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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- Dennis Prager v Cedars-Sinai Lawsuit
- Dennis Prager Through Randall Collins: Interaction Ritual Chains
- What is a ‘Received Idea’?
- Jordan Bardella: The Manufacture of Normality
- Everyone Became Television: Bourdieu’s Warning and the 2026 Iran War
- Marine Le Pen
- The Coalition-Proximity Rule
- Nigel Farage
- Bernard Haykel: A Life Between the Text and the Gun
- Walker Connor (1926-2017)
- Benedict Anderson and the Nation as Imagination
- Anthony D. Smith: The Student Who Kept the Question and Rejected the Answer
- Ernest Gellner
- Eric Kaufmann: The Man Who Made the Majority Visible
- Dominic Cummings: A Biography
- Steve Lopez: The Last City Columnist
- California Historian Kevin Starr
- Stephen Kotkin: A Life in Power
- William T. Vollmann: An American Life in Excess
- Rod Dreher: A Life in Exile
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: Basketball
Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter
Victor Wembanyama (b. 2004) stands seven feet four with an eight-foot wingspan. The instinct says park him under the rim and feed him the ball. San Antonio does the opposite. He spends much of every offensive possession out near the … Continue reading
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The Caitlin Clark Economy
I love sports. I am so liberal and broad-minded that when feeling desperate enough for a fix, I can even watch women’s soccer when it is the national team in a World Cup final, but I find the WNBA unwatchable … Continue reading
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Why are there more criminal elements in pro basketball, including with gambling, compared to say hockey or golf?
The WSJ reported last week: “But basketball has proven especially susceptible to foul play.” Why? ChatGPT says: A few converging reasons explain this pattern. Socioeconomic pipeline. Basketball draws disproportionately from poorer urban backgrounds where exposure to crime, gambling, and hustling … Continue reading
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How a podcaster solved Nikola Jokic
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Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s
Jeff Pearlman writes in this 2014 book: * Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hated white people. Read that sentence again. And again. And again. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hated white people and, quite frankly, why wouldn’t he have? Born on April 16, 1947, in New … Continue reading
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Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty
Here are some highlights from this new book by Jeff Pearlman: * To Walker, it’s all a joke. He and Bryant entered the league together, and the majority of players on the roster view Kobe’s latest efforts not unlike MC … Continue reading
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The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty
Here are some highlights from this 2020 book: * On March 2, 2019, sports media impresario Bill Simmons conducted a news-making one-on-one panel with NBA commissioner Adam Silver at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Though Simmons is by nature … Continue reading
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Urban Black Basketball
Here’s an excerpt from an Esquire interview with Steve Oney: EC: There are a few lines from Brown that suggest a racial insensitivity that today would not be permissible but at the time was a more accepted part of the … Continue reading
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Celtics/Lakers: Best of Enemies
I’m enjoying this series on Watch ESPN. I love most of ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentaries. I love sports docos in general. The 1960s Celtics were probably the greatest team ever but they couldn’t draw fans while Boston’s last-placed hockey … Continue reading
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Lavar Ball Blames White People for His Son Lonzo Getting Torched
Comments at Steve Sailer: * I welcome more statements like this. More HBD. Because whites are slower than blacks, they will be easier prey to black thugs and crime. Apply truth in sports to the streets. Yes, I welcome blacks … Continue reading
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