This is For The Win’s daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Did a friend recommend or forward this to you? If so, subscribe here. Have feedback? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey! Now, here’s Mike Sykes.
Good morning, Winners! Thanks so much for reading the Morning Win today. We appreciate you giving us a bit of your time today.
Here’s today’s word from Michelle Martinelli in Paris.
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PARIS — Bonjour, les gagnants! This morning, I had the incredible opportunity to swim in one of Speedo’s technical suits, just like the ones swimmers will compete in at the Paris Olympics. Back when I was competing [redacted] years ago, I raced in something similar, but this was next level.
You can learn all about Speedo’s tech suits at the Olympics in a video and feature on For The Win — How Speedo’s suits for the 2024 Paris Olympics were inspired by sharks and space exploration — but let me tell you how it feels.
Speedo held the event at the historic Molitor hotel, and after the 10 minutes it took me to squeeze into this suit, I hit the pool. I was only waist deep, and I could feel the suit’s buoyancy lifting me in the water. That’s a key element to help swimmers stay on top of the water, but I wasn’t prepared for how literal that feeling is.
Now three-time Olympic swimmer Ryan Murphy told me back in May: “The first time I put on a tech suit, I felt like Superman in the water.” And that’s exactly right. I felt invincible, smoothly gliding through the water.
He also estimated the tech suits shave off about a second for every 50 meters when racing, and after trying the suit out, I believe it.
Check the USA TODAY Sports Instagram account for more about my experience in the suit.
Thank you, Inside the NBA
Things between the NBA and TNT are as tenuous as ever.
The league announced on Wednesday that it’d be rejecting TNT’s contract match to the deal the league constructed with Amazon Prime. The NBA claimed that the deal TNT proposed wasn’t an actual match at all, so it’s moving on.
READ MORE: Three big questions about the future of NBA on TNT
Meanwhile, TNT is upset and believes the NBA doesn’t have room to reject its contract offer because of its matching rights. TNT seems to simply thing that all it has to do is decide that it wants to retain the NBA’s rights.
There are only two things that are clear about this current situation to me:
The first is this: The only way forward for this now seems to be the legal route. Sure, nobody wants to go to court, but these two sides are very far apart in their positions. When that happens, lawyers get involved.
Here’s the second: There’s probably no coming back from this. Never say never, of course. But the NBA wants to be done with TNT. Maybe a judge clarifies that that doesn’t matter, but I can’t see these two sides working together again.
If that’s the case, Inside the NBA is over. It’s time to give it up.
My only hope was that, through all of this, Inside the NBA would find a way to persist. It’s the best pre- and post-game show in sports television right now, bar none. It’s funny, it’s insightful, the players love it, the fans love it. It’s not perfect, but it does what it does very well.
Of course, we’ll still get one more season of the show next year. And it seems we would always lose a key part of the show once Charles Barkley retires, anyway. But to see the show go out like this? Because of bickering between two multi-billion dollar corporations? It’s just sad.
I’ll watch the NBA no matter what network it comes on. And who knows? Maybe there will be a show packaged in with the league’s new broadcast deal that can, eventually, fill in the hole that TNT’s best sports property will leave. There’s also a chance some Inside the NBA staff will move over to Amazon.
But, man. I’m going to miss all those goofy moments between Shaq and Chuck and all the races with Kenny Smith on the board. I’ll miss how the gang could transition from fun to serious in the blink of an eye, even when I didn’t always agree with them. Sometimes, they didn’t agree with each other. But there was always room for good faith discussion, which we need a lot more of in this world.
Inside the NBA isn’t the biggest deal in the world. The NBA moving on and, hopefully, improving its coverage is something I’m honestly looking forward to.
But potentially losing this show does feel a bit like losing a friend. If this is truly the end, I’ll miss it. I think we all will.
Booooo, Oilers
The Oilers hiring disgraced ex-Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman to run their franchise is not only a black mark on the team, but on the entire league.
For those of you who don’t know, Bowman was one of seven members of the Blackhawks organization to turn their heads and look away when deciding whether the team should report that one of their own players had been sexually assaulted by Brad Aldrich back in 2010.
Now, he’s working in hockey again. This is appalling. It should be shocking but, as Blake Schuster points out, this is how the NHL gets down.
“It’s hard to feel anything but nihilistic — though anger and embarrassment put up a good fight — because this is just what hockey does. It allows someone like Mitchell Miller get drafted despite knowing he bullied a Black classmate with developmental disabilities. Then it allows Miller to get signed (and quickly dropped) again after fans pressured the
Arizona CoyotesUtah Hockey Club to renounce his rights. It lets Trevor Connelly get drafted in the first round this year despite similarly concerning incidents. It lets Logan Mailloux, who was charged with sharing explicit pictures of a sexual act without the consent of his partner, get drafted even after he asked to be removed from the prospect pool. None of those incidents even begin to cover the Hockey Canada mess, either.Sense a pattern here? The next time you wonder about why a GM would bring troubled players into the league, remember it’s people like Bowman who are being empowered to do so.”
Have some shame, Edmonton. Get this guy out of here.
Quick hits: Brat summer, explained … 5 NFL holdouts to watch … and more
— Charles Curtis explains that Charli XCX “Brat summer” meme. I still don’t get it.
— 5 NFL training camp holdouts — er, also hold-ins? — that you need to keep an eye on
— Here’s Cory Woodroof on some of the Inside the NBA crew potentially switching networks
— Jonathan Gannon and the Cardinals were studying momentum this offseason and came up with nothing. Robert Zeglinski has more.
— Here’s Prince Grimes on the NBA’s rookie of the year race that’ll probably be pretty close
— Here’s Cory Woodroof ranking the MCU films ahead of Deadpool and Wolverine
-Sykes ✌️