You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. Your host for this episode will be Benjamin Markovits, who once wrote in the LRB that he grew up in Texas with two obsessions, basketball and romantic verse.

He's talking about the first of those obsessions today with his guests, Ben Cohen and Kevin Arniewicz, ahead of the NBA finals between the Golden State Warriors and the

Boston Celtics, which begin on the 2nd of June.

You're listening to the first annual LRB NBA playoff podcast, where LRB, of course, stands for London Review of Basketball. I'm Ben Markovits. My main qualification for hosting today is that I once got dunked on by Dirk Novitsky, about 25 years ago, a story that I've been trying to dine out on ever since, except that none of the people I go to dinner parties with know who Dirk Knavitsky is or what it means to be dunked on.

To rectify that and talk about what's going on in the NBA right now and why it should be

interesting, even for people who aren't interested in basketball, I'm very excited to bring

on two of the NBA insiders whose writing has helped get me through the pandemic.

Ben Cohen, a columnist of the Wall Street Journal and author of The Hot Hand, the Mystery and Science of Streaks. Welcome, Ben.

Hi. How are you doing? Having me. I'm good. Who among us hasn't been dunked down by Dirknovitsky?

Exactly. And Kevin Arnowitz, the Renaissance man of basketball journalism, TV script, writer, food, pod, co-host, LRB subscriber and regular at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, who has been covering the NBA for ESPN since I think 2008.

Welcome, Kevin. Is it breakfast time where you are?

It is breakfast time, unless you're intermittently fasting, in which case it's just fasting time.

So I'm going to start with a softball question.

Does this job feel like a job to you, or do you feel like you're in some kind of platonic high school world where you get to watch basketball with buddies and argue about box scores?

I think you're remiss if you don't every couple of

weeks remind yourself that it is a job coveted by millions. And to me, it's an expression of

ingratitude not to do that every once in a while. I think more than anything, it's not so much.

There are moments of great absurdity. I remember kind of sitting at a Chicago Bulls game a few years ago. I think more than anything, it's not so much, there are moments of great absurdity.

I remember kind of sitting at a Chicago Bulls game a few years ago. I'm a bald man.

So one of the gags that the Bulls mascot, so you have this grown man in a big red furry

bull costume kind of running around a very loud arena. And one of the things he'll do is kind of go on press row

and sort of towel off and shine the head of a bald sports writer and I was that guy that

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