Getting to know Pounding the Rock’s writers: Devon Birdsong
I swear it was just a joke
Welcome to “Getting to know Pounding the Rock’s writers”! During the All-Star break, we thought it we be fun to get to know a little bit more about our writers here at PtR.
A bit about myself
Blessed to have been born in Central Texas the year that David Robinson finally joined up with the Spurs, I hail from the city of San Marcos. Consequently I’ve long been in favor of the somewhat blasphemous idea that a new Spurs arena could be built in between San Antonio and Austin, though that looks less and less likely. Not that I mind, because if you had to ask me to chose between San Antonio and Austin I’d pick the former every time. But I do think of the Spurs as belonging to Central Texas since they were the only major sports team in the area for a long while, and especially since the person who pulled me into the Spurs fandom is long-standing Austinite.
A longtime lover and consumer of books, most people who’ve known me a while are not surprised to find that I work in libraries. A published author of poetry, writing is a passion of mine, and has been for as long as I can remember.
Outside of basketball, I consume just about every sporting event I can find that airs, and I’ve read more books about sports than I can count. I’ve also played just about as many sports at one time or another, spanning from baseball, basketball, and football, to gymnastics, competitive swimming, and tennis (my favorite to play).
How I became a Spurs fan
Oddly enough, many of the men in my family have never been very big on watching sports. My father did enjoy napping on the floor in front of Sunday NFL broadcasts, and I’m told his father went out and purchased a color television just before the first Superbowl, but by the time I’d arrived it was my now octogenarian grandmother who was most passionate when it came to sports fandom, and as the firstborn grandson I was duty-bound to join her in it.
Thankfully I enjoyed it as much as she did, and spent much of my youth enjoying the benefits of her expansive sports cable package. My grandfather used to complain that her obsession cost him a fortune in billing, but it was her only vice, so he left it alone.
And we watched everything. Arena football, college badminton, competitive cycling, you name it. But most of all, we watched the San Antonio Spurs, her obsession since they’d arrived in the 70’s as a part of the ABA.
All it took was a couple of prime David Robinson dunks in the 1995 playoffs, and I was sold on basketball. All it took for me to be sold on the Spurs specifically, was Tim Duncan’s ‘03 postseason run.
How I ended up at Pounding the Rock
Would you believe it was the result of a joke?
For those who’ve read me with any regularity that’s probably not a surprise, having seen my sarcastic little jabs in the injury reports of Game Previews when teams are transparently holding players out for other reasons, or the wild turns that some of my other articles have taken.
I can’t even remember what the joke was anymore. The relic of a Twitter/X account that I deleted, I was snarking in series of tweets between some the PTR writers and ending up getting a message from our editor, J.R. Wilco, asking if I liked writing and if I was interested in contributing to Pounding The Rock. Having been a longtime reader (and sometimes commenter), I told him I was, and that I’d send him a sample.
Little did J.R. know that my first major had been in Journalism. 36 hours later he received an almost 3000 word piece on LaMarcus Aldridge. He politely asked if I could perhaps aim for something in the 1500 word range.
As fate would have it, my first article for the site would be about the Kawhi Leonard exit, which happened while I was in the middle of an article with a very different focus, and I’ve been writing here ever since.
I’ve written just about every kind of piece in my six years here thus far (even live-tweeting when Tanner Bowen’s feeling reckless with the PTR Twitter account) though I mostly stick to previews and fairly eccentric What We Learned articles, and I intend to keep doing so for as long as I can (or I incite legal action).
I’m grateful to everyone here for giving me space to be my odd little self. This is a special place for fans of the Silver and Black, and I’m very proud to be a part of it.
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