From 2004 to 2007, the Seven Seconds or Less Suns played basketball the way jazz works: fast, collaborative, alive, in the moment. Mike D’Antoni set the tempo, Steve Nash read the room, and the rest followed instinct inside structure. Nothing was scripted, but nothing was accidental either. This second entry in Those Who Would Run the World looks at why the Suns’ ideas live on long past their championship window closed.

Trash talk has a line, usually found somewhere between ‘your mom smells of elderberries’ and ‘your mom is the village mule,’ since everybody’s had a ride.

What follows is Torsten’s confessional about his own brush with extracurricular justice in a high school soccer match involving a fast striker, a slow referee, and an insult so nuclear it triggered a response normally reserved for nature documentaries.

Torsten builds the Mount Rushmore of the greatest smack-talkers across sports history — the artists, the sociopaths, the philosophers, and Philip Rivers.

Look, none of us woke up this morning expecting a eulogy for Tron to end up being a prescient handbook for NBA system design, but here we are.

Once you start comparing Users to superstars, Programs to role players, and rim running to recognizers the whole thing becomes disturbingly coherent. Mostly, coherent in a way that makes you question your life choices and why you know this much lore about both Tron and the 2024 Knicks.

Greetings, programs — welcome to the unholy crossover where Grit and Grind meets The Grid.

The best courts in the world are barely courts at all. A driveway that tries to kill you on the way down. A rim that hates you in Harlem. A dirt field where dribbling goes to die. And a balcony in Tokyo that sends every miss into a neighbor’s living room. The surfaces change; the stubbornness doesn’t. That’s the real game — the beautiful, ridiculous urge to keep shooting anyway.

Silicon Valley’s founding myths and the NBA’s great reinventions share a structural twinship — the sprint toward a vision the rest of the world can’t yet see. One side builds devices and ecosystems, the other builds spacing, timing, and flow. Both chase elegance. Both weaponize pace. Both rely on teams who believe in the impossible long before the world catches up.

Those Who Would Run the World begins here, the opening chapter of a nine-part journey through the ideas that rewrote basketball’s DNA. This project traces the lineage of rebels, engineers, and madmen whose courage to accelerate reshaped the sport itself. These weren’t people waiting for a green light.
They ran — and the game had no choice but to follow.

Every empire falls the same way. First, sell the lie. Then build the dome to echo it. Ballmer’s Clippers are the latest sermon on the cost of ego and the myth of control. We take you through Steve’s alibi, how it was potentially destroyed this week, and then show that this isn’t new. This is just the same old Ballmer.

Once upon a time, refs made bad calls and life went on. Now we stop the game for six minutes to find out whose pinky brushed the ball at 1/16 speed. The TSA of Basketball is an indictment of the over-officiated era — where the NBA swapped rhythm for red tape.

After years of promises, surgeries, and luxury tax therapy sessions, the Clippers have driven one loyal fan to the brink. What started as devotion ends as detachment — and maybe freedom. “We Need to See Other People” is the most tender breakup you’ll read all season.

What happens when a basketball analyst, his co-writer, and his wife test a fantasy model built for chaos?
Explosions, obviously. Yahoo High Score rewards heat checks, not consistency — so we tracked every pick, every questionable decision, every statistical betrayal. This isn’t just a fantasy draft; it’s a referendum on luck, love, and math under pressure.

Three men, two FBI operations, one dying illusion.

Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier and Damon Jones find themselves caught between Vegas card tables and mob backrooms. 120 Proof Ball unpacks how the Mafia, the NBA, the FBI, and the myth of fairness ended up in the same deck.

Last call for dynasties. The next generation already ordered the top shelf.

The 2025-26 NBA season tips off with the old guard holding on by their fingertips while the kids blow past the velvet rope. Oklahoma City, Minnesota, Houston, and Detroit aren’t just arriving early—they’re rewriting the guest list. From the Lakers’ time-share with destiny to the Clippers’ billion-dollar denial, 120 Proof Ball’s Power Rankings pour one out for the kings… and crown the heirs.

Vegas odds, whiskey math, and Yahoo’s new fantasy format that rewards chaos instead of efficiency. The 120 Proof crew fed a spreadsheet whiskey and watched it explode. Here are your top 24 picks for ’25 — and the last math you’ll ever trust.

Before Beijing gold, there was Athens bronze. We Got This: Kobe Bryant and the Redeem Team is the story of how a generation of NBA stars found their leader in the one man willing to dive first, shoot last, and shoulder whatever was missing.

Once upon a funkadelic time, goggles weren’t a punchline, they were the show. This is the story of the bespectacled spectacles who turned corrective lenses into a fashion statement and a competitive edge. Raise your glasses — literally.

Bobby Bonilla may be the ubiquitous Bernie Madoff equivalent when it comes to players fleecing their teams but what if we told you that his is hardly the most noteworthy of one-sided contracts?

They sold us a savior. They gave him $28 million to disappear. This isn’t cap strategy — it’s The Usual Suspects with load management.

Six dynasties eat steak; the other twenty-four lick the plate and call it character. We did the math on fan suffering and started a support group anyway. Come recite the pledge and learn the One Blowout Grace Rule.

Draft night sells stories; year one sells receipts. From castle-proof to rotgut regrets, we pour each rookie and see who burns clean. Bring ice for your takes.

Cooper Flagg is the headline; the story is how you become that headline. We set his curated grind against a nameless template of hunger and let the film decide what travels.

Nature is a body-horror parade, and the NBA is full of players just as terrifying. From ear-burrowing wasps to playoff assassins, meet the creatures that haunt both ecosystems.