🏀 Jordan Poole of the Washington Wizards (bottom of the Eastern conference, worst win/loss ratio in the league) served a 35-foot buzzer-beater yesterday to beat the Denver Nuggets (top three of the Western conference, 2023 NBA Champions). This is the Wizards' second win against the Nuggets, the first one being back in December. So it is, in fact, a season sweep. Sport is nontransitive, as are so many other things in life.

Some pre-weekend reading:

• Fertility on Demand by Ruxandra Teslo
• The Nikola Jokić problem: Why we will never fully explain his brilliance
• Wikipedia: Monkey selfie copyright dispute (learned about this from the offspring)
• The hardest working font in Manhattan ← my pick of the week

🏀 Jordan Poole went from being my least favorite Wizards' player last season to their most valuable senior team member, and now that I learned he was a fellow cat lover I like him even more. Now if only their record wasn’t so bad… (ᔥr/washingtonwizards

🏀 Speaking of sports, how about them Wizards? Of course it happened while we were away and couldn’t enjoy the rare win, but it is also good since it was against the Nuggets and the family is split around which team we would have supported. So it goes…

The article is titled I Say Forbidden Things About Sports, and he does! Here are the six actual benefits:

1. To promote physical fitness and healthy living
2. To celebrate the values of sportsmanship and fair play—because these will make athletes better human beings, better citizens, and better participants in their communities.
3. To teach the benefits of unselfish teamwork and counter the intense promotion of selfish individual behavior in society.
4. To show youngsters how to deal with defeat and setbacks (as well as winning)—because they will face these again and again in life.
5. To bond together a community—both among fans and between opponents by the goodwill created via fair competitions.
6. To instill valuable life habits of discipline, hard work, courage, and persistence.

Instead, notes Gioia, the young athletes are taught that:

• Winning is more important than anything.
• There’s no value in losing. Losers get the ridicule and mockery they deserve.
• Maybe you need to play on a team, but rewards will depend on your success and fame as an individual—so always look out for your own selfish interests.
• Healthy living is okay, but don’t let it keep you from clubbing and late-night partying—because those are the perks of the athlete’s life.
• Cheating will enhance all these beneifts (sic!) — just don’t get caught.

How very true. To take NBA, an American sport with which I am the most familiar, you can see it in the large swings in score when the losing team snaps and realizes they can’t win the game and therefore they don’t even try.

Do read the whole thing.

🏀 The Wizards' season home opener against the Celtics was a bust, but that wasn’t a surprise. I’m actually more hopeful after this game than I’ve been after the last season’s home win against the Grizzlies. A dignified(-ish) loss against a great team versus an eked out win against a bad one.

Black, white, mixed, and Yugoslavian

File under “headlines of note”, from Scott Sumner.

On a semi-related note, the NBA season is starting tonight and I look forward to the Wizards’ home game tomorrow night, even if it ends up being the devastating loss from the Celtics that everyone expects will happen.

🏀 And we’re back!

🏀 With the Nuggets and the Knicks both knocked out of the playoffs on the same day, my basketball-watching season is officially over. Let’s see what 2024/25 brings to everyone, the Wizards in particular.

🏀 The craziest end to a half-time in a long long time happened last night in Minnesota and even if you are not a basketball fan I am sure you will appreciate the cinematic quality of the scene starting at 1:17. But do watch the whole thing, it is only 90 seconds long.