I guess you saw the story last week about JJ Redick’s bizarre encounter with a New York City courtesy car driver who had some sort of cage in the back of his vehicle. Redick explained what happened on his podcast and Phil wrote about it here. 

The long and short of it is that JJ thought a human being might have been inside the cage, but he wasn’t sure. He took a LOT of heat from random folks online because they don’t think he did enough to address a problem that they thought could have been serious – human trafficking, child abduction, something along those lines. Redick was with his wife and sister-in-law at the time and asked the driver to pull over. They got into a taxi instead.

He responded on Friday to people who were criticizing him for not getting a picture of the driver and/or calling the police immediately:

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This popped up in an ESPN story written by Jackie MacMullan. 

In case you haven’t been paying attention, a movement began this year to address concerns of mental health in the NBA. Kevin Love came forward to describe his struggles. DeMar DeRozan did the same. The NBA recently launched the “Mental Health and Wellness Program”, which is being funded by both the league and players association. Dr. William Parham was brought in to be the program’s first director.

Related to that, MacMullan’s article featured this nugget:

Yet there remain many obstacles to confront, chief among them the stigma attached to mental health that prompts many players to suffer in silence. The union also insists that mental health treatment be confidential, but some NBA owners, who in some cases are paying their players hundreds of millions of dollars, want access to the files of their “investments.” That is not, however, the league’s position. “The NBA fully supports protecting the confidentiality of players’ mental health information and, accordingly, committed to the players association that any mental health program we undertake would do so,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass says.

Confidentiality, says Love, has to be non-negotiable. Without it, he says, he never would have become comfortable enough to announce from that All-Star dais that he was seeking treatment.

It’s also a legal issue. I can’t imagine how NBA owners would navigate HIPAA laws to get those files. Lawyers would be licking their chops to take that case, if it ever made it to a courtroom.

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You might know her as the former Duke standout who played nine WNBA seasons with six different teams. She also had playing stints in Russia, Turkey, and Lithuania, plus a run with the Belarus national team.

Harding was the number one overall pick in the 2007 draft and now becomes the second WNBA player to receive a full-time scouting gig with an NBA team, the first of which went to Dallas Mavericks assistant Jenny Boucek, who scouted for the Seattle SuperSonics in 2006.

According to ESPN, Harding retired in 2017 and spent last season in the NBA’s “Basketball Operations Associates Program.” –

After completing the program, she interviewed with several NBA teams, looking for a role that would allow her to learn and grow as both a future front-office executive and maintain a connection to coaching.

“I knew I wanted to work with the team. That’s the one thing that you miss most from playing — being part of a team, competing, and trying to win a championship,” she said. “That’s always been the goal probably since I picked up the ball when I was 13.”

The Sixers currently have eight scouts on the payroll. Marin Sedlacek is the team’s “international scout,” while Alvin Williams and Jordan Cohn are listed as “pro personnel” scouts. We’ll see what Harding’s focus ends up being in the scouting department.

Brett Brown is also quoted in the article:

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Philadelphia 76ers shooting guard JJ Redick might be this city’s sporting version of The Most Interesting Man in the World. The former Duke star has had a very productive NBA career, and since he has taken his talents to Philadelphia he has launched a podcast and in some ways has become a brand all his own.

Part of Redick’s branding is attributable to his looks, and good for him. Work it. But Redick was working it recently in a photo shoot in New York for a clothing company and, well, let’s just say things got weird. From his podcast on The Ringer with Orlando Magic draft choice Mo Bamba:

So yesterday, I had a photo shoot…and at the end of the shoot they had set up a driver for me. So we come downstairs out of the apartment where we were shooting at in Chelsea, and I knock on the door, and the guy kind of leans out and he’s like “are you JJ Redick” and I’m like “yeah.” So…I’m like “hey, I’ve gotta put my bag…in the back.”

We’re OK so far. Let’s just keep the tape rolling and see where this goes:

As I’m like leaning in to put my bag in there and Kylee (my sister-in-law) and my wife (Kylee’s twin is my wife) the three of us were like in the back, and so I put my stuff in the back, Kylee put her stuff in the back, and I was like, “it smells kind of weird.” It wasn’t like a bad smell, like it didn’t smell like dog food or dog shit, it was just like a weird smell, and at the time I didn’t think anything of it.

Photo Credit: Eric Hartline, USA TODAY

We’re still OK…but very soon this story is going to go sideways:

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Ben Simmons was on The Late Late Show with James Corden last night alongside Mayim Bialik, who played “Blossom” on that 90s sitcom and now stars on The Big Bang Theory.

I haven’t seen much of Corden’s show, but in watching the replay, it looks like he brings out the guests first and does some goofy skit before the traditional interviews at the desk.

Last night Simmons and Bialik played some game where you put on a blindfold and “nuzzle” a random item, and the gist is that you have to identify the item based on pressing your face up against it.

She went first:

“Is it a nylon grocery bag?” 

Ben went second, after the jump:

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