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🔥 Spur of the moment
NBA Finals week and DangeRuss rides off into the sunset.


Happy Friday. A sports bar in New York is running a promotion during the NBA Finals where it will cover the tabs of every patron if the Knicks win. This might sound like an insane idea until I tell you that the owner has hedged against the promo by betting $5,000 on the Knicks to win each game.
If the Knicks take the series, he might break even. If the Spurs win the series, there’s likely going to be a bar in Midtown Manhattan going up for sale.
In today’s letter:
Revenge home runs in St. Louis
24 hours of NFL trade chaos
The Warriors take a run at LeBron


🏀 NBA Finals week kicked off with a banger. The Knicks took game one from the Spurs 105-95, extending a 12-game win streak in the playoffs and putting themselves three wins away from ending a 53-year championship drought. KAT locked down Wemby, Jalen Brunson hit the dagger in the 4th quarter, and that was all she wrote.
It was a close game until a Spurs fan decided to run onto the court midgame to try and get a selfie with Wemby. After that, San Antonio looked like a rec league team (can’t be a coincidence).
The last time the Knicks had a lead in the NBA Finals, OJ Simpson was getting chased by 14 cop cars down the LA freeway. It’s been a while.
👕 The Cardinals' tarp-off section was chirping Pete Crow-Armstrong with "overrated" chants, so he put a ball directly into their laps. With as violent a swing as you’ll ever see, PCA deposited a baseball directly into the tarps off bleachers as the chirps rained down. He even gave the shirtless fans a little celebratory shirt wave as he rounded the bases. Tarps off dudes, keep your heads up. You still rock.
🏈 The NFL had an absolutely mental June 1st. In a single day, AJ Brown was traded to the Patriots for a 2028 first-round pick, the Browns traded reigning DPOY Myles Garrett to the Rams for Jared Verse and a first-rounder, and last but not least, Odell Beckham Jr. signed with the Giants. Jaxson Dart, Cam Skattebo, and a 33-year-old OBJ back in New York. What could possibly go wrong?
In other news, Aaron Donald is hinting at a possible comeback with the Rams. I’m not sure any quarterback in the NFL is making it out of a matchup against Aaron Donald and Myles Garret without a few brown stains.
💰 The Warriors are taking a run at LeBron. Warriors insider Tim Kawakami said the team is already in the process of trying to clear cap space to bring in 42-year-old LeBron James. One last title run with Steph by his side? Who says no? (Other than Cavs fans through their tears).
⚾️ Fernando Tatis Jr. finally hit his first home run of the season (in game 56). His 55-game homerless streak to start the year was the second-longest in history by any player who'd previously hit 40+ home runs in a season. To his credit, he crushed this ball (451 feet to be exact), and his quote afterward was pretty hard to argue with: "About f---ing time."
It's still hard to make the case he didn't need those PEDs when he goes three months without leaving the yard.
🎤 Russell Wilson is hanging them up. DangeRuss announced that he’s officially retiring and joining CBS Sports as an analyst. The Jets had offered him a backup job behind Geno Smith — which is poetic given Smith was his backup in Seattle — but Russ wisely chose TV instead. Fourteen years, one Super Bowl, and somehow his most memorable moment was getting picked off the 1-yard line. Well, it's a tie between that and the Broncos Country, Let’s Ride video.
🤦 Hall of Famer Adrian Beltre said this week Wander Franco deserves a second chance in MLB. An early congrats to Adrian on the worst take of the year. For context, Franco was found criminally responsible for the sexual and psychological abuse of a 14-year-old girl. He avoided prison partly because the girl's mother was found to have extorted him — which apparently qualifies as a reason for a "second chance" in Beltre's eyes.
🎾 The French Open has been all-upsets. I’ve got a feeling people have lost a lot of money betting on this tournament. Pretty much any tennis player you have heard of was knocked out before the quarterfinals. It’s the first major since 1968 without a former Grand Slam champion in the round of 16.
Either way, someone's going home with their first Grand Slam on Sunday. It’ll be someone that nobody (including themselves) expected to win.
🏒 The Stanley Cup Finals got off to a hot start with a goal in the first 25 seconds. Carolina ended up losing Game One 5-4, but this opening goal (on home ice, nonetheless) was one for the ages. The video with no commentary and purely crowd noise is a work of art.
🚩 A Georgia NCAA baseball player got ejected for pimping a home run. College baseball umpires famously have the biggest egos. You can hit a piss missile of a home run, and if you have the audacity to watch it for a half-second, you're out of the game. The Georgia head coach looked like he was ready to tear the umpire limb for limb (can’t really blame him).
🚗 Brandon Aiyuk is being arrested after posting a video of himself driving 104 mph past Levi's Stadium. Pretty hard to beat the case when your own video is Exhibit A. He already lost $27 million in guaranteed money from the 49ers for refusing to rehab his ACL at the team facility, and now he's a wanted man in Santa Clara County. Stay hot, Brandon.
🧢 A fly ball bounced off Joe Adell’s head in the seats. The odds of this happening are so low, but what’s even crazier is that this exact same thing happened to Joe Adell a few years ago. To be fair, this is the same guy who robbed three home runs in a single game earlier this year. He’s still taken away one more homer than he’s given away.
🥶 Cristopher Sanchez's historic scoreless innings streak finally came to an end at 50⅔ innings. That’s the fifth longest in MLB history, a Phillies franchise record, and the longest ever for a left-handed pitcher. The Phillies lefty hadn't allowed a run since April 30. This guy really doesn’t get the respect he deserves. Maybe if he was dating Livvy Dunne, we’d talk about him more.

Shoutout to @Fellacakes for hitting our biggest parlay of the week, taking all under’s on a Wednesday night MLB slate. Something satisfying about betting against every hitter in the league and winning. Keep up the good work.

Alright, that’s enough for one Friday.
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