I’m Jared Dubin, a longtime NBA writer and analyst who has written for outlets like ESPN, CBS Sports, FiveThirtyEight, Grantland, The Ringer, Sports Illustrated, VICE Sports, GQ, Bleacher Report, Slate, Dime, The Step Back, and Hardwood Paroxysm, among many, many others. If the site either exists or used to exist or even existed for only a brief moment in time, it’s a pretty safe bet that I wrote at least a few basketball-related words for it sometime over the last decade-plus.
And everything I used to do there, I’m now doing here — which means that around these parts, we are going to obsess about the NBA. Specifically, about the stuff that happens on the court. Because that’s where the action is.
In the space below, you’ll find a detailed description of the coverage plan for this year. (Note that the listed prices below are for people who subscribe via web. The prices for subscribing through the app are higher because Apple takes a 15% cut on top of Substack’s 10%.)
But first, here are some testimonials from a few current Last Night, In Basketballers:
Paid subscribers ($8/mo or $75/yr) get all free posts, plus:
Three Things I Noticed on League Pass (Mondays): A lot of people would like to follow the entire NBA but mostly only have the time or bandwidth to watch their favorite team. If that sounds like you, I’ve got you covered. I do my level best to watch a good amount of every single team so that I can keep up with the whole league and actually know what I’m talking about. So each week, I will scour my game notes and highlight three things I noticed while watching basketball the week before. You might have missed it — but I didn’t. And if you read this feature every week; you can pretend that you didn’t miss it, either. The full Three Things archive can be found here but I’ll also link to a few of my favorite examples from last season:
Weekly deep dive (Wednesdays): This is where I dive deep (or at least deep-ish) into a team, player, or leaguewide trend that is worthy of further exploration. Either that or I’ll just write how I feel about a topic that is, shall we say, trending in the NBA discourse. If you’re familiar with my work at FiveThirtyEight and elsewhere (including much of what I’ve written here since this became my primary home for writing about the NBA), you should recognize these types of stories. Here are a few of my favorite examples from last season:
Access to chat feature: This will allow for increased interaction between me and paid subscribers, and between subscribers themselves. I’m going to feel out the best way to use this feature throughout the season because it’s new to me as well, but as a starting point this will include:
Subscriber Q&A/Mailbags: This is pretty self-explanatory.
Discussion threads: Feel free to start your own threads about any topic and see what others think, and I’ll pop in and contribute as well.
Game-night watch-alongs: Come hang out, watch the games together, and talk about things we noticed or anything else that might be going on in the NBA.
We’ll do these once a month during the regular season and hopefully a few times during the playoffs.
Free subscribers get occasional public posts, mostly:
Film Findings (Fridays): Throughout the regular season, I’ll use video clips to break down something interesting that happened (or is happening) in the NBA. Maybe it’ll be a specific set. Maybe it’ll be a concept that is making its way through the league. Maybe it’ll be just one player’s performance in a game that stood out for one reason or another. Or maybe it’ll be something else. But it’s going to focus on the stuff that actually matters on the court. Because despite the fact that we hear more about the drama than we do anything else, what happens on the hardwood really is the most interesting part of the NBA. The full Film Findings archive can be found here but I’ll also link to a few of my favorite examples from last season:
Founding subscribers ($150+/yr) get all of the above, plus:
Ability to request a specific Film Findings topic.
Ability to request a specific night for game-night watch-along. (Pending my own availability, obviously.)
I’m really excited about all of this, and about what will be my 15th (!!!) season covering the NBA. Whether you are a paid subscriber or a free one, I appreciate your support and your readership — and I plan to keep earning it throughout this season and beyond.
