Welcome to One-Legged Fadeaway–the ultimate basketball blog in all the Interwebs that my friends RB and Ryan have been planning for such a long time that I never thought they could actually put their lazy asses to work and really start doing it. But it’s finally here and though you can’t see their faces, please know that RB and Ry are giddy with a kind of excitement only their girlfriends on a hard-earned weekend can usually evoke in them.

Welcome, too, to the Diary of a Non-Basketball Guy, a featury column here on OLF that I will be writing regularly if I manage to stay on the good side of RB and Ry. (I will be writing again guys, right?)

The title leaves no doubt as to what this piece is all about: it’s about the non-basketball stuff. In fact, this will be about non-sports stuff. There won’t be any mention of balls here unless I’m talking about how much it hurts if you receive a kick to the groin in a street fight.

Why write about non-basketball stuff on a basketball blog? Let me put it this way: it’s the 1 Percent Rule.

The 1 Percent Rule is a rule I picked up from doing social media marketing. It states that at least 1 percent of your published content should be totally unrelated to the main theme of your campaign, so that people get a break from the usual diet you’re feeding them. Think of it as the amusing commercial break when you’re watching a tense NBA game–the one that gets the nervous chuckles from fans who could barely breathe because of the suspense and who would surely pee their pantaloons if they were watching a nail-biter without interruptions.

This column is that 1 percent and my friends couldn’t have picked a less sporty guy to write it. See, the guys behind OLF are your ordinary homies with a specially keen basketball sense and perspective that may or may not show when they’re actually playing the game (I bet you’re guilty of that, too, you Quinito Hensons of the world). When we talk about basketball, you can always trust RB and Ry to have a good point or analysis that, upon further reflection on a particularly ambitious drunken discussion, ought to be published on a blog. I’m the one who doesn’t know shit about the subject and who would regularly ask my pals if Michael Jordan is still the best player who ever lived, who’s better–LeBron or Kobe, Yao Ming or Shaq, whatever happened to Jeremy Lin, and does Magic Johnson still have HIV. All vague questions that reveal a strong desire to leave the basketball talk and move on to the next topic, which is sex.

But that utterly unrelated, stupid and oftentimes nonsensical 1 Percent is important—nay, even essential—to the smoothness of a friendly discussion over cups of coffee or bottles of beer. And you know this to be true. You know you derive some pleasure and amusement from that one friend of yours who would bravely cut through all the expert sporty talk to ask if anyone has ever dunked from the three-point line. That stale, dead air from the realization of just how stupid and idiotic your friend is is the break your brain needs to step back and more accurately assess the game at hand, which could lead you to make a more informed bet.

The break keeps you talking and thinking—and don’t all breaks? Just think of how hellish life would be if you were forced to work without weekends and vacations, or to chomp your way through a Big N’ Tasty or Whopper without French fries, to finish a bucket of beer without a sizzling plate of sisig, and to ride the MRT without the horde alighting at Cubao station. Heck, even the occasional fight in a relationship could at times serve as a breath of fresh air just to get away from it all for a while and spend some badly needed me-time because as the song says, “even lovers need a holiday far away from each other.” That break, that 1%, can keep you going a long while.

This “diary” is that 1% on OLF. The section where I’ll try my best to discuss other things aside from sex. (To RB and Ry: That was a joke. Half-meant.)

Again, welcome to One-Legged Fadeaway.