Now 25, Kyrie Irving is ostensibly ready to walk away from automatic championship contests every June for the more self-as-business glory of earnestly bowing out, but doing more on the court and for longer, every April or May. Read more »
John Wilmes - Basketball Analysis
The Cultural Curiosities Attached To Kyrie Irving
Lasting Intrigue Can Only Come From The Warriors Themselves
If the Warriors set themselves toward only achieving traditional sports goals that will be rote and predictable. Here's to wondering what, with their great powers before them, they might do that is not. Read more »
LeBron James, Michael Jordan & The Leap From Objective Excellence To Basketball Orthodoxy
Just as a rational person can't deny that LeBron James is the more evolved talent than Michael Jordan, an evidence-collecting observer knows that LeBron hasn't dominated the public imagination in the same way that his coolly bald predecessor did. Read more »
Milwaukee And Watching What Speed The Future Of The Game Moves At
The Bucks' new arena beside their current one summons easy metaphors for the endless skinny limbs of its starting lineup, which with its average age of 23.2 years also barely yet exists in the NBA. Read more »
Westbrook's MVP Waterloo And The Death Of The NBA Individualist
Russell Westbrook's first season without Kevin Durant is positively MVP worthy. Does it run the risk of becoming Sisyphean if he wants to continue playing this way and the Thunder can't improve his supporting cast? Read more »
The Dad Mystique Of LaVar Ball
LaVar is preceding his sons' feats with a reel of hyperbolic myth-making that turns them into more than athletes. Before any of them have taken a shot in the NBA, the Ball family have already become legend. Read more »
How The Political Climate Impacts Perception Of Knicks, Bulls
As the NBA reacts to an increasingly chaotic society outside that bubble, though, and pushes back on the forms that cultural madness takes within its own world, it plays a relevant role in the ongoing American identity crisis. Read more »
The NBA's Young Superstar Immigrants
Willingly or not, foreign-born NBA players like Embiid, Giannis, Jokic and Porzingis now lead a fraught and loaded existence, serving as examples of the distinct, inspiring excellence known when non-Americans become so fitted to national pastimes that they're magnetized to our land. Read more »
Derrick Rose's Game Of Myths
Now a singular NBA pariah, unfathomably facing a summer in which he'll have a hard time finding an eight-figure contract, Derrick Rose's fall has never lost touch with his rugged individualist streak that could only be forged in the American nadir, in order to escape the American nadir. Read more »
Kevin Garnett And The Deconstruction Of The Severe Basketball Self On Area 21
On Area 21, Kevin Garnett is reinforcing what we know about the wantonness of his words, but also revealing a broad, warm, and relentlessly frank sensibility. Read more »
Phil Jackson And The Loss Of His Holistic Touch
Phil Jackson, a previously untouchable uncle of the game, is an early casualty in the NBA's version of the cultural sea change challenging everything right now. Read more »
James Harden And Houston's Rehabilitation Project
James Harden will be in a position to easily score or assist on essentially every possession he's in the game, for a team that threatens to increase the number of possessions per game to previously unseen numbers. Read more »
Dwyane Wade's Beyond Basketball Mission In Chicago
Dwyane Wade's transfer back to Chicago endears him to just about everyone and elevates his voice to higher, more audible air as he makes his graceful transition to post-basketball relevance. Read more »
Why Russell Westbrook Chose His Uniquely Quixotic Task
While a superstar changing teams is always the more nuclear, news-exploding story, Russell Westbrook holding pattern in Oklahoma is just as dynamic a statement as Durant starting anew with the Warriors. Read more »
A Basketball Capital Born In The Dust Considers What's Next
A small-market team fought for championships every year, gaining global prominence and pride as Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook defied the long odds facing a multi-national entertainment product that stakes its identity in the middle of a state most known for its unbeautiful dust. Read more »
Non-Basketball And The NBA's Booming Business
While there are space-age strides being made in the way NBA is played, and while these Finals have seen some dazzling individual performances from LeBron and Kyrie, it's clear that the quality of play is not what has fans leaning in. Culture, not basketball, is the NBA's leading export. Read more »
The Warriors' Three-Point Excellence And Class Warfare In The NBA
Golden State's unprecedented expertise at the three-pointer has highlighted just how crucial it is to modern success in the NBA, perhaps even pointing the way where teams with championship aspirations treat the shot the way Fortune 500 companies look at offshore bank accounts. Read more »
Thunder Go Out As Golden State's Most Potent Antidote
The Thunder were this close to bridging the gap between excitement and satisfaction that has long defined them, and reversing many inevitabilities of the stylistic path the Warriors have sent the NBA down. Read more »
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