📝 The Week That Was (February 3-7, 2025)

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

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

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 Lakers Keep Getting Away With This - After the mind-melting Luka Dončić/Anthony Davis trade last weekend, I looked at the Lakers’ forever-habit of loading themselves up with Hall of Famers — especially HOFers they themselves didn’t actually draft.

  

• 🏀 Does the NBA Have More Great Teams Than Ever — Or Just More Bad Ones? - Amidst all of the league’s off-court drama (see above), the Thunder, Cavs and Celtics are all having historically great seasons on the court… and the Wizards are historically bad. So I dove into what’s driving this, how it compares to history and what it all means.

• 🏈 Interesting Super Bowl Logos Are Making a Comeback. (Finally.) - In honor of a recent uptick in visually interesting Super Bowl logos, I quantified the color quality of each logo throughout history — paying tribute to the wild logos of the ‘90s while also dumping all over the horrendous ones of the 2010s.

• 🏀💰 Terry Rozier Doesn’t Fit the Usual Profile of Sports Betting Scandals — And Leagues Should Be Worried - Most pro athletes involved in gambling scandals have one thing in common: they’re scrubs. Not so in the case of Terry Rozier, the former All-Star candidate (and multi-time $50 million+ extension recipient) who was recently implicated in a federal probe around suspicious prop-betting activity.

• 🏈 How Betting the Super Bowl Has Changed — And Why Closer Lines and Higher Totals Are Trending - In collaboration with Brian Wright and Unders Club, we wrote about historical trends in the Super Bowl point spread and over/under total.

  

• 🏀 Bubble Watch 2025: Men's NCAA tournament locks by conference - I am on ✨ Bubble Watch ✨ duty for ESPN this spring — and this week we launched the official page, which will be updated every morning and night until Selection Sunday. It’s powered by ESPN Analytics’ tourney forecast model, but I also try to provide context around why the model is returning a particular number and what a team needs to do from here.

  • Related: For a second opinion on these teams, check out my 🏀2024-25 NCAA Tournament Meta-Forecast 📊, which averages together many different tourney forecasts — including ESPN’s — to get a holistic view of each team’s chances. (Some of these models disagree quite a bit, which is why the composite has a lot of value IMO.)

• 🏁🎧 Bowman Gray’s Anatomy - This week on Podracing,

  Tyler
  and I recap the Cook Out Clash and look at its potential clues about the season to come. Then I do a little historical digging on cases like the weirdness of seeing Chase Briscoe — not Martin Truex Jr. — in the #19 Bass Pro Toyota. And Tyler explains our “world-famous” one-and-done pick-em contest.

• 🏒 Who excels in NHL's defining metrics at 4 Nations Face-Off? - Also for ESPN, I used a combination of NHL EDGE data and other advanced metrics to look at the fastest skaters, hardest shooters, most dangerous offensive threats and best goalies at the upcoming 4 Nations Face-Off.

Some interesting things I read/watched this week

A collection of articles (with a heavy focus on my fellow Substackers), videos and other media that I enjoyed and/or found thought-provoking over the past week. I don’t always 100% agree with what’s linked here… but that’s also sort of the point.

• 🏈 Super Bowl Saquon is for all the stars who never made it to a second team by

  Rodger Sherman

• 🏈 Bill Belichick's Girlfriend Is The Star Of The Super Bowl // What's her end game? by

  Madeline Hill

• 🏈 How the Kansas City Chiefs mentally BURY you and The Mystery of Zack Baun, the Eagles’ 2024 wrecking ball by

  Tyler Dunne

• 🏈 The haters guide to why every dynasty was hated by

  Sue Shawn Says

• 🏈 FOOTBALLNOMICS: An Economic Approach to Roster Management, Part 1 by

  CFB Graphs

• 🏈 The problem with nostalgia hires by

  Craig Meyer

• 🏈 The 2004 QB Draft, In a Hall of Fame Sense by

  Robbie Marriage

• 🏈🎧 The Unaccused Suspects: Schools, Players, and the Media by

  Who Killed College Football?

• 🏀▶️ What former players get completely WRONG about today's NBA by Thinking Basketball

• 🏀 The Incredible Basketball Immortality of LeBron James by

  Above the Break

• 🏀 Jimmy Butler Trade Shows Me I'm a Casual by

  Ethan Strauss

• 🏀 Riding the shot volume TRAM by

  Chris

• 🏀 11 Takes on the Explosive NBA Trade Deadline by

  🏀 5x5 | Royce Webb

• 🏀▶️ The Luka Conspiracy Goes Deeper Than You Thought by Atrioc

• 🏀 How close are the Wizards to being the worst team ever? by

  Jared Dubin

• 🏀 The game times, they are increasing by

  Ken Pomeroy

• 🏀 Michigan's two-way bet on shot quality and Yes, it's time to talk about Gonzaga by

  Will Warren

• ⚾️ The All No-Position Prospect Team by

  Down on the Farm

• ⚾️ Every Baseball Team Ranked By Angels in the Outfield Helpfulness by

  Ryan Nanni

• 🧊 Goalies Don’t Steal Games by

  GabArr

• 🧊 Dylan Larkin's Playing The Best Hockey Of His Career by

  Prashanth Iyer

• 🧊 JAROSLAV HALAK, ANZE KOPITAR et al / Four Nations & no others need apply. by

  Gare Joyce

• 🏁 Coping with expectations, Stenhouse has found peace in NASCAR by Kelly Crandall

• 🏁 The Hidden Hustle of Motorsport's Off-Season by

  Molly Oxner

• ⚽️ Barça Femení still dominate — but might be moving away from their defining style by

  Ben Wylie

• 🏆 There's not a frontrunner and it's dumb we're pretending there was by

  Numlock Awards

• 🚚▶️ The Rise of the Pavement Princess by Urgently Firing

• 🪒 Living on Occam's Razor's Edge by

  Andy Pregler

• 💣▶️ The Smartest Bomb Heist In History by Spds

• 🤣▶️ How the "Creed - One Last Breath" Music Video Would ACTUALLY Sound by bumtastik

Neil’s Substack Throwback of the week

Music to play us out

“Time's Up” by O.C.

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Filed under: Weekly Round-up

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