Billy Donovan and the Bulls have consistently become a whole much stronger than the sum of its parts, regardless of the setbacks that have soiled them. Read more »
Basketball Analysis
The Ad Hoc Bulls Are Still Back
Haliburton, Sabonis Stuck In A Trade
When you are young and skilled in the NBA, you have the whole world in front of you. The whole world viewed through the prism of whatever town you're stuck in. Read more »
The Nets, Sixers, And Whether To Cut A Bomb Wire Together
Any way you look at it, this possible swap of James Harden and Ben Simmons involves an unusual mix of both potential and risk. It could undo either franchise, but also lead either to a championship. Read more »
Andrew Wiggins Has Finally Become An All-Star But Not Quite
This is comfortably the most successful season of Andrew Wiggins' career, and it's been exactly successful enough to get him a piece of recognition he doesn't deserve. Read more »
Klay Thompson's Dispatch From A Simpler Time
Klay Thompson seems to embody the vibe that many NBA fans like to believe that they would have themselves... if only they were an athletically brilliant multi-millionaire. Read more »
The Indignity Of Russell Westbrook
Russell Westbrook is a fading hero struggling to move onto a new story, a man out of time and out of scene- seemingly trapped in his own replaying movie, one that everybody else has already stopped watching. Read more »
Orlando Remains Strangely Unreal
As Markelle Fultz and Jonathan Isaac remain on the shelf and the rest of the squad can't quite get right, this is turning into a brutal wash of a season for the Magic. Read more »
De'Aaron Fox's Prolonged Funk
There is so much in front of De'Aaron Fox, and yet it feels at this particular time in his career that he's going to play through all of it smacking slightly of disappointment, not quite lining up with our early expectations. Read more »
The New Bulls Are Still In Prelude Mode
Exactly halfway through this remarkably tempestuous season, the Bulls have shown resourcefulness, resolve, and evolution ample enough to suggest that they could rise to the title contender level with time. Read more »
LeBron James Is Still Amazing
LeBron James' improbably persistent excellence is the undertold story of the Lakers this season, and it's hard to blame the broader basketball public for not being super interested. Read more »
The Shared Construction Of A Mosaic
Dirk Nowitzki played 21 years. You could spend a lifetime dissecting a tenure that vast. It's spirit-salving, especially when everybody's down, to spend at least a few days on it. Read more »
DeMar DeRozan's Deliverance
DeMar DeRozan has come into his power like the sun showing up in the eye of a hurricane, there all along but waiting, patiently, for the circle of fortune to form up around him. Read more »
The NBA's Apocalyptic Season
Using cheap and strange nostalgia to brighten a season that started promisingly but has now taken on the same grim perfunctory stink as the last one feels appropriate, perhaps even metaphorical. Read more »
The NBA Has Completely Changed Its Pandemic Response
The COVID-19 decision-making process currently seems arbitrary, like the league is just trying to plug leaks and bail out water as quickly as possible to keep the ship from sinking and get to Christmas in as good of shape as possible. Read more »
More Hope Than Anticipation For Mavericks
It's hard to imagine Dallas going on a half-hot, half-lucky playoff run like the Suns did last spring. And so what are they accomplishing? What are they striving toward? Read more »
The Sixers, Standing Between Purgatory And Sleeping Gianthood
Maybe the 76ers don't actually need a second co-star; maybe Joel Embiid is a different kind of freak, so much a bulldozer that everything around him can just be a really nice shovel. Read more »
Dame Lillard And The Blazers Have No Idea What They Want To Be
Damian Lillard is an irritatingly tentative star at the center of an irritatingly tentative organization. Read more »
No Longer The Leastern Conference
For now, the Eastern Conference is promising and entertaining while the West is depressing and underwhelming. Read more »
Chris Paul Is Finally Understood
On his fifth team, in his 17th season, the man who may be his sport's greatest commander of all time has fatefully found his greatest love: a potent battleship crew that is willing to do everything just his way. Read more »
Kemba Walker Ended Up Where He Belongs Too Late
Kemba Walker's knee had eight good seasons in it, and he gave them all to a franchise that hardly anyone except the most committed League Pass dorks paid attention to. Read more »
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