Indeed, joining The Big Lead and FireJoeMorgan, the crew behind HoopsHype, the ultimate must-read site for basketball fans, bloggers, salary cap aficionados and NBA insiders (500,000 unique visitors a month) revealed themselves to be... Spaniards.  Three Spaniards from Madrid, in fact, according to this Wall Street Journal story.

And one of them doesn't even like basketball.  The three are 29 year olds who started the site six years ago.

My favorite line:

Mr. Sierra -- thin, with angular features and deep-set eyes -- rested his head in his left hand. He'd been up since 7 a.m., five hours earlier than usual. "It killed me," he said.

Um, being up at 7 AM kills you?  You normally wake up at noon?!?  These guys are still living the college life,  aren't they?  Hard not to be a bit jealous, right?

Here's one of the more interesting quotes in the article, one that really speaks to the impact that HoopsHype has on the NBA:

One morning in October 2005, a Hoopshype item caught the eye of Larry Harris, the former general manager of the Milwaukee Bucks: A New York tabloid was reporting that the New Orleans Hornets wanted to trade Jamaal Magloire.
The story turned out to be wrong. But the rumor prompted Mr. Harris to call the Hornets to find out if they were willing to deal. Two days later, Mr. Magloire was on his way to Milwaukee. Mr. Harris says he routinely calls other general managers in the league based on tips from Hoopshype.

Of course, Mr. Harris has a little more time to surf the web nowadays, since he was fired a few weeks back.  

There is also a fascinating portion of the article that talks about Fantasy Sports Ventures, an firm that acquires sports websites and sell ads.
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Unrelated, but worth your time - here's the video commercial of Steve Nash's "workout" in NYC one day last summer (you might remember that he stopped in Central Park one day to play some pick up soccer - I ran past him as I did my daily run, not realizing that who the fuss was about until I read about it the next day)... anyway, here you go:

And while we are on the topic:  The Toronto Star reports that Steve Nash financed and directed this commercial himself, and that he would like to do more filmmaking when his career is over.

Oh, and that he will be releasing a Nike sneaker called the "Trash Talk shoe", which is "made from manufacturing waste products" (better than manufactured from waste products) on Earth Day (April 22).  We'll have to file that one under "Athletes doing good", even if we might be a bit hesitant to wear shoes made from waste!

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