Checking In On Super Bowl Week + NBA Madness
It has been a week full of deadlines, illness, chipped teeth, jaw-dropping NBA trades and Super Bowl prep...
I need to start this newsletter with a heartfelt apology…
I have sucked this week. In what is one of the biggest weeks of the entire year, I’ve been missing from action. I’m sorry for that.
You can blame a holy trinity of random circumstances for my silence this week - freelance project deadlines, a bout of the flu and a chipped tooth.
The week started out so well too. I was on pace to meet my target of wrapping up two projects I’ve been working on and that have consumed most of my time over the past few weeks. By the time we reached Tuesday night I was feeling pretty pleased with myself and excited to write about a truly blockbuster week in sports. However, that sense of self-gratification, that probably carried a hint of cockiness, came back to bite me on the butt the next morning as I woke up feeling like I’d just done 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. And not the aging Tyson we saw labor against Jake Paul in a fight that should never have happened, but rather a Tyson at the very peak of his powers. In other words, the flu had knocked me sideways and I was left struggling to find my fastball the rest of the week. I’m also slowly - and painfully - finding out that it takes way longer to recover from such ailments the older you get.
Ah, the joy of adulting.
And then, to add the cherry on top of the hot fudge shit sundae, I chipped my tooth while indulging in some chocolate on Friday.
As an aside, as good as it tastes, it probably isn’t the greatest of ideas to put chocolate in the fridge for hours on end. It’s heaven for the tastebuds, but hell for your front teeth.
So, between hustling to meet some tight deadlines, getting hit with sickness and then enduring some self-inflicted damage to my front tooth, I feel as though my quest to be productive and to write a lot has been thwarted at every single turn.
And it isn’t being hyperbolic to state that this was the worse week to have run into a perfect storm of anti-productive chaos. Because, without meaning to be a prisoner of the moment, the last several days or so have been heaven for sports fans.
It all started with the earth-shattering Luka Dončić trade. It has been nearly a week since the Lakers shocked the world by sending Anthony Davis to Dallas in exchange for one of the best players on the planet in Luka, and yet I still can’t quite believe it happened. It was certainly the most shocking sports trade of my lifetime, and it will probably go down as the biggest and most consequential trade in NBA history. I don’t think it will truly feel real until we see Dončić in a Lakers jersey for the first time (hopefully that landmark moment will take place on Monday after a false alarm on Saturday). I’ll also have plenty of (belated) thoughts on the trade that stopped the sports world in its track coming up.
You have to give the NBA a ton of credit. In a week when everyone is fixated on all things football, the NBA managed to wrestle large swathes of attention from the NFL thanks to a trade deadline that was on steroids. If the Luka-AD blockbuster wasn’t enough to get the juices flowing, we also saw Jimmy Butler finally get his way by getting the hell out of Miami, the Spurs made a win-now move by trading for De’Aaron Fox, and the Lakers continued to morph themselves into legitimate contenders this year by adding a big man in Mark Williams. It is normally nigh on impossible for any other sports league to garner even a slice of attention during Super Bowl week, but yet the NBA managed to dominate a lot of the national sports conversation at times this week.
However, all attention is now firmly fixed on the big game on Sunday and I’ll be dedicating a lot of time to Super Bowl LIX between now and kickoff tomorrow night. I’ll be honest; we’re only a day away yet I’ve still not decided which horse I’m hitching my wagon to. My gut and my heart says the Eagles - they have the better all-round roster, they’ve got a formidable defense that can feast on quarterbacks for fun and, most importantly, they have a lethal and potent weapon in Offensive Player of the Year Saquon Barkley. But, and I can’t stress this enough, just how can you bet against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs? Just how?! I think we’ve entered the Tom Brady - Patriots territory with the Chiefs now where you’d just be foolish to pick against them. The only way I can see the Eagles winning on Sunday is if they jump out to an early big lead and build from there. If it is a one-score game late, then there is no way I’m not backing Mahomes to do what he always does and find a way to win.
Anyway, I’ll have plenty of thoughts on Super Bowl LIX between now and Sunday night, while I’m also going to attempt to catch up on everything else I’ve missed this week. So, to that end, I apologize in advance if I flood your inboxes with a slew of newsletters over the next couple of days. Hopefully you can find it in your heart to forgive me (and to also not hit the unsubscribe button out of annoyance).
The one good thing about being hit by an avalanche of inconveniences this week is the fact that hopefully now I’m in the clear - I could certainly do without chipping another tooth, that’s for sure - and I can get back to watering the seeds of this website every single day. This site and newsletter will always be my biggest priority and, while my time has been eaten up by other things lately, I’m excited to now have a clear runway in which to accomplish my goal of delivering you all quality, compelling sports content on a daily basis.
We’ve got a big few weeks coming up, too. While the next couple of days will be Super Bowl centric, baseball season is right around the corner and I have a ton of new baseball content planned. By the way, I’m still struggling to get my head around the fact that pitchers and catchers report in less than a week. I’m beyond excited for the 2025 MLB season. As most of you will know, I spend the majority of my time writing about baseball and I can’t wait for that first heavenly sound of a crack of the bat to arrive. I will send out a newsletter next week detailing everything I have planned content wise for the new season.
Until then, stay tuned for my thoughts on Super Bowl LIX, my prediction (I’ll sleep on it tonight and make a final decision Sunday morning) and some catch-up musings on what was a wild, wild, wild week in the NBA.
Thank you again for your support. I couldn’t do this without you.
Oh, before I go, I just wanted to say that I am on Bluesky, and I’m making a concentrated effort to use that app more and more. If you have migrated over to Bluesky too, feel free to give me a follow. I’ll be posting my work there too: @andrew21.bsky.social.
Also, and as you are all well aware, all posts on The Steele Sports Bar are absolutely FREE and will remain outside of a paywall. That’s my promise to you. However, if you would like to support my work and the future growth of this website, there are ways to do so. You can either upgrade to a paid subscription by clicking below, or you could make a donation at ‘Buy Me A Coffee.’ The upside with the latter is that you can donate any amount you wish, and any kind donations will help to ensure that I can keep this a full-time gig and also help to fund things like professional photo licenses and other fun things that will make this a better experience for all of you.
And, if you can’t, that’s fine too. Your support and readership will always mean the absolute world.
I’ll be back with a plethora of Super Bowl LIX thoughts shortly.