Oden or Durant?

Okay, there’s a reason we’re a bit more focused on the Oden or Durant draft pick for the Trail Blazers than we normally might be. About 3 weeks ago, our friend Dan Harbison contacted us and wanted to know if we wanted to help with a project, due as soon as possible, and it had to be “bad-ass.” How could we turn down a proposition like that?

So we quickly concepted, designed and built the “Oden or Durant” mcirosite found at trailblazers.com. It should be the first thing you see when you get to the site. You can learn more about Oden and Durant, listen to broadcasters’ takes on the players, read tons of online articles, view videos, listen to podcasts, check out photos… lots of content. And there will be more… workout videos of Oden and Durant when they come to Portland, content from IAmATrailBlazersFan.com, photos from the workouts and visits… whatever looks and sounds good and relates to Oden or Durant, it will most likely be found there.

One of the ideas we pitched to the Trail Blazers was the use of Twitter on the site. We’re not sure if any other teams are using it yet, but we see huge potential in the service as a one-to-many communicator. For the 2007 NBA Draft, it will be a great way for fans to subscribe via Twitter, RSS, and/or mobile devices to stay up to date on what’s going on, as well as learn who the Trail Blazers picked as soon as it happens. Post-draft, we think it will be a way to keep fans up-to-date on news, player highlights, special ticket promotions, and other ideas as they come up.

We’ll be doing some more tweaks to the site as we move toward the NBA Draft on June 28th… probably some more sound stuff, all the new content, allow videos to be embedded on other web sites and blogs, and who knows what else. After all, there’s still almost 3 weeks until the draft… we could build an entirely new microsite in that amount of time.

OFFICIAL PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS PRESS RELEASE: on Trailblazers.com

UPDATE: Twitter has featured the Trail Blazers feed on their public timeline, in the right sidebar. Thanks Twitter!

UPDATE (JUNE 18): Design Interact gives the “Oden or Durant” microsite some press… http://www.designinteract.com/news/13165.html. Thanks to the folks at Design Interact for the coverage!