Growing up, you learn quickly that time heals most wounds. A scrape to the knee at recess will become a scab and then peel away; you’ll get over your first heartbreak; you’ll mourn but move forward from the death of a grandparent or loved one. But well over six years later, there’s one wound I carry with me that time has yet to, and frankly may never, heal: the James Harden-led Houston Rockets’ Game 7 loss to the Golden State Warriors in 2018. Every second of the seven-game series inflicted psychic damage that I’m still processing with my therapist to this day.
As a Harden super-fan, and his parasocial wife, the years since 2018 haven’t been any kinder. So, why do I, and so many NBA fans like me, still return, season after season, despite the tremendous suffering, none greater than my own? What keeps us coming back?
That was the first question I asked Porter “Trill” Callanan and Sam Sheehan, co-hosts of the NBA Twitter-beloved podcast You Know Ball, as the regular season makes its equal-parts triumphant and miserable return this week. Sheehan has one theory, which I’ll preface by assuring you of his iron-clad feminist politics and acute awareness of how hard it is to be a woman: NBA fandom is, in one small but distinct way, similar to childbirth. “I’m thinking of what they say about childbirth, where it really, really hurts, but you might forget after some time from the oxytocin, or how nature can maybe push it from your brain,” he postulates. The love for your baby supposedly transcends that pain—even if it leaves a gnarly scar that, like mine from 2018, will never heal. Sheehan paused, and gave a nervous laugh: “Comparing [NBA fandom] to childbirth—that’s probably a good quote to give to Jezebel, right?”
In 2010, when Sheehan’s beloved Boston Celtics lost to their perennial rival, the Los Angeles Lakers, in a gutting seven-game series, he determined that he “wasn’t going to care anymore.” Then, after three months, “you just get caught up in it again. It’s like when people say they’re going to leave Twitter and then of course they come crawling back.” At least for Sheehan, “crawling back” paid off—the Celtics are the current World Champions. I can’t say it’s ever paid off for me, but here’s hoping.
Trill, an eternally suffering Philadelphia 76ers fan, gets the gist of what his co-host is saying. I’ve been both a casual and diehard Sixers fan at different points since 2018, which marked the height of the “Process” era that centered around stars Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons (who’s now a Brooklyn Net). But as a lifelong disciple, Trill has endured the worst of Sixers fandom and somehow lived to tell the tale—which he often does on YKB’s charmingly sprawling livestreams and podcast episodes. Trill has watched the team’s top-ranking rookies suddenly forget how to shoot (Markelle Fultz), nearly die of an allergic reaction to peanuts (Zhaire Smith), or, have something of a mental breakdown in the final minutes of a Game 7 (Simmons). He watched the Sixers pay the famously mediocre Tobias Harris $180 million over five years in what’s widely regarded as an Ocean’s Eleven-esque heist. And he watched the Tobias Harris of head coaches, Doc Rivers, helm his team for two agonizing seasons. Yet, still, in the big year of our Lord 2024, Trill remains as excited as ever for this new season.
Part of it is that the Sixers look better than they’ve looked in recent memory, thanks to the addition of Paul George and other key off-season moves. The other part is the simple fact that we’re wired to keep coming back to something as emotionally turbulent, as simultaneously devastating and thrilling, as basketball. “The biggest escape from life can be sports,” Trill said. And, two weeks from a presidential election, the allure of escapism is stronger than ever.
YKB, a pandemic-born baby, turns four this year amid a saturated NBA podcasting ecosystem. But it’s blazed its own trail as a fan-made pod—in no small part, thanks to its subscriber community of “passionate sickos,” as Trill puts it. NBA fandom may not be “the healthiest emotional outlet, but it’s definitely an emotional outlet,” he added. I would agree with this characterization as someone who’s spent the last odd year intermittently observing and interacting with fellow YKB listeners on its bustling Discord. Sports fandom isn’t exactly famous for inclusivity, and while membership on NBA Twitter comes with a lot of laughs, you’ll also encounter far-too-frequent posts defending abusers or hurling slurs. YKB manages to capture all of the fun aspects, and none of the unsavory chunks.
Sheehan cringes slightly at calling the podcast and its community a “safe space.” But as a space that’s welcoming of queer people and women and enforces (but rarely has to enforce) a zero-tolerance policy for all bigotry, that’s more or less what it is. It’s not quite a “Tumblr-esque, 2010s cuddle-puddle,” Sheehan explains, but rather, a community of “NBA Twitter and internet-literate, simultaneously ironic and earnest” fans who, on any given day, might come together to mock Curry for his notorious NIMBYism, or descend into hysteria over the latest Embiid injury. (Being a Sixers fan, after all, is the equivalent of about two years of medical school given the encyclopedic knowledge of freak injuries you’ll inevitably have to learn about.)
YKB is as much a comedy podcast as it is a sports podcast, which is a natural formula given its deep roots in NBA Twitter and digital culture. In 2023, I described NBA Twitter as an “at-times delightful, always deranged corner of the internet where name-searching NBA players and obsessive fans unite, where Serious™ Sports Reporters can fuel years-long running jokes with a single quote graphic, and where adult men write elaborate and earnest fan fiction about their favorite players.” (It’s also, more recently, become a place for said adult men to giddily compare their favorite players’ bulges, with such charming captions as, “WE OUTMEATED SHAI [Gilgeous Alexander.]”) NBA Twitter’s historical documents include players’ ridiculous, early 2010s tweets about being addicted to Applebee’s, enjoying Twitter more than the club, and feeling guilt over inadvertently killing rodents—prompting Casey Anthony-related revelations. And then, of course, there are NBA media members’ tweets, like Chris Broussard’s 2015 masterpiece: “Sources: [Mavericks owner Mark Cuban] is beside himself. Driving around downtown Dallas begging (thru texts) Jordan’s family for address to Deandre’s home.”
Speaking of, YKB is a podcast as devoted to the game of basketball as it is to the league’s varying storylines, bits, and recurring characters, who often include prominent NBA reporters and “establishment sports media” more generally, as Sheehan puts it. In addition to his personal Twitter account, he also helms the popular parody account “Sam Sheehan NBA Presented by Sportsbook.org,” a satirical performance of the average national NBA reporter who has shady partnerships with sports gambling companies, as well as the polarizing Ringer podcasting titan, Bill Simmons. Sam Sheehan NBA’s recurring bits include “breaking” news significantly after it’s been broken, or tweeting out inane, centrist political takes.
Just as fascists contend there are only two genders, I’m convinced there are only two types of NBA fans—casuals and the “passionate sickos.” As a “passionate sicko” myself, with the 2024-2025 regular season underway, it’s officially time to be miserable online again. And if there’s one thing that misery, specifically basketball-related misery, loves, it’s company—in the form of NBA Twitter and the podcasts it inspires.
Before we wrapped our conversation, I conducted an exit interview for quick takes from Trill and Sheehan on the following:
NBA champion and five-time All-Star Jayson Tatum: Why does NBA Twitter love to mock him?
TRILL: Part of the reason is people view him as a “super-team merchant,” and that’s not a new thing. Even with the best players, even with LeBron, this has been an accusation. … The problem is he doesn’t quite have that MVP-level impact, but he’s also not in what I call the “cool zone”—that space with [Minnesota Timberwolves’] Anthony Edwards, [Phoenix Suns’] Devin Booker, [New York Knicks’] Jalen Brunson, where you have, like, a likable media personality, you’re a good player. But you don’t face that pressure that top guys like [Milwaukee Bucks’] Giannis [Antetokounmpo] or [Denver Nuggets’ Nikola] Jokic or [Dallas Mavericks’] Luka [Doncic] face. So, Tatum is sort of with Embiid, where you’re maybe not quite a top guy and outside the cool zone, which is the worst place to be, because you’re most easy to hate on.
The Bill Simmons Podcast is a frequent topic of discussion. How would you describe your relationship to it?
SHEEHAN: It’s probably my longest-standing media consumption going back to high school. Bill really did change the game in terms of coming at this as a fan, not a journalist. Listening to him is a lot like listening and reacting to older relatives at the Thanksgiving table with your cousins.
What do you consider the most “Mickey Mouse” (fakest, easiest, etc.) championship of all time?
T: 2021 Milwaukee Bucks.
S: 2020 Los Angeles Lakers.
Which NBA players were most likely to have attended the Jan. 6 Capitol riot?
T: [Orlando Magic’s] Jonathan Isaac, [Nuggets’] Michael Porter, Jr., [former NBA player] Enes Kanter. [Both Isaac and Porter have espoused right-wing opinions.]
S: I think if you told [the Mavericks’] Kyrie Irving “the media doesn’t like this,” he’d want to just, like, check it out.
Which NBA team fandom do you think is most likely to kill you in your sleep?
BOTH: Raptors.
S: With Raptors fans, if you tell them, “Oh, I don’t know if Immanuel Quickley will score as much as Luka Doncic,” they’ll DM you a picture of one of your loved ones through a sniper-scope.
What’s coming up for YKB?
T: We’re going to expand into live events, like watch parties and meet-ups, mostly in Philly, but with one in New Orleans scheduled for March.
What do you really think of James Harden?
S: He’s been a victim of his own talent. He seems very affable and fun, and I’m hoping this season he can just chill out.
T: He’s misunderstood.
I would have to agree on both fronts. Harden is misunderstood—by everyone but me, that is.
GET JEZEBEL RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
