Check out Prof. Michael Newman’s recent piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books

I knew there were way more important things than basketball, and I was all for canceling everything back in March: in-person school, sports, plays, concerts, conferences, just shut it down. But, in order to hold this line, I had to force myself to stop thinking all the damn time about the interruption of the Milwaukee Bucks’ magical season, the second consecutive MVP season of Giannis Antetokounmpo, their certain progress toward their first NBA Finals in decades. This was supposed to be Milwaukee’s summer, with a long playoff run for the basketball team followed by the Democratic National Convention in the same new arena built for just such moments. Months later, when it was official that the NBA season would resume at Disney World, encased in a quarantined bubble, tears formed in my eyes. From mid-March until the beginning of summer, I watched no live TV. The news was too awful, and sports were all reruns. Since late July, I’ve been watching the Bucks again, and like everything else in America, it’s been strange.

Read the full review here.