The entire RotoWire family would like to congratulate The Professor, André Snellings on his big move to ESPN!
We here at RW have been lucky enough to work with Andrè since 2004, dating back to the annual flag football games in Las Vegas. His oldest full-length RW article still on the site, believe it or not, is not about basketball. It was a summer time 2007 team preview of the Cincinnati Bengals (we don't have articles pre-June-2007 still in our system). Before that Bengals piece, The Professor owned his weekly Hoops Lab column (here's an early example). Dré was a machine! He cranked out insightful hoops observations weekly from 2005 through the 2013-2014 season, all while supporting a family with a real job. And when we say "real" job, we mean "really super complicated job that most of didn't understand".
We call Dré "The Professor" because his real job was as a Neural Engineer, which, frankly, most of us at RW don't understand, but we know it's complicated. And it required a bachelor degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech plus a Ph. D in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan. Did we mention it's complicated? Here's a picture of the stuff he used to look at on a regular basis:
[caption id="attachment_23885" align="alignleft" width="700"]
Stuff Andrè used to look at during his "real job" days.[/caption]
Of course, no one can juggle a crazy-scientific full-time job, three kids and a hoops addiction without an amazing life partner. Thank goodness for Tamonie Snellings. Tamonie is so supportive, she would agree every year to come to the overly-male RotoWire Las Vegas summer meeting, knowing full well that Andrè would be attending multiple Las Vegas Summer League games. We can only imagine how many nights, back in Michigan, Tamonie was on her own putting their three beaufiful kids to bed while The Professor banged out in depth NBA anlaysis. Here's a nice picture of Dré and Tamonie:
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Andrè and Tamonie Snellings[/caption]
But the Professor's analysis was too popular for just RotoWire columns. A few years ago, Chris Liss and Jeff Erickson added weekly visits from The Professor to their daily SiriusXM show. Here is a sample:
His guest spots were a hit and he's been on ever since, and will hopefully continue stopping by the show during his ESPN days.
Drè's media empire continued to grow. The Professor linked up with fellow RW contributor and TYT Sports host Jason Rubin. They've cranked out a ton of entertaining basketball videos. Here's a sample:
This all led to André launching his own blog, naturally called The Hoops Lab. The blog covered deep analysis of basketball, of course, but also tackled tough topics like race relations in the USA and proper parenting (plus some Game of Thrones banter). The Professor also wrote A TON of articles for the RotoWire blog, including this fantastic reply to a flippant comment from Michael Wilbon.
André, your full body of work is too enormous to list within this blog post. Thank you so much for 13+ years of contributing to RotoWire. You and Tamonie will ALWAYSbe a member of the RotoWire family. We hope you'll still join us in Las Vegas. We know you'll be a tremendous success at ESPN.