UH Fam,

THE AMERICAN BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION merged with the National Basketball Association in 1977. But is “merging” really the proper way to describe the melding of the two preeminent hoops entities of the day?

This Substack does not follow boring “sports” like watching paint dry or women’s basketball… But we did do a WNBA post under Sports Memes and Transwomen in Women’s Sports Memes tags plus did a few Brittney Griner Meme posts:

Hi guys, YourFavoriteCasual here.

We asked 16 leading NBA voices on Substack:

Today I’m launching my Substack, titled Courtside. This is a new home for my basketball coverage. You’ll still see me at Swish Appeal and other outlets as I continue to freelance, but I’m excited to have an editorial space to call my own.

I loved my year working in the NBA, which is exactly why I feel comfortable being transparent about both what made the experience incredible and what made it complicated.

For years, one of the NBA’s most repeated roster-building principles has been that big, athletic wings are basketball’s scarce resource. Everyone wants players who stand somewhere between 6’6” and 6’9”, can move, score, defend multiple positions, and survive the increasingly positionless nature of playoff basketball. In theory, Jonathan …

🚨BREAKING: Our POINTS League DRAFT Cheat Sheet for AUG just dropped. We pulled data from our community expert mock drafts, Rotowire’s mock, and my own rankings to build it.

For most officials, the goal is never to become famous. It is to earn the next assignment, work the next big game and be trusted when the pressure is at its highest. Joey Crawford did that for nearly four decades. On August 15, his journey reached basketball’s most celebrated stage when he was formally inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall…

Luka Garza with a National Player of the Year award when he was winding up his Iowa basketball career (Hawkeyesports.com photo)

Since 1970, no NBA player has won more championships than Robert Horry. He won seven titles with three franchises: two with Houston, three with Los Angeles and two with San Antonio. Horry is one of only four players to win championships with three different franchises, joining John Salley, LeBron James and Danny Green. But Horry stands alone as the only player in NBA history to win multiple championships with each of three franchises. Excluding members of Boston’s 1950s and 1960s dynasty, no player owns more rings. Yet the man with the modern era’s greatest championship total remains outside the Basketball Hall of Fame. That is no longer an oversight that should be quietly accepted. It is a historical record that demands reconsideration.

I’m about to get a lot of women pissed off at me, and a lot of men, too, but would you all please hear me out, or read me out, before you march in protest to my corporate headquarters (a small cabin in my back yard)?

Any NBA player can have fantasy value.

LEAGUEWIDE

When I first moved to the US I knew almost nothing about basketball.

Miguel Sousa é o único português entre os 78 jogadores convocados para a primeira edição masculina do Basketball Without Borders Next Up, que decorre entre esta quarta-feira e sábado no Basketbol Gelişim Merkezi, em Istambul. O extremo-poste de 17 anos e 2.03 metros, que representa o Valencia Basket, integra um grupo com atletas de 44 países e territórios dos seis continentes.

Friartown, whether you spent the summer down the shore, out on Cape Cod, or mucking it up in the Hamptons, I hope this finds you well. School is back in session, Labor Day is right around the corner, and we are less than 75 days from college basketball returning. In normal times, when a season’s tip off is 2 months away a coach will have full clarity on…

TEAM-SPECIFIC

In 2019, I got a DM from Enes Kanter on Twitter complimenting my book The World As It Is. I was not accustomed to getting DMs about my writing from NBA players. I was further intrigued because Kanter had until recently played for the Knicks; he had also publicly criticized Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the increasingly authoritarian leader of his home country T…

I have been privileged, I think you can call it that, to have a front-row seat, or at least a behind-the-scenes look, at the inner workings of many Reformed denominations, including the founding of two Presbyterian denominations. The experience has been a mixed bag, but I have certainly learned a lot and benefited from it.