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PHILADELPHIA — When the lights went out, a crisp, adolescent shriek rose from all sides of the arena, anticipating her arrival. But she did not come, not just yet. Instead, a silence fell heavy and unsettled where the shrieking had been, as if making space for the ball at the other end of the arena, descending ever so slowly, blinking blue, pulsing as if it were alive. More than 40,000 eyes fixated on the descending orb. It was round, but not a perfect sphere, with bumps and craters on its surface like a morning star weapon with all of its spikes truncated, or a children’s bumble ball powder coated in black.  Though I was on the other side of the arena, and thousands of people were between me and the ball, it was dark, and there was nothing but air to separate us. I looked at the ball the way I look at the moon, with an awe bordering on reverence. Then it followed the same slow path back up into the rafters, and for a little while, I forgot about it.  On the main stage a large half-circle dome rested atop the space where Phoebe Bridgers would eventually emerge, like the kind of mesh tents that protect food from the prowling bites of bugs. As the ball on one side of the arena disappeared, the tent on the other lit up. The shrieks began again. And then it lifted, lights gleaming from the edge of it straight down so that Bridgers’ black dress was awash in so much light that it looked gray and the whole dome had the appearance of a UFO lifting off the ground in a movie. 

I'm not sure when we fell into the collective delusion that first-round quarterbacks should be capable of leading an NFL team on Day 1. Was it induced by the take economy? Is this sports radio's fault? Did Joe Burrow's early success create this standard? I can understand certain teams like the Browns or Jets believing it necessary to have their top draft pick run the offense right away, because they have little hope otherwise, but what's everyone else's excuse? While you may get Andrew Luck or Lamar Jackson on occasion, often these teams just end up stunting the growth of potential stars, who end up having to rehab their careers and abilities elsewhere. I was thinking about these things Sunday night while watching Bryce Young have arguably the best game of his career for the Carolina Panthers, against the Detroit Lions. Young led the Panthers to a 32-26 win while throwing for 329 yards and two touchdowns on 29-of-41 passing. Second-year wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan was the biggest beneficiary, accounting for 43 percent of the Panthers' total yardage. He caught 14 passes for 192 yards, and accounted for those two TD passes. Young and McMillan's chemistry has been building since last season, and never was it more useful than when last night's game was on the line. Despite outplaying the Lions for most of the game, the Panthers were in a spot of trouble late in the fourth quarter. After Detroit scored and cut the lead to six, Young and the offense took over on their own 36-yard line with 3:38 left to play. At the very least, the Panthers needed to get a first down and force a few timeouts out of the Lions. A one-yard run by Chuba Hubbard forced the first burned timeout, and then a penalty followed by an incompletion put Young in a tough spot. Suddenly it was third-and-14, only 22 seconds had come off the clock, and Young was scrambling to avoid pressure. That's when he saw McMillan near the sideline, and made an absurd throw to invite an incredible catch:

The first line in a Min Jin Lee novel gives you the whole story. In Free Food For Millionaires, it’s “Competence can be a curse.” In her follow-up, Pachinko, it’s “History has failed us, but no matter.” Both establish the thesis and themes of the novels, and of her larger project of writing about the Korean diasporic experience.  The first line of Lee’s latest novel, American Hagwon, does the same: “The rules of engagement have changed already.” The novel, which came out last week nearly a decade after Pachinko was published, situates her characters—and by extension, the Korean diaspora—at a point of transition where they must adapt. Ever concerned with the financial realities of Korean families, in American Hagwon, Lee considers the cost, both economic and human, of a people striving to elevate itself.  American Hagwon tells the story of a community centered around a hagwon founded in Los Angeles by Korean immigrants. Hagwons are cram schools that are incredibly popular in South Korea, and in the U.S. among Korean communities. They exist to supplement the day-to-day education students get at school. Students often attend them every day after school and late into the night, doing extra work to get ahead academically and to prepare for the highly competitive exams required for admission to the top Korean universities, as well as elite American universities.

The Atlanta Braves are not the best team in this postseason, but there do seem to be more of them than anyone else. Manager Walt Weiss has appeared blithely unconcerned by the math that demonstrates that the more pitching changes a team makes, the greater the likelihood that some of them will turn to shit. And yet Weiss persists, because these are the tools that have been provided for him. After the attrition of the regular season, he has at his disposal three discernible starting pitchers; the best of those, Chris Sale, already had to close out one game against the Phillies in Atlanta's wild-card win, and has not yet started in the team's NLDS. In a more normal environment, this "all hands on deck" strategy would be pointing toward a very predictable outcome: a mutiny by the crew. But Sunday was the acme of that plan to date. The Braves beat the Dodgers, 3-2, in Game 2 of the National League Division Series, because of stellar work by a 32-year-old ultra-journeyman whose career has been dominated by surgery rehab, and a 21-year-old puppy who fetches whatever is thrown his way because that's what 21-year-olds get to do this time of year. More or less everyone in the Atlanta bullpen was called upon to contribute to the team's most important game of the year so far, and more or less everyone did.

Who among us has not floated the idea of starting a bookstore to our friends and partners, as a way out of the nightmare that is 9-to-5 work and LinkedIn hell? In 2021, Lucy Yu actually did it. She had been unhappily working as a chemical engineer and socking away money, and when she had $40,000 saved, she took the plunge and opened Yu & Me Books, the first Asian American woman-owned bookstore in New York City. Yu & Me Books was the fantasy embodied. It was a cozy space in Chinatown, filled with Yu's favorite books and new releases, and she hosted author and community events each week. But that fantasy was only possible because Lucy was pushing her body and mind to the absolute limit of what she could handle. Everything changed when a fire nearly destroyed her shop in 2023. I've been a fan and supporter of Yu & Me since it first opened, but I was curious to talk with Lucy about how the fire forced her to learn that in order to take care of her community, she had to learn to take care of herself first. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCSOXHeHX-4

Are you grasping for an explanation of the Jacksonville Jaguars' typically excellent performance? Look no further than the Microsoft Surface. Microsoft Surface tablets are in the hands of all the Jaguars coaches on the sidelines now, and players are allowed to look at them as well. You can even buy a Jacksonville Jaguars skin to customize your own Microsoft Surface at home.  With Microsoft Surface, the opposing team can no longer hide behind their helmets. A few clicks or swipes of the virtual keyboard brings up all the information about them that was heretofore concealed. That includes photographs of the faces of each player, their height, weight, and colleges attended. Where past generations of football teams may have focused on developing better footballs or shoulder pads, the Microsoft Surface delivers the Jacksonville Jaguars the most powerful differentiator in the modern NFL: information.  Data unearthed by Microsoft Surface can be relayed by coaches directly into earpieces in the helmets of each Jacksonville Jaguar. Then a defensive lineman, for example, can look across at the offensive lineman on the other team and say, "Your facemask no longer intimidates me. You are Dalton Risner. You attended Kansas State University. Your favorite food is chocolate. I can tell you the exact address of your parents and other loved ones. A team of assassins is sitting outside of their homes, as we speak. The choice before you now is simple. Either you allow me to run past you, or you will never see them again." Then the Jaguars player could describe in detail what their houses look like on Google Maps. Dalton Risner doesn't know if the other guy is telling the truth, or if the assistant coach just fed him all that information from the sidelines. But does he want to take the chance? 

Our Monday crossword? It's good! This week's puzzle was constructed by Drew Schmenner and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Drew is a writer and editor for a national education non-profit who grew up in the Indianapolis area. Although he has lived in the Bay Area since 2013, he hasn’t renounced his Indiana Pacers fandom for the Warriors because his adoration for Reggie Miller’s heroics is so strong. Despite his decades of cheering for Indiana against its fiercest rivals, he couldn’t resist this puzzle’s theme. He hopes Pacers fans forgive him. Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX, run every Monday. If you’re interested in submitting a puzzle to us, you can read our guidelines HERE. 

Before Sunday's semifinal Game 1 in Ballhalla, the Valkyries threw a little ceremony to honor Janelle Salaün for winning Sixth Player of the Year. Salaün's unanimous approval by voters is one indication of her team's tremendous depth; another, stronger one is that the Valkyries overwhelmed the Aces, 71-60, thanks primarily to their bench and even as Salaün missed both of her shots, scored two points, and played six anonymous minutes. What makes the Valkyries special? Simply: There are so many of them. Sure, fine, also the defense, though the Valks' defense is in large part a function of their depth. Their bench scores more than anyone else's, and no other playoff team's starters get anywhere near as much rest as Golden State's. Not having to manage around the limits of, say, Breanna Stewart playing 33 minutes per game allows Natalie Nakase's team to operate at a higher intensity for a longer amount of time and mix up the looks they give opponents. However, the unfortunate predicament facing any team structured to play this way is that the playoffs are all about playing Breanna Stewart as much as possible, not having a bunch of overtalented eighth players buzzing around off the bench. At least in theory. Game 1 showed how devastating Golden State's depth can be. You could see it in the way the Valkyries closed, with Kaitlyn Chen not only stepping in for Veronica Burton but running a form of crunch-time offense built around her repeatedly cooking Mai Yamamoto. You could see it in Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young's combined 9-for-29 night, the product of being hounded for every inch of court by a rotating cast of good athletes. You could see it personified in Aminata Gueye, a backup center the team signed two weeks ago and trusted to play her first non-garbage time minutes in a crucial playoff game against the best player in the league. You could definitely see it in the gaudiest stat of the night: the Valkyries' 17 offensive boards and plus-27 rebounding margin. That was the subject of the first question Nakase fielded in her postgame presser, and she credited the rebounding masterclass to the team's depth.

I want you to imagine you are a Philadelphia Eagles fan. I know it can be difficult to formulate a theory of mind for them, but if it can be done for a bat, it can be done for a Philadelphian. OK, ready? Go. You are a Philadelphia Eagles fan. You suddenly have a constant craving for large sandwiches. Your head is now filled with detailed biographical knowledge of several local meteorologists. Every proper noun in this story is familiar. "Pond Lehocky" means something to you. The shouted phrase "FORMAN MILLS" plays randomly in your head at all hours. You are drunk. Drunker than normal, because it is game day. You have probably been tailgating, which is so important to you that you have reinvented collective bargaining from first principles in order to protect your right to drink next to the stadium as opposed to one lot farther out. You are drunk and feeling good. Your Eagles have been leading since the first drive of the second quarter. They are up 20-10 on the Rams. But not all is well. Jalen Hurts completes just two passes in the second half. They run an unsuccessful Tush Push. They unadvisedly go for it on fourth down with about eight minutes left, and fail, then allow Los Angeles to score touchdowns on two quick drives. The Eagles lose.

Mason Miller wasn't looking like himself by the time Jackson Chourio stepped to the plate in the bottom of the ninth of Game 2 of the NLDS. After making quick work of three Brewers hitters in the bottom of the eighth on Sunday, Miller was trusted to go back out there for the ninth and protect the Padres' 3-2 lead. It was only the third time all season he'd been called on to pitch six outs, and by the time he'd recorded two outs in the ninth, he'd also issued three walks. The most unhittable pitcher in baseball wasn't getting hit, but he was in trouble nonetheless. None of this is meant to diminish what Chourio did next. It is only meant to establish that baseball is a game that unfolds as a series of discrete moments that are not necessarily related to what came before. The first three batters Miller faced were blown away, and then three more benefited from the fact that he was having some trouble locating his slider. Chourio watched all of this from the dugout and the on-deck circle, and as he stepped to the plate with two outs and the bases loaded and his team down a run, he had to decide how to attack Miller. Baseball's most indomitable relief pitcher had just given out three free passes, and it's very rare that anything nearly as good as getting on base comes from swinging at one of Miller's pitches. A good time to keep the bat on the shoulder, no? Miller, too, had to make a decision. He could decide to let what had already happened in the inning affect how he approached Chourio's at-bat, or he could put it all out of his mind. He could remember that he's Mason fucking Miller, the guy who struck out 129 batters in 70 regular-season innings and allowed 13 earned runs all year. He could decide that everything that had just happened didn't matter, and all he needed to do to get his team a win was get one out.