NBA

Thursday

Neal Pollack

Did the mafia make NBA stars offers they couldn’t refuse?

The FBI has arrested Chauncey Billups, NBA champion, Hall of Famer, and coach of the Portland Trail Blazers for his association in a rigged poker game operated by some of New York City’s most notorious crime family. “Why would Chauncey do it?” the world of sports is asking. He’s already worth tens of millions of dollars. That’s a question for Billups, his attorneys, his God, and, presumably, Blazers ownership to answer. But as someone who regularly plays a lot of low and micro-stakes poker, I have a pretty good idea. The games I play in are monitored by security cameras, with armed guards at the exits in case people get out of line. When I play in World Series of Poker or World Poker Tour events, there are a strict set of rules by which the vast majority of players abide.

Chauncey Billups

Tuesday

Britt McHenry

LeBron’s ‘Second Decision’ wasted everyone’s time

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.

Monday

Kevin Cook

Which GOAT really is the greatest?

Shohei Ohtani had a baseball season for the ages. The Dodgers’ sensational designated hitter hit fifty-four home runs and stole fifty-nine bases to become the founding member of baseball’s 50/50 club. Even before his Dodgers won the World Series and Ohtani won the National League’s MVP award, sportswriters were calling him the best player in baseball history. His heroics bring a key question into play: is Ohtani’s 2024 season one of the greatest performances in sports history? It’s up there for sure, but there are other contenders. Jesse Owens won four gold medals under Adolf Hitler’s nose at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.

GOAT

Wednesday

Kevin Cook

Basketball is more popular, and soccer-like, than ever

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.

basketball

Friday

Cockburn

Barron Trump for the NBA Draft?

Can Barron Trump dunk? That’s the question posed by one opportunistic sportsbook this week, who started taking bets on which college the former president’s youngest son will play basketball at (their top choices I are the U and St. John’s at +300). The company is also offering odds on whether he’ll be drafted by an NBA team and in which round. So could he make it? On the one hand, at 6’7”, he’s the same height as NBA All-Star Luka Dončić — and, through his mother, the same nationality. On the other hand, Barron is on the record as preferring soccer.

barron trump

Saturday

Bill McMorris

Why the national divorce worked: a future history

The following is an excerpt from Yale University law professor Elizabeth Friedkin’s remarks to the 2026 International Federation of United Conscious Uncoupling Professionals. When then-Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene first proposed the dissolution of the United States of America in 2023, many feared she was threatening a second Civil War, including most of us in this room. Over the past two years, however, we have witnessed a benign break-up that is now a beacon to dissatisfied land conglomerates the world over. I was skeptical when I was chosen to serve as arbitrator, but I will be the first to admit that I underestimated the shrewdness of Ms. Taylor Greene.

national divorce

Friday

Matthew Foldi

GOP seeks answers from NBA over Chinese soft power display

House and Senate Republicans, along with a basketball star, are demanding answers from the NBA about its financial relationship with the Chinese Communist Party following an “in-your-face” display of CCP soft power in the nation’s capital. Following reporting from The Spectator, eight congressmen and four senators wrote to NBA commissioner Adam Silver to express “grave concerns about Chinese Communist Party propaganda being broadcasted and promoted at National Basketball Association games.

China's National People's Congress - Press Conference

Monday

John Pietro

Enes Kanter Freedom on LeBron, Erdoğan and the earthquake

Basketball player and human rights activist Enes Kanter Freedom was invited as Leader Kevin McCarthy's guest of honor to the State of the Union last week, an address in which President Biden barely touched on foreign policy. The former Boston Celtics and Oklahoma City Thunder center spoke with The Spectator about democracy, autocracies and hypocrisy. John Pietro: How far does China’s influence reach into the NBA, in your estimation? Could you see the NBA ever standing up to China in the way the Women’s Tennis Association did in defense of Peng Shuai? Enes Kanter Freedom: I didn’t know how deep the relationship between the NBA and China was until Daryl Morey tweeted and said "stand with Hong Kong" and after that obviously the NBA lost millions and millions of dollars.

enes kanter freedom

Tuesday

Bill Kauffman

Keeping Syracuse time

I have my flaws, but I do know how to treat a lady. Five years ago, for our thirtieth anniversary, I took my wife to a nineteenth-century mental hospital. (We didn’t check in.) This year, to celebrate her birthday, I showed her a traffic light — and as a lagniappe, we gandered at a clock, too. It’s not quite as quotidian as it sounds. Well, maybe it is, but now that I’ve got you on the line, let me tell you why we drove two hours to Syracuse, the Salt City, to inspect a pair of everyday sights. First, the light. In 1925 or thereabouts, the city of Syracuse installed a traffic signal with green on top and red on bottom in the Irish neighborhood of Tipperary Hill. This was done at the behest of an alderman surnamed Ryan. A proud Paddy politico, apparently.

Syracuse

Friday

Stephen L. Miller

Did China just take out an NBA player?

It sure looks like basketball player Enes Kanter Freedom has been blackballed by the NBA for his candor over the league's cozy relationship with China — concentration camps filled with ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang and all. Freedom, who earlier this year began wearing human rights messages on his game shoes illustrated by Chinese dissident artist Badiucao, became a vocal critic of the NBA's cherrypicking of human rights issues. That included directly targeting the league’s star and arguably most recognizable athlete on the planet, LeBron James. In 2019, after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey spoke out against China and in support of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong in a series of now-deleted tweets, China suspended all NBA broadcasts within its borders.

Thursday

Melissa Chen

The player exposing the NBA’s hypocrisy on China

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.

enes kanter

Wednesday

Marlo Safi

Enes Kanter, Kim Kardashian and Turkish crimes against humanity

The Hitler of our century, Boston Celtics basketball player Enes Kanter has said, is the president of his native Turkey. In response to Lebron James playing interference for China following Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeting support for Hong Kong’s protesters and their struggle for liberty, Kanter responded with his experience: his outspoken criticism of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s human rights abuses has cost him his family and his safety. 'FREEDOM IS NOT FREE,' Kanter wrote on Twitter, also listing the consequences for his disobedience, including his father being jailed, Kanter’s attempted kidnapping, and having not seen or spoken to his family in five years. Him and his family became pariahs.

enes kanter