About This NBA Betting Drama...

…Thanks to LAFC, HYBE, and Sonny. And if you live in LA, you can experience the complete Korean takeover on October 29 at BMO Stadium. Kogi BBQ, lightshows, the whole shebang. I’m about to book a ticket myself. 

Amazon and The Athletic announced they’ll debut a weekly 30-minute sports show, debuting tomorrow, and airing every Saturday. If you have an Amazon Alexa you can just say “Alexa, play the Athletic Show.” Unless you have mine, because my Alexa refuses to heed my requests. Anyone know how to fix an Alexa by the way?

Our pesky kid brother newsletter, SportsVerse, talks about what Grace Wales Bonner’s new gig at Hermès means for Adidas. Spoiler: it’s good news for them what with Wales Bonner being a key collaborator to the sportswear brand. There’s a reason the Samba is so back. 

E-bikes really scare me. E-shoes? Now I’m listening. Nike is quietly (maybe not, if it’s in GQ, but anyway…) creating a turbo jet for your feet. I personally believe we should give them to every tourist in NYC, free of charge! 

Friend of the pod (newsletter), Katie Heindl, is relaunching her newsletter “BASKETBALL FEELINGS,” to celebrate seven years and 5,000 subscribers. It’s one of my personal favorites (you’ve heard me talk about it many times) and it’s worth subscribing. Do so now or get left behind.

Every once in a while, an athlete comes around and changes a sport. We’re in the early stages with Wemby, but it seems like he’ll be an example of this. It seems like that’s what we’re witnessing in A’ja Wilson. But we’re definitely, and I mean definitely, watching it with Shohei Ohtani. This Is not a mere generational talent, or even a unicorn, this is something bigger for which the appropriate term has yet to be coined.

I remember the first time I saw Ohtani. I’m new-ish to MLB, so it was in maybe his second-to-last year with the Angels, and I was watching SportsCenter or something. I remember declaring aloud, something like: “This guy pitches and hits??? I might start watching baseball.” 

Professional athletes are so gifted they make what they do look very easy. Somehow you forget not everyone can hit a dagger three, much less dribble with both hands. They drop one pass, and suddenly you’re on your high horse, “How did he not catch that?” As if you would have. These are actual superhumans we are talking about. 

When it comes to Ohtani’s accomplishments, you immediately understand how wild it is. What do you mean he’s striking people out and hitting one, two, three dingers in the same playoff game? What do you mean? 

He’s the undisputed greatest of all time, and his retirement isn’t even on the horizon. He’s so good, some say he’s saving baseball, and others say he’s ruining it. What is the case for the latter, you might ask? Well, the fact that the Dodgers spend an inordinate (unfair?) amount of money on their contracts doesn’t sit well with some. And the fact that they don’t have to pay the rest of his $700 million for, like, 15 years, doesn’t help. Or that they may already have recouped every last cent of that $700 million. Kill me now, says my Padres-loving husband.

But does that mean he’s bad for baseball? Or does it mean some fans are lucky enough to get owners who invest in their teams? There’s a strong case for the latter, but maybe the issue is where that money is spent. Depending on who you ask, LA isn’t the most amenable of sports cities. 

It’s nice for baseball casuals like me, because what you don’t read too much about can’t hurt you. It makes me think of the meme with the two bus passengers, one sad and one happy. 

I’m the guy on the right watching Ohtani, but I can understand why diehards feel like the one on the left. Still, the prevailing thought is that he transcends teams in a way. Especially because he himself isn’t unlikable in any way. He’s literally just a guy. One of the best things you can be in sports. 

Except he’s literally just a guy who happens to also literally be some kind of mythical creature.

“I don’t even know where the eff to start,” I said in our team call this morning. “I think we found the opening line to the newsletter,” one colleague said. 

“Technically unbelievable but still believable,” my other colleague put it. 

And I guess that’s the best way to describe this saga. If you are living under a rock (isn’t it cold and dark? What a weird place to live, but anyway) you are wondering what I am referring to. TL;DR: Chauncey Billups, Damon Jones, and Terry Rozier (maybe also Malik Beasley) have been arrested for either fixing basketball or poker games, and the news shook the basketball and sports world. 

The long and the short of it is we really don’t know what’s what. The Italian mob? Rigged poker games? It’s a lot to parse. One particularly interesting thing to me is this podcast, which aired two years ago, details one of the alleged poker games. 

As a lifelong Trail Blazers fan, I am used to feeling cursed. Our stars’ (some should-have-beens) knees can’t withstand heavy gusts of wind (Brandon Roy, Bill Walton, Greg Oden, love you all); former ownership may or may not have had some connections to illegal ivory trade (not gonna link to that); and now our coach is indicted by the FBI for a crime that only exists in hour-long period-specific HBO limited series where they drink scotch, neat, for breakfast. 

The fact that it happened two-ish days into the regular season meant we were still riding the high of the NBA’s return to NBC. Our mouths are still agape watching Wemby do whatever this is (positive). 

And everyone else was memeing too, but some worry it’s the result of normalizing sports betting to the point that nearly every commercial break, podcast, and cable show features betting sites as sponsors. 

So, will someone step in and insist on regulation? Do we need regulation? Are we a society beyond repair? Was Damon Jones behind this moment? Was Chauncey Billups behind this one? Who really killed JFK? 

I don’t know, man, I’m just asking questions!