“Piston fans are starving for more information about
Pistons basketball than the major sports Web sites are serving them.They crave
online communities, interactive activities, and the inside details that
established portals don't deliver.
The PistonsAssemblyLine, has created the leading online
Detroit Pistons community where fans can directly access the latest news about
the Pistons past, present, and future. We give Piston fans all over the world
access to our database of thousands of players, multimedia, expert analysis,
message boards and much more - all with the click of a button.”
-Ngozika J. Nwaneri Jr. PistonsASsemblyLine.com, Publisher, Developer, and CEO
PistonsASsemblyLine.com(PASPN) is creating the world's leading online
Detroit Pistons community by providing Piston fans a unique assortment of
different services that come together in a single, easy-to-navigate Web site.
August 1996 –
Humble Beginnings…
The Pistons Assembly
Line started off as a section of a bigger website called Ngozika's Stadium Club
which was my final project for a summer program for rising high school seniors
at the University of Maryland. In addition to the Pistons Assembly Line, the club
consisted of The Lions Lair for my appreciation of Detroit Lions franchise and
The Download Dome which was part of a ring of NBA Live XX websites where I
updated and made available roster patches for the NBA Live series of games as
well as Sierra Sports' Football Pro XX series. The name
Pistons Assembly Line came from the concept that the site would provide its
users information, data, and a source on the Internet for the Detroit Pistons on
a consistent systematic basis-- like an assembly line. If I remember
correctly, I received a B+ for the website. http://web.archive.org/web/19970125095403/www.wam.umd.edu/~guzi/piston.html
August 1997 –
Moving to MIT!
I gained acceptance
into MIT of all places in part thanks to the Stadium Club (having a website as a
17 year old in 1996 and in the Yahoo! directory was very impressive at the time)
The site moved from my Univeristy of Maryland account to my MIT account where
Stadium Club became a section of my personal website called the Fuzi Wuzi Guzi
Zone. With the demands of the MIT course load, the Pistons Assembly Line took a
back seat as did the Pistons return to glory as they finished 37-45 after going
54-28 the previous season. http://web.archive.org/web/19981203032839/http://web.mit.edu/guzi/www/piston.html
January 1999 –
Redesign!
January 1999 saw
Pistons Assembly Line emerge from the Stadium Club to its own dependent entity.
With the Internet moving away from static html to dynamically generated html
pages in addition to the NBA Lockout, I took this opportunity to recreate a site
that I could maintain on a daily basis. Hosted on my computer in my dorm room,
Pistons Assembly Line re-debuted just in-time for the shortened 99 NBA season. http://web.archive.org/web/19990819145158/guzi.mit.edu/web/
October 1999 –
Pistons Assembly Line joins the Dot Com Era with Rivals.com
Pistons Assembly
Line was getting ready for the 1999-2000 NBA season and was poised in debuting
its first version of a message board system when Rivals.com
came calling to join their network of fan sites. In short, it was the
opportunity of a lifetime. Pistons Assembly Line moved from a Packard Bell
200MHz Pentium computer to an infrastructure with the potential to compete with
the likes of ESPN, and SI. The name Pistons Assembly Line became tedious to
write and the URL was even longer for users to remember. As a result, the
abbreviation for Pistons Assembly Line, P.A.S emerged. Everything was going
well, the site was growing, Rival.com
sent the top NBA publishers to Vegas in May of 2000, I was planning on dropping
out of MIT and becoming a full-time publisher. Good thing I stayed in school http://web.archive.org/web/19991128175122/http://pistons.rivals.com/
August 2000 –PistonsHistory
joins PistonsAssemblyLine; P.A.S becomes official acronymn
Joining the Rivals
network did elevate some of the responsibility of maintaining a website, however
because of their size and limitations to customization, they could not provide
all functionality I wanted in a website. I took it upon myself to start create
an extensions to P.A.S called PistonsHistory.com. This was and still is the only
dedicatedwebsite where users could access Historical stats
of the Detroit Pistons from 1957 to the present. http://web.archive.org/web/20000816095122/http://pistons.rivals.com/
April 2001—Dot
Com Era Busts, Rivals.com
falls, P.A.S lands on its feet.
You heard the
rumors, promises were not being kept, and everything at Rivals became suttle.
You knew the inevitable was about to happen. Rivals.com
was going out of business. Believe it or not, I was prepared though the timing
was not the greatest seeing I was a month away from graduating from MIT and my
thesis was my business plan in conjunction with Rivals.com.
Before, Rivals.com
went under completely, I was able to replicate the site and redirect users to pistons-rivals.com
which temporarily moved back to the Packard Bell 200MHz Pentium in my dorm
room. Upon graduation, the site moved from my dorm to hosting under the URL pistons-rivals.com
as the site began its rebuilding process that same summer.
June 2002 –
P.A.S reclaims URLs, becomes PistonsOnline.com
P.A.S became
completely free from Rivals.com
when it released the rights to URLs PistonsAssemblyLine.com and
PistonsOnline.com . Up until then, P.A.S used the URL pistons-rivals.com
as it waited for Rivals.com
to release the rights its URLs. To celebrate, P.A.S re-debuted with a new design
symbolizing its liberation as well as the new Pistons era post Grant Hill. http://web.archive.org/web/20030226123604/http://pistonsonline.com/
February 2004 –
Something Special Is About To Happen, But We Don't Know Yet
PistonsOnline.com
re-debuts with a new design. PistonsTalk.com, the branded name for the message
board, gets updated and long and behold, Rasheed Wallace falls into the Pistons
plate. Later that year we all know what happened in June… the DEBUT of the NEW
MOCK GM Game. (ooh yeah, The Pistons defeat the Lakers for the NBA Championship) http://web.archive.org/web/20040606064037/http://pistonsonline.com/
August 2004 –
P.A.S becomes PASPN
Pistons Assembly
Line became known as P.A.S over the years and since PAS.com was not available as
a URL, PASPN.net took over as the URL for PistonsOnline.com and
PistonsAssemblyLine.com (til this day I have not come up with a legitimate
meaning for P.A.S.P.N) http://web.archive.org/web/20040902165213/http://pistonsonline.com/