About

About the Blog
Steve Weinman launched D-League Digest on November 27, 2009 as part of the ESPN TrueHoop Network. D-League Digest focuses primarily on coverage of the NBA Development League, although it branches out occasionally to touch on related issues in the NBA, including the NBA Draft and Summer League, NCAA, and basketball in general. After more than seven months as the lead writer, Weinman stepped down from his position at D-League Digest on July 2, 2010, to take a job with the NBA. Before departing, Weinman named Matt Hubert, who began contributing to D-League Digest in February of 2010, as his successor as lead writer and maintainer of the site.

Matt Hubert, Lead Writer

Despite having lived his entire life in Erie, Pa., Matt’s sports allegiances have a definite West Coast tilt. He’s a diehard fan of the Los Angeles Lakers, Oakland Raiders, and Michigan Wolverines (football and basketball) as well as a casual fan of the Oakland Athletics and UCLA Bruins basketball. There’s a story dating back to childhood explaining why Matt chose each team. The Cliff Notes version: Dad (Lakers), Bo Jackson (Raiders), Fab Five (Michigan), uniforms (A’s), and Lew Alcindor/John Wooden plus a little bit of Tyus Edney (UCLA).

Matt became interested in the D-League when his hometown Erie BayHawks joined the league in 2008-09, and he covered the team extensively during the 2009-10 season at Blog Talk BayHawk. It was his writing at BTB that caught the eye of D-League Digest founder Steve Weinman, who asked Matt to come aboard as a weekly contributor starting in February of 2010. With Steve’s blessing, Matt took over full-time at D-League Digest in July 2010 after Steve accepted a full-time position with the NBA. In addition to serving as the lead writer, Matt is in charge of the site’s design, advertising inquiries, Twitter feed, and whatever else it needs to remain alive on the Internet.

Matt graduated summa cum laude from Mercyhurst College in 2007 with a degree in English and a duel concentration in writing and creative writing. He has interned in the newspaper industry and worked in corporate communications and advertising. His writing has been published by the Erie Times-News, Erie Insurance’s Eriesense magazine, and ErieBlogs, among others. Additionally, he earned a a master’s degree in secondary education from Mercyhurst in 2011. Currently he serves as a substitute teacher employed by several school districts in the Erie area. He is also the head basketball coach of Fairview High School’s 9th grade boys basketball team.

Gino Pilato, Contributing Writer

Gino’s early years were spent in southern Orange County. After trips to the Great Western Forum and eventually the Staples Center, he became an avid fan of the Los Angeles Lakers. This is where his passion for basketball began, after not only watching the bevy of talented players who donned the legendary purple and gold, but also getting the chance to see stars from other NBA teams play.

His interest in the D-League came about when he moved to Boise, Idaho—home of the D-League’s Idaho Stampede—in 2008. He attended games regularly, and went to the 2010 Showcase when it was held in Boise, an event that fueled his interest even more. Today he attends nearly every Stampede home game to check out the D-League’s abundance of talented players in person, while also keeping a keen eye to the happenings of the D-League on a daily basis online. In layman’s terms, he is a big fan of the NBA Development League.

Gino graduated from Southern Oregon University in 2008, and it was during his college experience that he first cut his teeth in sports journalism. He hosted a one-hour sports talk radio program which then lead to writing a weekly sports commentary article for the school’s newspaper. Since graduating and entering the “real world,” he has been unable to fill the sports writing void in his life…until now.

About the Logo

The D-League Digest logo is composed of the acronym D-L-D and features letters modified to look like arrows. The arrows represent the player movement to and from the NBA (via call-ups and assignments) as well as the flow of information to and from D-League Digest (via comments and emails, blog posts and tweets).

The color scheme of (from left to right) blue, white, and red duplicates the color scheme used in the official logo of the NBA Development League. The official web-ready RGB hexadecimal color palette of the D-League Digest logo and dleaguedigest.com consists of the following colors:

Blue: #0146ad
White: #ffffff
Red: #d0103a
Gray 1 (light): #ababab
Gray 2 (dark): #333333
Black: #000000