Research

WE ASKED THE NBA AI CHATBOT SOME MORE QUESTIONS – CONFERENCE FINALS EDITION | 2026-05-21

April flowers did bring May flowers, after all. Speaking of, this piece is brought to you by August Fanon’s The Golden Child — Nas [FANON EDITION] Vol. 1: a lush, lavish, and glossy mixtape by the Brooklyn-based hip-hop producer reimagining some of Nasir Jones‘s most significant tunes off Illmatic (1994), It Was Written (1996), and The Lost Tapes (2002). Should you have twenty bucks to spare, do your daily good deed and dash them toward your main man August by copping his tape instead of funneling them into prediction or crypto markets. He’s fighting the good fight for us.

At any rate, fights rule everything around us, and if you’re anything like us you’ll know of some highfaluting ones of the sporting affectation taking place right now as the National Basketball Association entered its momentous 2026 post-season phase a few weeks ago. Last month, we wrote and didn’t regret our bold NBA Pick ‘Em Bracket Challenge predictions, handily nailing the left-side Western Conference half of the Merkle tree, yet completely botching the East through what at the time didn’t seem like such outlandish picks by placing Detroit and Boston in the Conference finals (the first and second regular season seeds, respectively…?). Nope, both teams clearly had other plans and prioritized getting a head start vacation sign off to Cancún, with the Pistons imploding on Cunningham’s countless turnovers and Durens complete disappearance off the face of the earth, while the Celtics self-sabotaged via a mixture of prepotence, in-fighting, and folding Tatum too early back into the team.

We like to think we’re at least partially redeeming ourselves by having a 100% Western Conference finals hit rate with the somewhat predictable landing of both OKC and the Spurs (the first and second regular season seeds, respectively…!), as well as an active NBA Champions pick still in the race in Wembanyama‘s jackals squad. Sticking to the left-hand side of the Association (no relation to political affiliations, NB), we’d even have a perfect bracket all the way to the first round match ups, had Kevin Durant not willingly chosen to check out for the year before the Rockets series against the Lakers even began. Like, Los Angeles actually advanced 4-2 basically without Dončić and Reaves, facing little to no opposition by an unrecognizable Houston team, only to get wholeheartedly obliterated by the reigning Champs Thunder in the next round. Did we even mention we’re New York Knicks fans over here? We know you wouldn’t tell looking at our predictions. That’s why we keep off Polymarket.

Amidst this bulletin, we did see fit to return to our only friend, the NBA AI chatbot—and us likely being its only friend too, considering the radio silence around it this whole season (the service still sports a ‘Beta’ label next to it). So we went ahead and asked it some more questions. Only this time sprucing some Playoff zhuzh on top. We broke the queries down in three packages; two questions for each of the Conference final match ups, as well as two bonus missives we thought would throw it a bit for a loop. As per usual, you’ll find this mysteriously underreported feature by going to the Discover tab in the official native NBA App, and selecting the apposite card from under the Around the League menu. All questions and answers are up to date as of 21st May, with stat lines and data allegedly corresponding to the same timestamp. We started with our beloved East, looking for a hybrid between a low-key scouting report for each team and gratis intel to each opponent’s coaching staff:

First of all, this thing seems to have improved. Not only are we not sure this type of prompt could even have been processed and answered by the LLM five months ago, but some of the responses returned by our bot friend actually held some water. Let’s pick out some highlights. According to the NBA (?), in order to bounce back from the historical remuntada suffered at the hands of New York a couple days ago, Kenny Atkinson and his Cavaliers should i) attack Brunson’s lackluster defense more deliberately, ii) actually deploy healthy players they have on the bench such as Tyson and Ellis, iii) maximize the floor and be more unforgiving vis-a-vis the Knicks‘s tag teaming, iv) place former Defensive Player of the Year Evan Mobley under the rim, and v) freaking do something about James Harden. Aside from the pretty sus underplaying of the Madison Square Harden problem on account of how blatant it was, these are legitimately valid improvement areas for Cleveland—if slightly basic.

Hilariously if you’re the Cavs, the list of AI recommendations for the Knicks to keep the momentum going and leave Gotham City up 2-0 on the series start loudly and proudly with a “[k]eep attacking James Harden in pick-and-rolls”. While Mike Brown’s squad did receive an extra solicitation bullet point compared to their rivals (six to five), it did come in the form a trippy contradiction between its ethos (“Force Cleveland’s bigs to protect the rim and rebound in space”) and the preceding advice (KAT pulling Allen and Mobley away from the rim). Pick one lane, botty mouth. The final three recs all seemed based though, focusing on New York’s rapid, visceral, and dynamic defense, their sharp three-point shooters, as well as resorting to Brunson’s hero ball late in the game. Again, pretty duh takes—not least given that the Knicks captain was named Clutch Player of the Year last year—yet not too terrible considering this is free advice. Let us hop over to the West next.

Unlike the skewed critical mass noticed for the Eastern Conference finalists, both San Antonio and Oklahoma got six notes each, as they just rebalanced their series score after the instant classic game 1 which saw Wemby and co. edge out the reigning champs. Because the French alien is the best player on the planet right now, we chose to word the prompt leading OKC’s scouting report around potential ways to stop him, rather than the more generic formulation reserved to the other teams. Yup, his gravity and impact is that strong.

This second batch of responses came through as more of a mixed bag. Firstly, while it’s somewhat common knowledge that Gregg Popovich low-key acts as the Spurs whisperer—and surely commands a larger-than-life presence in the organization—for the Association’s official AI chatbot to still bill him as the head coach in two different passages is flat out gross and unforgivable. Not only is it disrespectful toward Mitch Johnson’s excellent work since taking over the honcho position last year, but it seriously throws into question the kind of data this language model is using and training on… Anywho, notwithstanding such faux-pas, the pieces of advice to San Antonio are generally fair game and strike a cool balance between offensive (protecting the ball, avoiding turnovers, spreading the floor in half court sets) and defensive (return to dominate rebounds, contain pick-and-rolls for SGA) adjustments.

As far as neutralizing Wembanyama is concerned, according to the chatbot Oklahoma should… throw more physicality at him? Uhm, firstly; did the Thunder head coach Daigneault not think about it already? And secondly, how exactly? Not even OKC’s larger-than-average bigs Holmgren and Hartenstein seem to have figured out how to slow him down—they got a game each to attempt that, unsuccessfully so. If anything, the last two bullet points appear a tad more conducive to scalable in-game adjustments SGA and friends could leverage depending on how brutally Wemby annihilates them: a) picking up pace offensively, beating him and the Spurs to the spot, and b) exploiting switches and screens to minimize his presence and gravity around he basket. All easier said than done.

Lastly, we did tease two bonus prompts for each of the two Conference finals, and this is how we put NBA’s AI to work: when asked about the potential impact of the Western finals’ IL—including projected starters De’Aaron Fox, Dylan Harper, and Jalen Williams as of the time of this writing—we were left pretty underwhelmed by the microwaved reflections yielding neither fish nor fowl (“those three injuries leave both teams short-handed”; “Spurs struggling to organize their offense”; “the Thunder needing others to replicate Williams’ defensive and slashing presence”). You know that feeling you get nowadays when AI spits back those hollow, boilerplate, surface-level, yet elegantly written (and perhaps “believable”) answers? These bonus prompt felt the most like that.

Even the more interesting and speculative inquiry about who the Knicks—billed by everyone as the clear East favorites to reach the NBA Finals for the first time in almost thirty years—should prefer to match up against in the prize fight was not only safe and uninspiring, but riddled with factual errors (wrong Playoff pace stats compared to OKC and average turnovers per game) as well as omissions (perhaps mentioning the fact that New York already beat San Antonio in a high-stakes finals game this season would have been appropriate?). Oh, lest we didn’t make it clear, AI too thought it was the Spurs.

So where does this leave us exactly, five months removed from our first sandbox trial of this little known, poorly-advertised proprietary algorithmic feature of the league? We’re not sure, actually. The bot’s answers did appear to become more substantial and articulate, at least at face value. Unlike our first underwhelming date, the NBA’s LLM didn’t push back on any prompt this time, no matter how forward-looking or potentially incriminating they might sound by being associated with the Jerry West logo (we even asked it for its thoughts on who will lift the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy this year, and it docilely returned bookmakers’ odds with the usual blah blah blah—not pictured here for obvious reasons). Yet, we’re still not sure we came away with learning anything new, or different, that we couldn’t just as easily have scraped from the right corners of NBA X (or Bluesky! Yes, yay, Bluesky is rife with hoopin’ blabber these days, believe it or not). This features remains a modern mystery to us.

All things considered, does this piece double as an indictment of LLMs? Well, did y’all see the gnarly AI-generate companion image below? This tech can’t even spell the word Oklahoma correctly—how can we trust it with deep Playoff on-court lore and intel?

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time. And let’s go Knicks, this time around.

AV

WE ASKED THE NBA AI CHATBOT SOME QUESTIONS | 2026-01-09

Believe it or not, we too like to have some little fun around here. We’re not just doom and gloom fueled by sad Ryan Adams reviews all the time. So recently we spotted a new sus AI feature in the official NBA app, one that has hitherto been kept surprisingly quiet. At the time of this writing, the ‘Ask NBA (Beta)’ module can be located in the ‘Around the League’ section under the ‘Discover’ tab as part of the native iOS interface. Currently, it’s being described as a “chatbot application” by the NBA’s fine print lodged at the bottom of the start screen:

Critically, there is no explicit mention of artificial intelligence anywhere on the product’s real estate. Nonetheless, the initial chat-like layout, as well as the ‘questions to get started’ prompts, look a lot like your everyday large language model navigation interface. While one could assume those pictured are relatively low-stake Q&A items hardcoded as ‘if-then’ statements baked into the source of this chatbot, they do set this whole experience up as a quasi-‘ask me anything’ deal. At any rate, if it walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck to us. Yet, it does kind of baffle us how little information or fanfare there is out there about this, and how surprisingly low-key this has been kept by the league so far. Needless to say, we gave this thing a go.

It didn’t start off… great. Below is the chatbot tripping over a somewhat banal data retrieval question about what team had been doing best in games against opponents outside of their league conference, just a few days ago. Alas, the NBA chatbot returned a plain answer listing the two teams at the top of the Easter and Western conferences at the time, citing their overall winning record instead of the opposite-conference one. (For the record, we did ask Google’s Gemini AI the same question—you know, the cannibalizing top search result that is swallowing the SEO market whole—and it did fall short of reporting such a trivial data point too…).

In order to get over the jilted disappointment of our first query, we decided to get cute with some Sixth Man of the Year predictions about halfway through the season. Thankfully, our AI bot friend provided us with sounder insights, bundling some of the well-known usual suspects, Miami’s Jaime Jaquez Jr, Minnesota’s Naz Reid, and Atlanta’s Nickeil Alexander-Walker into its top 5 prediction. We also didn’t mind the neat written summary at the end, partly justifying the table analysis—the holistic approach addressing both media and betting markets feels like a faithful depiction of current day NBA zeitgeist chatter. However, its inability to report a precise points-per-game number for Orlando’s Anthony Black (on top of a completely absent field goal percentage…), continued to leave us perplexed.

We then decided we wanted to test the NBA chatbot’s reasoning oomph by posing a more nuanced—if fascinating—question revolving around potentially unsung ‘diamonds in the rough’ players. We asked for its analysis over what players have been boasting above-average efficiency impact ratings but low playing time. In other words, we were hoping to alley oop NBA head coaches who read this site with allegedly untapped potential on their bench. To drive its insights this time, the chatbot opted for the NBA’s Player Impact Estimate (PIE), a league metric purported to show a player’s percentage contribution to all game boxscore events in totality (points, rebounds, assists, etc.), calculated using a simple and straightforward custom formula:

PIE = (PTS + FGM + FTM – FGA – FTA + Deff.REB + Off.REB/2 + AST + STL + BLK/2 – PF – TO) / (Game.PTS + Game.FGM + Game.FTM – Game.FGA – Game.FTA + Game.Deff.REB + Game.Off.REB/2 + Game.AST + Game.STL + Game.BLK/2 – Game.PF – Game.TO)

This one definitely got intriguing. According to our friend the bot, recently waived San Antonio forward Riley Minix would have counted as an incredible secret ace up Mitch Johnson’s sleeve, had they kept him on the team. With a stunning 25.7 PIE in just three games played this season, the Vero Beach, Florida-native left an impact like no other in the two minutes and change he played on average in each of the contests. For comparison, league heavyweights SGA, Wembanyama, Antetokounmpo, and Jokić’s PIEs all currently fare between 21-23. Similarly, the number two secret weapon in the league appeared to be former Detroit Pistons shooting guard Colby Jones, until you realize he got waived by the franchise back in November last year, after just one league appearance.

Matter of fact, of the ten players listed by the chatbot as part of this query, only Indiana Pacers veteran TJ McConnell has played more than ten games this season (24). Aside from him, Marcus Sasser (Pistons) and Pete Nance (Milwaukee Bucks) are the only other players that have reportedly been featured in more than just a handful games hitherto. Frankly, we could have used a tad more discernment by our NBA stats partner, but hey it’s not like that bar was set awfully high from that first prompt… If anything, this answer confirmed TJ McConnell to be Indiana’s own version of a bench mob leader Tasmanian devil.

This brings us to our pièce de résistance. Just in case the coaching staff hadn’t thought about it, we took it upon ourselves to try to boost the Brooklyn Nets’ mid-season performance review. Just because. Naturally, we began by daring the NBA AI to predict the 2025-2026 regular season record for the New York franchise, to which it annoyingly clarified it’s only set up to “answer questions about NBA games, players, teams, stats, rules, schedules, league history, and on-court action”. Too bad none of these attributes contribute toward a team’s regular season record.

Next, we turned to a rose-colored glass half full, and in spite of the Nets’ 11-23 losing record as we’re typing this (matching a .324 win percentage) we wondered if there were any statistical categories the young Jordi Fernandez-coached team led the NBA in. Well, with a bolded emphasis on not, the ballers’ GPT regretted to inform us that the Brooklyn Nets do not lead the league in any major team statistical category. Ouch. And yet, Michael Porter Jr is hooping like his life depends on it. Thusly, we rolled up our sleeves and fairly flipped the query script, this time inquiring about potential boxscore stats the Nets might be worst in the league in.

Unfortunately for Barclays Center patrons, according to our chatbot the team does rank last in the NBA in both rebounds and points per game—not exactly two negligible impact metrics if you’re them. To add insult to injury, the AI agent assumed Knicks-esque features and doubled down on the analysis, by adding that the squad is “also near the bottom in field goal percentage (44.9%)”, although it clarified as consolation that “Indiana is slightly lower (44.1%)”. Similarly troublingly, NBA intelligence is quick to point out how “[t]he Nets also average 15.7 turnovers per game, one of the higher marks in the league but not last overall” (emphasis in original…). Pheeeew.

To round things off for the rebuilding team East of the East River in New York, we threw them a tactical lifeline by sculpting a more moderate and forcefully balanced query as a last-ditched effort. Pressing the NBA chatbot for the team’s strengths and weaknesses so far resulted in a more uplifting outlook as Brooklyn enters the All-Star break and starts to focus on the final part of the season. According to the NBA itself, the Nets are good to continue to sharpen their shotmaking from key high-scorers (the aforementioned MPJ, as well as a healthy-again Cam Thomas). They should also continue to rely on the ascension of younger bucks such as Day’Ron Sharpe and Russian rookie Egor Dämin. The former, jointly with longtime Net Nic Claxton, also helps lead the team’s rebounding improvements, “a marked step forward from last season’s struggles inside” per the app.

Simultaneously, the answer did not hold back and strongly reiterated the team’s inconsistent defense, high turnover rate, as well as early-season injury setbacks as grave issues still plaguing them. In addition to needing to whip up more offensive creation beyond Thomas (on top of MPJ, might we offer), the chatbot concluded by addressing the Nets’ lack of experience: “With five first-round rookies and several new veterans, [their] biggest limitation remains time—they’re still learning how to play together at both ends”. Incidentally, the sentence might well double as mad libs description for the state the NBA chatbot finds itself in. Much like the Brooklyn Nets, it’s keeping its development on the DL.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

NBA CUPCAKE | 2025-12-15

There’s a new Ryan Adams double album out in the world (a pastiche grower, in case you needed to know), the Mass Appeal ‘Legend Has It…‘ series has come to a climaxing and culminating end, and Gabriel Jacoby is going to be a star. Yet we do need to come through and interrupt the regularly scheduled musical programming—AOTY and the long-in-the-works Mass Appeal Tier List are handily stuffing this jolly December—to chime in with the obligatory unfounded 2025 Emirates NBA Cup winner prediction, now that the championship game is finally set and will be won by our New York Knicks.

Hey, it’s no Larry O’Brien trophy, but after more than a half-century drought, the five Gotham boroughs will take any resemblance to ballin silverware. On any other day ending in Y, given how this first quarter of NBA regular season has fared—with reigning champs Oklahoma City Thunder entering last Saturday’s West semifinals with an otherworldly .960 winning record, hot on the heels of a 16-game winning streak—capitulating such an opponent would have likely translated into more hooping street creds for Brunson and co. than the actual Emirates NBA Cup and the lofty monetary cachet it carries. Too bad that honor has now gone to the marvelous and defiant San Antonio Spurs instead.

Zoomin out for a moment, this year’s Cup edition did feel like it finally started to establish itself as a worthy late fall slump pursuit for the thirty league franchises. Didn’t it? If anything, the NBA just announced that TV viewership of group-play games was up 90 percent from last year. 90% YoY! Now in its third edition, following a sage and well-informed name change from the management consulting-y In-Season Tournament label, if nothing else the dedicated Friday night Cup games throughout November lent buzzing and momentous urgency to an otherwise somewhat auto-pilot month in the league. Incidentally, the revamped scheduling, coupled with a few successful branding pivots, led to a fascinating single-elimination game bracket in the knockout rounds, including flipped seedings compared to regular season standings as well as somewhat unlikely ticket-punchers (Suns and Raptors?!).

Our fault—didn’t we say we were going to zoom out? For the uninitiated, or those oblivious amongst you, only here to mouth-water over next week’s Albums of the Year drop, here comes a handy recap of how the NBA Cup actually worked out this year in the first place—courtesy of the always astute Bounce newsletter by The Athletic’s Zach Harper:

We have three groups of five teams in each conference. You play against every team in your group once. 

  • The best record wins the group.
  • If you tie, head-to-head will determine the winner. 
  • Three group winners in each conference advance to the single-elimination bracket, along with one wild card team in each conference. 
  • Wild card is based on record, then point differential, then total points scored, then 2024-25 regular-season record. 
  • If all of those tiebreakers don’t solve it, the NBA does a random draw. 

Owing to the above, all of the group-play games shenanigans would then determine the knockout bracket, with quarterfinals played with the typical home/away format based on group seeding, before moving both conference semifinals and the prize fight on neutral Las Vegas ground… Ahh how do we love the poetic irony of sending these teams, their delegations, and especially the eyes of the hooping world watching to a site that is the synonymous dictionary entry of gambling and betting—all amidst the gargantuan FBI-doctored multiple illegal investigations plaguing the league. The place is literally nicknamed Sin City, for Christ’s sake. Let’s just assume that everyone in the NBA—from Commish Silver to any franchise’s front office—would have been completely fine with setting this all up in Omaha, Nebraska this year. Just for this one subaltern season.

At any rate, as good ole De La Soul like to throw it down, it turns out that three really is a magic number (although perhaps not a Magic number, much to Desmond Bane’s chagrin). This year, both conferences’ NBA Cup third seeds entering the single-elimination round (NYK and SAS) have managed to push through all the way up to the 2025 Championship game—slated for tomorrow, Tuesday 16th December. This is a first, for the lowest seed to ever make it all the way to a Cup final before was the Indiana Pacers’ second seed during the inaugural, wait for it, In-Season Tournament (a game they eventually lost 123-109 to LeBron James’ Lakers). It’s too early to tell whether this stands to signify any meaningful shift in regular season power dynamics, but it sure does speak to the Cup’s erratic left field monkey wrench influence on this season’s juncture; whether it spoils your pre-Christmas anticipation all depends on what side of the NBA fence you sit on. Regardless, it’s tight and refreshing that no current Cup or regular season top seed is sticking around in Vegas for the prize fight this year.

All of a sudden matching most odds and predictions, our New York Knickerbockers will win this thing tomorrow. Believe us, we’d have stuck to this prediction even if the opponent were the OKC. Yeah we know, no sane person would likely pick against OKC until like 2032 at this point, but hey you all saw what Win-banyama and peers did to them this past weekend. Also, we kind of just feel like such a statement snatch is in the air for New York. They just got perennially cool Zohran Mamdani; they’ll want to keep striking while the iron is hot. Not to mention, this is virtually the same ace core team that reached the Eastern Conference Finals a mere six months ago, only with a deeper and more versatile bench as well as a brilliant gaffer in Mike Brown. We get what you’re saying—they’re up against a young, wild, and free squad with arguably all of the wind in their sail after having defeated the seemingly unbeatable reigning World champs and having welcomed the Alien back from injury. But we’re asking you to trust us here.

So there goes our Cupdate. You know it’s New York Forever, and the Knicks will take the Cupcake. Besides, Midtown West will need to be under Martial Law for the two hours following the final buzzer. They are coming.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

WIN-BANYAMA | 2025-11-01

Happy November to those who celebrate. It just so happens that this weekend doubles as the days of the dead, or of all the Saints, depending on how and who you count. Two weeks ago, larger-than-life American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer D’Angelo moved on unexpectedly. Absolutely devastating. May the Lord rest his soul while he’s up there, we’ll take good care of his music down here.

October felt like it flew by like a 2025 Chicago Bull fast break, and there’s a lot to catch up on. Nasir Jones’s iconic Mass Appeal record label’s ‘Legend Has It…’ series cracked on fiercely, with highly-anticipated drops from Mobb Deep (Infinite) and the improbable exhuming of a patched-together compilation-mixtape by the prematurely disappeared Harlemite Big L (Harlem’s Finest: Return of the King)—hands down one of the most influential and resonant MCs ever to grace the genre. Not legend, but rumor has that this very in-house editorial team is working on the definitive ‘Legend Has It…’ Tier List once all seven projects have dropped later in the year. Another thing that happened this past month is the somewhat unexpected happenstance of a potential true spiritual successor to Frank Ocean‘s Blonde: Daniel Ceasar’s Son of Spergy—out a week ago on 24th October—has all the chops, vibes, and moods that faithfully recall the 2016 Neo soul masterpiece. Shoutout D’Angelo once again. Mostly though, October’s very own passing means that the official 2025-2026 NBA season is now fully underway.

With most teams having churned out five to six games at the time of this writing, the one meteoric and proverbial sore thumb standing out from the pack hitherto is San Antonio Spurs’ French center/power forward/small forward/shooting guard/playmaker Victor Wembanyama. Currently just one of three still unbeaten teams in the league—sharing the spoils with reigning champs Oklahoma City Thunder and the other fortnightly Cinderella surprise, the Chicago Bulls—the Texan franchise puts everyone else behind them in terms of average points differential per game (+14.4), as well as average opponent points per game (103.8). News at eleven, ladies and gentlemen—when you have the most uniquely singular and impactful hooper of the 21st Century in your rank and file, listed at 7-foot-4 (225 cm), and therefore naturally leading the NBA in rebounds and blocks per game (shooting at a 56.3% whilst at that), those street creds sound like just any day ending in Y.

What’s particularly cool about the Spurs going 5-0 to begin the 2025-2026 season is that they have never done it before in franchise history. Not even the Tim Duncan-Tony Parker-Manu Ginobili-Kawhi Leonard San Antonio Spurs started their season 5-0. The club has won five NBA Championships though. Oh, and this new-found glory all comes after they had previously established a negative record by capitulating 16 straight times in 2023, only to then besting it the following season with as many as 18 straight losses. Also, for context, San Antonio lost at least five straight games on 11 occasions just in the past three years, boasting a 78-168 win/loss record par for the course during that same span. Nonetheless, they did manage to snatch Victor Wembanyama a couple years back. The rest is history still being written to this day: the unanimous first overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft was, shockingly, named the 2024 NBA Rookie of the Year at the end of his first full season, finishing second for the Defensive Player of the Year award just behind French compatriot Rudy Gobert. Rightfully so, Wemby also became the first rookie ever to be named to the NBA All-Defensive First Team that same season.

Dude’s low-key being played in positions 1 through 5 on the floor, and is currently averaging almost eight more points per game than his career average (30.2 in five games this season, vs 22.9 all time), all the while putting up 56.2/31.2/79.1 shooting splits. We know there are literally just a handful observations in our sample, but what’s even gnarlier is that the French unicorn-meets-Alien is also cruising at better game averages in minutes played, field goal percentages, rebounds, blocks, steals, and turnovers conceded compared to his lifetime numbers so far. How does one even improve on career rebounding and blocks averages of 11 and 4, respectively?! Watch this: during the first three inaugural games this past month, Wemby was averaging 33.3 points, 13.7 rebounds, and 6.0 blocks every 48 minutes… Did we mention he’s 21-years of age?

Here it goes. If Wemby can stay healthy throughout the following eight months—he didn’t qualify for any accolade last season due to him not reaching the 65-games played threshold on account of a deep vein thrombosis—we’re anticipating a big sweep of his at this year’s individual NBA awards. This assessment should bode well for the San Antonio franchise, too. Aside from the athletic momentum they seem to have found, Mitch Johnson’s squad has some type of edge that no other team can claim this year: the emotional charge of honoring the work of record-setting, transcendental longtime head coach Gregg Popovich, who stepped down from his post after 29 consecutive years at the helm of the franchise due to worsening health issues this past May. The team appears in excellent managerial hands with Johnson, who had the privilege and honor to share gaffer duties bench with Coach Pop since 2019.

The Spurs might have found an additional improbable ally in the NBA fixtures schedule this month of November to keep this kind of wind in their sail, too. Of their upcoming fourteen opponents slated over the coming thirty days, only four teams are presently above .500: the Los Angeles Lakers, their fellow unbeaten Bulls, the Golden State Warriors (in a double header this month), and the 2023 NBA Champs Denver Nuggets. Thusly, it might not be completely out of the question that we would regroup this time around next month, and still find Wembanyama and friends in high altitude standings. This formulation is not meant as any type of shade to the Stephon Castles, Devin Vassels, Harrison Barnes, or Keldon Johnsons of the Spurs world. It’s just that this early season really does look like it put the Wemby church at the center of the Texan village. Take these first five match ups San Antonio has played so far: absent game two against the New Orleans Pelicans in which Luke Cornet grabbed one more board than him from the bench, the tall French glass of water was the team leader in both points and rebounds in each single face off. The Silver and Black are +23 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor, and a measly +0.1 with him on the bench. He’s that supreme.

And to think that the San Antonio Spurs’ highest-paid player, De’Aaron Fox, is still sidelined due to a right hamstring strain. His return should be imminent, however. Thing is, the 27-year-old former Sacramento Kings star might need to fight a little harder for ball handling duties once he comes back—Wemby is so omnipresent and position-less, and more often than not takes care of the rock from cradle-to-grave, with a few blocks and rebounds peppered on top for good measure. For Christ’s sake is this kid good. Not that anybody didn’t notice before, but this new season has made his impact and gravity absolutely undeniable. If you’re sick of this kind of generational talent already, then newsflash: the next couple decades are going to be tough for you. He’s poised to be one of the most influential players in NBA history.

Honestly, good luck to the Alamo City this year. God bless the San Antonio Spurs. But it’s New York Forever over here. Although we are still very much concerned about Josh Hart’s right index finger. Get that thing fixed before we’re too deep into the season, Tasmanian devil.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

THE FILE OF PABLO | 2025-09-27

I feel like Pablo when I’m workin’ on my shoes
I feel like Pablo when I see me on the news
I feel like Pablo when I’m workin’ on my house

In heeding the above not-so-veiled reference, you’d be forgiven to assume we’re about to chop it up about some revisionist account on TLOP‘s iterative hell almost turning ten years old (can y’all believe it?). Yet, for better or worse, “No More Parties in LA“‘s contribution to this story probably starts and ends there. The Pablo who might be seeing himself on the news a lot lately, is of course not Paul the Apostle, but American journalist, sportswriter, and perhaps now most famously, podcaster Pablo Sison Torre. What began as a breaking news piece of distinctive investigative journalism on his Pablo Torre Finds Out earlier this month has led to a remarkable cascade of high-profile inquiries by and into everything from government agencies, sports franchises, as well as disgraced eco-friendly ‘green banks’. The start of the 2025-2026 NBA preseason is still a handful days away, but the North American professional basketball league might have already peaked their media monitoring for the year… Go Knicks, I guess?

What’s with all the fanfare, you may ask. Well, in so many words, the fact that a relatively unknown and low-profile podcaster singlehandedly architected a substantiated and pernickety investigation alleging that Los Angeles Clippers’ heavyweight player Kawhi Leonard benefitted from a multi-year, near-$50 million partnership agreement with a now defunct and disgraced climate-finance firm FKA Aspiration (later CTN Holdings). The arrangement was said to be functioning more like a “no-show” compensation than a true blue endorsement for the premier basketball franchise’s star.

There is quite a lot more to the Kawhi-gate than that—such as the whole ‘uncle Dennis Robertson’ angle usurping officially licensed agent Mitch Frankel—but the central linchpin of the whole shebang is that this piece of financial engineering was purported to have been masterminded by LA Clippers owner and corporate stage maniac Steve Ballmer (who happens to be world’s richest person involved with any sports team), in order to improperly advantage himself by remunerating his top franchise player with a compounded amount significantly higher than the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement-regulated salary cap would have allowed him. The league’s salary cap threshold amounted to around $113 million during the 2021-22, the season tied to the impropriety in question. To put it bluntly, a gargantuan cheat.

Just to put this into perspective—on his latest podcast episode as part of the developing story, Torre made it clear that if the fraud scheme were all to be proven true, it would make for the largest salary cap circumvention in all of professional sports history. By orders of magnitude, in fact. Let that sink in for a moment. For Christ’s sake, the whole Los Angeleno franchise is alleged to have poured about $118 millions into brand partner Aspiration over the course of one and a half years (see PTFO timeline below). What is particularly uncanny in the chronological unfolding of events is the apparent pacing of the Ballmer scheme: the reported millions of dollars ‘invested’ in Aspiration by the LAC—inclusive of shallow and puffy equity-like purchases of Aspiration corporate carbon offset credits—all suspiciously took place in or around contract renewals and payment dates owed to Leonard (aaand his uncle Dennis), according to the endorsement deal documents. Torre understandably qualifies the hypothesis that those trails of money tranches were in fact laundered through Aspiration, in order to up Leonard’s total LAC compensation reward outside of the bounds of his team contract. And outside of the bounds of strict NBA regulation.

Naturally, this attracted the ire and sanitized press releases by a whole host of interested parties, all of them holding more or less stakes in this blow up. From Steve Ballmer himself to former Aspiration executive Andrei Cherny and NBA honcho Adam Silver (who called salary cap circumvention a ‘cardinal sin‘ in the league)—no one in hoopslandia seems to shut up about this. The NBA was forced to investigate soon after the Pablo’s reports started to circulate. Meanwhile, minority Dallas Mavericks-owner and angel-investor-next-door Mark Cuban was quick to hop on the court of public opinion’s bandwagon, challenge Pablo’s findings and side with ‘team Ballmer’. We wonder what on earth might he be benefitting from in adopting such a stance?

Moreover, in the above mentioned third PTFO episode installment on the Kawhi-gate series, Pablo underscored how his bombshell reporting and the ensuing investigations naturally infiltrated the September NBA Board of Governors meeting in New York, BIG TIME. How could it not. The sad, strange, beautiful irony in all of this? How about Steve Ballmer doubling as the Chair of the NBA’s Audit Committee on the Board of Governors, ergo the league’s own self-regulatory body furthering financial transparency across the thirty franchises. Ouch…

Aside from this potentially erupting as the biggest financial scandal of the modern NBA, this discursive dynamic holds a great deal of further analytical fascination, if you’re someone interested in media power structures like us. First of all—Pablo Torre didn’t ‘snitch‘ on anybody. Just like true blue investigative journalism once led the way, it took him countless hours of publicly available documents scrutiny and parsing all information with a fine tooth comb to begin to uncover certain laundering patterns. In a world succumbed to short-memory instant gratification inertia, this kind of journalism feels like a dying breed. His ability to construct a substantiated and believable conjecture of events, going after the eight richest man in the world, and leading to what is poised to become one of the most talked about fraud’s in professional sports history needed to overcome a thankless and gregarious job. This is no small feat. Where are all the award-winning ‘investigative’ newspapers of record when you needed them?

Bizarrely enough, although a number of legacy press outfits have saluted and given credit to the former Sports Illustrated and ESPN reporter, a loud majority of traditional sports media have failed to do so hitherto. Yes, they might have incorporated his unique piece of breaking news in their own circadian coverage rhythm, but their self-centered intake of such profitable story seemed to be more driven by skepticism than embrace. In fairness, some, like the Boston Sports Journal and the Toronto Star—not exactly top dogs in the press market—did add valuable and enriching reporting of their own to the developing narrative. What this act of dialectic reinforcement demonstrates is the underutilized power of decentralized and distributed investigative journalism, that when collectivized in solidarity such as in this Kawhi-gate can indeed hold giant power apparatuses to account.

Matter of fact; Pablo’s reporting was the kill. Regardless of the criminal and athletic outcomes from the various official ongoing investigations (we aren’t necessarily holding our breaths for their swiftness and justness anytime soon), we can’t imagine any regulatory agency carrying out a better job in advancing this type of circumstantial evidence to an adjudicating jury. If this piques your interest—and if you’ve read this far we’re going to assume so—do yourselves a favor and spend a few hours peeping the three episodes tracing the overall story timeline. They are worth it. Then arrive at your own conclusion.

For all intents and purposes, the jury is still very much out on this one. Yet, much like Pablo and his multiple featured guests have repeated several times on the podcast: what more evidence does one need to bring forward to overwhelmingly convince the court of public opinion that the LAC-Leonard-Aspiration farce triangle was a highfaluting scam? The NBA, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the SEC certainly thought it was enough… By the way, there is some cheeky someone who has remained awfully quiet throughout this whole time. Wanna guess? The notoriously stoic and taciturn Mr Kawhi Leonard himself, of course. ‘It’s (gr)apple time, (gr)apple time‘.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

SUMMER BARS, PT II | 2025-08-24

Don’t say we didn’t try. Because we did. We nearly made it through the month of August, which in many a Gregorian calendar traditions sort of equates with summer’s melancholic swan song days. And yet this past Friday 22nd, that’s the one that tipped the scale: on said day, Dominic Fike, Earl Sweatshirt, Kid Cudi, and Ghostface Killah all released more or less highly anticipated new music into the world. All at once. Moreover, tenured wordsmith-turned-academic professor Lupe Fiasco dropped a long awaiting anniversary EP deluxe celebrating last year’s riveting Samurai. Abi & Alan, Erykah Badu and The Alchemist’s long-rumored collab joint, is also supposedly coming out next week. These follow as many as TEN other carefully selected, must-listen, unmissable, greatest hit rap albums released during this year of the Lord 2025’s hottest season. Boy, oh boy. Everything but the kitchen sink. Part journaling exploit, part platforming, here’s Summer Bars, part II—let’s start pouring drinks.

For starters, this sophomore instalment of the series no one really asked for ups the records ante significantly compared to last year’s eight scrutinized projects. Assuming the purists will forgive us for it, including both Kaytranada’s AIN’T NO DAMN WAY! as well as the aforementioned Abi & Alan in this year’s count tally outright doubles 2024’s total amount—boosting it to sixteen signature hip-hop exploits all released between late May and late August. Boom. That’s a genre overrepresentation if we’ve ever seen one. For reference, our annual Albums of the Year feature compiles (give or take) our twenty favorite records of the previous 365 days; how on earth are we supposed to do the full twelve months justice, when just a few of them hand us over 75% of all suitable entries? At once? Not to mention that editorially, we’ve never really fancied ourselves a strictly hip-hop outlet. And yet, once again, this year’s summer avalanche was a rhythmic might we were simply powerless to deny.

And it’s not like we couldn’t have listed twenty of these. Just a selected handful notable rap exploit omissions spanning the same time period include none other than McKinley Dixon’s auteur hit Magic, Alive!, Boldy James’s umpteenth trustworthy and reliable Nicholas Craven-produced joint Late to My Own Funeral, as well as Nas’s Mass Appeal’s resuscitating “Legend Has It” initial series offerings by Slick Rick (VICTORY) and Raekwon (The Emperor’s New Clothes). Add to that The Coldest Profession, the exquisitely distilled meeting of the rap minds between DJ Premier & Roc Marciano recently unveiled. For Christ’s sake, at the time of writing this we haven’t even had the chance to bump Ghostface’s legendary sophomore Clientele instalment—speaking of Mass Appeal—or the Cudder’s alleged true pop foray on Free (yes, Chance the Rapper’s STAR LINE is that good…).

Before we go any further with this, let us get all of our ducks in a row by allowing us to chronologically list all noteworthy summer bars as they have been opened up for biz hitherto:

  • 30th May: Rome Streetz & Conductor Williams – Trainspotting
  • 6th June: Lil Wayne – Tha Carter IV
  • 27th June: Kevin Abstract/Blush – Blush
  • 11th July: Clipse – Let God Sort ‘Em Out
  • 11th July: Open Mike Eagle – Neighborhood Gods Unlimited
  • 21st July: Tyler, the Creator – DON’T TAP THE GLASS
  • 25th July: Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist – Alfredo 2
  • 25th July: JID – God Does Like Ugly
  • 15th August: Chance the Rapper – STAR LINE
  • 15th August: Kaytranada – AIN’T NO DAMN WAY!
  • 22nd August: Dominic Fike – Rocket
  • 22nd August: Earl Sweatshirt – Live Laugh Love
  • 22nd August: Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele 2
  • 22nd August: Lupe Fiasco – Samurai DX (EP)
  • 22nd August: Kid Cudi – Free
  • 29th August: Erykah Badu & The Alchemist – Abi & Alan

A few interesting patterns stand out at first glance. One, there is a bit of a sequel common thread in the batch, with Tha Carter IV, Alfredo 2, the aforementioned Supreme Clientele 2, as well as Samurai DX all following in the footsteps of storied predecessors as part of a creative series. Two, one can detect a few producer-rapper pairings in there, as well: Trainspotting, Let God Sort ‘Em Out, Alfredo 2, and the upcoming Abi & Alan all build on the artistic cohesion that emerges when a single studio consigliere oversees an rapper’s whole body of work, front to back. Relatedly, we also have the ever-so-busy and prolific The Alchemist and the pride of Naples, Florida, Dominic Fike appearing on multiple oeuvres in here (Fike is one half of Geezer, who in turn is part of Blush). Additionally, there exists a fistful artists piercing the space-time-continuum through last year: Ghostface, Lupe, and Kaytranada all prominently featured to varying degrees in 2024’s Summer Bars edition. Further, through a more miscellaneous analytical prism, this sophomore instalment even sports a debut effort—the gargantuan and versatile Kevin Abstract-led Blush self titled—as well as three long awaited comeback records, with Clipse’s perfect Let God Sort ‘Em Out being their first in sixteen years, the catchy return to form STAR LINE coming six years after Chance’s epic flop The Big Day, and of course Erykah Badu expected to drop her first full body of work in fifteen long years.

What an incredible savory and flavorsome bunch, ladies and gentlemen. As editorial heuristic, allow us to point your attention in the direction of five, just five, truly exceptional projects in the pack spanning the full three-month spectrum. We know that today’s record industry output saturation all too often leads to a form of choice-paralysis that is encumbering most listeners. Therefore, if you’re only going to sample five albums outta this list of sixteen (!), start with Blush, thank you very much. The record is a messily ambitious new curatorial venture for 29-year old American rapper, singer, and producer Kevin Abstract. Of our top five, it might be the least accessible and more patience-testing, but trust us, its rewards reap exponentially and with every new playback. After founding, skyrocketing, and then dismantling the iconic and watershedding boy band BROCKHAMPTON during the 2010s and early into this decade, the Dr Dre-inspired tastemaker mostly focused on a mixed bag of solo exploits. Blush formally counts as his fifth solo LP, but de facto the record sees him helm the eponymous multi-disciplinary Houston-based collective in a grand curatorial role. With no fixed membership, and a fluid creative chassis, Blush drafted a few dozens collaborators in total, on a high rotational basis and spanning engineering, production, and performing duties—not unlike BROCKHAMTPON, in fact.

Naturally, this led to a ginormously varied and eclectic batch of nineteen tracks, clocking in at almost fifty minutes of experimental material coasting through nearly all sub styles and cultures of modern hip-hop. It features folks like Quadeca, former BROCKHAMTPON members Kiko Merley, Ameer Vann, Romil Hemnani, Jabari, as well as true blue rap staples such as Danny Brown, JPEGMafia, and the aforementioned Dominic Fike. The collection of cuts is a sonic roller coaster snaking through blistering highs and crushing lows, yet one that sounds like nothing else this summer and therefore very much a singular entry in the lot, with plenty of inherent replay value. Meanwhile, the first of our three July picks is Clipse’s Let God Sort ‘Em Out. We’ll spare you the gratuitous re-hashing of why it’s so many people’s (rap) album of the year (if not decade) so far by redirecting you to our fully dedicated featured piece here. In short, Pharrell Williams’s beats throughout the tape confirm that the Neptunes co-founder still is the best sonic tapestry upon which the fraternity duo can maximize their unrivaled chemistry and spitting abilities. Please, please, please don’t let this one slip by you.

This past Friday 22nd August might’ve copped the most notable rap releases at once this summer, but its younger relative 25th July certainly had the two best ones come out in tandem. Pretty much exactly one month ago to this day, mobster rap-producer duo Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist as well as rap’s jittery prodigal son JID dropped their respective studio projects to wide fan and critical acclaim. The former, Alfredo 2, appearing somewhat unexpectedly, it builds on the strengths and potentials of its 2020 pandemic-defying debut chapter, by weaving Japanese yakuza iconography and aesthetics in lieu of Italian mafioso undertones into their tried and true coke rap blend. Pound for pound, it stands up to Alfredo and although it riskily comes with four additional cuts and fifteen more minutes of runtime, it never feels unfocused or superfluous. A formidable masterclass in modern day gansta rap that doesn’t come at the expense of sticky melodies or idiosyncratic beat choices. This slaps so much.

On the other hand, with the might God Does Like Ugly Atlanta-native rapper and singer JID finally put an end to years-long speculations amongst fans and press as to what he might be following up his 2022 magnum opus The Forever Story with. We now have the answer, and we’re pleased to report that it is an overwhelmingly satisfactory one: the American MC’s fourth studio album is an uncompromising, tenacious, and gritty listen. It dares to lean into softer and more melodic R&B and Neo-soul sensibilities toward its middle section, and with the surgical addition of guests such as Westside Gunn, Clipse, Vince Staples, EarthGang, and Ty Dolla $ign, it simultaneously doubles as both a record for the clubs and a record for the streets. Don’t let terminally online trolls fool you—this is exactly what JID should’ve given us, and anyone telling you it’s underwhelming or subpar is insincere. They’re lying to you. As far as offering a smorgasbord of rap nuances, palettes, and shades, no album has beaten this one yet this year.

Onto our chief pick. Trust us, we did not have Chance the Rapper dropping our favorite rap album of the year by end of Summer on our bingo card at the beginning of 2025. And yet, after a somewhat loose and disjointed promo runway that stretches back to standout number “The Highs & The Lows” getting released as many as three years ago—and with the thinly veiled benefit of letting the record sit for a full week—STAR LINE has emerged as an undeniable hip-hop force this year. Granted, it’s certainly not the most fun LP of Summer Bars (that credit probably goes to Tyler’s DON’T TAP THE GLASS, or AIN’T NO DAMN WAY!), nor is it the most cerebral or socially-conscious one (checkout Trainspotting or OME’s Neighborhood Gods Unlimited to scratch that itch). Nonetheless, Chano’s sophomore studio LP sounds like the most complete, wholesome, and integrated, and one we can’t seem to put down. We keep coming back to it; interestingly to find out different things every time. On it, the Chicago-native isn’t afraid to lean into his double edged earnestness to deliver some of the most convinced, impassioned, and believable 16s of the year. We know y’all busy, but if you’re reading this as a hip-hop tourist and are keen to just sample one of these sixteen albums, make it this one. It’s accessible, and a wonderful window into what authentic rap can be in this day and age.

What an incredibly generous offering of bars to choose from this summer. As far as hip-hop is concerned, we don’t seem to remember a similarly stacked one in recent memory. Not to mention, the world is still waiting for Joey Bada$$, J Cole, A$AP Rocky (lol), and Baby Keem to make their move and tack onto the pot of gold drops this year. I know some of you will always take 2024’s ultimate rap beef showdown over something like this any day that ends in ‘y’, but we love it. When the volume business is this good, we might just feel like we aren’t as screwed as most say. What are y’all talking about—we now have Let God Sort ‘Em Out?!

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

GENTLEMAN GIANNIS | 2025-05-01

More than half of the 2025 NBA Playoff First Round match-ups have already been sorted out. In less than ten days of scheduled playtime since the official kick-off of the ‘postseason that counts’, five teams across the Eastern and Western Conferences have already taken care of business, securing a landlocked spot in the Second Round. Two series sweeps, seeing each Conference’s top seed flat-out ridicule their fellow lowest-seeded Play-In Tournament hopefuls (Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers versus the Memphis Grizzlies and the Miami Heat, respectively), one giant upset (sixth-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves dethroning the LA Lakers), as well as a couple predictable verdicts, albeit not without late clutch play drama (here’s looking at you, Indiana Pacers—more on this in a jiffy). Amidst it all, there isn’t even a need to front here: our predictions have so far left a lot to be desired—see bracket below; the 19th April Bluesky timestamp is proof…

Were the Nuggets, Rockets, and Knicks to go on to win their respective series tie in the next couple days, that would leave our bracket accuracy attainment rate at a measly 3/8 correct guesses. That’s a laughable 37%. Achieved by guessing that OKC, the Cavaliers, and the Celtics would win their charitable trips to the Semis, no less—wow. Geniuses. What’s troublesome too here are two deadpan implications from these first ten days of Playoff action: our presumptive NBA Champions Lakers are already on their way to Cancún as of 1st May, and this year’s wishful Cinderella story—the unlikely thrusting of the living-breathing scaffolding Milwaukee Bucks all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals—well, ain’t happening either. Nostradamus would be proud of us.

When your biggest postseason’s brag is that you predicted that the defending NBA Champions Boston Celtics reach the Eastern Conference Finals again, you should definitely stay away from sports betting. Frankly, even a 100% correct bracket guesses should, but that’s a story for a different day. And yet, we really believe(d) in our earnest predictions when we first filled them out. Did we go out on a few limbs here and there, just for fun? Of course. Comment this post if you also had the Lakers making it all the way to raising the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy this year. Or if you too were hopelessly optimistic that Damian Lillard’s miraculously unprecedented return from his blood clot issue would be the decisive X factor that could bring a somewhat disgraced franchise to unthinkable heights this season, only to capitulate in a seven-game series loss against the reigning champs.

Yes, they were both stretches, but not entirely unfounded. The Lakers won seven out of their ten final Regular Season games—including a marquee triumph against the top Western seed Thunders—and finished third with their best record in six years (50-32, .610 win percentage). Oh, and they low-key pulled off the biggest blockbuster NBA trade of this century, acquiring Slovenian superstar guard Luka Dončić in a multi-pawned deal that sent veteran center Anthony Davis to the Dallas Mavericks. Also, Austin Reaves was on a sensational ascent. And this might be LeBron James’s last season, so why wouldn’t he do everything in his power to tip it off with at least one last Finals appearance? It all kind of made sense.

Not dissimilarly, the Milwaukee Bucks wrapped up the Regular Season with eight straight wins, that arithmetically pulled them out of the Play-In relegation slump, and officially set them apart enough to lock in the official fifth seed vis-a-vis the unlikely All-American success story of the Detroit Pistons. Considering how brutally disappointingly the 2024/2025 season started for the Giannis Antetokounmpo-led franchise, there was a great deal of new wind in their sail that would have allowed us to fantasize about them at the very least making it past the fastidious Indiana Pacers in the First Round (yup, even we’d have to acknowledge that beating the Cavaliers four times out of seven was perhaps too prohibitive and likely not on the cards for this year…). So, about that Bucks-Pacers series…

On Tuesday 29th April, Tyrese Haliburton and co. officially took care of business by eliminating Milwaukee 4-1 in a frankly pretty one-sided best-of-seven series. Pacers in five. The game ended 119-118 in dramatic fashion in overtime, and while the Bucks would probably have deserved to win the game and force a game six back in Indianapolis after blowing multiple double-digit leads, it’s what transpired in the moments immediately following the final buzzer that took on a whole other life of its own. To recap the succession of events for the uninitiated—right after Indiana clinched the series, Tyrese Haliburton’s father John Haliburton, sitting courtside, entered the floor during the celebrations. He then walked up to a petrified Giannis Antetokounmpo and proceeded to wave a towel featuring his son’s face, before directing provocative remarks at the Greek Freak. Giannis then confronted John, leading to a brief but tense exchange before teammates intervened to dissuade the situation.

There is so much that can, has been, and will be written about the altercation. For starters, the public embarrassment expressed by Tyrese over his father’s actions, indicating in a postgame press conference that he had had a conversation with his father to address the situation while also planning to speak with Antetokounmpo at a separate time. Tyrese’s awkwardness was followed by John’s too, who took little time to issue a forced public apology on social media, acknowledging how his behavior did not reflect well on himself or his son. As if it were not enough, it’s news as of 1st May that after conversations with John Haliburton, the Indiana Pacers front office saw fit to ban Tyrese’s father from attending the team’s home and road games for the foreseeable future. And yet the teachable, noble moment here comes from the former NBA MVP and Champion himself. Let us unpack the complete answer Giannis gave during his own presser after the game, when asked to speak on the incident:

All I’ll say is that I believe in being humble in victory. That’s the way I am.

Now, there are a lot of people out there that can say, ‘No. When you win, you gotta talk shit. It’s a green light for you to be disrespectful towards somebody else. I disagree. I have won a championship. They haven’t. That doesn’t say anything. I’m not trying to minimize their effort, but I remember when I won, my mom, she’s never missed a game from February 11th or 13th when she came to Milwaukee against the Knicks, she’s never missed a game. When we won a championship, I remember my mom was scared to cross. She was like, ‘Am I allowed to come and hug my son?’

Except now my brother does media this year. He wants to come back and play, but like, except Thanasis, you’ve never seen my family sit in a courtside seat. This is not something that we do. We don’t. I try to keep my family away from the game.

But losing the game emotions run high. Having a fan, which at the moment I thought it was a fan, but then I realized it was Tyrese’s son, which I love Tyrese – I think he’s a great competitor – he was his dad, sorry.

Coming in the floor and, um, showing me his son a towel with his face. ‘This is what we do. This is what we f**king do. This is the f**k we do.’ I feel like that’s very, very disrespectful.

You know, my dad, my dad if you guys go and ask and learn my dad’s not with us no more. My dad used to come in the family room and was the most respectful person ever. You know when you come from nothing and you’ve worked your whole life to sell stuff in the street and your whole life you’ll be scared of the police of deporting you and sending you back to your country. You have to protect your kids with all means. You create this mentality of being humble your whole life.

To not kind of disrespect anybody, not make the tension high, the emotions high, so anybody can you know snitch on you, say something bad about you. So when he came here I remembered I was like, ‘Dad, why are you so humble? Why are you going to the family room? You don’t even say a word. You sit in the back. Why, why, why are you like that?’ ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry about it. Don’t worry.’ That’s how I grew up. That’s what I had around.

So when I see other dads, which don’t disrespect, maybe if my son play basketball, I might be in the court. I might be the one on the court and like 20 years later you can play this interview and say ‘Giannis, you’re contradicting yourself.’ But we’ll see in 20 years, but I’m talking about right now how I feel. You know having somebody’s that which I’m happy for him and I’m happy for his son and I’m happy that he’s happy for his son. That’s how you’re supposed to feel.

But coming to me and disrespecting me and cursing at me, I think it’s totally unacceptable – totally unacceptable. OK, and … I’m not the guy that points fingers because in my neighborhood snitches get stitches. So I don’t want to say something you know for him to say to get fined or anything, but it’s not respectful. I talk with him at the end and we huh, I think we’re in a good place.

For the record, John Haliburton’s social media handle is @PapaHaliburton. Please. Like, who does that? How much more obvious can the familiar vestibule guised as genuine grassroots support get? While it’s evident that the Haliburton-Antetokounmpo incident has sparked welcome discussions about appropriate conduct for family members and fans during professional sporting events—highlighting the importance of sportsmanship and respect—we claim no better metaphor could be realized to capture the modern day’s delusion of spoiled nepotist entitlement. The kind that involves parents as chief architects of it. And honestly, the Haliburtons embody so much of that. Incidentally, 25-year old guard Tyrese, a two-time NBA All-Star, just won the Most Overrated Player in the NBA award this year in a recent anonymous player poll by The Athletic, receiving 15% of the votes (ironically, good guy in this story Giannis Antetokounmpo finished tenth on the same list).

This story basically writes itself—Haliburton is a non-factor Olympic gold medalist, too. Last summer, he was drafted as part of Team USA’s men’s basketball roster at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where the selection managed to secure the highly coveted gold medal (all the while this season’s NBA Clutch Player of the Year, the New York Knicks’s Jalen Brunson, stayed home to record podcasts…). However, unsurprisingly, Haliburton’s on-court contributions were limited. He merely appeared in three of the six games, totaling 26 minutes—the fewest among all players on the roster. He did not step foot on the hardwood floor in either of the games past the group phase (the semifinal against Serbia and the gold medal game against France). Granted, he was a good sport about it all, tipping off the experience with legitimately funny humor on social media (posting ‘When you ain’t do nun on the group project and still get an A‘). But this also kind of makes sense. Doesn’t it?

Go back to Giannis’ integrity lesson for a second. Re-read it in full. This doesn’t all happen in a vacuum. John Haliburton doesn’t walk up to Giannis with hostility at the buzzer, before even hugging his own game-winning shooter son, had he and Tyrese not perfected the gold digging upwards mobility of ‘take your dad to work’ models. Heritage, respect, and sacrifice typically don’t fail people in moments of need. They don’t get washed away by ’emotions’. They either pre-exist, or they don’t. The Nigerian-Greek power forward is obviously one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Arguably the greatest and most incisive player of the last decade. Since his 2013 debut, the guy has been sporting a career average 24 points per game (accompanied by a 55% field goal percentage), with a peak 31.1 points-per-game registered during his 2022-2023 season. As he reminded the audience during the press conference, he is the one with NBA Championship and three MVP titles, not them. Still, Giannis’s most honorable achievement to date might just have come off the court. Yes, Giannis Antetokounmpo is a gentleman, and a damn good basketball player whilst at it.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time. Oh and yeah, we do root for the Knicks over here at EMS, but these Pistons man…

AV

DETROIT PISTONS: AMERICA’S TEAM | 2025-03-28

As of Friday 28th March, with less than ten games left in the 2024/2025 NBA Regular Season, the Detroit Pistons have officially established themselves as franchise basketball’s America’s Team. Michigan’s Motor City team currently sits as the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference, sporting a .562 winning percentage and an overall net record of 41 wins and 32 losses hitherto. Not only would this ranking translate in the Pistons clinching direct playoff access for the first time since 2019, but the existing match-up picture would see them face the certainly not-unbeatable Indiana Pacers in the first round. All of a sudden, the Eastern Conference Semifinals aren’t a pipedream anymore. Granted, there are another nine games left in the regular season—incidentally, tonight Detroit is slated to face the projected Eastern Conference champions and undisputed season revelation Cleveland Cavaliers, at home—and lots can still change between now and mid-April. Yet, their performance so far this season reflects a historic and unprecedented improvement, transforming the franchise from the league’s lowest-ranked team to unwavering playoff contenders.

As a refresher, it’s worth reminding that last year, during the 2023/2024 NBA Regular Season, the Pistons finished dead last with a measly league-worst record of 14 wins and 68 losses (.171 winning %). Two seasons ago, same thing—they closed off with 17 wins and 65 losses (.207 winning %). This year alone, the club has already tripled the amount of wins from last year, with another nine attempts to go. Earlier in February, they even recorded their longest winning streak (eight games) since the golden franchise era of the 2006/2007 season—and as of their 73rd game of the season, they improved their average points per game by 6 (up from 109 last year), their field goal percentage by more than 1% point (47.8% compared to 46.3%), and elevated their three-point field goal percentage by nearly 2% points (36.3% over last season’s 34.8%). And although their free-throw percentage is dipping slightly compared to twelve months ago (a current 77.6% vis-a-vis 78.5% in 2023/2024), they are tracking better stats than in previous years across the whole front and backcourt: steals per game, blocks per game, total rebounds per game, and assists per game.

What’s not to love obsessively about this? How can the country not root for them? For those needing more convincing; so far this season their effective field goal percentage (adjusted field goal % to better account for three-pointers) jumped from 52 to 55%, while their offensive rating—ergo, points scored per 100 possessions—improved by more than 5. Defensively, they are par for their reputational Bad Boys course again, having ameliorated their defensive rating (points conceded per 100 possessions) bringing it down from 118 last year to this season’s 111, not unlike their opponents effective field goal percentage, which has seen a near 2 percentage points drop from last year (decreases mean good, in the latter two cases). All from a team that has consistently finished in the bottom three of the Eastern Conference in the last five years, with a meager all time high of 23 wins in a single season (2021/2022). A proverbial all-American redemption tale if we’ve ever seen one.

From blowout red carpets, to serious Eastern Conference Semifinal contenders. From near laughing stock of the league, to top ten NBA team in rebounds per game and field goal percentage. All in less than twelve months. But what’s to thank for this remarkable transformation? Well, quite a bit. First and foremost, re-signing core talent during the offseason. Securing a contract extension with franchise cornerstone and legitimate Most Improved Player-candidate Cade Cunningham in July last year ensured dexterity, leadership, and continuity on the court. Secondly, placing a few strategic free agency acquisitions on the chessboard: scoring veteran forward Tobias Harris as well as signing sharpshooter and living-breathing mascot Malik Beasley provided offensive versatility and experience. Moreover, absorbing Tim Hardaway Jr via a trade with the Dallas Mavericks ensured consistent perimeter shooting and yet more veteran presence, further addressing the team’s need for reliable scoring options. Similarly, the recent addition of reigning FIBA World Champion and tournament MVP, Germany‘s Dennis Schröder, increased depth at the point guard position, dishing solid experience and facilitating mad ball handling movement.

The Michiganian franchise also showcased and proved their sharp ability to grow in-house talent and draft promising prospects. Sourcing small/power forward Ron Holland II as the 5th overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft infused young incisiveness with significant potential into the roster, while the definitive explosion of young center Jalen Duren as well as evil twin Ausar Thompson as Swiss-army-knife small forward this year are other significant contributions to the team’s unlikely success this season. All this notwithstanding the fact that one of their most impactful players between October and December, former Purdue shooting guard Jaden Ivey, has been sidelined since 1st January after sustaining a season-ending injury in a nasty collision with Orlando Magic guard Cole Anthony. Last, but definitely not least, appointing former Cleveland Cavaliers head coach JB Bickerstaff to lead the team in the offseason—someone known for his effective communication and leadership skills—introduced a new strategic vision and leadership style, enriching the team’s improved impact. And although it’s harder to gauge, Trajan Langdon’s hire as the new President of Basketball Operations before last summer surely enhanced a front-office overhaul able to respond to a multi-year Playoff drought.

As Detroit Bad Boys reports, the Pistons will officially finish the season above .500 for the first time in a decade with just one additional win in their final nine games. While that win might not come tonight, against projected title contenders Cleveland Cavaliers, were they to eke out four more before the postseason, Detroit will go as far as securing their best regular season record since 2007-08. Not to mention the fact that so many of their wins happened in clutch time (final 5 minutes of the fourth quarter with a score differential of 5 or less). We haven’t checked this, but the Pistons have got to be a top five NBA team in terms of clutch games this year. What’s even more impressive, as the same article puts it, America’s team miraculous turnaround “is already among the biggest in NBA history. If Detroit wins just three more games [before the regular season ends], they will have the seventh-biggest jump in wins from one season to the next“. Before adding important context: “if you look at the top six turnarounds in NBA history, they are all built on major talent infusion and return from injury“.

We would be remiss not to finish off singing the Pistons praises by focusing on their best player, former NBA first overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft Cade Cunningham. The 23-year old point guard was deservedly named an NBA All-Star for the first time this past February, and makes for a more than plausible All-NBA Second Team hopeful, when this season is in the books. The Texas native is basically a walking averaging double-double, with a current trading of 25.7 points, 9.2 assists and 6.1 rebounds a game. These numbers are up from 17, 19, and 22 points per game in his first three seasons, respectively. He’s already played more individual games than in any single season before (66), averaging 35 minutes a match up on a roster not exactly devoid of options and bench depth. He’s even managed to turn around his +/- ratio for the first time in his professional career, recording a net 2.7 points when he’s on the floor after three years in the minus. Plus the guy’s hella likable, plays with unique calm, collection, and poise, and makes it look like he’s having a lot of fun while at it. That, and so much more, is why the Detroit Pistons are America’s Team.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): JACK WHITE TIER LIST | 2025-02-08

Support Jack White:

https://jackwhiteiii.com
https://thirdmanrecords.com
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/jack-white/826980
https://www.instagram.com/officialjackwhite

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): LINKIN PARK TIER LIST (UPDATE) | 2024-11-17

LP Tier List_Updated

This is an updated Tier List—find the previous version here.

Support Linkin Park:

https://www.linkinpark.com
https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/linkin-park/148662
https://www.instagram.com/linkinpark
https://twitter.com/linkinpark

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV