We launched a basketball show called Oddball! (Plus: a delayed letter from Summer League)
Basketball in the desert is an NBA fan's dream
*Jim Nantz voice* Hello friends.
I owe you an apology. When I said, “I’ll try to send you letters from Summer League,” I was writing a check my fingers couldn’t cash. I’m sorry that we weren’t able to pretend I was at camp and you were my parents.
But hopefully my excuse is a pretty good one: It turns out that launching a brand new show from Las Vegas takes a lot of time.
Which brings me to the fact that we launched a brand new show from Las Vegas!
It’s called Oddball, hosted by NBA expert Amin Elhassan and me. It’s about (you guessed it) basketball. New episodes air four days a week, Tuesday-Friday, on Draftkings Network at 5:30ET (here’s a good primer on how to watch). We’re also on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Threads (lol), and wherever you get your podcasts.
I hope you’ll follow along and join us on this bizarre and fun adventure. We’ll do our best to keep you entertained and informed.
In related news, Summer League is a strange wormhole that exists somewhere outside the time-space continuum. And I loved it.
The games all take place at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Arena, which is also where we filmed all of our segments and interviews. Amin introduced me to so many people in the basketball world that I began to feel like a part of it. Even though I’ve covered a lot of basketball, I’ve really been a generalist for most of my career. So it’s been fun drilling down into the depths of one sport for this show.
There’s an ease to Summer League that surprised me. Everyone is pretty laid back. Former players, current head coaches, GMs, All-Stars — people who aren’t playing or coaching the games can be around the action without the intense pressure of being directly involved. Everyone we interviewed (stay tuned!) was present and engaged.
Summer League is also about as good as it gets for hardcore fans. You can watch hours upon hours of basketball; this year that included the debut of high-profile rookies like Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson. Some of the games were good. A lot of the games were bad.
But no matter how sloppy the play, there’s something soothing about the cadence of the game. And something inspiring about watching the second- and third-year guys try so hard to prove themselves. For a lot of players, Summer League is their last chance to make a team roster or snag a spot on a team overseas.
The whole thing is also just an A+ people-watching and star-spotting experience.
Walking through the nicer hotels felt like walking through an NBA broadcast, if the games took place at carnival-themed parties. At the Wynn, Karl-Anthony Towns wandered the halls in a denim shorts-suit with a matching bucket hat. Sacramento Kings coach Mike Brown saw a stranger drop something and ran after her to return it. Multiple general managers of teams were having drinks at the bar. At Resorts World, most of the Heat’s coaches wandered around. Even big names used to living inside a fishbowl can relax a little bit in the higher end spaces.
Because, for the most part, there are more fish inside the bowl than outside of it.
Before I got to Vegas, I joked about Summer League being like summer camp. But it really was. Our wonderful team of Meadowlark producers and writers felt like my bunkmates, and the days had their own comforting repetition. Much like a long summer when you’re a kid, a week in Vegas felt like a year. Summer League became its own cocoon.
A cocoon that existed inside the wildest city in America. It was so hot in Vegas that it didn’t feel safe to be outside during the day. My body began to slow down when I stood in the sun. The breeze was hot, like it came out of an exhaust pipe. Anytime I left the artificially cool spaces, the inside of my mouth felt cold for a few minutes in comparison to the temperature outside.
So we stayed inside, wrapped in the air conditioning and in the Las Vegas of it all.
Las Vegas smells like a messy college party or high-end perfume, depending on where you go. It has its own rules, its own way of being, that I can’t quite comprehend. The more time I spend there, the more I start to find it normal — which is mind-boggling in itself. The Strip is a psychedelic maze of neon signs and slick glass and old stucco. It’s an homage to an America that doesn’t exist anymore while also being the most honest portrayal of the one that does.
In a strip-mall off the main drag you’ll find the Golden Steer, a steakhouse that was frequented by Frank Sinatra and Marylin Monroe. It still has photos on the wall of stars who’ve been dead for years. Less than a mile away, people walk by chain restaurants like Raising Cane’s. They stare up at the giant building in the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle. They feed cash into machines designed to take it away from them. Meanwhile, the rich people who own the city look down at the masses from suites high above the strip, if they are even in Vegas at all.
It’s like the country was filleted and then spread open so that everyone could walk right through its raw heart. Capitalism, competition, greed, and exhilaration — it’s all there for whatever you’re willing to pay for it. The price points vary. There’s something for everyone.
And for a week in July, if you’re an NBA fan, there’s not just something. There’s everything.
Well done, Char. A colorful and very personal description of that weird extravagant city and summertime basketball culture, neither of which I will ever know.
Worth the wait!