One thing that you need to know about my viewing of A Complete Unknown was that I saw it with a couple of coworkers from college work-study in the heart of Times Square on Christmas Day. Later on that night, I ate some of the best risotto I’ve ever had at the home of a separate college friend from the same job in Astoria. It was a normal day, before I rung the fallout shelter bell.
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The first time I got an inkling it had gone right, not left, was when a woman cloaked head to toe in MAGA gear boarded the bus on my ride home. I’ll leave aside the notable aspect that this was a bus in downtown Chicago after 11 at night: Sat alone all the way up front, I happened to notice over her shoulder from rows back that she was glued to her phone watching a map of projections that had the country awash in red. At such a remove and with my eyesight not exactly up to the task, it was impossible for me to tell which channel she was streaming, but to make the rest of my long ride home from Thalia Hall less mentally taxing — and taking in some very conspicuous context clues — I figured it was Newsmax.
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While we aren’t yet twenty games into the NBA season, the generally-accepted sample size for knowing what a team looks like and, more importantly, what it’s about, some useful-enough things have happened that we can start to posit theories: the post-championship Celtics remain dominant; neither of the Knicks nor Timberwolves is necessarily better nor worse than before That KAT Trade; the Phoenix Suns maybe, possibly have it figured out; and, perhaps most noticeably to the average viewer, everybody just wants to jack threes.
In the age of players like Kevin Durant and Victor Wembanyama, arborescent men who can reliably shoot threes, spacing has become even more paramount than when Steph Curry initially began running rampant from 22+ feet. Even a player like Brook Lopez, who didn’t hit a three until his seventh season in the NBA, has been crucial for keeping defenders honest, allowing Bucks teammate Giannis Antetokounmpo to take advantage of the space Lopez’s outward movement affords him.
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Hello.
Did we enjoy a summer of Olympic basketball, and did we dip our toes into the WNBA for the first time? (Not separate questions, by the way, until it is: Brittney Griner, 2024 gold medalist). When it isn’t your battle, it isn’t worth fighting: just know where they get their weapons. Fighting ain’t for peace.
On the way to never letting people watch basketball in real time again, the NBA signed broadcast deals with various partners who will continue to divide and devour the broadcast schedule, causing a big problem for the league’s streaming partners, which will once again rise: cable television. Who are we kidding? This NBA season will have no direction without the protagonists of every season: Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe, both formerly of ESPN. The Inside The NBA gang, however detrimental to actual basketball they may be, remain a reason to tune in, yet their presumptive farewell tour begins tonight. Come on, save us.
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They did it. They actually did it. After 28 seasons of existence, and in the final WNBA Finals of the best-of-five format before moving to best-of-seven next year, the New York Liberty finally won their first championship in the full five games featuring two overtimes it took to undo the Minnesota Lynx, featuring Defensive Player Of The Year and MVP runner-up Napheesa Collier (awesome playoff run, and thanks for the headline, but: we will not be hearing about her for the remainder of this post). Behind Finals MVP Jonquel Jones and Nyara Sabally, the latter of whom put up a much-needed thirteen points and six rebounds in seventeen minutes off the bench Sunday night, the Liberty won 67-62.
Despite Sabrina Ionescu’s (1-19; alt text: ONE FOR NINETEEN FROM THE FIELD) and Breanna Stewart’s (4-15; alt text, but slightly – only slightly – more cordial this time: FOUR FOR FIFTEEN FROM THE FIELD) worst efforts on offense of their respective playoffs, the Liberty’s defense carried them through. The New York Liberty are the WNBA champions.
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Adrian Wojnarowski’s tweets were the only ones I ever received directly to my phone. I cut that off right around when his relationship with agents would upend the NBA Draft broadcast in a way that made Woj himself start using verbs like “tantalized” with regard to Robert Williams III, or “zeroing in on” Kevin Huerter, but for a few years, I would open my phone and, usually, nod my head in agreement with “sources say” reports from the same man a few hours earlier.
As the chief news-breaking person of the NBA since his days at Yahoo! Sports, Woj barnstormed Twitter basically from its inception, giving the real heads credence and giving credence to the fringe candidates, letting them know and postulate about trades and draft picks hours before anyone would get back to a computer and realize that Carmelo Anthony didn’t play for the Nuggets anymore.
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Disclosure: I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time around men directly related to each other recently. To that point, in three out of four recent weekends, I was surrounded by brothers, including my own. I’ve always enjoyed feeding off the fraternal vibe, yet I went to a college without Greek life. The camaraderie, the internal knowledge, the handoffs one can only perform with a certain degree of intimacy: this is what gets me.
From back-to-back bachelor parties through, of all things, a Phish festival, the brotherly tone has been a strong presence for me recently. And then, lo and behold: rumors of an Oasis reunion began haunting my phone on a recent Saturday.
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“A lot of bullshit happens in this country. But a lot of great things happen, too.” – Kevin Durant, speaking in Paris. Not initially sure which country he’s referring to, between the host and his own; anyway, he’s right.
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The only outdoor running event worse is the 400m hurdles. Aside from that? Being told that an event is “basically an even mix of running and sprinting” shouldn’t inspire someone to want that. Sprinters and longer distance runners throw up doing it when cross-training.
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I didn’t ask for a Les Paul[1] for my birthday one year because of Eric Clapton; I did it because of Jimmy Page, who by 1973 had become all of Rock Music, as far as what most of the U.S. and England – therefore, most of the popular rock music world at the time – had accepted and acknowledged should be. Page maximized what a Les Paul guitar could sound like and expanded that context further than its namesake, an incendiary jazz player in his own right, likely imagined.
I don’t know that my request happens, though, without Clapton’s playing on what is probably the definitive British blues record of that time, in a period when British blues is reviving American blues sensibilities.
The Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, among others, witnessed it all and drew from it. “It,” in this case, is John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Mayall himself, a Macclesfield native son whose stretch we may not completely realize, died on Tuesday at 90, leaving an influence that extends at least as far as Cream and Fleetwood Mac.
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Tuesdays With Horry 