Every year, once the Las Vegas Summer League is in the rearview mirror and the core of the free agency bonanza is settled, my two brothers and I take a camping trip out to Raystown Lake, a 27-mile man-made lake that twists through the mountains of central Pennsylvania.
The lake is mostly built on land owned by the Army Corps of Engineers, which means development on the shoreline is largely prohibited, making it the perfect place for me to get the heck away from society for a few days and recharge. Mountain biking, kayaking, snorkeling, cliff diving and playing fetch with the dog in the lake and recapturing some of my lost sanity? Yes. Doom scrolling Twitter? That can be put on pause for a bit.
More and more, it's impossible for many of us to truly "turn off" their careers. Many of us are on alert, if not fully on call, 24/7/365, and that obviously applies to sports reporters as well. I'd love to say that I didn't have my laptop on me, that I didn't have my phone with me to tether to, and that I didn't have a 256 Wh power station on hand just in case shit went down, but I did. It's impossible not to.
Still, I tried to do my best to read the notifications to see if it was something that I needed to react to, but not get fully immersed in the online conversation. So now that I'm back, I'll use this newsletter to run through a few of the topics that I missed.
Today's newsletter will contain thoughts on:
- The proposed arena at 10th and Market.
- Whether this is the best team of the Joel Embiid era.
- Seth Partnow of The Athletic putting out his player rankings / tiers.
- The whole Jim Salisbury / Nick Castellanos "thing".
