Peachtree Hoops: There is first love, and there is Zaza Pachulia love

[Hawksquawk]

Well, it appears I was more attached to Mike Woodson than I ever knew.

Because friends, after over three years of blogging, thinking, writing, ranting, internet surfing, box score perusing, twitter creating, comment debating, and odd new ways of talking about the same exact thing, it is time for me to hang up my blogging hat.

It is nothing you did, and surprisingly, it is nothing Mike Woodson did. I just recently finished graduate school (yes, all those horrible grammar mistakes came from someone who now has a Masters degree), and my new job is going to take all my focus. And so, it is sadly time to exit.

I must admit, I am proud of what I leave behind. 3,044 tweets, 4,473 comments, 167 fanshots, and 802 posts have helped make Peachtree Hoops a place for Atlanta Hawks fans to talk about the team in an intelligent and entertaining way, but what I am most proud of is something I had nothing to do with and is the exact reason why I am comfortable leaving and excited to come back, and that is you. Peachtree Hoops now has almost 1,000 registered users and over 82,000 page views a month, and you are what makes this blog great.

So really this is a post of thanks. Thank you for reading what I wrote and for some of you actually finding it worthy to comment on (or so unworthy that it needed to be commented on). Thanks for making an 82 game schedule actually seem new and refreshing. Thank you for making me laugh. Thank you for helping me understand basketball better. And thank you for making me a better fan. I set out to express my love for Zaza Pachulia and you allowed it to be so much more. I could say thank you again, and it would not be enough, but thank you is all I have. So thank you.

I leave the site in very capable hands, more capable than my own, in the Human Highlight Blog. This site will certainly not miss a beat, and that is not false humility, but simply the truth that it has moved far beyond the skill of one man. You make Peachtree Hoops great now. I can't wait to continue to contribute to this community in a different way.

And at the risk of looking even more pretentious than I already do and taking this far more seriously than I should, I want to thank a few people specifically. So thank you to SBNation for taking my average content and making it seem like a legitimate voice because of the support and distribution you provide, to Jason Walker for coming on board and helping to create the best content and traffic numbers this site has ever seen. to my friend John who refused to comment on the site but gave me tickets to games and ideas for what to write about, to all those who read my Hawks thoughts since Zaza's Playground and before, to Bret LaGree for letting me take over for him here and challenging me to be a better writer with every post he published, to Micah Hart for making Hawks bloggers feel like they have a voice, to Larry for good fights and good post fight handshakes, to CoCo for actually going from blogger to friend, to Bronn for some of the most insightful posts and comments on the blog, to Duff Man for the humor, to JE Skeets and Henry Abbot for making me feel like a real writer, to the AJC (especially Michael Cunningham, Jeff Schultz, Sekou Smith, and Mark Bradley) for providing content and quotes and taking me (moderately) seriously, to anyone that ever made a comment, sent me an email, put me in the reader feed, or just read a post, and to Hawks fans the only reason I ever wrote anything was because I was one of you and I am proud to say I still am. Thank you.

I will be back. Maybe in a post here and there. Maybe in the comments. I am not turning in my Hawks card, I am just taking my freedom back to be even more bias. I feel we have created a community here, and I do not plan to leave it any time soon. Until then, please remember, there is first love, and there is Zaza Pachulia love.

Go Hawks!

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[DrReality]

Gotta love this guy and how he has become involved in the community with his resteraunt.