Dear Adam Silver

Hey Dear Adam Silver listeners! We are back with a new interview with writer and New York Times Bestselling author Mirin Fader who is on the show to talk about her new book Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon, which was released earlier this week!

Hakeem Olajuwon is of course a former professional basketball player who was a 2 x Defensive Player of the Year, a 2 league MVP, a 2 x NBA Champion and a 2 x Finals MVP, and a 12 x NBA All star among many other things on and off the court.

Mirin’s first book Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA Champion, was a New York Times best seller and was featured on many other best selling lists. Mirin is a Senior Staff Writer at The Ringer where she writes long-form, human-interest sports features. Before that, she wrote for Bleacher Report and the Orange County Register. This is a fascinating book that has seemingly endless interesting stories about Olajuwon's life and experience moving from Nigeria to the United States to play basketball. But also, it is just a book about the world and where basketball fits in and all of the ugliness and joy that can come from the game and institutions.

Purchase a copy of Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon ⁠here⁠. You won't regret it!

If you are curious about the video compilation of NBA stars Kyle was referring to, you can watch here.

You can follow Mirin on Twitter @MirinFader, Kyle is @kylethegreen and Abigail is @DearAdamSilver.

Kyle also produces and hosts the Give Methods a Chance and Give Theory a Chance podcasts. Check them out too!

Dear Adam Silver listeners! It has been awhile. After a cross country move and settling into my new home in northern northern California, we are back with our 88th episode.

Author Rafi Kohan joins the show to discuss his new book Trash Talk: The Only Book About Destroying Your Rivals That Isn't Total Garbage (PublicAffairs 2023). Dr. Kyle Green of SUNY Brockport's sociology department is back to co-host and we laugh a lot during this episode, all while getting into some heavy ideas and concerns. Rafi's book is an entertaining and informative read and it was fun to get into it and talk a wee bit of trash too! You can purchase the book here.

Follow us on Twitter: Rafi, Kyle and Abigail

New York Times Bestselling author Andrew Maraniss is back on the show to discuss Inaugural Ballers, his 2022 book that tells the story of the first US women's Olympic basketball team that played in the 1976 games. This incredible team was recently inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and it felt like the perfect time to chat with Andrew about this moment in history, that has helped to shape women's basketball today.

Kyle Green (MMA nerd, Professor of Sociology at SUNY Brockport, and all around wonderful guy) joins as co-host as we dig into this fascinating story that teaches us much about basketball and also the history of the United States.

The always charming and witty Kyle Green (Ph.D. in Sociology) and Tunisha Singleton (Ph.D. in Media Psychology) join the show to discuss the sports stories from the summer that are on our minds! Topics range from Las Vegas as a professional sports center point, watching big games and matches at Stadium Swim, the continued failures of UFC as an institution, and the misguided UNITUS apparel launch. Throughout the episode, we collectively feel all of the anger, frustration and excitement around our fandom and process it together.

You can follow Tunisha on Twitter @TSingletonSay and Kyle @kylethegreen.

More new episodes of Dear Adam Silver coming soon so please subscribe and share!

Dear Adam Silver listeners! It has been a minute! I am glad to be back at the mic and sharing a conversation that touches on themes of family, expectations of gender and health trauma all via the topics of basketball and astrology......very timely for Mother's Day.

I am excited to share my conversation with interdisciplinary artist, educator, mystic and Team Captain of New Craft Artists in Action (NCAA) Maria Molteni, who is back on the show (first featured on Episode #32: Maria Molteni and Basketball Magic). 

Maria and I unpack the wonderfully complicated and nuanced Senda/Sedna zine that we worked on together this past November, which includes an essay about Senda Berenson (founder of women’s bball) and an essay about Sedna 90377 (Maria's favorite Trans-Neptunian Object). The printing of this zine coincided with the release of Maria’s Star Ball, which was created based on the design of the Cosmic Court in Fall River, MA that Maria painted alongside local students and NCAA members. On this episode we discuss the zine, the ball and all of the themes and concepts that they offer to us.

Please be aware that Maria and I are very candid on this episode and discuss on our struggles with our body, some relating to infertility, and familial trauma.

You can find the Senda/Sedna zine for sale here and the Star Ball on sale here and you can follow Maria on Instagram @strega_maria

Blake and his work have been featured on three previous episodes of Dear Adam Silver, including episodes 44, 48 and 81. 

Dr. Johanna Mellis is an Assistant Professor of History at Ursinus College where her research focuses on international sport during the Cold War, namely in the Eastern Bloc and Hungary especially, in order to connect the local voices and experiences of Hungarian athletes to the IOC and broader international sport society. Her manuscript, Changing the Global Game: Hungarian Athletes and International Sport During the Cold War, examines Hungarian sportspeople’s interactions with the International Olympic Committee from 1948-1989. Changing the Global Game shows how Hungarian athletes, Socialist Hungarian state sport officials, and the IOC gradually realized by the 1960s that sporting cooperation with one another - and not East-West political clashes nor resistance - was the way to achieve their respective aims of sport success, career and financial stability, and political and institutional strength.

Our conversation covers many different topics, but we do repeatedly come back to a consistent theme of unlearning our early understandings of world history through sport to form a better, more accurate, and historically inclusive narrative. 

You can follow Dr. Mellis's amazing and well curated Twitter feed @JohannaMellis. As I share in the podcast, my eyes have been opened to a multitude of different historical perspectives on sports through Dr. Mellis's Twitter account. 

Dr. Mellis also cohosts the End of Sport Podcast, a podcast on capitalist sport, labor, and justice for end times. The show features interviews with athletes, critical sports journalists, and fellow academics to explore all the ways that people use sport to harm others - i.e. through racist mascotry, the NCAA and higher ed’s exploitation of Black and Brown college athletic workers, sexual abuse and harassment, transphobia, and more.

You can read Dr. Mellis's writing alongside her End of Sport cohosts in The Chronicle of Higher Ed, The Guardian, Time, The Baffler, and more. She also has sole-authored pieces with The Washington Post and Arizona State University’s Global Sport Matters.

As always, thanks for listening! Please share, rate and review Dear Adam Silver wherever you get your podcasts. 

Mikey Yates is a painter currently based in Kansas City, MO and a resident at the Charlotte Street Foundation, where our interview took place. Mikey paints tiny moments that carry a significant weight to him, sometimes also engaging with historical world events. Basketball, his first love, comes up again in different scenes that he depicts and his rich, dynamic palette brings a glow and reverence to each of his paintings. Grateful to have the chance to talk shop with Mikey and unpack how his work, and deep appreciation for basketball, came to be. 

You can see and find out about his work here and be sure to follow him on Instagram @mikey_yates. 

Please rate and review Dear Adam Silver wherever you get your podcasts! Thanks for listening, as always. 

Blake and Giovanni are on the pod today to discuss pickup basketball and the creative culture around the game. We touch on playing during COVID and post vaccines, including their personal experiences, and the ways they have used basketball and photography as a means to connect with  other likeminded people around the world.

Thank you to Blake and Giovanni for coming on the show. Follow them on instagram! Blake is @sacredhoopsbook and Giovanni is @hgnext. And feel free to listen to my earlier conversations with Blake, featured in Episode 44 and Episode 48.

Thank you to all you listeners out there! Please subscribe to Dear Adam Silver, and if you already are subscribed, please share, rate and review wherever you find your podcasts. Thank you so much for all of your support.

Noah Cohan and John Early who are on the show to discuss their project Whereas Hoops. Noah Cohan is the Assistant Director of American Culture Studies at Washington University St. Louis and is a previous Dear Adam Silver guest from Episode 22 where he joined the show to discuss his book on fandom entitled We Average Unbeautiful Watchers. John Early is an artist and senior lecturer at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington university St. Louis. Their collective project Whereas Hoops was created to draw attention to the lack of basketball courts in Forest Park, which is located in St. Louis and is one of the biggest urban parks in the country.....but with all that space, there are still no basketball courts. Noah and John are working collaboratively to highlight this issue within its' proper historical context and hopefully correct it in the long term. 

Follow Whereas Hoops on Twitter and Instagram. Thank you to John and Noah for coming on and thank you to you all for listening! Please subscribe, share, rate and review Dear Adam Silver wherever you get your podcasts.