whatever I say here is going to be not enough, but I have to say something because i can't say NOTHING so anyway

When I got traded to Chicago at like...10PM on a Tuesday night, I was just miserable at the idea. Tampa was the only locker room I'd ever had, I thought I was going to be part of a rebuild that was about to happen, and then I wasn't, and I was just so sad, and then I messaged you because you were like the ONLY person I knew there, and you made me feel so much better about it. I didn't realize until I got there how you were so much of the heart of the team already, even though you weren't GM yet. It was you and JNH we were going to for build advice for so long, it was you I came to with FHM questions when I started to tentatively venture into management myself.

We have talked a lot about how a lot of people seem to think you had something handed to you, that Chicago was just a really good team when you took over and you got to reap the benefits or whatever, but anyone who was there before you became GM knows how much work you actually put into building the team into what it was when you actually took over. I know people who weren't in there like to talk shit. People always do talk shit about stuff without all the information (god knows I've done it) but as somebody who lived in that locker room for over two years, I really don't think it's possible to overstate how central you have been to the entire culture that has been built there, and what a genuinely loving, positive environment it has always been since the day I got there. Anybody who says you were handed something doesn't know shit, and I'll leave it at that. You have put so much work and love into this team and making it what it is, and I wouldn't still be kicking around here if it weren't for the time I spent there.

You guys have built a place where people feel valued and welcome - regardless of who they are and what stage of their life they're in, and that is such a hard thing to do. We have pockets of like-minded people form all over this website - people bond over being around the same age, or having the same interests, but you managed to build a little community of people who might otherwise have absolutely nothing in common. You had me in there as a thirty-something first time mom, and y'all made me feel like me (and my little stories about my kiddo, and her occasional keyboard smash messages to the whole locker room when I left my computer unattended) were such a big part of it, and you have made so many people feel that way - whether we were all giving Nyko advice on girls, or tagging @shots, or throwing juice boxes at Patty, or jackbox nights, we were a family in there. It was exactly what so many of us needed at that point in the pandemic, and I don't know what I would have done without it.

i love you and i appreciate you and i see how much you put into your team and this site as a whole and I am sorry if anyone has ever made you feel like that's not valued, because the passion you put into the things you work on is something we need more of and I am so glad to have had the chance to be so close to it for so long. thank you so much for everything, don't go anywhere <3