Ben Stiller Can’t Quit Sports

…But he told Taylor Rooks that Pat Riley better have nothing to say to him. Also, ahead of the Heat/Warriors game last night, Kevin Love made sure to let us know their reunion might have a real MJ/Bird You B****, F*** you vibe.

NBA players are vying for the title of Dad Of The Year, and their cats are very proud. The Today Show shouted out Myles Turner, Greydy Dick, and Jordan Poole for setting a purrfect example for their felines. 

Have you heard about the new hoops tournament in Vegas? Twenty men’s teams who didn’t make the NCAA tourney will face off in the College Basketball Crown. Winner gets $500k in NIL money. Losers get stranded in Vegas forever. 

Boat Racing: Nature’s Favorite Sport. Also a new fave of owners Tom Brady, LeBron, and Rafa Nadal. E1 racing is a sport that requires no fuel because the boats run on lithium-powered batteries. And, yeah, some of the biggest names in sports happen to own racing teams.

The NBA might be Eurostepping onto another continent. League owners are set to vote on a proposed plan for a European faction of the NBA. This doesn’t mean your team will be sent to Europe. 

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To the untrained eye, Severance is a show about a dystopian workplace, the human condition, the burden of consciousness, and fluorescent lighting. But we know the truth about Severance. It’s about sports. There have been allllll kinds of sports-denominational easter eggs. 

Hear us out. 

While the theory that creator Dan Erickson named characters after Arsenal players (Declan, Kai, Mr. Saliba) has been debunked by the man himself, we know Ben Stiller isn’t attempting to be slick in his nods to sports. 

Take the reference to Malice At The Palace above, behind Irving’s troubling watermelon head. 

And how about when Mr. Milchick was being introduced in the season two finale? Did anything feel familiar or overtly sporty about the song they used? It should have because it was the Bulls player intro music in the ‘90s. 

The marching band segment felt like halftime at an HBCU event, which makes sense because Tramell Tillman attended Jackson State and used that experience to perfectly execute that scene.  

And when he needed a marching band to join a live performance at a screening of the finale, he leaned on USC’s marching band.

Plus, remember how Milchick gets in trouble for using big words? An obvious reference to how jocks don’t know big words (steretypically, of course). 

So, yeah, the general OffBall thesis of the show is that being a sports fan can be so hard, that sometimes, perhaps in a moment of darkness, you wish you could sever from it. 

And because we’ve all decided Severance is a sports show, we want to see Tillman in another sporty role. He was born to play Barry Bonds. 

Yesterday, our pesky kid brother newsletter, SportsVerse, was all about athletes and gaming—it was really good, make sure to go read it—and that got us thinking. 

Athletes are playing video games more than ever. One starts to wonder how it affects their game, both positively and negatively. A lot of pro athletes use video games to unwind, regather their focus, or even to enhance training. And, as SportsVerse says, the risk of injury and PR disasters is lower when players are cooped up inside (positive). 

Sometimes, though, injuries happen. In the last 20 years or so, there have been a couple of cases of injury directly caused by video games. In 2021, A’s pitcher Jesus Luzardo took flack for breaking his pinky while playing video games. In 2006, Tigers pitcher Joel Zumaya hurt his wrist playing Guitar Hero. After being picked first overall in the 2007 NBA draft, Greg Oden became mostly known for never playing due to knee injuries. At the time, the rumor was that the injury first occurred while playing Dance Dance Revolution—which he now denies and laughs about. 

Of course, video games aren’t some boogeyman that cause only strife and injury to professional athletes, but we regular humans know you can hurt yourself reaching for a pen after a certain age. And when gaming injuries do occur, they probably aren’t something players make public, but provided the athlete ends up mostly ok, or enough time passes, they do make for a good story. 

Who knows if it’s because they’re really gifted at anything they touch (Luka and LeBron and Jessica Pegula are a few examples of athletes who run the sticks) or if it’s as simple as athletes just really love games. Of any kind. They’ve dedicated their lives to them, after all.