Month: May 2026

Proposing a modification to best of sevens

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously I didn’t watch the game, but when I saw the score, I wasn’t the least bit surprised that not only did the Knicks beat the 76ers to complete the sweep, they won by a large margin.  And not only did the Knicks knock the Sixers out of the playoffs, Philadelphia got completely owned (again) by the legions of New Yorkers who made the jaunt down to Philly to watch the conclusion to the series, completely taking over the Whatever Name Arena that the Sixers call home.

Man, I don’t know what’s the deal in Philly, because I normally have this begrudging respect for their sports fans, but outside of the Eagles, it feels like Philly sports fans have completely lost their reputation, seeing as how the Phillies, Sixers and even the Flyers who were also just swept out of the NHL playoffs are all showing poorly, and their supposed, die-hard fans, aren’t showing much better either.

But anyway, back to the subject of this post, I have a proposal that would absolutely, never, ever come to fruition because a lot of parties stand to lose money if it were to happen, and regardless of if the athletes themselves would love the idea, The Man absolutely refuses to yield any money under any circumstances, logical or not.

Regardless; my proposal would be that in a best-of-seven matchup, should any team go up 3-0, the series is over, without the need to get a fourth win.  My hypothetical eye test has observed throughout my life as a sports fan, that not only has historically a 3-0 all but guaranteed a series win, in most cases, a 3-0 has a high chance of being a sweep.

Most every sports fans know that a comeback from 0-3 is practically impossible, with there being legitimately just three recognized instances in history; two in the NHL, one in MLB, and zero in the NBA.  Sure, there have been many instances where be it pride, a fluke, or a good old fashioned college try, where a team down 0-3 has scraped out a win, maybe two, with only a few times in history where they managed to force a game 7, but the ultimate comeback has literally only happened three times in the three big sports that utilize best-of-sevens.

And the thing is, the numbers actually back up my observation; with teams that are up 3-0, their win percentages in game 4 are all ranging from 60-70%, with MLB teams completing the sweep 77.5% of the time, NHL teams closing out at 62.5%, and NBA teams putting the finishing touches at a rate of 69.3%.

So that being said, zeroing in on the NBA, since it’s never happened before, why even bother anymore with playing out a series once a team goes up 3-0?  Not only has it been proven to be impossible for a team down 0-3 to comeback, it seems like in most cases that not only do they get swept, but they also get blown the fuck out in the finale too.

Much like the rest of the world, the NBA today has a lot of players who fall into this complete defeatist mentality, and watching teams that know history is against them, with a monumental task in front of them, you can just see their will to try and give effort is just not there.  I don’t care enough to really pore through the numbers, but I’d wager that a noticeable number of 3-0 game 4’s in history have resulted in not just a sweep, but a sweep by virtue of a big embarrassing blowout.

That being said, I propose to eliminate game 4s once a team is up 3-0, and declare it a series victory, because frankly, it just seems like a foregone conclusion that’s formally just a waste of time.

Obviously, this would never fly, because television broadcast money, advertiser money, venue money, ticket money, concessions money, all the money that circulates on account of one singular basketball game, would be forfeit with this idea, and nobody wants to lose out on getting paid.

But I feel like players would be over the moon if this idea were to become reality, and it would create all sorts of interesting new dynamics if this were the case.  A team up 2-0 starts to really play with their balls out in game 3, knowing that they can close out the series immediately, and potentially get a few extra days to rest before the following round. 

A team down 0-2 really now needs to kick that desperation gear in motion, because 0-2 now becomes the 0-3 in a way, but the difference is if they can stave off 0-3, they not only stay alive, but mathematically 1-2 comebacks don’t mean the end of the world, and even 1-3 comebacks are not impossible either.

Plus there’s a number of not-so altruistic factors that come into play, because if a team closes out a series at 3-0, and have to wait on an opponent in another series that goes the distance, there’s a potential for a long layoff, and almost every sport has demonstrated the perils of too much time off, and it could creates for some interesting outcomes if a hot team that won a 3-0 sits for 13 days, while their opponent who went 7 games to move on is battle tested, hardened, and still has momentum on their side; or they could be exhausted, and the team that won 3-0 got some much-needed rest, and then they overpower their opponents.

Above all else, basketball is a physically grueling sport.  Probably more running than any other sport outside of futbol, and last year especially, we saw an NBA playoffs where like 3-4 different guys tore their ACLs, most notably Tyrese Haliburton in game 7 of the Finals.  Players would probably be thrilled at the possibility of gaining some extra rest time, should they close an opponent out 3-0, and something like this could be critical at allowing for players to get some much needed rest and recovery, and strategically lead to some more compelling basketball.

But again, it boils down to the fact that game 4s now, where a team is down 0-3 are just boring as fuck.  The losing team not only almost doesn’t ever win, they also get embarrassed, when they get blown out to complete their sweeps.  The NBA playoffs are already long enough, why not make some tweaks to the format to help spice some things up?

Happy Trails, Bobby

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ESPN: Legendary Braves manager, Bobby Cox, passes away at the age of 84

As the years passed, long after his retirement in 2010, occasionally I did have the thought of this eventuality, when Bobby Cox would one day leave us; usually whenever he’d pop up sporadically throughout the years, be it as the novelty guest manager for an exhibition game, or just appearing at the ballpark for some special occasion.  But Bobby Cox was no exception to the rule of Father Time, and as his age continued to rise, it was always a matter of when and not if, and curiosity on how the sports world would receive the sad news.

And now, that hypothetical has become reality, and at the age of 84, Bobby Cox has sadly passed away, leaving a void in the hearts of Braves fans, and to varying degrees, fans of baseball, fans of sport, and the people of Atlanta who had a modicum of local pride to the Braves that repped them.

Naturally, I am very sad to hear this as well, at 84, it can’t be said that it was too soon, and he lived quite the full life, but still it’s sad to hear that ‘ol Bobby has finally left the party.  In a way, he was kind of like everyone’s dad, who grew up watching the Braves, and not just to the players themselves. 

I’m not going to wax too much poetic and recite a lot of the same statistics and career numbers that anyone can read about on the countless other obituaries that are already posted all over the internet, but I was always amused at the fact that he had been ejected from nearly an entire regular season’s worth of games (158).  Although I definitely recall a few times where he trudged out of the dugout to get in the face of an umpire, what I always remembered more were the times where TV cameras and mics don’t necessarily pick up what he’s saying, but we just see the umpire react and throw out his finger and send Bobby off, without anyone but commentators really knowing what was being said.

But that’s what Bobby did, he got his ass tossed out of games, always in defense of his boys.  He was this totem of steady respect and support, and I like to imagine Braves fans everywhere wished for the levels of support and sticking up for his team from their own parents as Bobby did for his players throughout his entire career, and imagined how much better life could be if they did.

What was always amazing to me was how Bobby Cox seemed to be immune to the criticism, from even the most staunch and stubborn of newer baseball fans who prioritized statistics and analysis over the old school, touch-and-feel managing style that Bobby Cox exercised, and what made Bobby, Bobby.  Sure, there would be some grumblings of critique over some of his old school game tactics, but at the same time, nobody would complain when he’d get a feeling, and suddenly Brooks Conrad is hitting a pinch-hit home run of the go-ahead variety and the Braves would win a nailbiter.

I think one of my favorite memories of Bobby was when it was somewhere in between 2011 and 2013, but he would emerge out of retirement at the end of most Spring Trainings, and he would manage the Braves’ minor league all-stars for an exhibition game against the final 25-man Atlanta Braves roster, usually at the home of one of their affiliates.  There was one year, where the game took place in sleepy small Rome, Georgia, and the Bobby Cox-led minor league Baby Braves ended up stomping the Jesus out of the Atlanta Braves by like a score of like 10-3.

Every year, I’d always make jokes about how whether it was at these exhibition games, or whenever Bobby showed up to the ballpark, about the umpires should single him out and eject him from the premises, just for old time’s sake, and every time I’d make the joke, it would get avalanches of likes and thumbs ups from the masses, and it always brought me comfort that others shared the same humor and got the joke.

Either way, it is truly a sad, sad day in Atlanta and the baseball landscape, that Bobby Cox has passed.  No hyperbole, the man was genuinely one of the greatest baseball managers in the history of the game, and Major League Baseball is in a position where tomorrow is not going to be a better day than the last because of the magnitude of the loss of one of its greatest alumni.

What’s crazy is that Bobby’s passing was just days after Ted Turner’s, because the two were very closely intertwined, between the former owner and the former manager-turned GM-turned back to manager.  Already, the morbid hypothesis has already been posed about the brutal rule of threes, and seeing as how one and two were Atlanta icons, those legends in my city need to be on high alert over the next coming days into weeks.

Fare thee well, Bobby Cox.  This one genuinely does hurt, and I’m sad to see that this day has finally become reality, and if this were a magic fairy tale baseball season, there’s no more better reason for the Braves to win it all, than, For Bobby, and what the hell, for Ted too.

Happy Trails, Ted

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WABE: Ted Turner, unofficial godfather of the City of Atlanta, passes away at the age of 87

As a (for lack of a better term) Atlanta Braves fan, the passing of Ted Turner does mean something to me.  As a professional wrestling fan who witnessed the rise and eventual fall of World Championship Wrestling, the passing of Ted Turner does mean something to me.  As a resident of the Metro Atlanta area for over half of my life, the passing of Ted Turner does mean something to me.

Frankly, whether or not they were fans of the guy, not a fan, or just somewhere in the middle, I feel like it’s accurate to say that if you lived in the Metro Atlanta area, it’s kind of hard to say that Ted Turner, or more accurately, one of his endeavors didn’t affect you in some way, shape, or fashion.

I know that in today’s twisted, demented, politically charged state of America, Ted Turner equals CNN which equals information source for the filthy gross fake news Democrats which equals Ted Turner being trash to an unfortunate majority of the unwashed right-leaning troglodytes of the country, but I would wager that the life and business dealings of Uncle Ted affected even those shitheads in a positive way, whether he provided employment, entertainment, or through some of the many philanthropic endeavors he was a part of, and in spite of the fact that people these days tend to dislike those with wealth, I can’t really run off many scandalous and negative things about Ted Turner off the top of my head.

Personally, it’s one of those things that I never really thought about, as far as whether or not I was a fan of the guy or not.  In one hand, he has money and is rich therefore I should be inclined to lean towards disliking the man, but in the other hand, other than the day he decided to cede control over his own company and sell to AOL Time Warner, which ultimately killed WCW and made the Braves into the soulless corporation it is now, there’s really nothing that I found particularly offensive about the man.

The man put Braves baseball into the national spotlight, force-feeding the country through TBS, contributing almost entirely to why the Braves have such strong brand recognition and pockets of fandom throughout the entire country and beyond.  Ted Turner was one of the only people in the world to really go toe-to-toe with Vince McMahon and not only challenge him in the wrestling industry, but punch him and draw blood, before the pendulum would eventually swing in the other direction, but let the record show Ted Turner’s success.

And of course, like many who live in the Atlanta area, I too had my stint(s) with the Turner company, having worked for Cartoon Network for two of the more noteworthy years of my career, as well stints with Turner Sports as well as NCAA.com.  Many in Atlanta joke about how you can’t really say you’ve ever lived in Atlanta unless you’ve worked for some of the big dawgs of town, like Coca-Cola, Delta, The Home Depot, or Turner, and I remember the feeling of professional pride I had when I was issued my first @turner.com email address when I was brought into Cartoon Network.

Rich as he was, Ted Turner never seemed to be of that devilish, moustache-twirling kind of evil asshole as many rich white guys are often seen.  The man seemed to genuinely care about the City of Atlanta, and dumped tons of money into the arts, culture, city projects, and was always reliable to find a way to get his name on all sorts of charitable causes throughout the city.

Whenever I’d have friends in the car, it was night, and we were headed southbound towards Midtown, I’d always refer to the 17th Street bridge, going under it, and when you emerge and the Atlanta skyline is unveiled to your eyes, as the mouth of Ted Turner, because there’s just something about seeing all the high rises and lit up buildings as you emerge from underneath a bridge that always seems kind of magical when you see it.

I actually saw Ted Turner once, a long time ago, when I was at a Ted’s Montana Grill; naturally I saw a strikingly attractive older woman, but then right behind her was a man with white hair and a white moustache, and it dawned on me that it was Ted Turner.  I remember thinking, man, he’s way shorter than I thought he was, because whenever he was on television, he was always in his power suits and framed real tight to make him look like a massive, giant man, but in reality, Ted couldn’t have been more than like 5’8.  But all the same, for a rich guy that most snarky people would assume would be too good to eat amongst pleebs, even at a joint named after him, it was refreshing to see him actually at one of his own restaurant’s locations.

Unsurprising, there’s not really anything substantial about this post, but I guess what it really all sums up is that Ted Turner was Atlanta, and his passing really means something to Atlanta, whether or not people want to admit it, and I just wanted to share some not-negative words about a guy that had a lot of contributions to things that were important in my life, and that I appreciated who he was, and what he meant to the city I live in.

Life after Spirit: It has begun

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MSN: Delta to cut snack services on what they deem short flights

At a quick glance, this doesn’t sound like a big deal at all.  Many on social media are very quick to opine such, claiming those people who see it as doom and gloom to be overreacting.  And in all fairness, it really doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, considering the fairly logical rationale behind it: shorter flights struggle to even complete snack service, with an extremely tight window that offers almost no margin of error, and any sort of turbulence or complication leads to some people getting snacks and others not, leading to a negative experience for some.

However, it’s the timing of this business decision, coincidentally as soon as Spirit Airlines has wrapped up operations, that raises my eyebrow, and gives me the impression that this is just the start of eventual perk-removing, that starts with snacks on a small scale to test the waters of reception and blowback, to eventually transforming into a fare class that might as well be called the Spirit fare, but without the actual Spirit prices.

Although the removal of snack service really doesn’t sound like a big deal at first blush, Delta will probably save somewhere in the neighborhood of like $8-12M in snacks they don’t have to purchase, more if this slashes their alcohol stocking.  These savings of course, will not mean that they will be passed onto customers, and in fact will probably pad the end-of-year bonuses to guys like Ed Bastian, who reportedly made around $24M in bonuses last year, and a conglomerate of old white male shareholders.

I can’t speak for any airlines, but I’m not going to assume Delta is the only one doing it, with their offering of some basic bare bones fare class, that’s basically already like Spirit Airlines, with no assigned seats, no checked bags, last to board, and the kicker being no SkyMiles earned, but it still costs like 3x the price of a Spirit RT.  I imagine this fare class will become more expensive with the removal of Spirit Airlines as a competitor, further entrapping would-be travelers with bullshit prices for the shortest of flights.

The point is, airlines are already fucking the people on a daily basis with their bullshit high fares, and the people are entitled to take back as much as humanly possible from them for how much they’re paying.  It’s not so much about the actual snacks themselves being removed as much as it’s an exploratory malicious act of deception with the end goal being more cash pocketed at the corporate executive level.

It starts with snacks, and little by little, 350 mile flights turns into 500 mile flights, the little bag checker displays start showing up outside of Delta gates, with ominous threats to start charging for personal items.  All while the fare classes continue to escalate, citing inflation, the Strait of Hormuz and the rise of jet fuel.

Randos on the internet can claim that it’s no big deal, but will be wondering why their round trip from ATL to DCA costs $479, gets no snacks, and no SkyMiles are awarded; all while Ed Bastian makes $30M in bonuses at the end of the year.

I know the death of Spirit was a good time for many on the internet, with all the jokes and memes to have come out of it, but it seriously was not a good thing at all for the entire industry, and the only ones who will suffer from it, are people who need to travel.  Eventually, nobody will be able to travel at all, unless it’s on their employer’s dime.

Dad Brog (#165): Can’t even see the end of the tunnel

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As is often the case with a lot of the time I write under the Dad Brog tag, things are going a little rough these days.  In fact, it’s like the difficulty of my life is currently sitting at a 9 on a scale of 7, and I’m having a hard time of accepting that this is just kind of going to be the state of it, given all the circumstances around me.

Frankly, it’s not so much my children being the source of lot of my general stress and anxiety beyond the usual every day gripes of parenting.  Sure, they can be little shits when they want to, and their listening skills have a tendency to become questionable at times, but in this case, they’re kids.  A six and four year old, being a six and four year old; defiant, rambunctious, playful, but otherwise pretty normal as far as being kids go.

However, it’s my third kid, AKA my elderly dad who is undoubtedly the largest source of my general daily angst, frustration and reason why my mood gets tanked faster than anything else.  Frankly, this wouldn’t be classified as a Dad Brog if not for the fact that my own dad has basically turned into a third child for me, and is about as functional and capable as my six and four year olds, with the exception being that a lot of his inability to function has mostly been on account of his own choices, and not because he’s a six or four year old.

I struggle on a regular basis to not let my frustrations boil over and take it out on my dad, but it’s really fucking hard at times when the things I request and ask of him are never absorbed, never honored, and never respected.  And with the recent diagnosis of early signs of dementia, it’s like he’s got a permanent excuse to be inept and completely oblivious to my life or my needs, and that I’m basically expected to be available at his beck and call, because he can always just chalk up forgetfulness on account of signs of dementia.

What frustrates me a ton is the fact that he put himself in a position to let his brain rot and degrade to its current state, by his own life choices over the last 10-15 years or so.  He lived in isolation, he had almost no friends, he didn’t have any real hobbies, and he basically resigned himself to stop bothering to keep learning things in life.  It’s like he was in prison, except on his own volition, based on the life of low stimuli he put himself into and refused to get out of it.

Whenever I boil over from him blowing up my phone on a daily basis, in spite of me telling him to please not call me during work hours unless it’s an emergency, and he keeps calling anyway, because whenever he gets bored, lonely or depressed from the shit life he bestowed upon himself, he dials me up, and it makes my blood pressure immediately elevate at hearing my phone go off because I know it’s most likely going to be my dad, and I wince like OJ Simpson in court whenever I confirm that it is.  But when we do speak, everything I state or ask or more often than I care to admit, chastise, the response always starts with “no, but…”

Pretty much everything I suggest or try and convey is met with no, but, or some other form of pessimistic nihilism, and if anyone has ever wondered why I might have such characteristics, then this is most likely where I am getting it from.  However, the difference is that I’m still clear of mind and often times police myself, and try my best to not have such a tone and scare everyone because I’m like a big fucking chupacabra that scares people really easily apparently.

But I also get a ton of resistance and questioning from everyone else in my life, be it my own children, and people I work with.  My kids question everything, and not always in the good way, but more like when I ask them to do something they don’t want, it’s always met with great resistance, and feet dragging, and complaining.  Any time I try and flag something as (obviously) needing clarification or push back or some factor that’s coming from a place of pursuing efficiency and less wasted time, I’m the one who gets tagged as being difficult, glass half empty, or just plain fucking negative.

People like to label me as overly negative or pessimistic, but the truth of the matter is that I’m surrounded by it, and I’m the asshole if I become a product of my surroundings. 

And this is where I am currently, sick beyond words at how exasperated and exhausted I am of everyone questioning me, complaining to me, resisting me, and just not giving me any modicum of respect.  I don’t feel as if anyone alive these days respects my opinions or my time, and unfortunately I don’t really anticipate much of this is going to change in the indeterminate future.  I see no light at the end of the tunnel, which is a really shitting feeling to feel, but with my life basically being a glorified babysitter and caregiver, there’s pretty much no time for anything else; believe me, there are a lot of things I’d like to do, like set up an old laptop to be a good emulator machine for a lot of retro games I feel like playing, or exploring the potential gold I could be sitting on with some of the CIB video games that I have, but there simply just isn’t enough time left each day for me to do anything that I want, beyond maybe catching up with exercise, going off brogging a rant, or watching 1-3 episodes of Batman the Animated Series, depending on how much sleep I want to sacrifice.

I can’t really go to bed sooner than I do, because one of my kids is a problematic bed wetter, and I try to take them to the bathroom in the middle of the night to empty out their bladder to reduce the chances of a wetting episode, with it being a cautious game of chicken to not go too early in which there’s a lot of time left overnight for a wetting episode to occur, or going too late, and for there to already being a wetting waiting for me to have to fucking clean up in the middle of the night instead of 6:30 in the morning.

It would just be great if my life didn’t have to be so fucking insufferably hard, all the god damn time, and frankly it would just be great to have something to look forward to, because there’s a real lack of that in my world these days, and so I’m just kind of going through the motions at times, which is really unfair to my kids.

But for reals though, I really need my life to stop being so sucky more often than it is, and get me back to a position to where there’s more to look forward to in the day, than dreading.

eBay has the chance to do the funniest, probably most satisfying, thing in the world

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Engadget: GameStop reportedly trying to purchase eBay, with reports of offer being $56 billion dollars

I’m not going to pretend like I have any modicum of care of what’s really going on with this whole story, except that I think it’s really weird that a general small coffer company like GameStop is in any position to acquire a much larger company like eBay, but I think most of the world has seen stranger things and about as improbable takeovers in history.

But as the subject of this post says, I think eBay has the chance to do the funniest thing ever, and that’s telling GameStop that their $56B offer, has not met the reserve.

It would be satisfying to probably everyone remotely following this story, because I feel like every gamer in the history of existence has probably been fucked over or at least been insultingly low-ball offered by GameStop, and it would probably bring great joy to see eBay, much less any large conglomerate, basically tell GameStop something they’ve been telling their customers for decades.

Seriously though, how the fuck does GameStop have the gall to offer to buy eBay?  Their company is valued at like $9-11B, and where the fuck are they getting the extra $45B+ needed for their offer?  Store credit??

When the day is over, I really don’t give a fuck what happens with this.  I don’t shop at GameStop, and my eBay usage is pretty minimal, beyond impulsive niche purposes; however, I have recently learned about the CIB retro game market, and I’ve come across some clean and potentially lucrative games with boxes in my old belongings, and it would suck if a GameStop-ified eBay comes to fruition and manages to fuck up my potential earning.

All the more reason why I hope eBay tells GameStop to fuck on outta here with their offer.

Is there anyone who doesn’t know how to be a pro-athlete more than Kelsey Plum?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yahoo Sports: WNBA star Kelsey Plum demonstrates a critical lack of understanding of tax knowledge, embarrassing herself and whatever representation she claims with her proud proclamation of avoiding a tax clause but being completely wrong about it

The fact that a brogger like me is once against writing about anything related to the WNBA at all goes to show how much the sport has risen over the last few years or so, but it should be noted that once again, it is about Kelsey Plum, whom I’m inclined to believe seems to have no idea of what it takes to be a professional athlete.

A year ago, she made the news because she crashed out on an autograph hound that was camping outside of her team’s hotel, and sure, the dude was obviously one of those cretin fans that just wanted autographs with the intention to flip and profit, but from what I saw, the guy wasn’t pushy, maintained a safe and respectful distance, was out in public, and it was during the daytime.  As far as anyone seeking autographs, this person was pretty respectful, and not necessarily deserving of the criticism and combative approach from Plum.

But frankly, my general take was that the fact that someone was there seeking WNBA players, kind of goes to show how much the awareness of women’s pro basketball has risen, and that at least to me, there’s a degree of “we’ve made it” that should be considered when autograph seekers start seeking their players out.  And that Plum had a poor showing on professional athlete conduct with how she basically verbally dunked on a fan just tryna get some autos.

And here we go again, with Kelsey Plum making some niche news again, and once again the Magic 8 ball says outlook not good.

TL;DR the WNBA renegotiated their collective bargaining agreement, and it was a huge win for all the women in the WNBA because it came with a massive pay bump, leaps and bounds better than the paltry $74,000 minimum salary that was in place prior to.

Kelsey Plum, being a good basketball player, somewhat still in the prime of her career, was eligible for a $1.4M supermax contract, which again, considering the top players of the league were making less than 90% that a year prior, was due to make some big bank.  However, she ultimately signed with the LA Sparks for an approximate value of $999,999, notably one dollar shy of a cool million bucks.

She would go on to boast about how that one dollar would prevent her from hitting a threshold that would make her eligible for what’s known as the California Mental Health Services Act, AKA “the millionaire’s tax.”  To her knowledge, signing for $999,999 instead of $1M meant she would save $13,000 in taxes.

However, tax experts were quick to correct and educate the rest of the viewing world that Plum’s belief on how the millionaire’s tax worked was not accurate, and that the tax would only affect any dollars that were $1M and above. 

Had she signed for a $1M, she would have owed 13¢ in taxes on that solitary dollar that pushed her to $1M.  Had she signed the $1.4M supermax deal with the Sparks that she was entitled to, she would have had to have eaten $182,000 in taxes, but if we’re doing math over here, she would have still netted $1,218,000, which is $218,001 more than the $999,999 she signed for.  Sure, she would have had to have eaten a tax hit, but it’s funny that in her belief she was saving $13K, she ended up losing $218K.

The best part about all of this was Plum’s sheer cockiness in her belief that she had gamed some system.  Because fewer things are more hilarious than someone being so sure that they’re right about something, only to be completely wrong about it.

That being said, I’m more inclined to believe that there’s no professional athlete more ill-suited to being a professional athlete than Kelsey Plum is, because she doesn’t seem to like autograph seekers, and whether she was using an agent or not, she completely bombed at playing the salary game, and these are just kind of things that seem to be everyday life for other professional athletes.

Act like you’ve been there before, not like you have absolutely no clue to how the culture of privilege works.