Essay, From The Classical — I started this essay on how both the Celtics and Blue Note Records created their own kinds of dynasties without any real idea where it was going. I was fascinated by each in their own way but ultimately became most interested in how their legacies were created more by persistent flexibility than dogged adherence to one approach.
Sportswriting, From Rolling Stone — How does one even begin to explain this? This dunk enters the realm of the absurd. It is the "Le Sacre du printemps" of dunks. People should have been rioting in the streets.
Satire, From the New Yorker — Now you can binge watch the entire Warriors season on Netflix, before it happens.
Sportswriting, From Vice Sports — Boo had trouble focusing because of delayed sensory and speech issues, as well as a diagnosed reactive attachment disorder. Boo's father, who is Zach's oldest brother, is in prison; his mother doesn't make an effort to see Boo and A'Niyah, who has some of the same issues. As a result, Zach's family has custody of him. Zach and Boo are nearly inseparable.
Interview, From Rolling Stone — "When I was younger," Lopez says, "the first one that appealed to me was 'Lemon of Troy.' My favorite thing about that episode was seeing the world of Shelbyville for the first time, and then seeing the kids' world. It was kind of what it was like to be a kid, but in Springfield."
Interview, From Rolling Stone — "In our era, I don't think Michael Jordan would have been saying, 'Let me call Magic, let me call Larry Bird.' I wouldn't want to play with Hakeem. I wanted to beat them. That was just our mentality."
Sportswriting, From Rolling Stone — A collaboration with writer Ian Levy and artist Jesse Blanchard, hatched during a ludicrous bar conversation at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
Essay, From Medium — For years, I couldn’t listen to the Beatles ballad that’s indelibly linked to my mother’s death. Then my one-year-old daughter helped me start to make it better.
Fiction, From Revolver — The power went out, and at first, it was just that. But then an hour turned into a day and that day turned into a week and they threw away the food in the refrigerator. After two weeks and no word, they had to leave the house with the milky, clouded plastic still flapping at the back of the upstairs, where it covered the fire damage. The workers’ tools had lain scattered around on the ground, on the scaffolding.
Essay, From The Classical — I know my daughter is not going to understand most of what happens at the game, but I want to give her the chance to be near it, and become enmeshed in it. After all, we don’t fall in love with live basketball, at least not at first, because of beautiful down screens or crisp defensive rotations or true shooting percentages. It’s the atmosphere that does it, the feeling of being gathered into something bigger and stronger than oneself. It’s something I almost can’t even see anymore, except through her.
Sportwriting, From ESPN —
The zone. That semimythical place that all athletes strive night in and night out to reach. When LeBron James went off for a career-high 61 points against the Charlotte Bobcats recently, he said, “It felt like I had a golf ball, throwing it into the ocean.”
The Minnesota Timberwolves’ Chase Budinger knows a thing or two about that feeling, and the pressure that comes along with it.
“When I was playing,” he says, “I was getting close to my other high and once I finally beat it by 10 or something, then I was able to relax a little bit and just keep going. Once you’re past it, the pressure goes away. The pressure is in getting close.”
Just how far did Budinger sail past his previous career high? He nearly doubled it, finishing with an unfathomable 327 points.
In Flappy Bird.
Essay, From Hardwood Paroxysm — In discussing the beauty of a flower, Feynman says, “It’s not just beauty at this one dimension, one centimeter; there’s also beauty at a smaller dimension.” That is perhaps analytics greatest promise: that understanding itself is beautiful, that there is a joy inherent in discovery, and that there is beauty wedged in between the things we can currently see. Yes, analytics holds forth utility to teams and players, competitive advantages to be gained or overcome. But for spectators it is beautiful science. “Science and knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of the flower,” says Feynman. “It only adds.”
Essay, For The Classical — Neither game was as satisfying in its over-the-top endgame and worldly ambition as it was during the times when it left you to pick your way through crumbling rubble or a darkened sewer, hoping you had enough mismatched bullets to fend off whatever lay in wait. The satisfaction in playing them was in the struggle for survival, in finding something worth saving. There’s nothing quite as elemental as that. Whether built on words or the rich juxtaposition of nostalgia and decay, Wasteland and Fallout were about the little things, about what’s left and what grows after everything is gone.
Criticism, From Polygon — Next-gen consoles will bring enhanced graphical fidelity. That's a given. But is that all we should expect from them? Ever-escalating attention to the follicles of hair on LeBron James' receding hairline or the precise shininess of one team's jerseys versus another? There should be more to it than that.
Criticism, From Grantland — A spirited back-and-forth with Grantland's (and now The Ringer's) resident Maester Jason Concepcion on whether HBO's flagship show is better on the page or the screen.
Sportswriting, From the New York Times — Asked if dunking is as much fun as it looks, he grimaces. “Nowadays? I do it because I can, but sometimes, the landings suck. That takes the toll on your body. If it’s needed, it’s needed. But if I can make the two points by layup, I’m going to do that. You have to be smart about it.”
Music, For innova Recordings — “Devotion,” the opening track of Grant Cutler’s 2012, approaches you from what seems like a great distance, moving slowly across snowy Midwestern plains. It’s a fitting introduction to an album of cold, geologic beauty, a record not only inspired by the setting of its creation, but quite literally fashioned from artifacts unearthed from attics and closets and basements.
