Welcome to my site. My name is Alex Roig. They say a journey begins with but a single step. That single step was a pair of Jordans for a 10 year old. From there, that pair of shoes turned into a curiosity to find out more about this guy whose shoes I bought. This was before the time of YouTube and Twitter. As a military brat living overseas, I had to wait into the late hours of the night to even watch a game. But watch I did. And play I did. Eventually that curiosity turned into a love for the game.

Fast forward a couple years, and that 10 year was now a teenager watching the Bulls’ second three-peat. Every time Michael Jordan raised a banner, I raised a banner. I was now living in Oklahoma, but my team was from Chicago. But then, Jordan retired and the Bulls sucked. And so with my favorite player gone and no civic duty holding me to cheering for the Bulls, I became sort of a fan free agent (because, of course, Oklahoma didn’t have a team back then).

Then Hurricane Katrina hit. And surprisingly, somehow, Oklahoma landed a team. It was on a temporary basis, but who cared. Oklahoma? Okla-fricking-homa had an NBA team. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine Oklahoma would have an NBA team. But here were the Hornets, ready for my fandom.

Around this same time, I found out about the internet sensation called sports forums. And once I found an OKC Hornets sports forum, I was hooked. I would visit the site everyday and eventually formed my own account and started contributing. I can’t begin to remember what my first comments looked like, but I eventually started to form my own voice and developed a good literal syntax and cadence.

Eventually that Hornets fan forum turned into a Thunder fan forum (www.Thunderfans.com). I had read enough blogs to try my hand at it. I reached out to the site manager and asked her if I could do a blog for the front page. She said yes, and I was hooked.

About a year later I decided to start my own blog. My content focused mainly on the Oklahoma City Thunder, and on the NBA, to a lesser extent. At the same time, I started to develop some contacts around the blogosphere and became the Thunder blogger for the now defunct Hoops Talk Nation blogging network from the Toronto based duo Audley Stephenson and Dave Mendonca. Unfortunately that site eventually shut down because of their growing commitments to the Canadian Basketball League. I was also the Thunder correspondent for The Visitors Section podcast with Josh Hastings and Mike Erwin until they switched fully to a fantasy football format in 2013.

So I continued with my site for a couple years. All the while, I kept on developing contacts around the league. I tried my hand at writing for an international sports site, but that didn’t work out. Eventually one of those contacts, Royce Young, who ran the premier Thunder blog, Daily Thunder, needed some help with some aspects of his site. Royce was a bit busy with his burgeoning ESPN career, so I threw my hat in the ring to help him out.

I eventually became the main pre-game writer for the site and then became the content manager the following season. I got to cover some games, which is something I wanted to do my entire life. But now, I feel like it’s time to decide my own fate. And that starts by coming back to my site. So this is where I’m at now. The journey isn’t done. In some way, it may only be starting. #ThunderUp