As ESPN cuts expert voices and rewards viral argument, fans who want to understand basketball are building a smarter conversation elsewhere

After the Phoenix Suns dumped the Golden State Warriors out of last season’s play-in, Stephen A Smith settled behind the First Take desk to explain why Steve Kerr might have coached his last game. Midway through the burial, he claimed the Warriors hadn’t “been to the playoffs since that championship in 2022” – a four-year drought in his telling – before grumbling that Golden State could pay someone far less than $17m a year to miss the postseason.

Cool. Except the drought never happened. Golden State reached the conference semi-finals in 2023 and again in 2025. ESPN anchor Shae Cornette, who had command of the basic facts, tried to smuggle that inconvenient reality into the discussion. It went nowhere. Apparently, nobody on an ESPN set is permitted to correct the franchise “star”. Only weeks earlier, Smith had been inducted into the National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame for his work in media.

The 1996 US women’s Olympic team enter the Hall of Fame on Saturday after giving momentum to the WNBA and re-launching an era of American dominance

For the US women’s basketball team, the 1996 Olympics weren’t just about winning gold in front of their home crowd.

It was about the future of women’s basketball in America. The US women were knocked out of the 1992 Olympics in the semi-finals by the Commonwealth of Independent States – a stunning and embarrassing defeat. Heading into the 1996 Games, which were held in Atlanta, turning around the program was a top priority not just for USA Basketball, but the NBA as well, which was looking to start a women’s league that would become the WNBA.