Posts by Steve McPherson

October 23, 2013
6-Day NBA Warning: Let’s Hope Ricky Rubio Doesn’t Grow Up

Looked at a certain way, NBA players are men playing a kid’s game. But shift the angle slightly and they — especially the younger ones — can look like kids playing a man’s game. Any rookie, any sophomore — hell, any player who’s been in the league for fewer than five seasons — has a […]
October 14, 2013
15-Day NBA Warning: Kevin Love’s Labor Lost

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” —William Faulkner Kevin Love has a bone to pick with Faulkner. For almost his whole career, Love has thrived on proving people wrong, whether it was Kurt Rambis telling him not to shoot 3-pointers or anyone who doubted he could be a go-to scorer or questioned […]
August 9, 2013
The Breaking Bad–to–NBA Translator

[FAIR WARNING: There are spoilers here up through the current aired episodes. And one pretty graphic/gross Photoshop that’s also a spoiler.] At first glance, it may not seem like there’s a lot in common between professional basketball and the story of a chemistry teacher turning to a life of crime in the face of a […]
August 2, 2013
The New Pelicans Uniforms and the Yawning Maw of Our Own Demise

Since this is about fashion, let’s charitably call the initial reactions to the unveiling of the New Orleans Pelicans’ new uniforms beige. Or maybe taupe. Possibly even mauve, but I don’t want to overstate my case. The specific whys and wherefores of what makes the design at best plain are lucidly plumbed by UniWatch’s Phil […]
July 15, 2013
The Promise and the Mirage of Las Vegas Summer League

The desert makes you see things. On the flight in, we passed over untold stretching miles of nothing but sand, dust, and scattered brush before suddenly: Las Vegas. Like the Mall of America teleported Watchmen-style into Times Square, Vegas is not so much a place as an ever-evolving event bent on rending the fabric of […]
July 10, 2013
We Went There: Taking in the WNBA With the Lynx and Dream

I’m going to start by telling a story that makes me sound like an asshole. A few weeks ago, right at the apex of the NBA playoffs after San Antonio had gone up 3-2 on Miami, I was having lunch at an Indian buffet in Minneapolis to celebrate a holiday that my brother made up […]
June 17, 2013
Do It Again: Rewatching Game 4 of Heat-Spurs

I once rewatched the entirety of the Red Sox 2004 ALCS victory over the New York Yankees. Not exactly to understand it better, because there were plenty of stories written and even a movie made to explain it, but to see how that understanding happened in real time. In a culture where people rush to […]
June 12, 2013
The New Gods vs. the Old: Is Game of Thrones Better As a Show or a Series of Books?

The book is better than the movie. Or TV show. And the movie is inevitably better than the video game, right? It’s an article of faith: The first thing is the best thing. But it’s not so clear that’s the case with HBO’s Game of Thrones and its source material, George R.R. Martin’s A Song […]
June 3, 2013
Image Is Nothing: Grant Hill and His Amazing ’90s Sprite Ads

The occasion of Grant Hill’s retirement from the NBA is a time for reflection. It’s time to consider his accomplishments, both in college at Duke (where he passed Christian Laettner that ball that led to that shot that went in) and at the professional level as a member of the Pistons, Magic, Suns, and Clippers, […]
May 9, 2013
This Band Marijuana Deathsquads Played Music to a Montage of Dunks

On a bad night, Marijuana Deathsquads is a band full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. This is the risk of music that relies heavily not on rote performance but on a kind of high-wire act of endlessly unfolding possibilities driven by a couple of things, including faith, instinct, adrenaline, and Ryan Olson, who for […]

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