The Week That Was (June 9-13, 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.

• ⛳ Tiger at Pebble Is Still Untouchable - Twenty-five years later, Tiger Woods’ 2000 U.S. Open remains the most dominant major performance ever — and I have a new metric, ELDRICK, to prove it.

• ⚾ Baseball Bytes: Did the Braves Miss Their Shot at a Dynasty? - Atlanta mastered modern team-building — but their golden era may be depreciating. Plus, a look at Roman Anthony and how quickly top prospects find their first hits.

• 🏀 What The Pacers Have Done To OKC - Thanks to tactical changes by the Pacers, the Thunder weren't themselves in Game 3 — and Indiana found itself 2 wins from an unlikely NBA title as a result.

  • 🏀 2025 NBA Finals: Pacers–Thunder Outlier Stats Ahead of Game 3 - Relatedly, at ESPN I looked at some of the statistically strange turns the first two games of the NBA Finals had taken.

• 🏀 Is Jalen Williams Actually the Thunder’s Key to Winning? - I analyzed which Thunder and Pacers players best correlate with team success this season — with some admittedly surprising results.

• 🏒 The Panthers and Oilers Remain Hockey's Ultimate Toss-Up - The Stanley Cup Final was a dead-heat through two games — and with the series now tied again at 2-2, the balance still holds.

• 🏁 Don’t Count Out Shane van Gisbergen Just Yet - SVG’s playoff hopes are hanging by a thread — but with a bunch of his bread-and-butter road courses coming up, he has a surprising good shot at a comeback.

  

  • 🏁🎧 Saint Van Gisbergen - This week on Podracing,

    Tyler
    and I talked Denny Hamlin's fuel-saving masterclass at Michigan, and why we shouldn't take his impressive streak of 3-win seasons for granted. Then we paid tribute to the Patron Saint of Podracing, Shane Van Gisbergen, ahead of the Mexico City race. And finally, I cashed in on successfully tanking to take SVG in the one-and-done contest.

  

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.

• ⚾ Small Sample Size: All Data Starts Here and When Defense Was An Identity: I Am The Position I Play by

  Doug Glanville
  (Note: Both of these pieces were excellent, so they get first billing!)

• 🏈🏀⚾🏒 A Young Man's Manifesto on Old-Time League Structures by

  Robbie Marriage

• 🏈 Nick Saban, Kent State, and What Happens Next (1970) by

  Michael Weinreb

• 🏈 Alabama Found Another ONE at Wide Receiver by

  VP

• 🏈 I Created a Play-By-Play Dataset for the 2007 College Football Season Because I Couldn't Find One Online by

  Ray Carpenter

• 🏈 Is 2025 Mike Gundy's Last Saloon? and 💰 Will Buyouts Go Bye-Bye in the Rev-Share Era? by

  Tyler Schuster

• 🏈🏀 Welcome to a New Era: House v. NCAA Gets Final Approval by

  Griffin Olah

• 🏀 The Pacers are Almost the Clutchest Team in (Recorded) History by

  Above the Break

• 🏀 SLAM Magazine Review - January 1998 // Antoine Carr, more Detlef Schrempf, and a game winner for Shaq! by

  Chris Shorts

• 🏀⚖️ The Time Jay Bilas Subpoenaed Barney the Purple Dinosaur – by

  Jeremy Markovich

• ⚾ Once a Shortstop, Now a Stud? by

  Maxfield Lane
  and
  Owen Riley

• ⚾ Murray State is the Ultimate College World Series Cinderella by

  Craig Meyer

• ⚾ Almost A Met: Kris Bryant by

  Almost A Met

• 🏒 Does the NHL Still Have a Size Bias? by

  Garret Hohl

• 🏒 On Expectations, NHL Coaches, and the Board Game “Root” by

  Sean Shapiro

• 🎾 The consistent Jannik Sinner has a crucial role in the new rivalry atop men’s tennis by

  Ben Wylie

• ⚽ Soccer in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq by

  Austin Cornilles

• 🏁 Season Grades for NASCAR Drivers: Part I by

  Sean Wrona

• 📝 Who YOU think does it well by

  Brian Moritz
  (Note: Only partially being linked because I was included, lol.)

• ▶️ The Pros vs Joes pilot was beautiful sports chaos by Kofie

• 🎶 These Things I'll Be: Brian Wilson 1942–2025 by

  Ross Barkan

• 📰 The weird zombie existence of the Family Circus by Don McHoull

Old YouTube Game of the Week

1988 Stanley Cup Finals - Bruins vs. Oilers - The "Lights Out" Game 4 (Boston Garden - May 24, 1988)

Music to Play Us Out

“'Til I Die” by Brian Wilson

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Filed under: Weekly Round-up

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