The Week That Was (Mar. 11-15, 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.
🏒 Mike Modano’s Monumental Legacy - With Mike Modano getting a statue outside the Dallas Stars’ arena on Saturday, I wrote about his legacy as the league’s first Sun Belt superstar — and leader of the region’s first Stanley Cup champion.
🏀 The Stunning Rise of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander - SGA was already an NBA star, but this year he is having one of the best statistical seasons of any player since the ABA merger. It’s a rise few would have predicted just a handful of seasons ago.
🏀 These Teams Could Be Your Men's March Madness Sleepers - Using a couple of tried-and-true methods, I went looking for hidden NCAA tourney gems that might be lurking in your men’s bracket. (If Michigan State makes a run, you have to sign up for a subscription!)
⚾️ Mookie Betts Is Attempting an Unprecedented Move - With the news that the Dodgers were moving Betts from 2B to SS — after already moving him from the OF — I tried to find other cases of star outfielders making the move to the middle infield. (Spoiler: There are not many.)
🏀 These Are the Coaches to Avoid in the Men’s NCAA Tournament - Some coaches, like Tom Izzo and John Calipari, have a long history of outperforming expectations in the tourney. Then there are these coaches…
🏀 Where Sixers-Knicks Ranks Among Recent NBA ”Unders” - Feeding into the research and conspiracies around the NBA’s recent, mysterious scoring drop, I looked at just how weird it was for the over/under on a low-scoring Philly-NY game to miss by FIFTY-NINE-AND-A-HALF points.
🏀 17 NBA Finals Predictions: If Boston & Denver Are Ousted, Who Are the New Champs? - In Part 2 of
’s round-up, I offered the most likely Finals matchups in my forecast model… conditional on neither Boston nor Denver making it.
Some interesting things I read/watched this week
🏀 The NBA's bizarre free-throw drought continues: Is it the NBA's pitch clock? by
🏀 Daryl Morey on AI and the NBA by
👀 Sports, but make it content by
🏀 Shot volume is back like it never left by
🏀 WE DONE WITH THE 90'S!!! by JxmyHighroller, We (Not) Done With the 90s (1990) by
and Michael Jordan is the GOAT and We're Not Done With the 90's by
(Yes, this topic set me off. LOL.)⚾️ Padres to World: We Still Exist! by
🏀 SGA might be an 82-game MVP, but can he be the best player on a 16-win team? by
🏀 Inside the Multiverse: 1994 Street & Smith's (Almost) NBA Preview by
🏁 Doriane Pin for President by
⚾️ The Best Base Runner Ever by
🏁 Jesse Love on NASCAR versus F1 racing, his Xfinity debut, and his Jeff Gordon roots by Jeff Gluck
📺 The Big Issue with the Athlete Podcast Space by Bomani Jones
📺 I deleted all my social media and made a website by lrnjulie
✍️ Is Honest Writing the Next New Thing in Journalism? by
🤑 Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman Demonstrate How to Not Think About Economics by
📺 The NBA's funniest new rivalry by
📺 Marvel rejected this couple, so they revolutionized the comic industry by matttt
New feature!
For the degenerates who might bet on auto racing (not that I would ever endorse such a thing), I added something extra to my 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Driver Rankings… The ranking table now contains a tab with projections for the next week’s track, based on a weighted average of performance at that track and similar ones in recent years — and it tells you who is projected to be better there than at other tracks overall.
Old YouTube game(s) of the week
Dallas Stars at Buffalo Sabres: 1999 Stanley Cup Final Game 6
Music to play us out
“悲しみのJody ~She Was Crying~” by L.A. Unit (1990)
Filed under: Weekly Round-up
I’m at neil[dot]paine[at]gmail[dot]com.