📝 The Week That Was (July 8-12, 2024)

A roundup of what I wrote, read, watched, etc. over the past week.

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In this space on Saturdays, I do a weekly round-up of sorts: Sifting through what I wrote that you might have missed during the week, what I’ve been reading and watching myself, and some other fun things that have been going on. Let me know what you think about the format in the comments (or email me!¹), and if there are running sections you’d like to see on a regular basis.

What I did this week

Stealing a bit from Will Leitch’s newsletter format, here are the things I wrote or podcasted about during the previous week, sorted in descending order by quality, popularity and/or current relevance.

• 🏀 The 2011 Finals Sabotaged LeBron’s GOAT Case before It Had a Chance - Amidst the ever-ubiquitous Jordan-vs-James GOAT chatter, I argued that it’s probably been too late for LeBron ever since he and the Heat flopped as favorites against the Mavs.

• ⚾ Nobody Runs Hot and Cold like the Yankees - If it seems like the Bronx Bombers are constantly teetering between total dominance and total destruction, well… you’re right.

• ⚾ Hey Now, You’re an All-Star. You Probably Earned It in the First Half. - What matters more in All-Star selections: First-half performance, or previous track record? (And has that changed?)

• 🏀 Ranking 2024 WNBA rookies: Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark, more ($) - At ESPN, I updated the WNBA rookie rankings, based on my Consensus Wins metric. Where are Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese?

• ⚾ It Looks Like Rumors of the Astros’ Demise Were Greatly Exaggerated - After being left for dead early in the season, the Astros have surged back into the playoff picture — potentially overcoming one of the worst starts ever for a postseason participant.

• 🏀 OLYMPIANS, ASSEMBLE! // Pick a starting five from the roster pool of American heroes (plus a couple of snubs). - Try your hand at ESPN’s Team USA men’s lineup picker, which uses Estimated RAPTOR to grade your selections!

Some interesting things I read/watched this week

• 🎮 🏈 The death and life of EA Sports' college football video game by

  Split Zone Duo

• 🏀 How Free is Free Agency? by

  Michael Hendricks

• 🏀 Who are college basketball's great overachievers on the sidelines? by

  Will Warren

• 🏀 Introducing the Consensus Best Player Alive metric by

  Tom Ziller
  (Note: This reminded me of an exercise that
  Justin Kubatko
  did a long time ago. Speaking of…)

• 🏀 Old Guards, New Tricks by

  Justin Kubatko

• 🏀 Building a Rudimentary Player Tracking System Using Computer Vision and Homography by

  Joseph George

• ⚾ How the Dodgers and Braves Fixed the Two Best Starting Pitchers in the National League by

  Molly Knight

• 🏀 Is A'ja Wilson en route to the greatest single season ever? by

  Matthew Coller
  (Note: This is a really good overview, though it could have used some Estimated RAPTOR ;-)

• 🏀 The NBA's Continuity Complex is Coming, and No Team Is Ready by

  Jacob Sutton

• 🏀 2025 NBA Draft Big Board 2.0 by

  Nic Thomas

• 😂 Thank God the Founding Fathers Foresaw a Role for the Hot Doctor From “ER” to Save Us in a Time of Crisis by

  Jeff Maurer

• 🛻 The complete story of the time a monster truck drove across the Currituck Sound by

  Jeremy Markovich

• 📖 How the War of 1812, a Vanderbilt, and an insurance company gave us Madison Square Garden by

  Ryan Nanni

• 🏒 GARY BETTMAN / The Commish had been on the job for a year when we first talked & the interview started out just grand. A couple of innocuous questions chilled the room. by

  Gare Joyce

• 🎵 How Has Music Changed Since the 1950s? A Statistical Analysis by

  Daniel Parris

• 🏒 The Dallas Stars have left TV and are going all-in on free in-market streaming by

  Sean Shapiro

• ⚾ The Five Sweetest Swings of All Time by

  Joe Posnanski

• 🏈 Which rookies are destined for success? by

  Tyler Dunne

• 🏀 Five Out: All-Star Picks, Plantar Fasciitis and a potential Rookie of the Year race for the ages by

  Andrew Haubner

• 🏒🎵 Introducing the NHL Soundtrack Project by

  JFresh

• 📝 Alice Munro is Dead by Freddie deBoer

• 👀 Biden's age and the problem with the misinformation cope by

  Dan Williams

• 📉 America's Income Crisis: How It's Triggering a Collapse in Birth Rates by EPB Research

Chart of the week

Music to play us out

State Cows - Ticket to Ride

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Filed under: Weekly Round-up

1. I’m at neil[dot]paine[at]gmail[dot]com.