Ben Cohen

15. “An impressive record of achievements for an...

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 10:57:00 -0400

15. “An impressive record of achievements for an impressive player who joined San Antonio in September 2011.”

14. “In September 2011.”

13. “The last one in the family but the tallest.”

12. “Nueve Lounge.”

11. The piano.

10. “Three times winner of the NBA.”

9. “Pamela.”

8. The pose.

7. The couch with the dogs.

6. “Was part for quite a few times.”

5. The dogs.

4. “Terence is the second in line.”

3. “The age of 30, Tony Parker has not said his final words and intend to continue this story and amazing career.”

2. The cartoon.

1. “He gave me this American spirit which, I think, strengthens me.”

I wrote about the high-stakes drama of home-field...

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:47:00 -0400

I wrote about the high-stakes drama of home-field advantage… in chess. Also about celebrity grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, with cameos from rock-paper-scissors, Jay-Z, the Mayor of Paris, a trip to Azerbaijan, and Indian food.

And this March you prompted the unparalleled headline in The Wall Street Journal, “Harvard Outsmarts Harvard,” when one of you devised a hot new mathematical model that gave the men’s basketball team a 4.6 percent chance of an NCAA upset. Then another one of you, against all odds, helped upset that prediction when you led the team to its first ever NCAA victory. You are the class that busted a million brackets.

Wed, 29 May 2013 11:12:00 -0400

And this March you prompted the unparalleled headline in The Wall Street Journal, “Harvard Outsmarts Harvard,” when one of you devised a hot new mathematical model that gave the men’s basketball team a 4.6 percent chance of an NCAA upset. Then another one of you, against all odds, helped upset that prediction when you led the team to its first ever NCAA victory. You are the class that busted a million brackets.

Front-page story in the Journal today about the Nintendo version...

Fri, 10 May 2013 09:50:00 -0400

Front-page story in the Journal today about the Nintendo version of The Great Gatsby. A real thing! With video and a podcast interview and a dot drawing of an 8-bit Nick Carraway. (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s estate declined to comment about the game. I didn’t ask about the dot drawing.)

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Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:26:21 -0400

Florida Gulf Coast received hundreds of applications from people...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 10:34:04 -0400

Florida Gulf Coast received hundreds of applications from people who wanted to be its next men’s basketball coach—and I talked to some of those people who had never before coached college basketball.

Russ and Slick Rick, Russ and Waffle House, Russ and Lil B, Russ...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:05:00 -0400

Russ and Slick Rick, Russ and Waffle House, Russ and Lil B, Russ and Dark Slime, Russ and Big Russ, Russ and Barack Obama.

"It's like a wife," Behanan said of his junk food. "I'm married to her, and I can't break up with her, but sometimes I have to forget about her."

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:56:28 -0400

"It's like a wife," Behanan said of his junk food. "I'm married to her, and I can't break up with her, but sometimes I have to forget about her."

smile, you’re on candid camera

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:39:03 -0400

smile, you’re on candid camera

Missed Dunk > Dunk

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:15:50 -0400

Missed Dunk > Dunk

We talked to a bajillion fucking broadcasters for...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:27:25 -0400

We talked to a bajillion fucking broadcasters for the Journal—Marv Albert, Verne Lundquist, Craig Sager, Jay Bilas, Bill Raftery, Reggie Miller and the one and only Charles Barkley—to answer an insane question. How do they stop themselves from swearing on live TV?

As it turns out, some have more elaborate routines than others. Dan Dakich retreats to the bathroom for 10 minutes every day before his radio show and reads the newspaper aloud. He reads the newspaper because he likes the newspaper. He reads it aloud to hear himself speak without cursing. When he broadcasts games on air, he writes “NS” for “no swearing” atop his game notes and doodles around the reminder for the entire telecast.

There’s also a quote from Charles Barkley at the end that you might want to read if that’s your thing.

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Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:53:00 -0400

Craig Sager, waiting for the coat-check inside Le Parker...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:47:00 -0400

Craig Sager, waiting for the coat-check inside Le Parker Meridien hotel on Monday morning: “There’s a place called Rex’s Fabric in Miami, they do mostly dresses for a lot of European dignitaries and women, so I went there and got some piece of fabric that was supposed to be a dress and had them make a sportcoat out of it. I bought a tie at an Armani in Boston that was boring, but it was a nice tie, so I went around the corner to a jewelry shop, bought some Swarovski crystals, took ‘em back and had them sew it onto the tie.”

"And what is all this postgame praying? Those new fashionable prayer huddles—what goes on? They can’t..."

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:11:00 -0500

“And what is all this postgame praying? Those new fashionable prayer huddles—what goes on? They can’t be thanking God for winning, because how do the teams with the losing records explain things? (“The Lord loves our team—He sabotages us so we can get a high draft pick.”) The players also cannot be thanking God for keeping them from injury, because they’re injured all the time.”

- Woody Allen on the ’90s Knicks.

I examined 1,157 of Dick Vitale’s...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 09:44:00 -0500

I examined 1,157 of Dick Vitale’s comments—like “Talk about a P-T-P-er, baby, a prime time performer! Mr. Kelly’s been on fire! Somebody call the fire chief, man, he’s burning up the nets! Here he is, nothing but nylon! NBA time! Ryan Kelly, what a show!”—for Duke bias.

"Carey’s quote reminded me of something I read in the early stages of my reporting, a 24-page report..."

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 09:48:00 -0500

“Carey’s quote reminded me of something I read in the early stages of my reporting, a 24-page report prepared for Frito-Lay in 1957 by a psychologist named Ernest Dichter. The company’s chips, he wrote, were not selling as well as they could for one simple reason: “While people like and enjoy potato chips, they feel guilty about liking them… . Unconsciously, people expect to be punished for ‘letting themselves go’ and enjoying them.” Dichter listed seven “fears and resistances” to the chips: “You can’t stop eating them; they’re fattening; they’re not good for you; they’re greasy and messy to eat; they’re too expensive; it’s hard to store the leftovers; and they’re bad for children.” He spent the rest of his memo laying out his prescriptions, which in time would become widely used not just by Frito-Lay but also by the entire industry. Dichter suggested that Frito-Lay avoid using the word “fried” in referring to its chips and adopt instead the more healthful-sounding term “toasted.””

- It’s toasted!

Oh, what, do you not read Dog News? Who even are you? (In...

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:28:00 -0500

Oh, what, do you not read Dog News? Who even are you? (In related news, I wrote about Dog News for the Journal. Its office is above the 40/40 Club and it has a gossip columnist.)

My story on Page One of the Journal about why the Labrador...

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 09:14:00 -0500

My story on Page One of the Journal about why the Labrador Retriever has never, ever won Best in Show at Westminster. Also in this story: Las Vegas odds, “pure, simple politics” and a U.S. Supreme Court appeal.

The best Girls recaps you’ll ever read probably are from...

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 23:52:00 -0500

The best Girls recaps you’ll ever read probably are from your mom.

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Mon, 04 Feb 2013 11:26:50 -0500