R.I.P. GMIB. Long live GMIB.

What happened at SB Nation and what comes next.

Átropos (The Fates), Francisco Goya

TL;DR — I’m no longer at SB Nation, so if you want to continue to receive Good Morning It’s Basketball, you need to subscribe to the new version, published here on Substack.

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Longer version —

So, that happened.

I’ve been at SBNation.com (the website) since 2010. I’ve been with SB Nation (the network, company and ongoing concern) since 2005. And … that’s over after Vox Media implemented its new policy on California-based contractors.

If you’re just here for the messy drama, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I will not be bashing anyone or anything here: not Vox, not the law, not the lawmakers who wrote it. I will not be giving media interviews about AB 5 or Vox Media — if you’re a reporter here for that, sorry, it’s not happening. Everyone is doing what they think is right. I’m not a lawyer, legislator or media executive. (Or — SPOILER ALERT — am I now?)

I have issued my lamentations with how this was all rolled out privately and I know that I am privileged enough to have built a loyal audience in my time at SB Nation.

I hope that audience — you — will follow me as I strike out on my own.

Today, I published the last of my 1,253 issues of Good Morning It’s Basketball (my daily NBA newsletter) at SB Nation.

Tomorrow, I publish the first issue of Good Morning It’s Basketball here on Substack.

You can subscribe by clicking the button below.

Everything will be free for everyone for the next couple weeks. If you sign up as a free subscriber, you’ll get everything I publish here in your inbox through January 10. After that, free subscribers will get one issue per week.

Paid subscribers will get everything all the time: five issues of the GMIB you know and love in your inbox and here at ziller.substack.com. It’s $5 per month, or you can do $50 for a full year.

What about columns (The Hook)?

I’ve been writing columns for SBNation.com since LeBron’s first season in Miami. Wild, huh? Like 1,300 columns over that time.

Going forward, those columns will essentially be a part of GMIB. They will probably be shorter — those columns were always written for a general sports audience, which often requires more context than will be needed for basketball fans — but they will be a part of our daily newsletters.

I will be publishing a couple dozen columns for SBNation.com to fulfill the remainder of my contract over the next couple of months. Those will be linked in the newsletter, of course. After that, everything I write about basketball will be in GMIB for subscribers.

What I’ll miss

Over the past week, I have been forced to reflect on what’s changing and what I’ll miss as I move under my own shingle. It’s the people, 100%. SB Nation has a ridiculous quantity of incredible talented and kind people. I’m going to resist rattling off every name lest I miss anyone, but seriously, I’ve loved working with everything there, from the former EICs to the social staff to the copy desk to my beloved friends on the NBA desk. The list of SB Nation alumni is truly incredible! I might be one of the people most qualified to put it together because of how long I was there, but it’ll have to wait for another day.

I’ll probably get sappy about certain people on Twitter for the rest of the day, so if you want to see an entire mess, find me there.

In a very obvious way, the new GMIB will be a much more solitary effort. I’m hoping that the relationship with the audience — more intimate, more direct — will help ameliorate some of that. We’ll have comments open on each post for subscribers only and we may find a way to do some open threads for particularly big NBA events.

But yeah, I’m going to miss the people at SB Nation.

Next up

GMIB, Friday morning, by 8:30 a.m. ET. Subscribe today so you get it in your inbox. Become a paid subscriber by January 10 so you don’t miss an issue. Let’s go.