No Timeout
The Knicks are in the Playoffs, The Children are at a Multi-Sensory Rave, The Advertising Is Bad
There was a moment in Knicks vs. Hawks Game 2 where after a bad 4th quarter, the Knicks were down 1 point with 5.6 seconds remaining and a mercurial CJ McCollum set to take two free throws. The announcers, Noah Eagle and Grant Hill, informed the audience that the Knicks had one timeout remaining and that no matter what happened, they would certainly use it to regroup before the big play.
They did not have a time out left. The announcers were wrong.
McCollum proceeded to miss both foul shots. The Knicks rebounded, and Mikal Bridges found himself with the ball and the few precious seconds left ticking down. He did not take it to the basket. He shot from mid-range, missed, and the Knicks, who had been up by more than 15 points, lost by 1, final score 107-106, the series tied at a game a piece headed to Atlanta.
The moral isn’t just that the Knicks blew a 15-point lead. It’s that sometimes, when you need a timeout, you don’t have one. You have to get the ball, figure it out, and shoot the best shot you can. It either goes in or it doesn’t.
This has been the essence of my week. There has been no chill. There has been no rest. There have been no time outs, despite how much one could help.
Hence this newsletter dropping on a Wednesday. Hi!
Social Battery Drain
I went out Monday - Friday last week. At the start of the week, my brother was in town. We hung out with Cedric the Entertainer. (My brother’s best friend? What?!)
Tuesday, a networking event. Wednesday night, industry dinner, Thursday, late lunch meeting in the city that went late. Friday night, jambalaya party.
First, when did we get so old? By the third night, my body was craving electrolytes and vegetables. By night 6, after racking up terrible Whoop scores, I was all fumes, no gas.
Recovery be damned, Saturday was Knicks Playoff Game 1. We had tickets. I summoned what I could, ready to bring my team into the playoffs with gusto.
Before the game, we met our friends at The Dynamo Room, a new upscale place connected to MSG, for martinis and oysters. This time of year, I have been ordering a 50-50 Hendricks martini with a twist. 50-50 because it’s a little less gin, which helps the aforementioned whoop scores. Hendricks is my typical gin of choice for a mixed bev. And the twist is a must, as I am not a salad with my cocktail kind of man. Was it my 7th cocktail in as many days? Possibly. I just said it was a 50-50. I’m trying.
After some bites, we walked into Madison Square Garden. The Mecca.
There is no experience like the Knicks playoffs. It is singular. It is electric. It is a communal out of body experience where Jalen Brunson is your sherpa and he is taking you to places unknown.
You sit in your wildly overpriced seats with a 24oz can of Michelob Ultra (the only beer you can drink at such a size and remain classy) and get a free t-shirt. You become best friends with the guy sitting next to you, and not just because he’s wearing a champagne 41mm fluted Datejust, but also because he too took a Josh Hart double-double on his betting app and so now you will be blood brothers for life. You watch KAT as he proceeds to block three separate shots, you watch Mitch as they hack him and the arena explodes as he hits one of two free throws, you watch OG Anunoby briefly exit for what looks like could be the end of the line, just to watch him sub back in moments later to a huge collective exhale and a booming chant of “OHHHHH GEEEEEEE!”
It is singularly the greatest fan experience one can have. And I’m not even supposed to be a Knicks fan.
A quick aside for an origin story
I grew up in St. Louis. St. Louis does not have a basketball team. What we had was the Cardinals, and the Blues, and the Rams, until Stan Kroenke, mustachioed evil billionaire, ripped them away from the city with a 2 billion dollar empty stadium and crippling public debt.
Point being I wasn’t a basketball guy. Once upon a time, I showed up for my first day at ESPN and they asked me what sports I like and I said English Soccer. I used to think that the only thing that mattered in a basketball game was the last two minutes. I know. Roast me. But folks, I have changed.
Thank my wife.
Robyn is a day-one Knicks fan. Born into it. Raised in it. She watched Patrick Ewing rise and fall, six points short. She thought that Porzingis was going to save the team. She does not casually watch basketball. She watches it the way air traffic controllers watch a radar screen. At any given moment, you will look over and see her shield her eyes as someone who is 95% from the line takes a foul shot. This is called inherited trauma.
I inherited it as well. And luckily, I bought low.
The 2019-2020 Knicks were the last truly bad Knicks team. That was my entry point. I came in at relative rock bottom, married to a woman who had been holding this stock for decades, and I said I’m in. Let’s ride. And now we’re the three seed with a legitimate shot and I get to act like I’ve been here the whole time. I have not been here the whole time. But all my chips are on the table.
To circle back to Game 2, it was a clear win that slipped through our fingers. We needed a time out. We didn’t have it. In these situations, all you can do is reach for more and hope you have the juice.
The kids also might need a time out.
The party didn’t stop. Sunday brought us to a place called Space Club. It is a children’s indoor playspace in Brooklyn. I want to describe it to you accurately:
It is 28,000 square feet across multiple floors. There is a bead pool filled with seven million beads. There are trampolines. There is a disco room. There is a three-level jungle gym with slides that seem, to my anxious eye, optimistic in their engineering. There is a bedazzling studio. There is a foam pit into which children cannonball from significant heights. It is absolutely nuts.
Sadie loved it. She was too little for most of it, but the things she got herself into were unbridledly joyous. The kind of joy that adults spend thousands on therapy trying to get back. A six year old’s birthday party was all it took.
Meanwhile, I was very much overwhelmed. I was standing in the middle of a maximalist sensory explosion craving a Xanax. Kids were drenched in sweat, their exhausted dads trailing behind them, hoping that one or both of them didn’t tear an ACL. One child peed his pants. Another had on a GPS tracker bracelet so his parents could stay in touch wherever he wound up. I found myself wondering about their insurance liability policy. This is who I am!
The energy in that place is the kid version of MSG. Same volume, same chaos, smaller people. And afterwards, you need a very serious nap.
Take the A Train
It’s not the destination, it’s the journey. And on each and every journey out this week, I took the subway. And in every subway car, there as the very same Genspark.ai ad. Presented below.
You know who needed a time out? GenSpark AI’s marketing team.
You’re telling me with one prompt, I don’t have to do my job? Because it sure as hell seems like you only gave it one prompt before you decided to plaster this garbage all over every subway car in New York.
There are two pieces of creative. This, and a “subway like map” showing all of the other steps that you get to skip (image creation, deck design, thinking???) when you use their very fast, very effective new AI product.
The fact that they did this is wild to me. We live in era where thinking, real thinking, is so stupidly rare. Did anyone creative direct this? Was there any strategy? Did you literally just make this using your very own AI and then drop 400K on an NYC subway takeover? Does anyone actually run Genspark AI or are you yourself just a hivemind of servers in some OpenClaw basement?!
You have to think that there is one human there who works in marketing. And at some point before deploying a half million dollars, they might have just uploaded a photo to their friendly neighborhood LLM and asked “hey how does this ad campaign look?”
So I asked Claude what they thought. And this is what Claude said:
Claude from the top rope!!!
Seriously you guys what are we doing here. The groupthink, the lack of think… it could really use a pause. A creative person. A voice in the room that is willing to say - maybe we should try a lay-up instead of a last second shot from three. This is the way you win games - by being thoughtful, considerate, deliberate. Everything else is just noise.
Alright my besties. Have a great week. Take a pause if you need it. Go Knicks.
JW