It is the nature of the NBA, for reasons that only intermittently have anything to do with the league itself, that it is discussed as if it's in crisis. A lot of this is just how sports are talked about now, which is as reflexive and sour as every other big public discourse. The NBA regular season really is too long, but still it must be said: We are into the good part now, and the playoffs have been—pardon the jargon here—extremely fun and good. So Drew and I welcomed Patrick Redford, one of Defector's foremost basketball likers, to talk about that.
The result was more like a Lover's Guide To The NBA Playoffs, because we're having a blast over here. We talked about the fascinating and unfinished young teams currently leading the league, the conflict playing out between those future-facing young teams and the older, star-driven clubs trying to sneak through a narrow competitive window before the dynastic teams of the future arrive for real, and the disparate styles of play that divide them. Patrick has written about this stuff at Defector all season, and the conversation moved fluently between the meta-stuff—the semi-tragedy of Damian Lillard and the Bucks, the challenges of building a roster in the current cap environment—and a more nuts-and-bolts consideration of the actual basketball being played. Also we helped Drew decide whether to buy a Naz Reid jersey.
After the break, we stopped in with the Eastern Conference, which is as always the place where good vibes go to wane. Even here, though, there is stuff to celebrate: the Orlando Magic as a collection of a very specific type of guy, the Pacers as a team playing some of the most enjoyable-looking basketball in ages, the Celtics as a team doing something like the same thing but much better. We also talked about Tom Thibodeau and the Knicks, who are both boring and kind of backward and half-admirable despite that. Drew, in a generous moment, steered things back west so that we could talk briefly about the Clippers, who are really balanced and good, and their voluble owner Steve Ballmer, who is hilariously unbalanced. Somehow this bit includes all three of us doing Bernie Sanders imitations, although I should note that I started that.
Finally we looked ahead to the Finals that all of us want, which would pit the Cleveland Cavaliers' awesome and generous offensive style against the Oklahoma City Thunder's ultra-stifling defense. That's a lot of basketball, even before you get to Patrick's address on the state of the NBA discourse—his other podcast, Nothing But Respect, is a good primer for those interested in that—and the importance of Zach Lowe to that discourse not just as a beloved expert but as the author of the consensus NBA reality.
In the Funbag, we found farts—specifically, a question about whether farts are worse when you're sick. That was a tough one to answer, although we gave it our best efforts; Drew did talk about his kids getting mad at him for farting, which comports very well with what I imagine his home life to be like. A second question, which took for granted that I look like one or I guess both members of The Proclaimers, led me to get mildly heated in making clear that you can't just compare me to everyone that wears glasses. We ended with a lovely story about Drew's dad meeting his doppelganger in Europe and the two sharing a pint and talking about looking like that, and then with the pleasant image of Patrick enjoying a crisp, mineral-forward Sylvaner with his own consensus doppelganger, Jannik Sinner. There's a little more after that, but let's leave things there: a good wine, pleasant if slightly uncanny company, and nothing much to complain about.
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