He’s only 23! I don’t know if he’ll ever get it together, but there’s an awful lot of runway left.

The first time I read the comment I only saw “13 years in Philly?” and I was still nodding at the slur reminder.

Demographics in general are a big factor. Black Americans are by far the most religious racial and ethnic group in the country. Throw in a huge number of Latin American baseball players, and generally disproportionate representation from the American South, and you’ve got a pool of talent that skews pretty religious. 

Yeah, they’re literally #blessed. 

I was surprised at 1) how good ME3's multiplayer was and 2) how terrible Andromeda’s was, failing to build on any of what made ME3's so good.

This is a huge factor, and it couldn’t be a sharper contrast with the NBA — global sport, geography doesn’t matter, star players have fans in every city and most every country that follows the league. Baseball has gone hard the other way — I can tell you all about my favorite team’s roster and minor league system, but…

Because the NBA and NFL implemented those rules to prop up their free minor league systems, the courts said they could do it because it was collectively bargained, and prospects like Zion aren’t in the union so they get fucked. It’s a real perfect circle of fuckery, to be honest.

Not only should he not play, he should:

It really is as simple as this. Drastically reduce team control (arbitration-eligible after one year, free agency after two or three), let players hit the open market sooner, and all of this sorts itself out. 

Yes, sometimes they get it right. And sometimes they pull out of a documentary on concussions that makes the NFL uncomfortable, or discipline talent for making comments critical of important partners (say, the NFL), or run infomercials branded as reporting. It’s not all of one or the other, and they employ a lot of…

Thankfully, the vast majority of news divisions aren’t run like ESPN and have pretty firm walls between news and advertising. ESPN is incredibly shady about it, in no small part because it was built on incestuous broadcast rights-driven relationships with leagues, but that’s the exception.

“Listen, guys, we mean ‘eat that vagina and like it.’ Any questions?”

I really don’t think it changes how teams deal with the Pels in the future, to be honest. First, nobody likes the Lakers. Second, trade proposals get leaked all the time and it’s fine. Third, you can not like the Pels all you want, but if you want Anthony Davis this summer -- and plenty of teams do -- you’re going to…

No, and it’s not that you automatically get bad when you hit a certain age. It’s that it all adds up, and eventually something slow you down — health, some upstart kid, just plain age. Modern sports fitness has certainly extended primes, but eventually it just happens.

As a fellow Federer guy (who also doesn’t think Federer will win another, but *also* started thinking that in 2011 so what do I know?) I still think Nadal has the edge. And I’m not sure either of them are a lock to get to 20.

Exactly! Trying to police individual players from a wild era of rampant PED use is insane. Just acknowledge that everything got weird and judge them against their peers. Bonds was a juiced-up asshole, but he was unquestionably the best juiced-up asshole in the heyday of juiced-up assholes.

In all seriousness, we should put in the Cream and the Clear! There should be a steroids wing in the hall, because they were a huge part of the story of the game for a generation, and that’s what the Hall is — a keeper of that story.

This is actually what annoys me the most about the time and energy we devote to NFL replays: We’re breaking down slow-motion tape from every angle and wringing our hands about how to bring these very precise judgments to what is essentially a random number generator. There are penalties on every play. There is chaos…

Why did you list Milwaukee twice though?

This is a great point that’s easy to forget: It’s so hard, and you have to be so incredibly good, to be a *bad* NFL quarterback. We lose sight of it when you’re out there playing like trash because you can’t run the supercomputer in your brain and also execute a perfect throw while hulked-out supermutant linemen are…