Over the last few days, the Los Angles Lakers a hired a coach with no coaching experience, and drafted a player who virtually no scouts believed is ready for the NBA. Since both guys — JJ Redick and Bronny James — seem to have been picked because of their relationship with LeBron James, it’s led to a lot of consternation about merit, and stupid points about nepotism.
As someone who is on the record as pro-nepotism and pro-Bronny James, let me just clarify: This is a dumb. You should not literally make the case for nepotism, or favoritism more generally. But if you want to defend something like this, then what you should say is:
1) Relationships are important. Not just in a descriptive, that’s-the-way-the-world-works way, but in a normative way. Relationships shape our abilities and our work-ethic and our morale, so hiring people because of their relationships is actually good.
2) This will, unfortunately, create unfair advantages for people, but the way to rectify that is not to ban favoritism, but to fix the consequences of those disadvantages more generally, by giving opportunities to people WITHOUT pre-existing relationships.
3) Given how inherently meritocratic the NBA is, any advantage created by pre-existing relationships is likely to be short-lived. In other words, if the Lakers don’t win, then JJ Redick will get fired; if Bronny James can’t play, then the Lakers will send him to the G League.
To put all this another way: Favoritism and nepotism are not good things, but they are inevitable by-products of good things. The problems they create are manageable and fixable, and the anger they generate is usually not worth the trouble. I’ll be rooting for the 2024-25 Lakers, in part because of how mad this making everyone…
Anyway, here’s everything from Undrafted this month:
The Rise and Fall of the NBA Superteam (Part Two)
On “Player Empowerment” and the Failure of the Superteam Era
I have to admit that I’m a little happy the Boston Celtics won the NBA Finals this month, because they seem well-positioned, even with the NBA’s new salary cap rules, to try to defend their title. And I’m frankly sick of the parity and chaos that has plagued the NBA since the abortive Superteam Era began.
Finally! Another Man Has Thoughts on Caitlin Clark…
“In the Marxian view, human history is like a river. From any given vantage point, a river looks much the same day after day. But actually it is constantly flowing and changing, crumbling its banks, widening and deepening its channel. The water seen one day is never the same as that seen the next. Some of it is constantly being evaporated and drawn up, to return as rain. From year to year these changes may be scarcely perceptible. But one day, when the banks are thoroughly weakened and the rains long and heavy, the river floods, bursts its banks, and may take a new course. This represents the dialectical part of Marx's famous theory of dialectical (or historical) materialism.”
On how Caitlin Clark illuminates a Marxist notion of history.
RIP Willie Mays, 1931-2024
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” —Stephen Jay Gould, scientist/socialist “These men couldn’t do what I did because they didn’t have the chance. But they dreamed the dreams I did when they were 15, too. And they taught me and they gave me the combat training so that I could do it.” —Willie Mays, on his Negro League teammates
On how we should remember the forces that made Willie Mays’ incredible story possible — and so many other stories impossible.
The Case of the Missing Gay Male Athlete
It's weird that there aren't more out male athletes by now, right??
In case it wasn’t obvious, this piece came from a real place of confusion. If you had told me ten years ago that in 2024 there would be ZERO openly gay men combined in the NFL/MLB/NBA, as well as none on the PGA Tour or the ATP Top 100, I think I would have been pretty shocked.
I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on the Nova Knicks. Is that a pro labor move? I don’t know the answe, but I know it sure is feel good.