Getting into the dog days of the NBA season. We don’t blame you if you take a little nap, and wake up in 15 games or so.
Meet the world’s top NBA gambler
Scott Eden
ESPN
If you’ve never heard the Haralabos story before, this article is worth a read for that alone. When you get beyond marveling at a man who makes his living gambling millions of dollars on NBA games, the takeaway is stunning: despite building perhaps the most comprehensive database and model of NBA games, no front offices are chasing him down to hire him. Furthermore, for the little amount of time he was consulting for a front office, his advice wasn’t heeded. Seems the analytics revolution is merely window dressing in some parts.
- KD
Why We Watch: The Kenneth Faried Situation
Michael V. Pina
The Classical
One of my favorite aspects of The Classical’s “Why We Watch” series is the exuberance with which the piece’s authors write about their subjects. It is clear that the open-ended format gives the creator room to wax excitedly about a number of subjects that may or may not relate directly to basketball, and as a result, we get a much more lively, energetic piece. Michael V. Pina’s recent effort about the peculiar tautology of Kenneth Faried has been one of my favorite additions to the series because of it’s unabashed love displayed towards the subject. Pina is correct when he says that in ”moments of general discharge, when chaos consumes the court, that Faried is perhaps better than anyone else in the entire league”, and the romping manner in which he justifies this assertion is a joy to read. I heartily recommend this piece, it does give great reasons to watch the Manimal perform.
- JG
The accuracy of rumor reporting
Larry Coon
CBA FAQ
Like many of you, I spent every minute leading up to the trade deadline focused on the twitter accounts of writers like Adrian Wojnarowski, Marc Spears, Marc Stein and Ken Berger, where the rumors, speculation, innuendo and gossip was flying fast. In a piece that could only be written by somebody who has an extensive understanding of how negotiating works behind the scenes but is also a reporter, Larry Coon explores the meaning of phrases like “in discussions” and “talking about”. His conclusions is that these rumormongers are actually impressively accurate, and provide a needed service to the basketball community.
- KD
Kyrie Irving and the Death of The Ghetto Superstar
Khalid Salaam
The Shadow League
In this stupendous piece, Khalid Salaam argues that Kyrie Irving’s rise to prominence as an All Star and ball handler par excellence also represents something deeper: another blow to the “Ghetto Superstar” monolith, and the association of athletic showmanship to a racialized view of black urban poverty. This piece does a wonderful job creating synthesizing an incredible amount of information from a variety of sources and disciplines to create a comprehensive narrative of “the Ghetto Superstar”, which Salaam defines as an idealized version (and vision) of an African American athlete who comes from a poverty-stricken urban environment struggling to survive “the crack era”. According to Salaam, the Ghetto Superstar can link its conception back to the imperfect ideas of W.E.B. DuBois, a bizarre casualty of the “terror and glamor” that came with the expansion of a racist view of idealistic black culture. Prominent Ghetto Superstars have included Steph Marbury or Allen Iverson, players whose showy impacts on the court also affected perceptions of blackness off the court. But Salaam shows how players like Kyrie (as well as Steph Curry and Blake Griffin) have used aesthetic prowess to hasten the decay of the Ghetto Superstar paradigm, and do so with fewer accusations of “Uncle Tom”-ness than predecessors like Grant Hill and Shane Battier. This is a fantastic effort, one that weaves sports analysis with history, politics and culture. It is definitely worth a close, critical read.
- JG
Citizen Mike
Dave Zirin
The Nation
Last week, most major basketball media outlets were focused on the 50th birthday of Michael Jordan, who is widely regarded to be the greatest player of all time. While most of the narratives took on a distinct “hero worship” tone, Dave Zirin offered this counternarrative which intelligently focused on the more troubling aspects of Jordan’s 50-year-old persona, in particular the dark, almost sociopathic elements of his personality that stand out in the Internet era. Indeed, as Zirin notes, no one looked more unhappy about reaching the half-century mark than Mike, who “finds himself mired in nostalgia for the person he was, opening old boxes and shouting at the help in cavernous hallways in search of misplaced championship rings”. Zirin’s piece does a great job contextualizing MJ’s successes as both a player and entrepreneur as well as his failures as a NBA team executive and owner and commander-in-chief/public face of a global brand. It’s a necessary addition to the widely evolving body literature on Jordan that is beginning to question what exactly it means to be the “greatest of all time”.
- JG