The Week That Was (July 7-11, 2025)

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

Jul 12, 2025

Apologies for skipping last week’s post — but we’re back again this weekend.

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 Death of the Wild NBA Offseason - Remember the NBA’s summers of wild, star-driven chaos? I quantified how much recent CBA restrictions and second-apron penalties have made those a thing of the past, with no 10+ WAR players and just five 5+ WAR players changing teams this offseason.
⚾ Which All-Stars Tend to Stay All-Stars? - Congratulations, 2025 MLB All-Stars — you’re part of an elite club… for now. But how long will you stay elite? I looked at the odds of making it back to the Midsummer Classic based on such factors as age, track record and position.
🏀 The Rise and Fall of NBA Generations - With the Thunder’s Zoomer-heavy title run, Gen Z has officially taken over the NBA — just as Millennials did before them, and Gen X before that. I traced each generation’s rise and fall through NBA history, showing how long they held power and when the next wave began to take over.
🏒 From adding talent to losing captains: NHL teams that changed the most this offseason - I used three-year weighted Goals Above Replacement to track offseason value shifts: Despite an offseason of less big-time player movement than usual, teams like the Sharks, Ducks and Kraken added the most GAR talent via smart veteran additions and few key losses, while the Stars, Oilers and Leafs lost major contributors and took big hits to their rosters heading into 2025-26.
⚾ Is MLB Due for a Second Half — and October — of Parity? - Despite prediction and betting markets giving the Dodgers 30 percent title odds, this year’s weak group of top first-half teams suggests we could be headed for chaos more in line with parity-filled seasons of the past. With no dominant favorites and a deep middle class, 2025 might end up being one of those classic unpredictable Octobers from an earlier era.
🏈 Can Oklahoma Finally Be Good on Both Offense and Defense? - The Sooners have long struggled to sync up offensive and defensive excellence in the same season, usually featuring wide gaps between the two sides of the ball year after year. But with transfer QB John Mateer and a reunited OC on board, plus a strong returning core on D, 2025 might finally be the year both sides click — and OU finally rejoins the playoff race.
🏁 Is Shane van Gisbergen already NASCAR’s best road-course racer ever? -Fresh off another Chicago win, Shane van Gisbergen has a strong case as the most dominant road-course racer on a per-race basis in NASCAR history, with the best win percentage and Driver Rating ever. Whether he ranks above all-timers like Jeff Gordon, Cale Yarborough or Marcos Ambrose depends on your metric of choice, but SVG has already done enough to earn a spot in the GOAT conversation.
- 🏁🎧 SVGoated - In this week’s episode of Podracing,
  Tyler
  and I broke down SVG’s sweep in Chicago — winning both the Xfinity and Cup races — including the late caution that helped seal the deal. Then we dove into my story making the case for SVG (and a few others) as NASCAR’s greatest road-course racer, previewed Sonoma — where SVG is, of course, the big favorite — updated the In-Season Challenge bracket odds, and made our one-and-done picks.
🎧 Numbers & Words - A Multisport Survey of Thibodeaus with Neil Paine - My friend
Ryan Nanni
was kind enough to invite me on his new podcast Phantom Island to talk about coaches who were fired after taking their teams to a “final four” appearance — and how those moves tend to work out.
Programming Note: Check out my NASCAR driver ratings page for updating probabilities of each driver to advance through — and win — the inaugural In-Season Challenge:

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.