Ryne Gery

It was once said that “the magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.”

Peter Robert Casey loved basketball from a young age. It was his first love. Basketball was special – magical. He never had to worry about losing the game. He would remain close to basketball from childhood to adulthood. The magic still hasn’t worn off.

Casey was the first microblogger in college basketball history during the 2009-2010 season. He covered the St. John’s men’s basketball team on Twitter. He provided in-game updates, analysis, and observations at each game. The experience from press row in Madison Square Garden was a dream come true.

“For me, it was a constant high to learn a new craft, meet influential people in the college basketball community and facilitate conversations about the game I love,” Casey said.

His love for the game began about 20 years ago.

He was enthralled by the dominant UNLV teams of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Larry Johnson and Anderson Hunt led a group that some consider to be the best team ever to the national championship. Casey took notice and couldn’t help but admire their greatness.

“I had a Runnin’ Rebels Starter jacket and loved watching them roll through the competition with bravado and superior talent,” he said, “I was obviously a front-runner early on.”

Casey also watched Duke closely as they rose to national prominence. The team that lost to UNLV by 30 in 1990 won in a rematch in the Final Four in 1991. Duke quickly became the household name in basketball it is today. The defining moment for the program caught the nation’s attention for years to come.

Casey was among the millions of viewers that magical March night in the Spectrum. Christian Laettner’s buzzer beater in 1992 captured his love for basketball in a short 2.1 seconds.

“I relived that shot in my backyard a million times, often missing,” he said, “ It still unearthed a relentless passion for the game of basketball.”

The love affair took him from CYO ball to the AAU circuit to countless summer camps until it culminated with three years of varsity basketball in high school. He stayed with the game as a freshman on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. After a year of JV ball, he decided to hang it up.

The passion wouldn’t go away, though. The game still had the same magical draw it did when he was that kid in the driveway. The simplicity of the game also made it great.

“All you really need is a ball and an imagination,” he said, “A backboard and rim help, but milk crates and other homemade hoops will not stop the most ambitious kids from dreaming.”

Casey kept his imagination from his childhood. While his playing career was over, it didn’t mean he had to stop dreaming. The court was his field of dreams. He just needed the voice for some direction.

He discovered social media as the perfect outlet to share his passion for basketball. It gave him the voice he was searching for.

His LinkedIn profile led to an internship with the Entertainer’s Basketball Classic at Rucker Park. It would be the first stop on an incredible hoops journey. Social media got his foot in the door.

“I intended to use social media as a platform to establish professional relationships, and after quickly seeing value in it, I was sold,” Casey said.

The door swung open after the internship at Rucker Park. Social media became the opportunity and he ran with it. Casey said it led to basketball writing opportunities and showed him the value of social media outlets such as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. He liked he ability to exchange ideas and get feedback on his content.

Of course, basketball was right in the middle of it all.

“I found a lot of like-minded and like-hearted people that shared the same passion for basketball, and I haven’t looked back since,” he said.

He balanced a full-time job with many hours online in basketball communities. He wrote about the game and attended as many basketball and social media events as he could. It was a hectic lifestyle that came with a price.

“I suffered from sleep deprivation (and I still do) and my wife is very understanding,” Casey said.

All of the late nights and exhausting days were worth the price, though.

He said St. John’s reached out to him one year after he began writing about basketball. He had a great experience with Big East basketball in New York City from a perspective that no else has ever had. It took him to Indianapolis for the Final Four – a scene he described as “basketball bliss.”

Casey hopes he can share that bliss with other social media users. He said he thinks bloggers will join him on press row and that the NCAA is looking to accommodate more journalists outside the mainstream media. St. John’s opened up the world of microblogging to cover sports and Casey wants to see more credentialed tweeters at games in the near future.

The idea might sound crazy to the traditional, old school media, but social media is just a new “style of play” in communications.

Think half-court team play vs. the fast break. Both can be effective. Casey enjoyed one contrast during his hoops studies.

“I used love watching Pete Carril’s Princeton teams spread out the floor and pick apart a defense through constant motion, screening, back door cuts and precision passing,” Casey said, “At the same time, I get chills watching old footage of Nolan Richardson’s teams playing 40 minutes of hell.”

Social media can find a place in the traditional press today. With a passion and love for the job, good things will happen. Whether that is being shared on Twitter or in the newspaper shouldn’t matter. Like basketball, many different styles can get the job done.

“Whatever works, works, winning often trumps aesthetics,” Casey said, “I love all flavors of the game.”