Hi there, and thanks for coming to The Cipher! Maitreyi did a great job covering this space last week, but you are back to your usual host for this one. Sorry!
-Lauren |
Why Your Team Sucks 2024: Pittsburgh Steelers
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In Snark Forums, Fans Are Haters And Haters Are Friends
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My Terrible Son Alec Bohm Is All Grown Up
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Two Things We Liked On The Internet Today:
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Caitlin Clark Tests The Limits |
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Caitlin Clark is making her bones, as the mobsters in our neighborhood say, with everyone in the WNBA. The Indiana Fever—her Indiana Fever, to simplify this—are well-positioned to achieve their first winning season since 2015 and their first postseason since 2016, and are becoming good enough to transcend their singular and sickening nickname. Whatever else you want to say about the evils of modern marketing, you don't want to name yourselves after a symptom of malaria.
But that's not the fun part, largely because eight years without playoffs does not create the official designation "long-suffering fans." The fun part is that Clark is among the league's leaders in technical fouls, and even in the wake of Sunday's convincing win over Seattle before a sellout crowd, she is now two techs away from a suspension for persistent dissent.
Her reaction to Sunday's technical foul for misdemeanor tantruming was funny enough, but on the WNBA's 40-game schedule, the suspension threshold is just seven Ts. If she gets to seven, she will miss a game under the league's version of the Rasheed Wallace rule.
If you've got tickets for that game (and they are both expensive and hard to come by by WNBA standards), you're likely to be at least moderately pissed. For all the WNBA's undisputed growth in both interest and star power, the engine for casual fans is still Clark. Getting no Clark will have the same feel as load-managed LeBron or Curry.
Now maybe the officials will get a memo written in invisible ink (or unicorn blood for added deniability) from the league office to stop standing on Clark's tongue, but we do enjoy the idea that Clark is not shying away from the potential for a heel turn. Thanking the official who T'd her up is sarcasm-oozing hilarity—a passive-aggressive hat-tip to Sheed, who never thought to thank Joey Crawford for any of his.
And if you were worried that this could impact her game, consider this: Tied for the leading technical foul collection in the NBA this past year was Anthony Edwards. He did just fine.
-Ray Ratto
Photo: Chet White/Getty Images |
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Last week I was in Minneapolis for the first time ever, and I found it to be a very beautiful and well-designed city with tons to do. I know it's cold there most of the time, but I was especially impressed with how much the city encouraged people to hang around outside. There's a TV playing the game outside the Twins' ballpark and a large open area for you to plop down a lawn chair. You can easily take light rail to the Minnehaha Falls park, which is gorgeous. And, open for free from 6 a.m. to midnight, there's a generously populated sculpture garden with an incredible variety of works, headlined perhaps by Spoonbridge and Cherry from Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. This massive fountain piece, with its succulent red cherry and long horizontal stretch, is impossible to miss. It can be viewed by dozens of people all at once with no obstructions. Moreover, it can sometimes create a rainbow when the water falls right, and it provides some nice shelter for ducks on a hot day. This is a work all species can enjoy.
-Lauren |
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