The Week That Was (Jan. 29-Feb. 2, 2024)

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

Feb 03, 2024

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!), 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.

✍️ Back on the ‘Stack - In the wake of The Messenger’s well-documented implosion, I wanted to give thanks to the many people there who I got to know and work with. Our time together was brief, but we still managed to make cool stuff — see below. I also gave an update on what’s next for me, including the future of this Substack. (Paid plans are now active again! 🙏)
🏁 A Brief History of Ferrari Signing Former F1 World Champions (Like Lewis Hamilton) - Lewis Hamilton is leaving Mercedes for Ferrari after this season, which is a crazy thing to have just typed. I looked back at other times the Prancing Horse brought in a former champ — or an otherwise heavy contender like Kimi Raikkonen — to see how often it works for them.
🏀 Luka and Embiid’s 70-Point Games Are Part of a High-Scoring NBA Trend - After Joel Embiid and Luka Doncic dropped 70-point games within a few days of each other, the NBA world seemed to take extra notice of the crazy stat lines that players are piling up. I put it in context by looking at the prevalence of 60- and 70-point games over time, and how it relates to the league’s current scoring environment (teams haven’t scored this many PPG since 1969-70).
🏈 Chiefs-Niners Is One of the Super Bowl's Weirdest Rematches - A lot is going to be made of Super Bowl LVIII being a rematch of Super Bowl LIV from 2020. But how much of a rematch is it? I looked at the amount of roster carry-over since the 2019-20 season for both K.C. and S.F., and how those figures compare with other teams who returned to the Super Bowl after four years.
🏀 Is the NBA’s 65-Game Awards Threshold Unreasonable? - Everybody is kvetching about the hard cutoff for games the NBA has in place to be eligible for major awards this season. (That’s especially true since Joel Embiid hurt his knee this week, putting his ability to stay above the 79 Line in doubt.) But how often in history would it have actually affected the selections for those awards?
🏀 When Will Caitlin Clark Break The All-Time Scoring Record? - This is an updating tracker that we launched before this past week, but let’s forget about that for a second. At her current pace, Clark is tracking to break both the women’s and overall D1 records for points before the end of the season:
🏈 Belichick’s Statistical Secret Sauce: Can It Ever Be Replicated? - It looks like Bill Belichick won’t coach anywhere in 2024, and he may not even come back in 2025 or beyond. But if he does, he’ll probably need to revive these five Patriots-dynasty hallmarks in order to be successful again.
🏒 Can the L.A. Kings Pull Out of Their Tailspin? - The Kings have already had one of the weirdest up-and-down seasons of any team in recent memory, starting the year as Stanley Cup favorites at one point before completely falling apart. They did notch a W heading into the All-Star break, so maybe that will help stabilize things on the other side.