Digby

They're one of those teams who play in a smaller arena, so between that and the location, they're always going to have an upper limit to what they can draw. And the location has been a turn-off for certain players to play there, too. But, they've been a really well-run franchise throughout their tenure and have had Bills-like luck in actually securing a title, so they've done well for themselves despite the limitations. I'm curious if they made much/any money on playing at the Garden last night. The Celtics definitely helped organize and promote the game but it's not like they have arena control. (Also they trucked up the usual Sun floor, including the "Mohegan Sun Arena" logo on the court, which seemed silly. Would've been more fun, IMO, to have a parquet floor and Eddie Palladino doing PA. But I digress.) Tickets were said to be "sold out" but it looked to me like there were wide swaths of empty seats for groups that didn't actually show up, so guessing attendance was more in the 15-17k range. Still a nice night out for a WNBA team. Pre- and post-game vibes around the Garden were really great too, people were really amped for this event. I will say it was a very welcome change of pace to have the bars and sidewalks packed with many generations of lesbians rather than the usual roving bro hordes.

Yes, I'm sure Kroenke and Ballmer wouldn't want to cut a deal if they don't have to. Kind of sad for that to be an efficient and profitable use of space in such a dense city (by California standards) and kind of a sad statement at the same time both of these venues are getting publicity as part of the "the first car-free Olympic Games", or so they say.

Connecticut Sun are playing a home game at the Boston Garden tonight. Surprisingly, first time that's happened in 20 years (a reversal of the pre-New Garden years when the Celtics would play in Hartford (and Providence) a few times a year.) Also surprisingly, they've got the place sold out. Interesting to consider a future if/when the Mohegan Tribe decides it wants out of the team ownership business, and this franchise would make a move to Boston.

New Clippers arena looks great and congrats to them for having a nice thing for once. Though also, hilarious to me that they built a ginormous parking garage attached to it, across the street from an absolute sea of parking lots for SoFi and the old Forum. Never change, LA.

I don't either, seems like he had a fun time, but I don't know what he's got left to add to these broadcasts, and if I never hear Savannah Guthrie try to talk in AAVE again it will still have been too soon. Also would have been cool if the California beachfront concert segment didn't consist mostly of artists with sexual assault allegations levied at them. At least we have sweet, innocent Billie Eilish.

Fallon's main contribution was mentioning how he knew everyone performing (except when he didn't even know their name). And also saying "that's how it's done!" after literally every segment. Yes, that IS how it's done, in fact it was just done in precisely that way and we all saw it. Also they cut to commercial for half of the Phoenix set, which is insane. Apart from finally figuring out how to use Peacock correctly to serve these events, NBC's coverage was as terrible as usual, I thought. But I guess good if you're not really a sports fan and more just into celebrity. I'd be thrilled to never see Snoop Dogg at the Olympics again.

I mean, it's international play, the player pool is the player pool. The roster is already as Euro-heavy as it's ever been and the Berhalter era secured several key dual nationals in the US setup, so I don't know what could really shift there.

Mildly surprised that they actually went and got a guy with an actual coaching resume. Stupid that Chelsea fired him but good for Poch to get an easy plum gig in a low-pressure environment; good riddance to the nonsense of the current European club climate. Despite that I have some concerns: 1. I remember last season when Chelsea fans were moaning about their tactical system not suiting their players and the non-stop crosses that hardly produced a goal, which sounds oddly familiar. (This improved as the season wore on but he was also largely bailed out by Cole Palmer going nuclear.) 2. Related to the previous -- the increasingly belligerent USMNT fanbase won't have Old Gregg to kick around anymore, and I suspect that they'll be too blinded by Europhilia to take much out on Poch, so I expect the players themselves to feel more public pressure than they have previously, especially with hosting the WC. This is probably a fair distribution of blame but given how mentally fragile/stupid these players have been, I worry things could go south on that front. Man-management needs to be a real priority for Pochettino here. 3. Poch's teams tend to ship goals and, given how badly the USMNT's defensive form dropped from WC22 to Copa, that problem might get further exacerbated. OTOH, maybe this is a case for playing to your strengths and we can realistically say we expect to win by playing comically high energy and winning 3-2 every game. Should be entertaining at least. Biggest thing I'm hoping Poch can do, besides the aforementioned instilling of confidence and intelligence, is put in some calls to his coaching buddies and get our players in better club situations.

I had the thought that -- Phoenix always sings in English despite being a French band, but Thomas Mars has a fluent-but-funny grasp of the language so their lyrics are usually fairly inscrutable. So weirdly the same as the Chili Peppers, just for different reasons. (Also the France vs. California thing showed through in every other contrast between those performances, lolz.)

Jarren Duran has been the unofficial captain of the moderately-good-vibes on this slightly overachieving Red Sox team, but he's got himself suspended for calling a fan a "f--ing f--got" while going up to bat. Candidly, should have been a longer suspension. He's blossomed into a great player but I worry, between this and his anti-vax situation in '21 ... we need a stat that's Wins Above Replacement but sub out Wins for Toxic Self-Sabotaging.

Also, how about that Closing Ceremony? Tailor-made for the Gen-X/Millennial cusp (except for Billie Eilish, but she wants to be one, so it sort of counts). I could have done without the Chili Peppers at this time or any other time, but an entire mini-concert from Phoenix is better than any halftime show in American sport.

Weightlifting events at Muscle Beach OR ELSE

Oh I was on the opposition. Seemed like a bad idea from the start. A giant stadium that's not even the Patriots stadium in the middle of the city? Weird, though maybe it would've worked if it got downsized to Revolution-size afterward. But there were way too many questions about the cost overruns, and we have a surfeit of venues but not many are Olympic quality (Harvard Stadium is historic but that's why Harvard won't let anyone fix it up from being a dump, BC is literally banned from doing anything but 6 football games a year at theirs, and nobody else has an outdoor one). You can surf plenty of places along the coast of Mass and Rhode Island (bring a wet suit) but it's not like Tahiti waves. That said, I guess that precedent's been set to put those events way way further afield. My hot take: Boston would've made a better host for the Winter Olympics. Put the skiing 3 hours north if possible -- not sure if any mountains actually have the vertical, maybe Sugarloaf? Jay Peak? Killington already hosts World Cup moguls. I guess we could let Lake Placid have that one. But the Boston-area college venues for hockey are nicer than their football stadiums and the overall smaller scale of Winter Games might make it work. Won't happen, though, long as this town is NIMBY as all get-out and the general uneasiness of hosting Olympics continues.

They were planning to build the swimming pools in SoFi, right? Wacky but fun I guess. Ceremonies for any LA games should always be at Memorial Coliseum, IMHO.

Some level of spread-out is probably a good thing, though. As a typically self-absorbed Bostonian I kept imagining how they ever would have done all of that here this year, and I simply can't fathom how the operation could possibly have worked, there simply wouldn't have been enough physical space. If LA is doing events across Carson and Inglewood and DTLA and, idk what else, Anaheim or UCLA, that seems spread out if you're visiting for a few days but manageable breathing room for so many fairly-large events happening concurrently.

Yeah, I don't think that sort of leak is going to credibly come from an author nobody knows on a blog called Scarves and Spikes. Let's keep our media literacy training hats on until a Goff or Tannenwald or Bogert type has a scoop worth discussing.

I was watching the cycle relay event thing last night, where each team goes as a unit of three and loses one cyclist per lap, and the other team is on the opposite side of the track at the same time. Very odd event but quite exciting and aesthetically fascinating to watch.

Idiotic maybe, impractical not at all. Turner has already tried to shoehorn him into news and politics shows, seems even more likely he'll just become a mascot figure that drops in on other sports.

You can tell these shorts and shirts weren't quite designed to go together, but I dig it. Cool look for a change. And it's Olympic canon... sorta... as the Wrong Side of the Pond pod noted.

Gold Zone solves the problem with going a la carte to watch events that I find, which is that I don't know when I should be tuning in for the relevant stuff. It's a good idea apart from the hosts being irritating. Which reminds of the absolute best part of the Peacock sport-specific coverage: No Colin Jost bits.

The argument from the Dutch committee was that he had served his sentence, even though he only spent like a year in prison which seems like a light sentence for raping a preteen, but that part's just my opinion. Also apparently he wasn't allowed to stay in the Olympic Village, which seems like the primary appeal of being an Olympian in one of these non-glory sports, so at least there's that.

What I also find bizarre about 3x3 is: why is the camera so far away? It's not just at the far corner but it's a ways behind the court, too. If we're purpose-building these courts, why not figure out a better place to film from? Seems like maybe directly on the side or maybe directly behind the court would make more sense. I find it really difficult to watch as-is.

Has NBC always used Roundball Rock during the Olympic basketball events or are they just being cheeky this year with recent news?

I think it's more that halfpipe skating has always had ebbs and flows to it... it wasn't much of a discipline until the X Games made it happen in the late 90s, and then it fell off again when the X Games dumped it a decade ago. Seems like a generational blip. But street/park is forever.

Definitely drug testing but, relatedly, the puffed-up suits that run the Olympic sports world didn't wanna hang with those sorts of crowds, and the sponsor universe around it didn't know how to make money off of these sports. Not that X Games hasn't also always been a giant branding expo, but for very different brands. Also helps now that ESPN basically punted on the X Games and the prestige has slid quite a bit there. My feeling is, no one is making all skateboarders enter these competitions. If you wanna skate for the love of it, you can do that and stick to making videos (I assume that culture is all on TikTok now or something).