Every NBA offseason is now a great realignment event. Long-time contenders topple, or foreshadow their near demise with sweaty over-investment while new insurgents take their ground. Read more »
John Wilmes - Basketball Analysis
The NBA Is Realigning (Again)
The NBA Has Made Us Care More About Managers
The new emphasis, for prolonged contention, is on constant renewal. Continuity is almost impossible and we're to care more about the NBA's managerial dances. Read more »
Oklahoma City's Conquest Is Already Here
Physically, financially, and otherwise, the Thunder could never be in this position again. This is not to say that they can't, or won't, win another title- it's certainly possible. Just that the future is stupid. Read more »
The Pacers Are At Home In The NBA Finals
It's not all explosive comebacks and hothouse conquests. The Pacers can win normal games, too, even against a 68-win team. Read more »
OKC Vs. Indy Is A Basketball Science Experiment
The Thunder play a uniquely suffocating defense that has stifled every opponent, but the Pacers might be the one team that can crack it. Read more »
Tyrese Haliburton Is Underrated
It's because of how Tyrese Haliburton sees and enacts the game that his team is more a weather system than a collection of men. Read more »
The Denver Nuggets Vs. The NBA
Dynasties, they say, are over. The goal for Denver, potentially impossible, is to buck everything that the NBA has set in motion. Read more »
The Never-Ending Paranoia About The NBA Draft Lottery
The Mavericks winning the Cooper Flagg lottery months after trading Luka Doncic has the conspiracy theory machine on tilt. But there are no outcomes that would prevent fans and media from such meaning-making. Read more »
The Entropic Indiana Pacers
Tyrese Haliburton is a System Player in that the system flows from him. It is his vision of basketball that defines how his team plays. Read more »
Thunder Emerge As NBA's New Apex Predator
Collectively, the Thunder are a superior basketball species- meaner, faster, deeper, and more streamlined than anyone they face. Read more »
The Nuggets And Clippers, At The End Of Certain History
Five years after their bubble series, the Nuggets are no longer rising talents, but beleaguered champions, potentially on the verge of more change; the Clippers are no longer a microwaved super-contender, but a quirky brew of born-again role players filling in around one star. Read more »
Denver Throws Dynamite At Their Demise
Michael Malone and Calvin Booth battled for control and both lost, but were also in an inevitable race against the NBA's CBA rules that force good teams to renew their rosters every few years. Read more »
Pistons Up, Bucks Down
As the Pistons rise and the Bucks fall, notions of NBA hope and doom clarify. The Pistons, built through the draft and shrewd free agency bargains, will experience the same complex and limiting salary rules that have shrunk the Bucks' prospects, inevitably. Read more »
The New Bulls Charge
Until the Zach LaVine trade, the Bulls looked very much like a team between identities. Now, they're playing a faster style built around Josh Giddey and Coby White. Read more »
What Of The 2025 Dark Horse Contenders?
Big, glitzy talents are often given a longer leash by fans, expected to contend for titles even after non-dominant regular seasons. Even in this parity era, the odds of those teams actually winning a title remain slim. Read more »
The Thunder And Rockets: A Prescription For NBA Depression
Both the Thunder and Rockets are frenetic, physical, and new in a way that quickly washes the rubbish from your mind when you're watching them, if you care at all about the real physical pleasures of the sport. Read more »
Disaster Capitalism At The NBA All-Star Game
The NBA and TNT could have a had an entertaining night of basketball with its new format, but instead did a bait-and-switch with the likes of Kevin Hart and Mr. Beast where the main event became a footnote. Read more »
Why The Luka Trade Will Never Be Forgiven
Luka Doncic has meant something more than what wins and losses do. He is famous, himself, and alive in a way that is wholly original and that will likely prove timeless. Read more »
Who Are The Lakers And Mavericks Now?
Unwilling to see Luka Doncic through whatever plagues him, the Mavericks just sent him to a task much harder than the one they'd given him. If he can do it, basketball mythology will have to revise its definition of "forever." Read more »
The NBA Just Changed
Overnight with the Luka Doncic trade, the NBA moved out of the superstar empowerment era and into one where teams build within the jammed-puzzle machinations of its new CBA. Read more »
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