Welcome on back to BASKETBALLWEATHER. It’s the first of the month!!!!!!!! I love firsts.
Speaking of, the NBA has tried out this thing called the In-Season Tournament, have you heard of it? I have no idea if people like this thing or not yet? Part of the reason for this is that it’s actually hard to know. The NBA seems to have brainwashed every large media company into pretending that the In-Season Tournament is cool, when in reality it’s actually been extremely weird, awkward, and confusing.
Turn on any large media channel, and you would have absolutely no idea. They’re treating it like it’s the most successful initiative in the world. All of the coverage is twisted into making us believe it’s supposed to matter, but to my eye it all feels so phony and fake. Maybe next week’s 16 team “tournament” in Vegas is going to change the calculus on this, but because no one else is telling you the truth, I want to take this moment to say that the In-Season Tournament has sucked so far, and no one I know actually cares about it.
Here’s the last thing I’m going to say about it. Again, not a single media member has said this since the season started (a great reason to support BASKETBALLWEATHER with a paid subscription).
But here’s the thing.
The reason the “tournament” kinda sucks is because it started almost as soon as the season itself started. That’s like starting a new job and telling someone within the first week that your boss is the best boss you’ve ever had. How do you know if you’ve only been there for a week?
The teams have barely begun to develop and the players are still getting the fur balls out of their summer vacations to Paris and Bali, and next thing you know there’s a Tournament? There’s only one lens that this makes sense from, and it’s such a shocker.
Ukrainian bucks 👆🏻
By artificially creating “a tournament,” the NBA can pretend that it has some new shiny toy that it can then try and sell to the highest bidder. Maybe it’s Amazon or Apple? ;)
There’s nothing wrong with that, and I certainly have no problem with the prize money being offered to the players, and the potential extra earnings, but some phantom passion / intensity that has allegedly been brought to the games by the players as they try and vie for favorable standings in the “tournament,” please.
It’s not that I think the players aren’t trying more. I’m sure they are sometimes. These are uber competitive people, but what pisses me off is when media, yeah you media, tries to act like we’re watching something “special,” when in reality, they all know that the only reason they care about what is happening is because all of their wallets are tied into the NBA’s success.
Aka If the NBA pie gets bigger, so does theirs.
Everyone eats and makes more money, except for one group of people, the fans.
We have to sit there and be fed this B.S. about standings and “player’s caring more than they normally would during the early part of the season,” when for the most part, even if this is happening, it’s not exactly making anyone from the fan side care more.
I have zero data to back this up. But I’m going to go find some. Here it is.
See?
Shit, I’m wrong. The numbers do say there are more people watching.
Still, no one is tuning in to see players “try harder.”
What’s interesting so far this season is the same thing that’s always interesting early on in the season: Who’s winning and why? Who’s disappointing?
The James Harden to the Clippers experiment. The crumbling of the Warriors Dynasty. The Orlando Magic? The Chet Holmgren being the best Rookie thing, better, yes, than Victor Wembanyama, not some manufactured NBA story supported by the NBA media to help them all fill their bellies with cash.
It’s the same thing it always is.
Personality, teams, basketball, and nirvana. What drives me crazy is that we’re all still being distracted from the truth, the NBA SEASON IS TOO FUCKING LONG.
We don’t need a “tournament” to fix that. We just need less games.
And now, my friends, onto the real story. Doc Rivers has a son. His name is Austin, and he doesn’t listen to Taylor Swift.
Young buck Austin Rivers came into the NBA as the son of a very influential coach who had just recently led the Clippers in a coup against Donald Sterling, their racist owner. He was a rare example of NBA nepotism, where the meritocratic system of basketball, and sports in general, may have been side-stepped.
I say maybe because Austin Rivers is no slouch. Whether you’re someone who thinks he belongs in the NBA is a debate for another time, I’m just asking you to recognize that the debate existed. Rivers may have been in the NBA, at least partially, because of who his dad was.
Austin Rivers had to deal with that “pressure” when he got into league, and most NBA players did not feel bad for him. He was an NBA nepo-baby before the term nepo-baby existed. Unfortunately those days, the basketball playing days, I mean, might be in the rearview mirror for Rivers now.
But if you follow the NBA you probably know that Austin Rivers has another career, podcasting.
And if you listen, then like me you might be enjoying the existential crisis Austin is having about his future NBA playing career.
It’s understandable. Homie is still only 31 years old, and has at least five or six more years left in him at an optimal playing level, years that he believes he can be spending in the NBA.
Listening to Austin Rivers work through this has been some of the most riveting NBA podcasting I’ve heard, period, because he’s not “working through it” in retrospect like some cheesy memoir where the author has already tied a bow around the ending and planned the next chapter of their perfect life, but in real real-time, unconsciously, and on air with his friend and co-host Pasha Haghighi helping him navigate the emotional ups and downs.
There is a very real possibility that Austin Rivers might not play in the league EVER again, and he desperately wants to. That is dramatic!
The man in the suit above, that’s not Austin Rivers the basketball player, that’s Austin Rivers the NBA analyst. Austin Rivers, the suit. That’s a guy in a tie talking about basketball, not playing it. A guy in a position he never expected to be. And you know what, he’s excellent at it.
Maybe even special.
I won’t go into all of the details as to why but it’s a brilliant stroke turning a former player who still wants to play, into a podcaster/analyst. The tension inherent in that struggle is hard to take your eyes off of.
Things Austin has said on his podcast have been absolute bangers as well, like when he said the only people who listen to Taylor Swift are white girls. Is that even true?
It was absolutely hilarious.
(Turns out that a good percentage of Taylor Swift fans are people of color but who cares, in Austin’s world, the only people who listen to Swift are white, and that “reality” is far more interesting at the end of the day.)
Austin Rivers is very kind. I hope he gets his goal to don a jersey for an NBA team again, but he may not, and it’s just as fascinating to watch him deal with that reality in real-time, and at least for me, more interesting than watching him actually play.
Not that he’s a bad player. He’s just a better podcaster. I have no doubt if he never plays professional NBA basketball again, he will be be alright. He’s always been a roll player anyway. Instead of figuring out where he fits on a team, he, like all of us, will now be left to figure out where he fits in the wider realm of his life and professional career.
This is normal. Everyone goes through it, on and off the basketball court.
Look at Katy Perry. You think she wanted to be on American Idol? Or what about Kelly Clarkson? Does she wake up every day dying to be the face of a talk show? These are actors and musicians, not talk show hosts. But their careers have benefited greatly because of where these left turns and sacrifices have taken them.
Katy Perry has a residency in Vegas. Kelly Clarkson just released another #1 album. Nicole Richie is a rapper called Nikki Fre$h?
Their “side hustles” opened up even more doors. That’s exactly what’s going to happen to Austin Rivers too, whether he plays in the NBA again or not. Props, man. Keep doing you, you’re an inspiration to all of us, and a breath of fresh air for a tired media landscape that keeps telling me to pay attention to something called a tournament.