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It looks promising. They aren’t super clickbaiting like the ones I saw. He isn’t trying to tell me about some secret or truth of a team/player that seems to be so pervasive with other NBA YouTubers. I quite enjoy The Ringer’s basketball content, I especially enjoy NBA Desktop. The problem is that I feel the majority of their content is from their podcasts. It’s surprising that despite the NBA being the young cool league the amount of YouTubers/people breaking it down in interesting ways outside of this player/team rankings, highlights, and other (in my opinion) useless debates/hot takes you get from shitty ESPN shows is almost nonexistent. You’d think there would be a Foolish Basketball or someone on that level that is well known, but it seems like there really isn’t. I feel like the most popular NBA YouTubers all just put out highlights or just simple breakdowns a couple minute long breakdown of the games with the same basic commentary and breakdown you can get from watching the highlights on ESPN.

I love Zach Lowe’s articles, podcasts, anything! He is for sure the best voice out there to listen to if you want to take basketball seriously. Hopefully there is a young or old NBA fan that sees Lowe’s work and wants to do videos on stuff like that. I’ll be a subscriber in seconds! I’ll keep going through and let you know how this Coach Daniel turns out, as well as, if I come across any Foolish Baseball level basketball commentary.

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Sounds good! Good luck on the hunt.

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So just a quick update since I went through a few more NBA YouTubers. I don’t think I found that Foolish Baseball-esque channel for the NBA unfortunately. I think it is in a difference in how the league is covered. A lot of similar topics are covered between FB and the NBA YouTubers I watched, but it just has a different feel. FB feels like he is doing it to showcase something he found interesting or bring to light something most people might not know, but the NBA YouTubers all feel like wannabe coaches/front office guys. They’re making content in hopes of being discovered and getting a coaching, front office, or even a major media job. No matter the scale every NBA YouTuber seems to have this same energy. It’s a serious tone to everything! Everything has to be done like a documentary if it isn’t about game/player highlights. They can be incredibly thought out analysis to incredibly dumb hot takes. They all sound like they are making these videos not to inform the fans of this game they love, but to show off how smart or well they can breakdown the game so they can get hired on to do bigger things.

That isn’t to say I didn’t find some interesting and well produced channels (I will share them in just a bit), but I just wasn’t able to find that fun, informative, yet goofy style video that Foolish Baseball produces.

So the first one that I found is Thinking Basketball. He does a great job of breaking down players and explaining the game. He also does a series called 5 Thoughts that is similar to Lowe’s 10 Things column. He also breaks down the meaning of stats in these series of videos. It’s very informative and I feel like he breaks down things that I don’t see dozens of other NBA YouTubers breaking down too. Oh also he did a a video on Jalyen Brown that you might be interested in @Ryguy.

The channel Coach Daniel was another good one, thanks for suggesting it. He seems to be focused on defense and breaking down the schemes of a defense. That is one thing is always under represented in basketball coverage. Defense never gets enough credit. Also he made a video comparing Golbert and Whiteside, two very similar players, and why one is a DPOY and the other doesn’t help your defense. It is surprising to me just how much praise Whiteside gets for his “defense” just because he averages a lot of blocks, so if you says Whiteside is actually a bad defender you immediately get points in my book and gain my attention.

Sub Me In Coach was a pleasant surprise. He has just under 3K subscribers, and does some really thoughtful and good player breakdowns. It has a slight Foolish Baseball like vibe at times, with little moments like this and a few seconds later too. It still isn’t a constant thing, but he has a less self-serious kinda vibe that seem to plague so many other NBA YouTubers which is nice. I’m probably most excited about finding this channel. He is apparently going to start a series of videos looking at good players on bad teams (he already did a video on Devin Booker) and is going to examine KAT next which is very well thought out and well done.

I also found the Dime Drop channel which is the person behind some of the better NBA videos at The Ringer. There hasn’t been a new video uploaded in 9 months so I imagine they’ve completely moved over to The Ringer, but there are still a handful of videos to go through if you’re interested.

Again I didn’t find that magical Foolish Basketball channel I was hoping to find. I’ve found interesting, nuanced, and informative breakdown of players, systems, and teams though. I’ll keep wading through the thousands of hot-take self-serious creators that seems to be plaguing NBA YouTube, and post any ones that I come across that are any good.

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Heads up hoops heads, 2K is free on PS Plus next month:

It’s also on console Game Pass for Xbox ballers.

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An issue you’re going to run into with NBA coverage is that there are multiple camps set up. There is a camp that is more popular in podcast/video world than real life which is the drama camp. These people marginally care about basketball but really care about drama and soap opera stuff. They have an outsized presence online.
Then there is the analytics only club. This isn’t people that happen to use numbers to help analyze the sport, these are full throated worshipers at the altar of excel. These people also marginally like basketball, but they really like general managers. That’s more interesting to to them than basketball games. The games just get us to off season free agency and the trade deadline. That’s way too simple, but it holds.
Then there is the “we talk about the nba” camp. And they’re a diluted bunch who do like talking about games. They tend to be a mix of it all, but are kinda boring.
There are many other people discussing basketball, but from a mainstream media perspective this is kind of what you get.
To me, the single biggest problem comes from how media has been gated for so long. It comes from super white newspapers to super white tv execs to to super white podcast moguls. Think about the black people you see covering the sport. Most of them are former players and beat reporters. The biggest names in basketball coverage are white. Lowe, simmons, windhorst, the old guard like macmullan and McCallum. In newer media stuff it’s the basketball jones and the the game of zones guys. Marcus Thompson is probably the biggest black name going, but he isn’t a brand in and of himself.
We can find exceptions here and there. My point is just that a lot of online nba discourse is led by white people, while the culture of the game itself is very much not that. And its hard for black voices to break through and it’s very hard fit into what the mostly white online audience wants.

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Thanks for the Jaylen Brown vid rec, he’s actually my favorite player. Was nice to see him do basketball again, even just in replays.

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New Open Gym showing life inside the bubble:

First footage that I’ve seen. It feels so surreal that this is actually happening.

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At this point, with the state of things in Florida, I do not believe it’s going to happen. I feel like I’m watching a bus barrel towards a cliff that no one on it is willing to acknowledge.

(If not for Florida, I might be less pessimistic but woof.)

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Really feels like it a) doesn’t happen or b) happens and then a staffer or somebody dies and all the leagues go like “ahhhhhh noooo we never could have seen this coming.” I’m worried for everyone involved here because I think they’re gonna keep pushing until something breaks.

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As much as I love sports I’m not convinced any sports really should return here in the US. The NWSL and the PGA have mostly been successful, but I feel like those are the exceptions to the rule. The MLS has already been seeing more than a few positive tests and not even all the teams are there yet. In tennis the other night Francis Tiafoe mentioned in his post match that he hadn’t been feeling well for a couple of days and then not even 24 hours later it was announced he’s positive. They’re playing in the south so there are even limited fans at their events. Who the hell knows what will happen when they’re supposed to be in New York for the Western and Southern and the the US Opens. Lastly the NBA bubble really doesn’t seem that secure since resort staff can come and go and the players seem to be operating under the honor system that they won’t leave. I just hope that nobody dies.

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Keep telling myself there’s no way this lasts and it’s a bad idea and sports should absolutely not be happening right now.

But also… Ben Simmons was 1-2 from 3 today, which means he both made a 3 and attempted multiple 3s in a game for the first time in his career, and if that doesn’t make me grossly, irrationally excited nothing ever will.

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If Ben Simmons could shoot like 35% from 3 and figure out how to expand his game around it, he’d basically be a top 5 player imo. Obviously that’s a lot to ask, but it would be quite something. As a Celtics fan I’ve been concerned all season that they’ll get the Sixers round 1. Recent developments have not made me feel any better.

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Wake me up when Simmons does that in game that count. He intentionally stopped taking those shots ever once his coach called him out on it. Hopefully he’s learning to be an adult.

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Turns out he was a stretch 4 all along.

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you joke but i think most sixers fans would tell you that we’ve been yelling for him to play point forward for a while now. the team does so much better when he plays with other ballhandlers on the floor. it makes signing Horford last summer seem even sillier than it was at the time, and even trading for Tobias, who I love as a human but who never quite fit on this team as well as Jimmy did. the Butler+Redick+Simmons+Embiid+nebulous 5th starter lineup really was the best version of this team.

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As a former Suns fan it is hard to say, but does this mean Colangelo was right?

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Hard to say honestly? Burnergate was such a singular, defining event that it’s hard for me to say anything good about Colangelo.

But that 2018 team was underrated, and if actually given time to grow, would probably be way better than the mismatch of parts we have now. Simmons was Colangelo’s consensus #1 pick and Redick is probably the best free agent signing this team has done in a long time, while everyone else on that team was Hinkie acquisitions.

(That said, last year’s team was also really good. It’s this year’s team, where they decided Horford could play the 4 and Tobias the 3, that’s painful and makes no sense.)

Sometimes I wonder about the world where the Kings pick-swap and Fultz trade never happened, and we ended up with De’Aaron Fox at #4 instead, and man that team would have rocked.

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Fox would have been better, but you still would have two players that wanted to start at point guard. Though, that might have made it easier for Simmons to move over to the 4 last year, than if you try to get him to do it for someone like TJ.

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To be fair, Fultz was supposed to be that as well, but whatever accident/mental issues/Bostonian magic trick that made him forget how to shoot kinda ruined that plan. But I think most importantly that might have prevented the star-hunting trades that came after 2018, and we would have ended up with a Fox/Redick/Covington/Simmons/Embiid lineup, with Saric at the backup 4, Landry Shamet and Mattise Thybulle, and plenty of assets and cap for a backup center who isn’t cooked and/or a fire-off-the-bench type guard. This team just had so many assets and they went and spent all of them on pieces that don’t fit with their core.

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First year GMs often start out with big trades, otherwise they would have kept the old guy. I guess Brand was in the position for a slower approach, but maybe ownership wasn’t?