But they still grant whatever is left of institutional authority. A lot of people are unaware of the Pulitzer's various issues as a prize or its politicization and recognize it as a long established award that recognizes excellence (the Oscar has some of this too but its lapses are more publicly known).
When people think of the Pulitzer (which is probably not all that often) they probably think of Woodward and Bernstein or novels like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Grapes of Wrath rather than some of its more embarrassing choices.
Even if many of us have moved beyond such things, it still gives permission around the taboos of reporting certain subjects in the mainstream media. It's an official gold star from the liberal elite and that has some downstream effects as Ethan suggested here.
There was a time when I could name almost every played on every roster. These days, there are entire starting fives on the worst teams who names I don’t recognize. I don’t think I’ll be renewing my NBA League Pass this next season.
I didn’t renew NBA League Pass this year because I got tired of feeling that I cared more about the regular season than the league itself. And I didn’t miss it. In fact, the final months of this season (after All Star Game) were the least engaging of my life.
This right here is the biggest reason I only watch the playoffs: the teams, players, commissioner, and owners don’t care about the regular season so why should I?
I LOVE the playoffs because (haven’t missed a playoff game in years) watching NBA players play hard and with a level of desperation is incredible. I love seeing the greatest athletes in the world exhausted and pushed to their limits.
I've played enough that I very much understand why all the new moves aren't technically traveling or breaking other rules, but it feels like the game has turned into an attempt to cheat the fine print of the rule book rather than a tactical and personnel based competition based on commonly understood rules.
It also got much more political than I was ok with. It broke the spell of interest for me.
I made a similar comment to a friend the other week. I feel like I’d do pretty well in pre-2020 NBA trivia but would be useless for anything in the past few years.
In terms of Alberta's politics, he is a liberal who briefly worked as a reporter for National Review, so he has (when it would help him) occasionally used that to get people to trust him in Republican leaning spaces.
I doubt that, he’s a Christian and he’s not a “liberal”. He’s pretty apolitical, but if anything he’s probably in that “classical liberal” libertarian-minded space, along the lines of The Free Press.
He’s absolutely a liberal, at least now. Alberta may have had some conservative leanings at one point, but he has since gone the route of The Bulwark, embracing any and all positions on the liberal side of the aisle out of opposition to Trump. There are plenty of people who made that move, and it’s not like you aren’t allowed to change ideological positions after major shocks, but you don’t get to switch teams and still claim allegiance to the old one.
In fairness, I might have Alberta Derangement Syndrome. I just really dislike him. I find him to be disingenuous, incredibly self-important and moralistic, and spiteful.
You don’t get to be buddies with Justin Amash and then bemoan that the tea party populism was a poison that led to Trump.
Sure and that’s not Alberta. He’s a respectful, mild mannered, non partisan journalist. I’ve read a book of his and plenty of articles and heard him on multiple interviews.
Anyone who thinks he’s an asshole is likely too online and takes partisans politics too seriously. It’s an absurd thing to say, and you gotta be pretty bitter and angry to get to that take.
Good to hear! I probably shouldn't have weighed in but people who sometimes push in and ask the difficult questions aren't always the nicest, but they can do a lot of good despite that. I'm not familiar at all with Alberta but after the conversation I feel I need to read some of what he has written. I'm intrigued!
"He begins and ends his days with media briefings, but he also spends plenty of the intervening hours scrolling “NBA Twitter,” studying complaints and critiques the way a stockbroker monitors movement in the S&P 500."
Sweet Moses Malone. The only fanbase more toxic and perpetually unhappy than NBA Twitter are Star Wars fans. THAT'S who the most powerful man in the NBA is listening to?!?! I don't want to act like every critique from NBA Twitter is ridiculous but the majority of it is. God knows how many of those accounts are even real.
Correlating the amount of money the league makes to the performance of Silver would be a mistake. The popularity of the league amung young men is down big time. That will take years to show itself, but it will eventually happen. Silver is a schill of the corporate class, the corporate class is always late to realization things are wrong.
Tim Alberta is from Brighton, Mi which leans more right, but he's a moderate Democrat from what I have read and gathered in his articles. He does a great job of just REPORTING. Wish more people would do that. Strauss is definitely reporting, thank god
One of Trump's particular political talents is to bring subjects explicitly into the political space, instead of the softer/vibes-based quasi-political tagging that is the lingua franca of bourgeoise political action.
Reffing the game in a way that is fair to the defense means adjudicating, in real time, 100+ collisions per game, a game where players are constantly trying to fool the refs into calling fouls. As offensive players have the initiative they have more opportunities to foul bait. It is easier to just call defensive fouls.
What happened in 23-24 is that the league got feedback that the cheap offense was hurting their contract negotiations so they made the refs work harder for a couple of months. After the new deal was signed why bother?
You have Tim Alberta slotted in the wrong box. Go read his coverage of the Trump campaign and tell me he didn’t cut through all the derangement that usually follows mainstream coverage
I wonder if anyone begins their career hoping to become the “longtime flack” of a prominent businessperson? On the one hand, it sounds demeaning. On the other hand, it can be called “right hand”—and is more successful than most.
I don't know Alberta's political opinions,but he got his start at the conservative magazine National Review. What's more relevant, though, is that his article on then-CNN head Chris Licht in 2023 was so embarrassing to Licht that he was fired a month later.
If he doesn’t describe himself as a liberal, he’s on the David French route of being functionally indistinguishable from one.
National Review’s reporter program (as opposed to its opinion writers) has been a mess. I have a sneaking suspicion that it attracts people looking to get into political journalism but don’t have the connections to land a major media job. They’ll work at NR for a couple years before graduating to Politico or CNN, and a concerning number of them (Oliver Darcy and Tim Alberta, to use two examples) immediately make an ideological about face.
Conservative media in general is often used by ambitious people as a launching pad due to lower barriers of entry. The “principles over party lifelong Republican” who agrees with Democrats about everything is one of the most sought after big media gigs.
The number of Republican consultants who become counter-signaling pundits once they secure a notable commentator position is so prevalent I believe the point of working on Republican campaigns is leveraging that experience for a well paid position where you criticize the GOP.
Yeah, I’m not sure how much of this particular story is political vs. how much can be attributed to a specific NBA fan being annoyed at the state of the game:
“Cards on the table: I am a lifelong Detroit Pistons fan—and a child of David Stern’s NBA.”
A lot of the ideological cheerleading comes either from brain-rotted nba media or liberal media that have *no* interest in the NBA outside of cultural warfare.
To the extent there is or will be a sea change, the age related phasing out of more politically active millennial players and the NBAs slight step back from the vanguard of partisan politics combined with the turn on the left to an awkward form of slopulism, has weakened the shield as to attacks on ownership/management. See within this
“In the decade preceding Stern’s retirement, the NBA’s annual revenue hovered between $3 billion and $4 billion. After just a few years with Silver in charge, the league was making $8 billion, and franchise valuations were soaring. Last season, total revenue was $12.5 billion; this year, it’s projected to top $14.3…’Yes, gambling can ruin lives, and yes, it jeopardizes the legitimacy of our game, but it’s making our league and its stakeholders rich’”
Pulitzers impress no one outside the soon to be extinct newspaper people. And some of the winners turn out to be spectacularly wrong.
*cough* Walter Duranty *cough*
But they still grant whatever is left of institutional authority. A lot of people are unaware of the Pulitzer's various issues as a prize or its politicization and recognize it as a long established award that recognizes excellence (the Oscar has some of this too but its lapses are more publicly known).
When people think of the Pulitzer (which is probably not all that often) they probably think of Woodward and Bernstein or novels like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Grapes of Wrath rather than some of its more embarrassing choices.
Even if many of us have moved beyond such things, it still gives permission around the taboos of reporting certain subjects in the mainstream media. It's an official gold star from the liberal elite and that has some downstream effects as Ethan suggested here.
There was a time when I could name almost every played on every roster. These days, there are entire starting fives on the worst teams who names I don’t recognize. I don’t think I’ll be renewing my NBA League Pass this next season.
I didn’t renew NBA League Pass this year because I got tired of feeling that I cared more about the regular season than the league itself. And I didn’t miss it. In fact, the final months of this season (after All Star Game) were the least engaging of my life.
This right here is the biggest reason I only watch the playoffs: the teams, players, commissioner, and owners don’t care about the regular season so why should I?
I LOVE the playoffs because (haven’t missed a playoff game in years) watching NBA players play hard and with a level of desperation is incredible. I love seeing the greatest athletes in the world exhausted and pushed to their limits.
This is descriptive of a great many NBA fans.
I've played enough that I very much understand why all the new moves aren't technically traveling or breaking other rules, but it feels like the game has turned into an attempt to cheat the fine print of the rule book rather than a tactical and personnel based competition based on commonly understood rules.
It also got much more political than I was ok with. It broke the spell of interest for me.
I can’t stand the foul baiting.
I made a similar comment to a friend the other week. I feel like I’d do pretty well in pre-2020 NBA trivia but would be useless for anything in the past few years.
Same.
In terms of Alberta's politics, he is a liberal who briefly worked as a reporter for National Review, so he has (when it would help him) occasionally used that to get people to trust him in Republican leaning spaces.
Good article.
I read his book. He is the epitome of what a journalist should be. I’m a big fan.
Eh, he seems like an asshole. I remember he had a lot of bad faith arguments around his book on American Christianity.
I doubt that, he’s a Christian and he’s not a “liberal”. He’s pretty apolitical, but if anything he’s probably in that “classical liberal” libertarian-minded space, along the lines of The Free Press.
“Seems like an asshole” is hyperbolic.
He wrote a book attacking American evangelicals for supporting Trump. You can agree with that POV, but it's certainly not apolitical.
Oversimplifications and Partisanship for 300, Alex.
Sure, that would be a good way to concisely describing Alberta's work.
He’s absolutely a liberal, at least now. Alberta may have had some conservative leanings at one point, but he has since gone the route of The Bulwark, embracing any and all positions on the liberal side of the aisle out of opposition to Trump. There are plenty of people who made that move, and it’s not like you aren’t allowed to change ideological positions after major shocks, but you don’t get to switch teams and still claim allegiance to the old one.
If TDS is real (it is), so is what you have, the mimetic inverse of it.
In fairness, I might have Alberta Derangement Syndrome. I just really dislike him. I find him to be disingenuous, incredibly self-important and moralistic, and spiteful.
You don’t get to be buddies with Justin Amash and then bemoan that the tea party populism was a poison that led to Trump.
Asshole and terrific journalist are not mutually exclusive things. There are definitely people who are both.
Sure and that’s not Alberta. He’s a respectful, mild mannered, non partisan journalist. I’ve read a book of his and plenty of articles and heard him on multiple interviews.
Anyone who thinks he’s an asshole is likely too online and takes partisans politics too seriously. It’s an absurd thing to say, and you gotta be pretty bitter and angry to get to that take.
Exactly. I don't know him personally, I would assume he's a normal well-intentioned guy just like most people.
We just have opposing political projects.
Good to hear! I probably shouldn't have weighed in but people who sometimes push in and ask the difficult questions aren't always the nicest, but they can do a lot of good despite that. I'm not familiar at all with Alberta but after the conversation I feel I need to read some of what he has written. I'm intrigued!
As I mentioned above, his coverage of the Trump campaign should have been more impactful in setting off alarm bells at the DNC
"He begins and ends his days with media briefings, but he also spends plenty of the intervening hours scrolling “NBA Twitter,” studying complaints and critiques the way a stockbroker monitors movement in the S&P 500."
Sweet Moses Malone. The only fanbase more toxic and perpetually unhappy than NBA Twitter are Star Wars fans. THAT'S who the most powerful man in the NBA is listening to?!?! I don't want to act like every critique from NBA Twitter is ridiculous but the majority of it is. God knows how many of those accounts are even real.
Correlating the amount of money the league makes to the performance of Silver would be a mistake. The popularity of the league amung young men is down big time. That will take years to show itself, but it will eventually happen. Silver is a schill of the corporate class, the corporate class is always late to realization things are wrong.
But what about next quarter's earnings?
Tim Alberta is from Brighton, Mi which leans more right, but he's a moderate Democrat from what I have read and gathered in his articles. He does a great job of just REPORTING. Wish more people would do that. Strauss is definitely reporting, thank god
Not obvious to me the Atlantic is more influential than Outkick (both roughly at zero) and it seems like a mistake to give Alberta an interview.
I saw that article and groaned, thinking it would be a Jemele Hill piece. What a pleasant surprise to see Alberta wrote it.
David Stern constantly got involved when he shouldn't have, and now Adam Silver constantly doesn't get involved when he should.
Only Mark Tatum can save us.
One of Trump's particular political talents is to bring subjects explicitly into the political space, instead of the softer/vibes-based quasi-political tagging that is the lingua franca of bourgeoise political action.
After reading the second paragraph, I wondered “how is Tim Alberta going to make this about himself?”
Didn’t have to wait long for the answer to that one.
Was there ever an explanation on why defense was allowed after all star last year, to be reversed this past season?
Reffing the game in a way that is fair to the defense means adjudicating, in real time, 100+ collisions per game, a game where players are constantly trying to fool the refs into calling fouls. As offensive players have the initiative they have more opportunities to foul bait. It is easier to just call defensive fouls.
What happened in 23-24 is that the league got feedback that the cheap offense was hurting their contract negotiations so they made the refs work harder for a couple of months. After the new deal was signed why bother?
You mean after all star in 2023-24, and I wouldn't at all say that it was reversed.
wow you are right, guess it was after All-Star 24.
My sense is reffing reverted tho.
after allstar 2024: 111.9 PPG
24-25: 113.8 PPG/team
25-26: 115.3 PPG/team
You have Tim Alberta slotted in the wrong box. Go read his coverage of the Trump campaign and tell me he didn’t cut through all the derangement that usually follows mainstream coverage
I wonder if anyone begins their career hoping to become the “longtime flack” of a prominent businessperson? On the one hand, it sounds demeaning. On the other hand, it can be called “right hand”—and is more successful than most.
I don't know Alberta's political opinions,but he got his start at the conservative magazine National Review. What's more relevant, though, is that his article on then-CNN head Chris Licht in 2023 was so embarrassing to Licht that he was fired a month later.
If he doesn’t describe himself as a liberal, he’s on the David French route of being functionally indistinguishable from one.
National Review’s reporter program (as opposed to its opinion writers) has been a mess. I have a sneaking suspicion that it attracts people looking to get into political journalism but don’t have the connections to land a major media job. They’ll work at NR for a couple years before graduating to Politico or CNN, and a concerning number of them (Oliver Darcy and Tim Alberta, to use two examples) immediately make an ideological about face.
Conservative media in general is often used by ambitious people as a launching pad due to lower barriers of entry. The “principles over party lifelong Republican” who agrees with Democrats about everything is one of the most sought after big media gigs.
The number of Republican consultants who become counter-signaling pundits once they secure a notable commentator position is so prevalent I believe the point of working on Republican campaigns is leveraging that experience for a well paid position where you criticize the GOP.
Darcy was Daily Caller, I believe. Robert Costa is the other NR reporter who went on to be a fairly traditional liberal reporter.
It’s just like when Joan Didion got her start with them. The very nerve!
Yeah, I’m not sure how much of this particular story is political vs. how much can be attributed to a specific NBA fan being annoyed at the state of the game:
“Cards on the table: I am a lifelong Detroit Pistons fan—and a child of David Stern’s NBA.”
A lot of the ideological cheerleading comes either from brain-rotted nba media or liberal media that have *no* interest in the NBA outside of cultural warfare.
To the extent there is or will be a sea change, the age related phasing out of more politically active millennial players and the NBAs slight step back from the vanguard of partisan politics combined with the turn on the left to an awkward form of slopulism, has weakened the shield as to attacks on ownership/management. See within this
“In the decade preceding Stern’s retirement, the NBA’s annual revenue hovered between $3 billion and $4 billion. After just a few years with Silver in charge, the league was making $8 billion, and franchise valuations were soaring. Last season, total revenue was $12.5 billion; this year, it’s projected to top $14.3…’Yes, gambling can ruin lives, and yes, it jeopardizes the legitimacy of our game, but it’s making our league and its stakeholders rich’”