Rough Notes: The Great Basketball Escape Begins
A winter road trip of basketball & making sense.
Hi, world! Maya here. I want to tell you about the Great Basketball Escape… my way of moving from Chicago — where I’ve lived for the last 13 years — back to Oakland — where I grew up and have been spending most of my time. The GBE takes place over the next two weeks, and includes all my stuff, packed into a Subaru Impreza, a constellation of Google maps, and a list of women’s basketball events across the southern half of the United States I’m hoping to attend. These GBE dispatches will be exclusively available to paid subscribers of this newsletter (don’t worry, I’ll also continue to release free content for everyone.)
The GBE is also a way of celebrating nearly 1 full year since the re-launch of Rough Notes (which is January 28 & will include more exciting announcements!) If you love or just really like Rough Notes, upgrading to a paid subscription really means the world, and helps make this content possible… including next season’s coverage of the Golden State Valkyries, live from the Bay. Plus, the GBE is all about giving you the most unfiltered, candid, provocative insights into this moment of 2026 winter basketball & my small drama of a biiiig life change.
My route is rough, since that’s kind of a theme for me, if you hadn’t noticed. Here’s a ~glimpse~ at my current path (subject to change):
Chicago —> Baton Rouge / New Orleans
New Orleans —> Grambling, Louisiana
Grambling, Louisiana —> Somewhere in Texas for a high school basketball game
Somewhere in Texas for a high school basketball game —> Albuquerque
Albuquerque —> … I’ll tell you next time.
I think of road trips as writing residencies (only half joking about this), and this time, my goal this time is to weave women’s basketball in, captured at the height of the winter season — right in that moment of teams are gritting out their potential, mid-January, to see what they are made of. I’ll chase games across from Baton Rouge to Berkeley, California, from prime time top 25 NCAA matchups to high school gyms in far flung towns. Because writing about basketball is also how I also make sense of my self.
The GBE adventure begins today, actually! I am already at a Days Inn in the suburban sprawl of southern Louisiana for today’s HUGE matchup between #2 Texas + #12 LSU today, at 2pm CT! I’ll be there, and report back about the game + my drive from Chicago to Louisiana, in the next dispatch.
