished the year 130–116 on my picks and nailed 59% of my best bets — not bad!
But the biggest NFL story this fall happened off the field. Colin Kaepernick started a revolution when he and others began kneeling during the anthem before games. I wrote about what kneeling means to me and why sometimes we kneel because we have to.
October also meant a couple quick but wonderful trips, a surprise day vacation with my family in Minneapolis (pictured above) and a day trip to Notre Dame for a football game with friends. In between, serge and I wrote unveiled our early season NBA League Pass rankings.
November
I began work with a few exciting new teams in November, one of them Grandstand Central with Dan Szczepanek and a team of brilliant up-and-coming sports and culture satire writers. I had a ton of fun doing a ridiculous draft of Thanksgiving stuff with serge as we drafted turkey, stuffing, football, naps, leftovers, Black Friday, and more (I won).
I also did my first piece for Press Basketball, an up-and-coming NBA site based out of Canada with a talented young team. I continued a series I did last year, ranking the worst best players in the NBA for the 2017 season.
This fall I found a new home at City of Light Anglican church in Aurora, where I’ve found friends and a family and met God anew. It brings me great joy to serve with our kids team, but that was a strange juxtaposition next to the All Saints Day massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
December
We made it! December meant time at home in North Dakota with family and friends, and it also meant a lot of NBA and some 2017 retrospectives.
I did quarter-season NBA check-ins for The 94 Feet Report and began a series of scouting reports watching terrible NBA teams play so you don’t have to. Then I wrapped up my year with one last 2017 collaboration with serge as we handed out Christmas presents to all our favorite NBA teams and players at Grandstand Central.
As the year wrapped up, I looked back at the best thing I did in 2017, finding a new home in a place I never would’ve expected. I also wrote about my 25 favorite TV shows, movies, books, and podcasts from 2017 in case you need a recommendation or two to get you through the long winter.
2018 has begun well as I continue to look for new writing and consulting opportunities. The freelance world is freeing but suffocating at times. Writing can feel lonely, like I’m shouting into the internet abyss wondering if anyone is reading, always looking for the next opportunity. It’s exciting to see how my freelance opportunities have grown over a couple years. I’m getting even more involved in my church, and I’m getting ready for a move this summer.
Some of you have asked how you can support my work. Leads are always helpful—both writing and consulting. If you know someone that may need work and/or writing done and think I can help, please connect us. My biggest struggle is still getting that first connection.
But honestly, it helps a lot just knowing that people read and enjoy what I write. It’s an emotional lift every time someone clicks the clap button (up to 50 times!) or shares an article, and those things help a lot by getting my work in front of more eyes. Social media likes and comments help, too. It’s great to get feedback, positive or negative. If you read something, say so! Tell me what you liked or didn’t like. Ask me if I’ve ever thought of writing about something. I’m always looking for new ideas. I write about sports but also TV, pop culture, humor, and more. You probably won’t be interested in everything I write, but there’s something for everyone.
Some of my articles are pay-only now. If you join Medium for $5 a month, your subscription fee goes directly toward supporting me when you read my work and click the clap button. Otherwise you get three free pay-only articles a month, which is about all I do anyway for now. I’m also considering starting a Patreon account soon where you could support me directly.
Thanks again for reading, and thank you for your support. It’s been a crazy couple years, and I continue to learn a ton about myself and grow in new and exciting (and scary) ways. Can’t wait to see what the rest of 2018 holds!
What was your favorite 2017 piece I wrote? Let me know in the comments!!
If you appreciated this piece, please give it a few claps 👏 👏 so others see it too. Follow Brandon on Medium or @wheatonbrando for more sports, TV, culture, and humor. You can visit the rest of Brandon’s writing archives here.
