| Earlier this week, The Ringer’s Danny Chau asked whether the Knicks-Pacers reboot could ever top the rivalry of the 1990s. After watching Indiana’s highly improbable comeback over New York last night, I think it’s safe to say that yes, it could! But it won’t be an exact repeat of the past, despite Tyrese Haliburton copping Reggie Miller’s famous choke celly. Basketball looks a lot different in 2025. Back in the ’90s, it didn’t cost $62,000 to sit courtside next to celebrity guests. The plushies of star players weren’t getting reverse voodooed on TikTok. And the mayor wasn’t going around renaming streets to honor each player ahead of the Eastern Conference finals: Although I’m sure Karl-Anthony Towns Square makes for a lovely afternoon stroll, Mayor Eric Adams is acting a little prematurely, no? And where are the streets named after New York Liberty players, who actually won a championship? I don’t see Sabrina Ionescu Avenue or Breanna Stewart Street or Natasha Cloud Circle on Google Maps. In New York and elsewhere, female ballers seem to be still playing second fiddle to men — and elephants — despite making a lot of progress since the ’90s, when the NBA still owned 100% of the WNBA’s teams. The league’s opening weekend was entertaining, star-studded and full of excitement, says Adam Minter. Yet more investment is needed to elevate some of these teams. Take the Mohegan Tribe-owned Connecticut Sun: “Rather than enjoy a dedicated facility, the players practice and train either at their arena (when it’s not in use) or a community center,” Adam writes. “During a playoff series against the Indiana Fever last year, one of the Sun’s practice sessions was reduced to a half-court in order to make way for a community event. Despite the awkwardness and likely impact on player performance, the Sun has announced no plans to upgrade its practice and training resources.” In contrast, players for the Las Vegas Aces enjoy a $40 million practice facility. Seattle Storm has a $64 million training complex. Chicago Sky is building a $38 million training center. And Phoenix Mercury has a $100 million practice gym that Adam says sounds like it “could double as a luxury spa.” Instead of enduring suboptimal conditions, Connecticut’s “entire starting roster left via trades or free agency and the coach departed for Indiana,” writes Adam. “Investing in women’s sports is no longer about simply keeping teams afloat. It’s about growing them into professional franchises on par with the top men’s leagues.” A sale and relocation of the Sun would be a step in the right direction. Read the whole thing. And — at the risk of infuriating the Hoosiers at my alma mater — go Knicks! You Can’t Spell AI Without Altman and Ive | What’s more concerning: A dubious survey claiming 80% of Gen Zers are willing to marry an AI partner, or the fact that Sam Altman — the OpenAI guy — and Jony Ive — the iPhone guy — hard-launched their professional marriage with a nine-minute video trailer and an introductory website that carries all the same trappings as my cousin’s wedding registry on Zola? I’ll let you decide:  Source: OpenAI Look beyond the theatrics and you’ll find a $6.5 billion deal for OpenAI to acquire Ive’s startup, io. The goal? To create a revolutionary AI device before Apple, which just this week opened up its artificial-intelligence models to outside developers. “Frankly, I think it’s a bet with long odds,” writes Dave Lee. Even if Altman and Ive find a way to make it happen, scaling the hardware would pose a major challenge: “Apple has 695 suppliers, according to Bloomberg data, coexisting in a delicate dance that means the iPhone arrives in consumers’ hands at a price they can stomach,” he notes. “It will be vastly more difficult for OpenAI to create a killer AI device than it will be for Apple to create an AI offering good enough to maintain the iPhone’s supremacy.” At the same time, Parmy Olson says a lot of cutting-edge AI is nowhere near ready for mass adoption. At Anthropic, one large model pretended to follow the rules when it was being tested for safety. At OpenAI, an advanced model learned to hide its true intentions to get better rewards. It’s not as if these models want to trick humans — AI can’t “desire” anything — but, as Parmy explains: “Humans tend to design AI with goals like refusing to share harmful content or being as helpful as possible, and that is why when new instructions conflict with those goals, the models sometimes act to protect their original programming, even if that means lying.” Hmmm. Marriages that are full on lies don’t have a high chance of survival, but perhaps Altman and Ive’s project will buck the trend. | 
