I'm tense. Whenever something good happens (like being asked to play last week), I'm immediately afraid it of it breaking. So I'm tense. Not only is Shoals about to come to Michigan to visit class and give his talk, but the Big Ten Tournament was to begin on Thursday and, while my students weren’t actually scheduled to play until Friday, I’d already received the form e-mail...

Strange but true. I will be giving a public lecture at the University of Michigan next Tuesday, as well as paying a visit to Yago Colas's "Cultures of Basketball" course. Hope to see you there!

This is a hallowed day. They asked me to play. They actually asked me to play. Okay, well it wasn’t exactly that they asked me to play, but pretty much. Walking across campus to class from my previous class, the fantasy image flashed into the slide projector of my mind: an intra-class pickup game. The still image sprang into motion: all of us going up and down the court at...

TWO SNAKESorone reporter's opinion 0. the world according to nouns I've seen some **** that nobody else has. A willowy poet putting up either 7 or 8 points every quarter of every game for a decade, turning nonce-jumpers and floaters from a defense's seams into inevitability incarnate. A 6-3 would-be shooting guard running a team, leading it in assists, rebounds, steals, teleportation...

Just listen to the music, man. It is kind of like Tony Conrad, but not, and also kind of like I thought Coltrane was when all I did was read about him. It's also reasonably pertinent to this quick bit of posting I have to take care of on these parts.Because Twitter has gone altogether useless, and there's no such thing as having weighed in recently enough, or collective memory...

It's been a long time since I paid a visit to Disciples of Clyde. Actually, last time was the day the second book came out. Ken and I had a long, serious conversation about writing, animosity, and true passion. This visit is all about ghosts, sometimes even the NBA. Eric Freeman is on board, too. You won't want to miss this one. This is only the beginning.

The latest from Yago Colas. My students, and readers following me here, know that in 1968, when I was 3, my family moved to Madison, Wisconsin and that my memories of my first few years there are dominated by the Bucks and their meteoric rise to a title and to perennial contention. But all that changed forever in the summer of 1975. The knowledgeable among you are thinking thatâ...

7PM, Rockit Room. Eric Freeman, Eli Horowitz from McSweeney's, and myself. FREE ZILLER. MORE INFOI plan to be fully on, like in this video, where I'm acting like I just swallowed a school bus full of coke. But feel free to bring me pills if you want. Also I am trying to figure out if I broke a law by posting/typing this. I have to call my insurance company now. See you tonight!

Despite the summertime hostility directed toward LeBron James, and in contradistinction to insistence otherwise, the Miami Heat have not been particularly villainous this season. Miami is disliked, probably more than any other team, but the gap between it and other elite teams is more crack than chasm. Consider Boston, which must regularly confront geographic enmity, Paul Pierce...

Yago Colas posts again about his Cultures of Basketball course, but also, what the ABA means to us today. Especially in the afterglow of All-Star Weekend. Here's Day 11, on kids and the seventies Knicks, if you missed it. I didn’t plan it this way when I designed the syllabus, but it seems especially appropriate to be teaching, thinking, and writing about the old ABA during...

Here's some vintage Bron-acting-human that also suggests he saw the latest FreeDarko print. You know, the one where Blake Griffin himself jumps over a giraffe instead of that piddly car.LeBron: "I wouldn't have jumped over a car. I would've jumped over a giraffe!"BUY OUR BLAKE PRINT HERE.Plus, additional happiness: Ziller and I reunite to grade the Skills Challenge like a Dunk Contest...

Congrats to Blake Griffin! He did what we thought he would! Check out our print of the newly-crowned Dunk Contest champ, and read some quick thoughts I exchanged with Eric Freeman.Bethlehem Shoals: I've convened this meeting under the cover of darkness because that dunk contest left me all emotionally bedraggled. Like it was far deeper than the usual "yay" or "nay". How are you holding...

For All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles, the folks at UNDEFEATED commissioned our very own Jacob Weinstein to do an artistic interpretation of the Blake Griffin Experience. Look for it if you're in town. If not, cop the print, in one of three colorways, at the newly re-opened FreeDarko Imperial Outlet. Buy some other stuff, too!A few links:-If you haven't already, take a look at GQ's...

If you aren't reading Yago Colas's posts about his Cultures of Basketball course, well, you're an idiot, because they just might be the most FD thing going right now. Sorry if I've used that line before. Sure, there's stuff about school in there, but even if you have no interest in academia or pedagogy, there's still a good 2,000 words on basketball and culture...

It's on FanHouse, yes, but Eric and I really kept saying "****, these made-up insulting NBA Valentines really belong on FD". Unfortunately, I had to stop short of having Dolan called Walsh a "******* cripple" because it was on AOL. Believe our recommendation.

Last summer, I took part in the D-League's fantasy Hall of Fame experience thing. Here's what happened. I kept in touch with Wayne Washington, one of the guys I met there. Wayne's in a situation that this blog—or any, for that matter—rarely consider: trying to break into professional basketball, without the benefit of McDonald's hype or D1 exposure. Wayne kept a running journal...

Here's a piece I did for The Good Men Project about what I like to call "sports criticism". That would be the intersection of sports and criticism. I wrote it a while ago but couldn't get it published until now. You can tell that from how heavily it leans on a long-ago Simmons column. Enjo!UPDATE: This video is new to me. Thanks, Extra Large!

Yago's latest post from his Cultures of Basketball course is up, where he subjects the students to my "Mikan and Modernity" essay. That's the chapter I was both most shaky on and, idea-wise, the most proud of. Yago homed in on my view of Mikan as the first true individual in the game, and in doing so, drew out the definition of "modern" that begins around Descartes. That view of...

FreeDarko is hitting the road again, in support of the book that keeps on giving.2/8: SEATTLEI'll be at the University Bookstore, starting at 7PM, to talk about the book with Sportspress Northwest columnist Seth Kolloen. Trust me, you don't want to get just me and the electronic noise machine like Portland did.2/24: SAN FRANCISCOGet ready for fear ... Green Apple Books is hosting...

Or, if for once you want a title that makes sense, "Who Owns a Meme"?I don't claim to have invented the "Positional Revolution". That would be the players who dared to do fifteen-hundred things at once, or the coaches subverting the conventions of their day. But I do know that I coined the phrase, started the conversation (on the internet) at least, and, have pursued it with some...

As Dr. Santiago Colas conducts his Cultures of Basketball course at Michigan, and writes a bunch about it, we here at FD are committed to participating as second-hand participants, albeit with a somewhat privileged perspective. Yago's last two classes dealt with the early pro leagues and the great (and zany) barnstorming operations. Here, Jacob and I discuss his posts: Bethlehem...

Jason Johnson is, by his own admission, not particularly stylish or athletic. He does however hold the distinction of being the world's tallest sports/style blogger. He can most often be found at Style Points, or on Twitter @frazierapproves.When Shoals asked me to write a style piece related to the re-release of Walt Frazier’s seminal Rockin' Steady: A Guide to Basketball and Cool...

First, the bad news. For those of those alien to Twitter, or undisposed toward general interest sports blog, FanHouse is no more. Actually, let me pause with the hysterics: It will live on, just with an almost entirely new staff, and under the direction of the Sporting News. Also, this transformation doesn't go down until March 1st, so you get another month and change of pedal-to...

Hello, all. While stumbling around the web, I found this phenomenal little paper by behavioral scientists, Emily M. Zitek and Alex Jordan, entitled, Anger, aggression, and athletics: Technical fouls predict performance outcomes in the NBA." From the abstract:A dataset including all players from five consecutive National Basketball Association (NBA) seasons was analyzed to determine...

Here's Chris Webber talking about the microfracture experience (if you can call it that) during last night's unforgettable Kings-Nuggets event. Thanks to Sebastian for pulling the video.