The Basketball Feelings Podcast, Episode 61: Pasha Malla

There is no duplicate, [and is] something that has fairly regimented mechanics. It’s so individualized. In silhouette, you’d never mistake Steph Curry for Klay Thompson.

Pasha Malla first came across my basketball radar when I worked at Penguin Random House and his publicist suggested him for a goodbye playlist I was putting together for DeMar DeRozan after DeRozan’s unceremonious shuttling from Toronto (I’m over it, I swear). He was on my radar before as an author — he’s written seven novels — in those days his books were physically surrounding me at the office. Besides writing books, he’s a professor and the chair of creative writing at York University in Toronto.

We talked about falling into careers a little bit backwards, and how humour was an early conduit for the both of us into the kind of writing we’d end up doing professionally (here’s the piece Pasha wrote for McSweeney’s on how to guard Teen Wolf, and here’s the piece I wrote for The Classical on Jimmy Butler and the Minnesota Teen Timberwolves). We also talked about the writing process, finding your way to the central idea, and why Pasha decided to be a Warriors fan growing up in London, Ontario.

Plus: The artistry, palmistry and individualism of the jump shot (and some of our favourite owners of them), seeing footage of yourself playing pickup basketball, the hypnotism of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, comparing Luka Doncic to German soccer, the ripple effects of game-shifting movers, whether all left-handed shooters have a beautiful shot, and the state of the Eastern Conference.