For two leagues that are predominantly Black and brown, and in a country that pays Black women 64 cents to every dollar paid a white male, the NBA is uniquely positioned to make one of the boldest statements regarding women’s and civil rights that this nation — this planet — has ever seen.
Read MoreCrazy enough, what might be the most stable organization in the National Basketball Association, that franchise roughly 400 miles to the north of Chino Hills, is in pole position to bring LaMelo Ball in the fold. And maybe even crazier, I think he’s the obvious choice for the Golden State Warriors in this year’s NBA draft.
Read MoreI almost chose to sit this eulogy out. I mean, transparently, making fun of Kobe’s eccentricities has been a favorite pastime of mine for two decades. His scuffle with Chris Childs remains quality content, to this day. He semi-pursued a music career, and enlisted Tyra Banks for his only single. I used to make fun of his mini-fro just because I thought it looked dumb. (In hindsight, he started the era of the thot fro twenty years ago. A man truly ahead of his time.)
Read MoreIt’s insane LeBron continues to play these 48-minute games in Season 15, but I have no reason to believe he’ll slow down, either. And, to his credit, he has a short memory: for better or worse, he’ll be kicking the ball to Earl for open 3s on Sunday as if nothing happened tonight. He doesn’t really have a choice, no. But I’m not doubting the guy again.
Read MoreOn October 27, 2012, around 6PM London time, I learned the Thunder traded James Harden to the Houston Rockets. The Thunder vaguely claimed they were unable to reach an agreement on a contract extension; James was seeking a maximum contract of $60 million over 4 years, which the Thunder countered by asking him to take a $4.5 million discount. The Thunder traded away their third head over a mid-level exception.
Read MoreHaving watched an inordinate amount of hoop this year (shoutout to my Warriors-exclusive League Pass subscription), I think I’m around 77% qualified to tick off who I believe should make this year’s All-Star team. Plus, I needed to get my selections on the website before the official choices for the game's starters come out in like five minutes. Drumroll, please...
Read MoreSure, continue to ignore all the intentional system failures harming people of color in the name of pretending we don’t have a legitimate gripe. Let’s also pretend these wealthy, black athletes weren’t dead broke once-upon-a-time, because in this fantasy, they shouldn’t complain about anything! They don’t have it bad at all! Or — even better — let’s continue to pretend that America has this spotless history, that the many terrible things happening right now in the United States — white supremacist rallies, mass shootings by domestic terrorists, the election of an incompetent imbecile to run the country — are just aberrations and not the byproduct of backlash from the eight years prior, anger not only of a black man being President, but of him being damned good at it, too.
Read MoreOklahoma City had been blessed with THREE generational talents, plus a guy overqualified to be a team's fourth option, and have absolutely nothing to show for it. You need luck to win a title, sure, but that luck seemed to come in the players they'd been gifted. And they blew it.
Read MoreI don’t know if these really classify at ‘hot takes.’ I’d consider these more as thoughts I had entering the game and observations made during. I really wanted to write all of these in the immediate aftermath of the game, but I figured giving myself a day or two to sit on them might prove that these thoughts were far more emotional than logical.
A month later, and naw. I believe everything I thought then and that I’ll write now. But, some of you might view these as still very scorching opinions here, and the catchphrase ‘hot take’ seems good for clickbait, but whatever. To begin:
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