Jay Ernani

Joined: 8:00 AM CDT

Jay Ernani is a contributor at Space City Scoop, FanSided’s Houston Rockets site, specializing in player development deep dives, film study, and analytics-driven storytelling through a global, culturally rooted lens. While covering the Rockets, he also writes broadly on league trends and historical comps. Writing about the NBA since 2021, Jay brings on-court credibility as a former player in the U.S. high-school circuit who later played and coached at the college-level in Brazil, pairing an athlete’s eye with a fan’s voice. His bylines include AfroBallers and Overtime Heroics, with notable features such as “Evan Mobley: The 2020s Kevin Garnett” (Nov. 2022). A true historian of the game of basketball, he fell in love at first sight during the Bulls’ second three-peat and has since studied NBA history passionately — rewatching full games from every decade back to the 1960s while cross-checking era-to-era insights with metrics like WS/48, PER, and BPM. Based in São Paulo and trilingual (PT/EN/ES), off the basketball court, he leads a Talent Acquisition team for a global pharmaceutical giant and is a proud dog and cat dad to a full starting five of furry friends.

From Barkley to KD: the Rockets’ history of big names, bigger bets