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Basketball is a sport where five teammates work together to dribble and pass the ball up the court and ultimately toss it into the hoop. Certain exceptions exist. For instance, the final possessions of a close New York Knicks playoff game. Here, basketball is a sport where a solitary little fella bounces the ball indefinitely until he has no choice but to fling it in the direction of the hoop. That is a fair description of the final Knicks possessions Thursday in Game 3 of their first-round series against the Atlanta Hawks, one of which ended in a Jalen Brunson airball, and the other in a Jalen Brunson turnover, as the Knicks lost by one point for the second consecutive game. Brunson is a one-man offensive system (complimentary and derogatory). He is an incredible talent. Were he not on the team, the Knicks wouldn't be remotely good enough to disappoint as violently as they do. But he has his preferences, which have held fast across different coaching regimes. He likes to hold onto the ball. He likes to dribble and dribble and probe the defense with a sequences of head fakes, hesitations, crossovers, shoulder bumps, pivots, until he's pried open a tiny bit of space to get off his jumper. (These moves, while deft, might also get a little easier to predict over the course of a seven-game playoff series.) Often, when the defense collapses on Brunson, you can see him seeing a passing window and deciding against it, because he'd rather avoid the risk of turnover and take the shot himself. These tendencies are exacerbated to comical extremes when the stakes are highest, and the defenders are playing hardest. His teammates—because the coach has told them so; because they have great trust in their captain; because their capacities for off-ball movement have atrophied while playing alongside him—often stand stationary while he breaks it down. This tendency wasn't specific to former head coach Tom Thibodeau's infamously stodgy offenses. We see it still under the regime of current head coach Mike Brown, who was brought in to give them some new offensive juice, and to take better advantage of the other extremely talented players on the roster, like Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby, and Mikal Bridges, all of whom can create their own shot against a defense in rotation. I'm not even saying that Brunson isolation is a bad outcome for a given possession. Perhaps it is better than passing the ball to Bridges, who, if he caught the ball under the rim, while all five defenders laid down supine on the hardwood, would still find a way to still take an 11-foot drifting jumper. I am just saying that I, personally, cannot look at it anymore. I need to see the ball change hands. I need to see a non-Brunson Knick take footsteps more purposeful than shifting their weight from one foot to the other. I would rather lose on a too-cute offensive set that sends a bad pass flying into the fourth row than watch Brunson take 40 dribbles into a double-team. I'm going to die.

Chances are you haven't seen or thought of Tony Dokoupil in a while, and you wouldn't be alone. Dokoupil's CBS Evening News is lagging well behind ABC and NBC's nightly news programs, recently dropping under 4 million viewers per night. But TV ratings aren't necessary for what you can see with your own eyes: The CBS anchor is a dud with poor direction, and everyone knows it—including the people who work with him. On Thursday, Vanity Fair published a piece full of brutal quotes about Dokoupil's time as Bari Weiss's pet. There's some clarity provided on why he had such a rough start in the job in January. Remember when Dokoupil ate shit on his first regular broadcast and screwed up a line read? That's reportedly because Weiss, the CBS News editor-in-chief, fiddled with the script to make Donald Trump look better, and typed her changes in the wrong place. "The text was added to the teleprompter twice, leaving her new star anchor flummoxed, stumbling over his words for several excruciating seconds," Aidan McLaughlin wrote. The Vanity Fair article is based off 20 or so sources, some of them anonymous CBS staffers. As anyone could've figured out, Dokoupil's weirdly hostile interview with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates in 2024 was what got Weiss's attention. (Dokoupil reportedly went off script with his questions in that interview.) When she was put in charge of CBS News, Dokoupil became her anchor, but only because no one good was willing to do it.

"Ahoy there, perverts!" are the first words out of Gabby Windey's mouth. The host of the new Hulu show Love Overboard stands on the deck of a 280-foot superyacht named The Chakra, wearing a gorgeous, slinky dress with cut-out sections. "Welcome to Love Overboard!" she says, throwing her hands over her head. The appetite for reality shows about young, hot, stupid people competing to find love or Instagram followers, or both, is bottomless. It's a crowded field. Off the top of my head, there's Temptation Island, Perfect Match, Love is Blind, Love Island, Too Hot to Handle, FBoy Island, Single's Inferno, The Bachelor, Are You the One? and The Ultimatum. And most of those programs have seasons in multiple countries and multiple languages. There is an endless buffet of choices for anyone who wants to watch people in bikinis backstab each other in order to make out with someone they've never met before, which is perhaps how Love Overboard's premise ended up as deranged as it is. The contestants on Love Overboard (young hot singles, duh) do not know what they have signed up for. They have agreed to go on a reality television show sight unseen, and now they are here, in what nobody wants to admit is essentially the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Much has been made of the arid state of NBA rivalries, a parched climate that owes itself to, depending on who you ask, player empowerment, AAU culture, the parity era, or the internet's anti-geographic effects. There's something to this, though all but the most committed Celtics-Lakers nostalgists would admit to at least one current exception: Nuggets-Timberwolves. These two teams are perfect stylistic and temperamental foils for each other, and they're currently three games into their third playoff series in the last four years. The present go-round is as laden with spite and loathing as the last one, a seven-game second-round slugfest in 2024, delivering reliably great theater and occasionally great basketball. As I was watching the Wolves dominate Game 3 on Thursday night, which they won 113-96 to grab a 2-1 lead in the series, I was struck by the impression that the emotional center of both the Wolves and their rivalry with the Nuggets is the brilliant, irrepressible Jaden McDaniels. Each of the past two postseasons, Minnesota has reached the Western Conference Finals, somewhat against the expectations of many experts, though the Wolves' style makes them the most obvious group of playoff risers in the NBA. The issues that plague them in the regular season—drifting focus, weak backend rotation, a tendency to play down to inferior competition, Julius Randle all but sleeping on the court—are of a sort that burn off in the playoff crucible. Their strengths—indomitable physicality, a rock-solid top-seven, autarkic anchors on both ends of the court—matter way more. The guy that makes it all work is McDaniels. The wiry Seattle native is the ideal complementary wing player, in terms of both his skillset and the edge he gives his team as a leader. McDaniels can guard up and down the lineup, he's a good rebounder, and he's figured out exactly how to play as a third and occasional fourth option. The consensus theory of this sort of player is that they are best left in the corner to provide a release valve for those responsible for dribbling the basketball. McDaniels has done a good deal of that in his career, though this year especially he has elevated Minnesota's offense by greatly improving his offensive game. He's now way more comfortable attacking closeouts and finishing in the lane, and he's figured out that when his drives get stopped, he can pass the ball to a teammate. The trick with McDaniels is that he's comfortable playing like a higher-usage player in a supporting role. He's not waving off Anthony Edwards to go one-on-one; he's found the right balance of aggression and deference.

There’s an apocryphal story concerning the original pitch for Girls: Supposedly, Lena Dunham wrote it on the back of a cocktail napkin. It was all vibes but no plot or fleshed-out characters, and situated the show concept somewhere between Gossip Girl and Sex and the City. It was about the sort of girls Dunham—then 23 years old and making a web series in SoHo—knew and was friends with. The cocktail-napkin pitch has become a metonym for her career more broadly—evidence of either her breezy genius or the unacknowledged privilege that underpins it all. Except, Dunham writes in her new memoir Famesick, that story is bullshit. “I’d actually written it on my brother’s laptop, borrowed for the trip.” Dunham wants you to know that she understands her name ceased to be a precise identifier for her individual person long ago. She accepts that a life and legacy defined by those stories is the price she’s paid for fame. She gets it, she really does. But she wants you to know her side, too. Famesick is a granular, exhausting, 15-year-long account of her side, from her early days as an indie filmmaker in New York, her stay in rehab for a Klonopin addiction, to her new life in London with her husband, musician Luis Felber. 

Lily Yohannes plays soccer with an efficiency that would come off as mechanical if she didn't have the vision of an artist, resulting in some of the most beautiful dribbling sequences and long through balls that have ever graced a pitch. Indeed, the 18-year-old OL Lyonnes star is the USWNT's best midfield prospect in a decade.  Considering she shot into the elite echelons of soccer at such a young age—while she was 16 and playing for Ajax, she became the youngest player to ever start a Champions League group stage match—it's no surprise that her family has been a large part of her story. And what a family she has. Both of her brothers play professionally: 20-year-old Jayden plays for SC Telstar’s U21 side, and 22-year-old Aethan plays for Almere City FC's youth team as well as the Eritrean national team.  Her father, Daniel, has been her most outspoken supporter. Daniel's Twitter account reads like a standard—if more thoughtful than most—soccer stan account, so long as you ignore the posts when he mentions being Lily's father. He reposts compilation videos other people have made of Lily's highlights, writes tactical analyses of Lily's and other games (he's a Chelsea supporter), talks about pay equity in the women's game, and makes the occasional impassioned political post.

It’s Los Angeles in the 1970s. Cars are as long as boats. Beachside tacos are practically free. The sun glares through chunky brown fog, but does nothing to prevent assorted bad acts from happening. A man with a casual, even careless manner may not seem to have what it takes to see justice done, but being underestimated is essential to his process. If you’re thinking, “Yes, I already watched Columbo during Covid like everyone else,” I have some great news for you about The Rockford Files. If you belong to the TV-watching community, chances are you have imprinted on at least one police or legal procedural. Maybe Law & Order marathons got you hooked on Sam Waterston’s tremulous righteousness as Manhattan A.D.A. Jack McCoy. Perhaps its spinoff, Special Victims Unit, drew you in with its mix of sexually based offenses and hysterical fearmongering about the many dangers of modern life. NCIS might be your opiate of choice if you prefer to see crimes solved navally. The appeal of shows in this category is twofold: 1) it’s satisfying to watch a mystery get wrapped up in 40-some-odd minutes; 2) these are network shows with three-digit episode counts, such that you might just get tired of their samey-ness before running out of episodes to watch. Indeed, all of the above are still pumping out new episodes right now. But if you watch TV and consume news, there may come a point when your enjoyment of these shows, which both center and lionize characters on the enforcement side of the law, might start to curdle somewhat. Yes, McCoy wins cases, but it’s often via shady moves that the audience is expected to affirm. The members of the elite squad known as Special Victims Unit apprehend sex criminals at rates that far outstrip that actual division’s real-life stats, and hate nothing more than a suspect who knows his rights in ways that probably track much more realistically. NCIS’s Jethro Gibbs … okay, I have no idea what his deal is, but the man works for the Pentagon, so it’s probably at least a little immoral. 

It's a tough situation for Drew. While he has dialed up his football fandom to super-sicko levels (complimentary) in recent years, my interest in the sport has remained stubbornly around average. When we discussed having an NFL Draft-focused episode of The Distraction, we were politely avoiding talking about the fact that I can't go nearly as deep on the subject of sleeper mid-round edge rusher values. Thankfully, we hit upon a compromise that worked for all of us: having the legendary Aaron Schatz, now of the sports analytics site FTN and the founder of Football Outsiders, as a guest, then spending half the episode talking about how awful online media is. Something for everyone! Aaron had a lot to say about his (highly negative) experience with the venture capitalists who bought and ultimately killed Football Outsiders, which Mike Tanier wrote about for us a couple years ago, and which finally wound down once those owners just straight-up stopped paying anyone. That URL, which once contained nearly decades of football analysis, from writers who became stars in their field and also in pro teams' front offices, is now a dead link.

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. The NFL Draft starts tonight in Pittsburgh, and no one gives a shit. Occupancy rates at both hotels and Airbnbs in the Steel City are falling woefully short of initial projections. Fans who live in other cities are uninterested in paying up to four figures for a single hotel room, and locals aren’t exactly pleased that their public school system was compelled to switch to remote learning for three full days this week just to accommodate the event. The hype for this weekend is at such a low ebb that Fernando Mendoza, tonight’s No. 1 overall pick, has decided not to attend. This draft is deader than your love life, and everyone knows it. This shouldn’t be the case. Even with a draft class that’s unremarkable by nearly everyone’s standards, the streets of Pittsburgh should still be teeming with drunken yinzers and myriad Jets fans who made the drive just so that they could boo the selection of Arvell Reese in person. Hell, I should be at the draft right now, rocking my Kevin Williams jersey and keeping my eyes open with broken toothpicks so I can stay awake to see the No. 18 pick announced live. Then I could fall asleep in my hotel room and wake up the next morning to enjoy a traditional Pittsburgh breakfast of a scrappleburger with two McGriddles for its bun.

PHILADELPHIA — On the afternoon of April 9, 2026, partisans of the Alberta separatist movement—who rally for the landlocked province’s secession from the broader, united commonwealth of Canada, and the establishment of a self-sufficient petrostate bankrolled by its ample oil, gas and mineral reserves—scored a major endorsement. “I officially RECOGNIZE the NEW INDEPENDENT NATION of ALBERTA,” the comedian, actor, and adult Catholic convert Rob Schneider posted on Twitter, “and its separation from the People’s Republic Of Canada and the socialist morons in Ottawa.” That’s right. Renegades and heretics of the Wild Rose Province, take heart: Deuce Bigalow, the male gigolo, has your back. This foray into the crankiest corners of Canadian politics might seem a little odd—if you haven’t been paying attention. Rob Schneider is probably still best known for his five-year stint as a cast member on Saturday Night Live in the early ‘90s. He was part of a cohort of young comics (Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chrises Rock and Farley) who would leave a more sizable imprint on the landscape of American comedy. On SNL, Schneider distinguished himself with such classic characters as Richard Laymer (a.k.a. the “makin’ copies!” guy) and … well, that’s the main one.