In “honor” of EA’s new live-service Skate game dropping, today’s post is about the zombie afterlife of our once-great skateboarding games — and what happens to a fundamentally rebellious culture when corporations strip-mine it for profits: neilpaine.substack.com/p/tony-hawk-...

With his return to the lineup, I had to write about the whole Kyle Tucker situation in Chicago — and it turns out slumps like he’s endured over the past few months are surprisingly common among the best hitters in MLB. neilpaine.substack.com/p/slumps-hap...

On the 47th anniversary of their 10th and final meeting, I wrote about Affirmed and Alydar’s remarkable rivalry, the closest in Triple Crown history: neilpaine.substack.com/p/affirmed-a...

With David Wright set to have his No. 5 retired and enter Mets Hall of Fame this weekend, here’s a piece I wrote about how Wright went from a surefire Hall of Famer to a heartbreaking “what-if?” back in 2017: neilpaine.substack.com/p/david-wrig...

Today’s post focuses on the only way LeBron can make a buzzer-beating push to pass MJ in the GOAT debate: Winning a ring that “counts” more. Based on a system that values rings based on their rarity to the team/city, there might be only 1 place to do that. 🗽🍎🚕 neilpaine.substack.com/p/if-lebron-...

I made a new metric, STANTON — or the Statcast-Tuned Algorithm for Nascent Tater Output, Normalized — to measure the Home Run Derby potential of exit-velo beasts like James Wood and Oneil Cruz: neilpaine.substack.com/p/are-james-...

Alex Ovechkin just claimed sole possession of hockey's greatest record -- here's how the unbreakable got broken: neilpaine.substack.com/p/wayne-gret...

I used the Yankees’ new bats as an excuse to talk about Formula 1. (I’ll explain why.) neilpaine.substack.com/p/the-yankee...

“Winning the SEC tournament is harder than winning the NCAA tournament this year” is a sentiment that is bound to be repeated all week. So my old PFR Blog pal @jasonlisk.bsky.social and I looked into just how dubious that claim is: neilpaine.substack.com/p/is-winning...

ICYMI: I wrote about the meaning of Katherine Legge becoming the first woman to drive at NASCAR’s highest level in 7 years, since Danica Patrick retired in 2018: neilpaine.substack.com/p/katherine-...

Just a few years ago, Detroit was the capital of America’s struggling sports cities. Now it’s on the upswing again — fueled by the incredible rise of the Lions as current Super Bowl favorites. neilpaine.substack.com/p/can-the-li...

With a 12% chance to make the playoffs, the Bengals are in danger of wasting an amazing Joe Burrow season. But sadly, that’s nothing new for Cincinnati over the history of the franchise: neilpaine.substack.com/p/nobody-was...

Focusing on Lamar Jackson’s play this year, I wrote about the strange psychology of MVP voting (not just in the NFL), and how a defending multi-time MVP with the best numbers of his career can somehow be a heavy underdog to win again: neilpaine.substack.com/p/voter-fati...

The NY Rangers are in a tailspin right now, having lost 11 of 14 games with a -1.5 GPG diff. But making things worse is that the schedule only gets harder. According to Elo ratings, NYR has faced the EASIEST schedule of any team so far; their SOS rises to 4th-HARDEST over the rest of the season.

Red Bull finishing third in the F1 constructor’s standings — and McLaren winning it! — seemed unthinkable a year ago. But as we’ve seen before, today’s dominant team can quickly become tomorrow’s third-place outfit once it reaches some kind of tipping point. neilpaine.substack.com/p/how-red-bu...

The Thunder are big favorites to win the NBA Cup right now. But the rest of the field are no slouches — and that includes the Hawks, who are the team that most consistently aligns their play to the level of the competition (for good or bad) this season. neilpaine.substack.com/p/basketball...