Leave it to my friend Myles Brown—respected writer, astute NBA observer, and Succession stan—to succinctly sum up what it felt like Monday as many teams around the Association held their media day.
Training camps across the NBA are now open and it absolutely feels like the actual playing of basketball is secondary or even tertiary to all the drama best reserved for a Bravo reality show. But that’s the league these days, and fans and the media eat it all up for obvious reasons. Clicks, ratings, etc. since everything’s a business, or everyone’s dying for some attention in the waste space that is today’s social and digital media landscape. So if you’re really only a fan of the games themselves then please check back in next week when the preseason tips. Or wait another three weeks for truly relevant basketball.
But if you’re here for the bullshit and yet somehow have been sleeping on all things NBA, there’s a lot to digest before the season begins Tuesday, Oct. 19 with the defending champs hosting (that would be the Bucks) hosting the Nets followed by the Warriors meeting the Lakers in LA.
Know that Ben Simmons is the star of the NBA’s most fascinating circus. Kyrie Irving, Bradley Beal, and Andrew Wiggins sound like anti-vaxxers. The Eastern Conference is better than ever. LeBron’s no longer the league’s top player. And the honor of being the second-best team in the Western Conference appears to be wide open.
There are storylines galore so now that professional basketball is basically back, here’s a mini-crash course on what the hell is going on around the league.
