The Basketball Feelings Podcast, Episode 27: Matt Ellentuck

In what other league are athletes playing half of their season in America and half abroad and having no break, just to get paid their worth?

I got familiar with Matt Ellentuck when my online NBA world gently and necessarily collided with the WNBA one, and it felt like I’d been missing out on what everyone around me already appeared to be well in on. He’s been a smart, incisive and funny part of the way I process and interact with basketball ever since.

We talked about Brittney Griner, the economic circumstances WNBA athletes are thrust into that require them to go overseas in the first place, the absolute isolation Griner is facing, and lack of care it feels we’re seeing at every turn of her detention in Russia.

We also talk about why it’s fine to give up on teams when they stink, inherited fandom, expansion in the W, unpack (whoops) a lot of Canadian and Toronto’s identity and identity crises, Steve Nash, Matt’s incredible Warriors-savant grandmother and her take on Golden State having a foot both in the developmental and insistence on being title contenders worlds, the Nets (whoops), and what Matt is excited for most in the W in the next 3-5 years.