📝 The Week That Was (March 24-28, 2025)

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

Mar 29, 2025

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.

🏀 There Is No Ethical Hooping Under Basketball Capitalism - Ever wonder why NBA players try to beg, borrow and steal their way to so many foul calls? It’s because free throws are so damn overpowered (see below). And any attempt to crack down on foul-grifting may need to address this fundamental incentive structure.
🏒 How the Flyers Fumbled a Rebuild... Then Fired the Coach Who Tried to Fix It - This week, I introduced a new series called 📂 “Case Studies” 🔍, in which I look at big decisions that teams had to make, what they did and why, and how it worked out for them. The first case under the microscope? The 2020s Philadelphia Flyers, whose botched rebuild led to John Tortorella being fired on Thursday.
⚾️ These Are Baseball’s Boom-or-Bust Squads For 2025 - Ahead of the U.S. version of Opening Day, I picked out 12 teams — or at least, 12 categories of teams — that have the highest volatility/uncertainty about how their 2025 seasons will go.
🏒 Handicapping the NHL’s Last Remaining Playoff Races - The NHL playoffs are just about three weeks away, and most of the playoff teams have things locked up. But for the two berths still in play, I broke down the pros and cons of each team in the mix, along with their playoff odds.
🏁 Ranking what each short-track star needs at Martinsville - At NASCAR.com, I wrote about the top short track drivers in my current rankings ahead of the first race of the season at that track type, and what success (or failure) would look like this weekend.
- 🏁🎧 Kyle Larson Has Entered The Chat - This week on Podracing,
  Tyler
  and I talked about Larson’s win at Homestead, NASCAR’s new Racing Insights metrics, and who’s set up for a big day at Martinsville.
🏀 Madness Is Mostly Missing This March — For Now - After the first two rounds of the NCAA men’s tournament, I noted how few close games — and how much chalk — there had been, but I also pointed out how a lack of Cinderellas could actually make for some powerhouse games down the road.
🏀 March Madness Heat Index: Who can excel in both Sweet 16s? - At ESPN, I broke down the four teams — two men’s, two women’s — who exceeded expectations the most through two rounds (based on point differential compared with power ratings) and the four who undershot expectations the most as well, identifying the one player who most typified the trend for each school.
⚾️ Bumper 2025 MLB Predictions Roundtable! - As part of
Andrew Steele
’s compilation post, I offered up some baseball predictions for the 2025 season.
🏀 Programming Note: Be sure to check out my 🏀 2025 NCAA Tournament Forecast 📊 for a free, updating look at each men’s tourney team’s odds to advance through (and win) the NCAA championship.
🏒 Other Programming Note: I’m refreshing my 🚨 Ovi Tracker 🚨 after every Washington Capitals game to estimate Alex Ovechkin’s chances of tying or breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record, by any particular date, over the remainder of the 2024-25 regular season.
⚾️ Other Other Programming Note: I am now updating the ⚾ 2025 MLB Elo Power Rankings 📈 page as new results come in from the start of the season.

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.