On Love & Basketball (YouTube) 🏀

Plus: Five things I think (I think)

Neighbors,

Quick question for ya…

Onto today’s essay, which shares observations on basketball, YouTube…and much, much more.

Plus: Stick around for a quick Five Things I Think (I Think).

— NGL

P.S. Last letter, we talked with Gracie Koh about finding inspiration from the city that raised her. You can read it here.

Love & Basketball (YouTube)

2.14.26

It’s thirty-eight degrees on a Saturday morning in Chicago, and as I pack the final of fifty books to ship out this afternoon, my phone perks up with a sharp ding.

A friend has arrived. I grab my basketball, and a quick walk later finds us shooting hoops at the park.

The wind whips its trademark bite, but it’s mid-February, and you take what you can get. Besides, I grew up with a ball in my hands at every waking moment. When rubber meets rim with a resounding clang, all else simply fades away.

The muscle memory remains, lurking. But this thing we used to do, for hours and hours on end, now exists in a liminal space, a stark reminder of how the passage of time waits for no one.

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In November 2021, I was cutting my teeth in brand partnerships, when a friend introduced me to a basketball YouTuber with over a million followers (let’s call him Mike).

Through several conversations, it became apparent that there was a real opportunity here. And at age twenty-two, I signed on as Mike’s de facto manager.

In our first week working together, he approached me with a problem in need of a solution. Another basketball creator, Chris “The Big Hooli” Whyte, was calling my new client out online, accusing him of “clout-chasing” by filming Chris’ Venice Beach “park takeover” (Mike was already there filming a different video).

To make matters worse: During a game of fives, Chris baited him into throwing hands. The clip was spreading like wildfire.

Mike was incredulous—and rightfully so. He’d taken several months off from YouTube to nurse an injury. Just as we were planning his return, Mike’s name was being smeared through the mud.

He said he needed to fire off a response video. I advised against it.

He did it anyway.

---

Fortunately, Mike’s intuition was right. Alongside fellow basketball creators, two hundred and fifty thousand viewers rushed to his defense. In response, Chris apologized—both privately and publicly.

For me, it provided a direct look into a subculture brewing on YouTube. NBA 2K gamers Jesser and Cash Nasty popped out on the court every once in a while, but this new breed was something else entirely. Emerging creators including Chris Whyte and Nick Briz went beyond your typical pickup game troll. They regularly stoked violence, and their videos—such as “Their Whole Hood Tried To JUMP ME!!”—were pulling millions of views.

This created a self-perpetuating cycle. Companies avoided working with guys like Chris and Nick. With no brand deals coming in the door, the creators increasingly relied on AdSense revenue. Therefore, every video had to be more provocative (and drive more viewership) than the last.

One creator, Matt “MK” Kiatipis, regularly began popping up in the background of these videos. Eventually, he branched out—and quickly rode the wave of the shortform FYP.

These days, MK’s one-on-one videos reach more people per Reel than the NBA.

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A typical MK video goes something like this:

• First, a three-second clip foreshadows his opponent slapping him in the face (and the assembled park crowd going nuts).

• Second, we watch as MK provokes his opponent throughout a game of one-on-one, throwing the ball off their face and ripping the shirt off their body.

• Third, the blow-up, now in real time.

• Finally, they regroup, and MK typically wins—but he daps up the competition, sharing a good game, bro before the video ends.

There’s something intoxicating about the formula, something that appeals to our animalistic self. You hate him, sure. Yet a small part of you wants to be on the court across from him, dropping him to the ground and spitting in his face.

Fans (many in their early teens) pull up to these park runs in droves. Their phones are out. They’re ready to taunt their favorite antihero, gleefully waiting to film a testy interaction and fire off a clip to their friends.

MK’s challengers will now step up with Rode Mics clipped to their collar. Everyone’s a creator these days, fighting for a slice of the pie. And the MK Formula (act like a dick, but show just enough respect to keep audiences coming back) is now worldwide.

While guys like Chris Whyte and Nick Briz faded away, MK’s star has only risen. The cultural climate has shifted, and Kiatipis doesn’t just pull views—he’s now sponsored by global brands like Adidas.

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On March 6, the White House’s official X account posted a thirty-six-second video carrying a short caption: “Touchdown.”

The video showcases NFL players landing devastating hits, stitched with clips of the United States Armed Forces dropping bombs on Iran. AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” roars in the background.

The metaphor isn’t complicated. Violence is a tool, a sign of strength in the hearts and minds of the current White House. Violence is American. And there’s nothing more American than good, head-crackin’ football.

In press conferences over the last week, our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, has proclaimed the military will rain “death and destruction from the sky all day.” What he hasn’t offered is a plan. He has failed to share a coherent argument for the necessity of this vastly unpopular war—along with anything resembling a vision for how this all ends.

The White House assumes that with all of our strength, this culture of violence, honed over years and years and years, we’ll cruise to victory in a war of choice.

The more dangerous assumption is that, in the end, our opponents will still dap us up.

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On the final night of basketball tryouts during my sophomore year of high school, the coaches brought everyone into the locker room, then proceeded to call us into a back closet—one by one—to let us know if we made the cut.

“Nate,” they told me as I sat down. “You’re coming into the season in really good shape. We love what we’re seeing. You’ll start for the JV team, then sit varsity as the season goes on.”

“There’s only one thing,” they followed up. “On the court, you’re too nice. When an opponent falls to the ground, I need you to not pick them back up.

“I need you to step on their throats.”

Just three games into the season, I suffered a high-ankle sprain in practice that took me out for the next month. Barely anyone helped me up off the court. I had to limp down the stairs to the trainer’s office by myself.

While I returned during the second half of the season, I never fully recovered, and I ultimately declined to play my junior year. I told myself it was because my class schedule was too difficult (it was), and that, quite honestly, the team wasn’t very good.

Truthfully, however, my lifelong love of basketball had waned. I couldn’t shake what those two grown men had told a fifteen-year-old kid in that dark closet, at ten p.m. on a Wednesday night.

Maybe I just didn’t have sharp enough elbows.

Maybe I still don’t.

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After a bad miss at the park, I sprint into the grass, rushing to save my ball from a pool of mud.

I fail. Unbothered, my friend and I laugh at my misfortune, then proceed to shoot for another thirty minutes, dirt streaking across our hands. The hoodies came off a long time ago. Bodies are moving, and at some point along the way, that brisk wind begins to feel like a welcome breeze.

My relationship with basketball has changed over the years. It’s a mirror, of sorts. This thing that once meant so much to a past version of myself has now been reduced to a midafternoon break, an escape from various forms of blue light.

But while that relationship has evolved, the love is still there, buried deep. It’s mornings like these—when the only thing that matters is shooting a ball into a hoop, and shooting the shit with a friend—that all other problems begin to feel so simple.

Basketball offers an escape, yet it saves room for its main contribution: a shared language. It’s a language of sneakers squeaking and shit talk spewing. It’s a language that, in the real world, unifies more than it tears apart.

After finishing up at the park, we grab a bite to eat at the cafe down the street, dragging dirt-stained clothes and sweaty gym bags with us. In these in-between moments, I see the teenage version of myself, smiling.

There’s no place he’d rather be.

I give shooting hoops at the park four stars out of five.

5️⃣ Five Things I Think (I Think)

1️⃣ I think James Talarico has that it factor. In winning the Democratic primary for senate in Texas, he invoked messages of unity—and still gained heaps of traction online. It feels like culture might be swinging in the right direction; bonus points for using the word “neighbor” several times in his victory speech.

2️⃣ I think Chicago’s literary scene is a sleeping giant. Sam Buntz wrote a great piece in The Dispatch last week, encouraging writers to “seek their fortune” in the Windy City:

Chicago is concerned with production, with hustling, with getting the work done. It is plainspoken and populist in comparison to New York, yet still creatively fecund. All the commodities move through this central circulatory headquarters, the heart of the American body.

Is it subject to tachycardia and the occasional myocardial infarction? Absolutely. But it still pumps fiercely.

3️⃣ I think I have real FOMO. Over the last two years, a friend of mine, Geller, has been hosting a live music series he calls “Public Sounds.” Every session, he finds a different, off-the-beaten-path spot in LA (his hometown) to post up and play his music.

He started the series right as I moved from LA. I promised him I’ll make it back one day, but for now, I’ve been following along on YouTube.

4️⃣ I think the monthslong Chalamet Rollout needs to draw to a close. Yes, you gotta hand it to Timmy Tim for campaigning this hard for an Oscar. But if his recent comments on ballet show anything, it’s that media overexposure is a real thing, and no one can survive at the center of the spotlight for this long.¹

5️⃣ I think I’ll be offline for a bit. I’m getting ahead of scheduling letters for next week. But if you don’t hear directly from me after Tuesday, I’ll get back to you the following week!

Thanks for reading! Shoot us a reply, comment, or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—we respond to them all.

1. Yes, in proper context, he was actually praising ballet. But since when does proper context matter anymore?