📝 The Week That Was (June 10-14, 2024)
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
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.
🏀 Jerry West Was Basketball’s Greatest Lifer - To pay tribute to the great Jerry West, who died this week, I showed that no other individual in NBA history combined excellence as a player and a coach/GM after retiring like The Logo did.
🏀🏒 The NBA (and NHL) Finals Could Be a Championship Sweep. We Don’t See Those Much Anymore. - With both Finals looking like they might have potentially ended with 4-0 margins, I looked at whether championship sweeps happen as much as they should (and if not, why they don’t).
🏈 We Don’t Know Which NFL Teams Have Hard (Or Easy) Schedules - The NFL schedules are out, and that means digging into which teams have the hardest and easiest slates. Except, what if preseason strength of schedule based on last year’s opponent winning percentages basically tells us nothing?
🏁 Who might win Iowa’s Cup debut? Look at who’s (sort of) been there before - My debut for NASCAR.com! With the Cup Series running its first race at Iowa, I looked at results from lower-tier races at the track to see who might have an edge.
⚾ Is Julio Rodríguez Destined to Be a Slow Starter Forever? - The Mariners’ star is off to a sluggish start again in 2024, after struggling to heat up until midseason in 2023 as well. Is this just going to be a thing with him now?
🏀 The NBA Finalists Who Went Down 0-2 on the Road... And Won Anyway - When the Celtics took a 2-0 lead in the Finals, I found that teams who won Games 1-2 at home had a 28-5 all-time record. so naturally, I then had to find which five teams actually overcame that situation…
🏀 Remembering the ‘77 Sixers, who held a 2-0 NBA Finals lead on Bill Walton’s Trail Blazers — and let it slip away - …And one of those teams was the 1977 Sixers, which gave me the excuse to look back on their collapse for the Philly Inquirer.
🏀 Are the NBA Finals Over? and What We Know Now about the Celtics and Mavs - At
’s substack, I was lucky enough to be one of the writers asked to react to the first few games of the Finals.
Some interesting things I read/watched this week
🏀 Jerry West: The Logo and a Lot More by
🏀 Jerry West by the Numbers by
⚾ The radar gun doesn't work here / What bat speed can tell us about a hitter's decisions by
⚾ Kyle Schwarber is Mr. June - At Least For Now... by
🏀 The Celtics' reality beats the theories by
🎧🏀 Did the NBA's changes cause all these playoff injuries? w/ James Herbert, CBS Sports by
⚾ It's Congressional Baseball Game Day! by
🏀 Exits: Flesh wounds by
🏁 Max Verstappen and Kyle Larson making history together by
🏀 What Is Cable TV in 2024? A Statistical Analysis by
🗳️ Pollster ratings, Silver Bulletin style by
🐜 Economic Termites Are Everywhere by
⚾ 5 Franchise-Changing Baseball Cards by
🏁 Stewart-Haas demise might ignite NASCAR's ongoing charter feud by Ryan McGee
🏀 Bill Walton's passing & defense was insane! by Thinking Basketball
Blast From the Past
In honor of the 10-year anniversary of Tony Gwynn’s death coming up on Sunday, here’s a 2019 piece I wrote about his enduring influence for FiveThirtyEight:
Old YouTube game of the week
1993 Stanley Cup Finals Game 5 - Los Angeles at Montreal
Music to play us out
Pete Rock & CL Smooth - “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)”
Filed under: Weekly Round-up
I’m at neil[dot]paine[at]gmail[dot]com.