Balls to the Wall

You might have heard by now, but the Los Angeles Lakers are having a pretty rocky quest on their quest for their 17th franchise title. To keep you up to speed with your VISFs, the Phoenix will be giving you the skinny on the fortunes of the NBA’s (real or pretended) elite. Enjoy! The Lakers [...]

With your externship meetings with possible VISFs fast approaching, The Phoenix has prepared an updated cliff-notes version of the trending NBA storylines, for the times you need a break from studying organic chemistry or the art of rolling natural tea. Enjoy! BIG (UNROTTEN) APPLE? Knicks: with an under-control pass-first point guard managing their coterie of [...]

A chance a iconography, a lore, a legendarium.  A means of developing a collective memory, the memory the Lakers, Celtics, Knicks, Bulls, Niners, Packers, Cowboys, Yankees, and Red Sox have. It is ironically what the Heat have started to build: a franchise memory from its victories and the lore around them. I was beside myself [...]

Dear Laker Nation, Hello from New York! We love your weather, your people, and occasionally your prices. We don’t like your earthquakes. We New Yorkers have experienced the terror of floods, blackouts, and out of control parades. Then there is the annual plague of James Dolan. From his perplexing ego troubles (see Lin, Jeremy) to [...]

It took less time than normal for this year’s Super Bowl coverage to make me feel like heatstroke was imminent. Looking back, it might have been the article with the headline “Ahmad Bradshaw’s heart inspires New York Giants” that finally did it. Maybe it was the story about how the Patriots had divine intervention on [...]

Ravens on Offense: Is there a well-known quarterback you’d be less likely to recognize on the street than Joe Flacco? He’s like that one kid in high school that other kids would make fun of for half an hour before realizing he had been sitting there the whole time. If you’ve watched the Ravens for [...]

As holidays go, Hanukkah falls short in several respects. “Let’s all listen to that great Hanukkah-themed song!” says no one. Where it excels, however, is in its ability to sustain the pleasure of gift-receiving for eight days, while Christmas blows it all in five minutes. It’s like the tantric sex of holidays, my own personal [...]

Since the NBA officially locked out its players on July 1st, the question people seem to be asking more than any other has been, “How could this be a race issue?” It’s always asked the same way: rhetorical, and with just enough combativeness behind it to hint that the person doing the asking has an argument waiting [...]

For just a minute, forget that you have ever heard the term Moneyball. Pretend that if you were to hear it right now, the first thing that would come to mind would have something to do with announcing the day’s final lottery number, and nothing whatsoever to do with how to win baseball games. In [...]