It has been nice to see that those LOF and LOH debates have been slowly settling down as Lin's play lately has been getting more on track with the expectation of most fans. I didn't mean to stir anything up again. But those "X-only-fans" myths have been hovering in my mind for quite a while, dating back to the YOF years. So I want to see when did all the members of this site have created their member ship. Clutch's member #1 was created since Feb 1999, so that's when the site was setup up. Then I search good and get the member # of whoever from the top hits with phrases like this: I would get member #1285 and that means from Feb 1999 to Feb 2000, the Clutchfans.net got roughly 1300 new members. Similarly I get new member numbers from the previous Feb to Feb of the year from 2000 to 2013. Here's the plot of annual newly joined member numbers over the years. A few guesses here: 1. The Rockets drafted Yao Ming in the summer of 2002. That most likely gave the CF the first bump from a little over 1000 new members in the previous year to 7000, talking about YOF!! 2. The Rockets traded for TMac on June 29, 2004. Are there any change in numbers showing up? Yes, CF new member number in the following two year combined (2005 and 2006) plummeted to around 500. So to me TMAC is an effective box office poison of CF unless Clutch has other explanation. 3. The Rockets traded for Shane Battier on June 28, 2006. The Rockets were on win-now mode in the following a few years (2007-2010) until Yao's feet broke down. During those good years, CF netted in 6-8 thousand new members annually. 4. As Yao struggled and retired, the number dipped until last summer when the Rockets traded/signed a bunch of great players in Harden/Lin/Asik, which excited the fans and bumped the number from 2000 to 4000. And we usually call those a few mere additional thousands joined after June 2012 LOF. :grin::grin:
Wasn't there a ban on new members or non-contributing members somewhere in that 2005-2006 dip? For some reason I seem to remember that around that time I was looking for a site like Clutchfans, only to see that membership wasn't being granted...so I joined realgm.com. Then later, I found out that Clutchfans was adding new members again and I finally joined it in 2009. I'm not imagining that, am I?
I remember the same thing. I couldn't join during 2005-2006 either. Then joined later when the restriction was lifted.
I think there's a big difference between X-only-fans (who are fans that are ONLY concerned with the performance and fortunes of a single player, even if it means harming the team) and people who have become fans of a team due to a single player. The latter is common here, while the former is not. Some people act as if it's wrong for people to have become Rockets' fans because of Jeremy Lin. That's ridiculous. Teams sign new players all the time in order to draw new fans. Should GMs avoid signing marquee players so that the fan base can remain "pure"?
To be honest, I've followed Patterson and Douglas over to Sac and started looking into that team 'cause of them, joined their forum over at SBNation. I find it amusing that fans have started yelling for Patterson to have more playing time (also it looks like they have a good chance at keeping the team!).
Maybe the additions weren't caused solely because of trades. Maybe they were added because fans got older and decided to join. I didn't join clutch fans because of a trade, I joined because I turned like 13 and wanted to be apart of it.
OP you're failing to take into account the context of the posters. Its impossible to gauge with statistics but Lin has the most die hard following of any players that have played here. Yao was a nationalistic icon, the 1st chinese player to come play over here and the best C in the league for a little bit so it was a lot more understandable to see his following, but it never reached the lengths it has with Lin.
Speaking of this I remembered when I tried to join sometime in like 2005/2006 but it wasn't successful, I used to just read the forum lol I remembered reading a website called Yaomingmania too
A lot of the members here were lurkers for a long time before they made accounts so I don't think join date is an accurate indicator for when they actually became Rockets fans.
new members spiked 2007-2010 following the Clutchfans acquisition of Carl Herrera. Pfffff, Shane Battier couldn't touch CH's stats
yea, it think the rapid surge you see is from all these people finally being able to create accounts. The site was WAY more strict back then. You had the rookie rule where you had to get upgraded before you could start threads or do anything. As long as you were a good poster all was well and you would get upgraded soon, but it was also pretty easy to get tossed and banned from the site when you were a rookie. I think I had an acct in 05 got a two week ban for something and never logged on it again. Never remembered the username or PW. Tried creating an acct during the 07 but it registration was closed. It opened up again in 09 so I joined.
My first impulse when I stumbled across this site wasn't, oh let's make an account and spew everything that comes to mind, is quite literally just read stuff ever now and then LOL
i hate the fact that you automatically become asian and a LOF if you joined in 2012. Sure most of them are but not all. Also hate how some older posters when beaten in an argument and have no rebuttal whatsoever refer to user join dates to try to win the argument. pathetic.
Interesting thread. I wonder if the increase and decrease and membership of CF is more than just about our records of the past. I think the whole context of being a Rockets fan has changed over the years. For most of us, it's about supporting and being diehard about this team that you love. The team. Not one player. The damn team. With some of our big-name players like Stevie, Yao, Tmac, and JLin, the notion of fandom, for some, has changed into supporting one specific player over the team that they play on. Thankfully, there are still the great majority of us that rep the Houston Rockets and not one individual. These team-oriented fans are the ones I love.
^ This I have been a rockets fan since 04 and I didn't join but I would always come to the board and read the post of what the people are saying so later I decided to make join Clutch fans. I didn't have a favorite player to root for I just rooted for the whole team and not one player.
Basically this. I started watching basketball pretty much because of Lin (hockey rules here in Canada haha), and he's the reason I signed up here. But I think that I'm pretty reasonable with what I post. There are a lot of people who are primarily Lin fans here, true. But I think there are only a few who are really annoying (not naming names but I think everyone has someone in mind). It's pretty easy to just tune someone out when you recognize them as a terrible poster, though, so I hope all this meta-posting about LOFs and LOHs die out. There are good posters and bad posters, and it doesn't really matter who they're rooting for.
