Basketball

With bated breath, diehard sports fans in America and across the globe waited to see what LeBron James’s “The Second Decision,” meant for the NBA icon’s future. Retirement? A team change? Another son being gifted – ahem – earning an NBA draft pick? “Everyone’s on pins and needles across the country,” the host said in the anticipated video. “You ready to go, LeBron?” Then, a pause for unnecessary dramatic effect. “LeBron, fans want to know where you’re taking your talents this year. What’s your decision?” “In this fall, man this is tough,” James’s bad acting enunciates, “In this fall, I’m going to be taking my talents to Hennessy VSOP.” Hennessy is a cognac brand. He was announcing a new brand deal.

Editor’s note: The views stated in this article are the author’s opinion and arguably contentious. Derek Webb, a California resident mentioned in this piece, offers his alternative view here. Today tens of millions of Americans will happily place a billion bets they know they will lose. The tradition of March Madness office pools, one of the healthiest forms of camaraderie-based parlay gambling, will take place all across America, with people who have never seen a single game played by any college basketball team this season picking UC San Diego over Michigan, because they know a guy who knows ball and he has a feeling. Or, even more popular, the all-mascot bracket, which will struggle with this year’s Houston-SIU game – because they’re both the Cougars. Best to flip a coin?

Over the past two weeks, one of the biggest culture war conversations in America has had absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump, Joe Biden or the 2024 elections. Instead, it’s centered on, of all things, the WNBA.  The discourse around Caitlin Clark, the Iowa phenom who won rookie of the month in May, has run the gamut of everything wrong with how we argue today — injecting racism, sexism, talk of “pretty privilege” and allegations of “assault” for hard fouls. Most non-sports commentators writing and discussing Clark’s controversial entry into the pros have never had an opinion about basketball until five minutes ago, but no matter — let a thousand takes bloom about a hotshot rookie on a bottom-feeding team.

The announcement this morning by owner Ted Leonsis that Washington, DC is losing the Washington Capitals and Wizards franchises to Virginia is the ultimate indictment of incompetent Mayor Muriel Bowser and corrupt Democrats on the city council who let crime take over the nation’s capital. To say DC has a rampant crime problem is an understatement. You may already have heard about the incredible rise in carjacking, which more than doubled year over year – with juvenile offenders accounting for the vast majority of arrests. All crime is up by almost a third, violent crime is up almost 40 percent and total homicides passed 200 in September, earlier in the year than it has since 1997.

Basketball is one of America’s best exports. Back in 1992, NBA rosters featured only twenty-three foreign-born players from eighteen nations. That was the year the US Olympic “Dream Team,” starring Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Charles Barkley, posterized its way to the gold medal by an average margin of forty-three points. The Dream Team helped spur a worldwide hoops boom that shows no signs of stalling. When a new NBA season tips off on October 24, there will be at least 120 foreign-born players from forty nations on league rosters. Basketball, born in a dusty gym in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891, is now one of the world’s two favorite sports, second only to soccer. The games are close cousins.

The LSU women’s basketball team won the NCAA National Championship Sunday night. The Lady Tigers beat Iowa 102-85, earning themselves a trip to the White House. But the meeting between First Lady Jill Biden and LSU’s star player, Angel Reese, might be a little frosty, as Jill Biden suggested the Iowa girls tag along for the visit, too. “I know we’ll have the champions come to the White House, we always do,” Jill Biden said yesterday. “So, we hope LSU will come. But, you know, I’m going to tell Joe I think Iowa should come, too, because they played such a good game.” It seems that either Joe doesn’t give a darn what Jill thinks, or else he forgot her suggestion already.

March Madness markets itself on the chaos, the unpredictability, and the Cinderella stories that make the NCAA basketball tournament one of the most beloved sporting events in America. Most years, the really shocking upsets are usually out of the way by the end of the first weekend. By the time the tournament reaches its most critical rounds, fans are fortunate if there is a single Cinderella still dancing. Over the last thirty tournaments — I would say years but the 2020 tourney was canceled due to Covid — only two national champions have started the tournament as lower than a three seed. In that same span, only two Final Fours did not feature a one seed, while thirteen Final Fours over the past three decades have contained multiple one seeded teams.

Remember when “Free Tibet” was a mainstay of the cool, hippie subculture that dominated the Nineties? Back when Hollywood cared about the fate of Buddhism’s Holy Land? Few will even remember that Disney — yes, the same Disney that recently filmed parts of the live-action Mulan in Xinjiang — produced a film, Kundun, about the early life of the Dalai Lama. China then retaliated by banning Disney films, causing the company to backtrack and attempt to bury the Scorsese-directed biopic. Disney's then-CEO even traveled to China to apologize. This series of events should sound familiar by now in the age of Western capitulation to China. Less commonplace these days is the sight of a celebrity sporting imagery of the Dalai Lama and any quaint talk of “freeing Tibet.