There are many people who are capable of watching dramatic sporting events in crowded bars and enjoying themselves. You may be one of them, and you have almost certainly seen them out there erupting in celebration at big moments, or just chanting "U-P-S" at a UPS truck because they don't know what else to do with themselves. The NBA Playoffs are great for these people, and the subset that have given themselves to the New York Knicks have been having a pretty incredible time of it of late. But this is not the only type of fan that exists, and this week we welcomed a different type of fan onto the podcast—our resident Knicks die-hard Giri Nathan, who has watched his lifelong fan dream come to the very edge of realization while sitting on the floor of his apartment, nursing a seltzer and trying not to wake up his baby with OG Anunoby-inspired ululations. The sickos matter, too.
We recorded the episode around midday on Wednesday, as is our custom, which means that the events of that evening's implausible Game 4 were not covered. In their place, we have an assessment of what the first three games illustrated about these two fascinating teams, and also of what the series has done to Giri's emotional state. There is a good deal of vibe assessment and basketball analysis, a retrospectively unavoidable amount of Robert Kraft voice, and a consideration of the oafish security theater that surrounded both Game 3's accursed presidential visit and, for reasons that have not been specified, also Game 4. But there's a lot of basketball talk, too, including Giri's prescient Jose Alvarado Prophecy, a consideration of the specific officiating problems and broader officiating challenges of these NBA Finals, and how the game is struggling to keep up with the emerging foul-all-the-time-on-every-play exploit.
After the break, we discussed Giri's decision to head to San Antonio for Game 5, which is both the best type of Dan McQuade Behavior and straightforwardly a bargain given that it is much cheaper to fly to San Antonio, stay in a hotel, and pay to get into a game there than it is to attend a game at MSG. We talked about the adult work of building an internal pricing structure for once-in-a-lifetime expenditures like this, cryptid-style Charles Barkley videos, and where the Spurs are relative to where they're going. Drew unexpectedly went Eric Adams mode and I belatedly apologize for botching the name of Giri's excellent book, which for the record is Changeover, earlier in the podcast.
From there we discussed what wound up being both a chaotic and decently wack French Open, capped by a men's champion nobody can get excited about, before turning at long last to another of Giri's areas of expertise: sneaking food writing into blogs not otherwise about food. This section addresses a memorable French Open lobster roll of unknown provenance, fancy sports desserts, and Giri's recent book tour experience in Italy, a country that has serious tennis fever, compelling risottos, and some outlandishly well-dressed old men. This left time for one Funbag question, which wound up being an admirably rigorous one about the books that got you into books as a kid, elementary school edition. Answering this for younger readers is tough, although we all agreed that the answer probably wasn't Johnny Tremain. In lieu of an actual recommendation, we celebrated William Golding's bizarre pickup lines. Here, as in fandom, there's more than one way to get there.
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