ShamSports.com is a one-man operation run by me, Mark Deeks, a man sorely in need of a more professional headshot.

This website is the perpetually unfinished pseudo-culmination of many years of laborious and financially unsuccessful study of the NBA, more specifically studies of the basketball operations side of its business. I am continuously intrigued by the esoterica and minutiae of all the aspects of building an NBA basketball team. I want to build the best basketball teams possible, and until such time as I can do this, I settle for commentating on how others can do it.

Saying that I "am interested in building the best basketball teams possible" is vague and all-encompassing, yet it is deliberately so, because that is precisely what I am interested in. There are many such things that go into building a team, and I am interested in them all. From a roster management point of view, a simplified view could be taken that states that there are three factors that go into building a team - salary cap management, old school player scouting, and advanced analytics. This website is concerned with the first two.

Over time, the website has undergone many changes of plan, as I seek to reconcile dreams with reality, ambition with time, and desire with money. The purpose of the site has changed many times, from a place to be slightly acerbic [I was younger then, and no one was looking anyway], to a place for compiling data that the rest of the internet wasn't compiling satisfactorily, to a place that tried to be all things to all people, with many other stops in between. Many other stops were started and not finished with remarkable regularity; the list of deleted bits of this website is about fourteen times longer than the list of finished bits. Even this page took about six months from putting the link up to actually writing it.

Ultimately, though, what you see here is a CV. Everything you will see here is what I like to know and think about, and this is what I know and think about those things. Or, more accurately - this is some of what I know and think about those things. There's more than this, but this is as much as I have had time to compile. It will never be finished because I will never stop learning. It could stand to be more finished than it is, of course, but therein lies the challenge.

The purpose of this website now and forever hereafter (until such time as I change my mind again) is two-fold. Firstly, it is designed to be something of a scouting database.

Contained within the player index are many of the players about whom I have written, about whom I will write, and about who I will write again. [Once you're on the list, you're in for life.] There is an element of randomness (at least to the viewer) as to which players are in there - however, the loose parameters are all players in the NBA (training camp contracts count), all playing elsewhere in the world who are good enough to be, all D-Leaguers/G-leaguers, all future professional Division 1 college basketball players, all national team representatives in Eurobasket and World Championship play, and all the players in the upper echelons of European club basketball. When finished - which will be never, although not through a lack of trying - that index will represent a place to go for analysis and thoughts about players, normally but not exclusively written with a view to their suitability for (or value within) the NBA, what they do and how they project at doing it. I like old school scouting and feel it must never fall by the wayside. Eyes are no more deceptive than statistics if you use them right.

The second purpose of the website is much better known and better established. This website was once regarded as one of the primary stops on the web for NBA salary information, which was brought accurately and helpfully if not especially quickly. More than just rolling out the numbers, though, I was interested in the process of using them. I am always trying to understand, and help others understand, the vehicles and particulars of the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement, endeavouring to understand and explain why things can and do happen, and what things can and should happen. If it is contract or market related, I am interested in it. Put more succinctly, I like to know the rules and know who they are worth using on.

And so with that in mind, this website now plays home to The Capulator.

Straddling both purposes is the blog, found on the home page. Thoughts and relevant information for both purposes (purpoi?) can be found there. However, this website, this CV, is but one such place where I do such work. The blog on this site is not used much, as the writing mostly takes place elsewhere.

Specifically, I am the NBA Partnership Lead at GiveMeSport, the NBA's UK media partner. I produce a lot of work there over various media. I try to collate it all on this page as well. As ever, I am interested in all aspects of team building and the NBA roster management market, and I feel that need not be limited to one side of a multi-sided fence.

Most readily and most regularly, I can be found on Twitter at MarkDeeksNBA. There I can regularly be found self-publicising my work and thoughts, quietly commanding the respect of the room while answering questions about the salary cap and NBA market with an unending joie de vivre and lust for life. The vida loca is truly lived, so come join the party.

If you wish to contact me for any reason, email me at admin@shamsports.com. I am always willing to discuss the rules, the players they are worth using on, and my work on these subjects. I welcome feedback be it positive or negative, criticisms or agreements, corrections or congratulations. We're all endlessly trying to get to the bottom of it all in a piecemeal way, so all pieces to that meal are welcome. I also doubly welcome offers for future employment elsewhere, be they media based or consultative. Also, if you want me to do your radio show, that's where to go right there.

Please enjoy what is already there and check back for all that is forthcoming.

    - Mark