Now, for something completely different! The NBA season is winding towards the playoffs, and my Warriors are on a six-game win streak. They traded for Jimmy Butler a month ago, and the vibes, as they say, are good.
Despite this, most people still think that last year’s champs, the Boston Celtics, are a better team. Maybe they are. But they play a style of basketball on offense that I find deeply unpleasant—almost the inverse of the joyous improvisation of the Warriors. So I was so delighted by this sick burn from the writer John Saward:
The Celtics, a kind of perverse, analytics-defiled basketball project joylessly hunting 3-pointers with the cold determination of a hedge fund manager…
The rest of the piece, about the surging Detroit Pistons and the idea of “momentum” in sports, is also excellent. (I’ve been really enjoying my subscription to Flaming Hydra, the daily newsletter it was published in.)
