hoops fever
It has been an extraordinary year for basketball in the land of its birth.
It began last summer with the epic journey of the U.S. men's basketball team through the 2024 Paris Olympics, ending with wins in the semifinal against a stout Serbian team and a proud French side playing in its home final. Unlike in previous Olympics, neither game was a gimme for the Americans — it no longer has been for the last decade or so, with the world catching up to the inventors of the game — and both Serbia and France could easily have won those games, if not for the heroics of Kevin Durant and Steph Curry in the Serbia tilt and again Steph in the France final... in a performance that instantly became the stuff of legend.
As for the NBA, the 2024-25 season will go down as perhaps THE most impactful and storied in the entire history of the league, and it's not even over yet! I may be guilty of recency bias here, but the facts I am about to array for the argument are more than solid. They are astounding.
[ in progress ]