📝 The Week That Was (May 5-9, 2025)

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

May 10, 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.

🏀 The Celtics Are Having the Most Choke-Tastic Start to a Series in Modern NBA History - After blowing both Games 1-2 of the East semis in a mind-bogglingly similar fashion, exactly how much Win Probability did Boston give away to the Knicks — and where does that rank compared with other early-series collapses?
🏀🏒⚾ Which Games Matter Most in a Best-of-7 Series? - In this chart-heavy post, I explored which games in a series carry the most “leverage” toward the eventual series outcome, based on where the game is and who is leading (by how much) going in.
⚾ Baseball Bytes: The Redemption of Javy Báez - One of the great stories of the 2025 MLB season so far has been the ongoing improvement of the Detroit Tigers into one of baseball’s best teams — and a surprising driving factor has been the once-and-future stardom of Báez, whose career seemed basically shot as recently as a year ago. I also dove into why Mark “Hittin’” Whiten’s four-home run game was perhaps less of a fluke than it seemed.
🏒 The NHL Playoffs Are Down to Eight — Including (Somehow) the Jets. But the Cup Is Up for Grabs. - The Winnipeg Jets barely survived Round 1 to continue their status as on-paper favorites to win the Stanley Cup in my Elo model. But it’s clear that any of the remaining teams could — and might — win it all from here.
🏀 What Game 1 Upsets Did to the Thunder, Celtics and Cavs’ NBA Title Chances - At one point in Round 2 of the NBA playoffs, the three teams that were heavy favorites all year — the Thunder, Celtics and Cavs — had a stunning 0-5 combined record. After Game 1 of each series, I looked at where they stood in the overall title picture despite the losses.
🏁 Joe Gibbs Racing has cooled in Q2, but is reignition on the horizon? - This week’s NASCAR.com piece focused on the recent downturn in performance for Joe Gibbs Racing — who’d been the co-best team of Q1 in 2025 — and why there may be more dominance in their future regardless.
- 🏁🎧 Joey Logano is a PROBLEM - This week on Podracing,
  Tyler
  and I reacted to Logano’s big Texas win — and the big release of Netflix’s Full Speed Season 2 this week. We broke down a literal hot-seat moment for Denny Hamlin, unpacked JGR’s sudden slump after a red-hot start (see above), and previewed Kansas with our favorite bets and one-and-done picks.

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.