Michael Pelter

Cash App: $MPelter 👀 Venmo: Mpelter

[Clemente Almanza @CAlmanza1007]

Probably the best moment from what Sam Presti said today. Went scorched earth on all of the SGA narratives that have been bubbling up over the years:

Of all the things that I've talked to Shai about, this is actually one I've never talked to him about. He's probably going to kill me for talking about this, truthfully.

First of all, let me just start with the opposing coaches for one second. The post-game press conference has turned into the bully pulpit to create competitive advantage. I mean, we know what that is. It used to be you'd get up there, you'd talk about your own team. Now everyone gets up there and they talk about the officials and they discredit the other team. Again, like they're great competitors, so we know why that's happening, and I don't fault them because I think they may think it works.

So the question is why are they continuing to do it? Because there's financial incentives not to do it. But everyone's competing. Let's also recognize that it's the bully pulpit for competitive advantage, and that's what it's kind of turned into, which is part of competing. We all get that.

Relative to Shai and the narrative on that, he's playing against six people. He's got five defenders, and the sixth defender is social media. That's a reality. He's not going to be the last player that the machine decides to target, but no one's going to handle it as gracefully because, when they turn it on somebody else, they're not going to step up there every night and not acknowledge it.

A couple things more just on the whole topic. We think all the time or we hear all the time about things that people don't like about the NBA, which are inaccurate, but they're narratives that exist on the alternate reality.

One, players don't play defense. Shai's a two-end player. Now, he plays with four or five All-NBA defensive players, so sometimes his defensive ability gets undersold, but he plays two ends.

Second, all NBA players do is complain, bitch and moan and try to intimidate the officials with bad behavior in the games to give foul calls. He's gotten three technical fouls this year. None for complaining. One for waving a towel in support of someone that hit a shot that doesn't play very often. Okay. So he's not doing that.

The other thing is load management. Nobody plays. They take all these games off. Shai plays every night. He missed a bunch of games this year for an oblique strain, and we might give him a night off two or three times a year, maybe. But he plays back-to-backs. He plays heavy minutes. He plays against good teams. He plays against teams that are bad teams. He plays every night. His consistency is well documented. So you can't get him on that.

The next one is all you do is shoot 3s. NBA players, all they do is shoot 3s. Okay. Well, he's brought the mid-range back to an art form. He's transcendent for any generation, any player. That's why like older players love his game.

It's also one of the reasons he gets fouled a lot. Because he plays in the mid-range because we don't call the landing space fouls in the mid-range the way we do at the 3-point line, right, because he's avoiding that oftentimes because there's too many bodies in there. With the 3-point shot, you can see it easily, and I think a lot of times he's trying to avoid that. So he's not a guy that's just launching 3s. So we can check that off the box.

The other one is like these guys are just totally inaccessible. They're in their own world. Well, the guy signs 400 autographs before every game. Before the Western Conference Finals Game 7, he's signing autographs.

So we've got a litany of things that generally the narrative is about NBA players that they do wrong. Well, based on those narratives, I don't agree with them, but he would be doing them right. And he doesn't really complain about any of it. So if we're just talking about trying to draw fouls, well, every other great player in the NBA, that's part of the game is drawing fouls.

He drew 415 fouls this year; 11 were challenged. 11. Four of those were overturned. So that's like 2 1/2 percent of the foul calls were actually challenged. Again, that's part of the bully pulpit part of this thing, which I get and it's part of competing.

As far as those fouls, I think in the fouls drawn -- I had this written down here -- he's tied with Embiid for 8 and 9 in terms of number of fouls drawn in the season. 6 and 7 are Jaylen Brown and Wembanyama. So that's kind of the group of players that he's in.

But I understand, if you listen to the narrative, you'd think he's 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. He drew a lot more fouls before we got much better, and when we got better, obviously people pay much more attention to him.

We'll have to see where that goes, you know what I mean? We don't know. He'll never say anything about it. And the only thing I'm pointing out is I don't think he's being unfairly handled, I just think, instead of talking about something that we are looking to find as a negative, can we please also acknowledge that he also does a lot of positive things for the game, most of which are the things that people are very unhappy -- not unhappy, but they don't like on social media. And I know that a lot of us live on social media. I would think they would love him for that reason.

This is like the world we live in today. There's a lot of financial incentive to create these things, career ambitions, like I said before. The best thing we can do when those things happen is stay above it.

Now I'm pointing it out now at the end of the season, but we're going to have to stay above it because it's probably not going to change. But he does a lot of good things too.

[Matt Smethurst @MattSmethurst]

Man, this is beautiful. A life adorning the gospel.

Listen to what @StevenBartlett—host of one of the world’s most popular podcasts—says to Christian apologist John Lennox.

[Michael Pelter @Mbpelter]

@LegionHoops May be the most respectable thing I’ve ever agreed with Draymond on and that takes a lot for me to say it 😂

[NBA @NBA]

CARUSO HAS 18 3PM IN THE SERIES 🎯

Most threes made off the bench in a single NBA Conference Finals series 🤯

Thunder win Game 5 to take a 3-2 series lead in the West Finals!

[Kalshi Hoops @KalshiHoops]

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has played 35 playoff games over the last 2 seasons, shooting 334 FT attempts in that span.

His 334 attempts rank outside of the top 1,000 for most FT Attempts in any 35-game playoff span in NBA History.

He remains the Finals MVP Favorite on Kalshi.

[Michael Pelter @Mbpelter]

@okcthunder This right here was the most hyped I got all night. J-Will massive impact tonight 💪🏼💪🏼

[OKC THUNDER @okcthunder]

JAYLIN WILLIAMS AND 1‼️

[Michael Pelter @Mbpelter]

Nothing more telling than being down 15-0 to start the game and then flipping the game to be up by that amount with 1:30 left in the 4th. @okcthunder

[OKC THUNDER @okcthunder]

💪💪💪

[Michael Pelter @Mbpelter]

Bro the spurs are so soft lol

[Jacob Kniffen @JacobKniffen]

I didn’t think Castle was playable this series — but if he’s gonna be allowed to maul and grab Shai like this on every play he should play 48 minutes. This is hilarious.

[OKC THUNDER @okcthunder]

2 Consistent. 2x MVP ✌️

#SGA2MVP | #KiaMVP

[BrickCenter @BrickCenter_]

Wemby with an INSANE flop 😭

[ESPN Insights @ESPNInsights]

The Thunder have beaten the Lakers by at least 15 points 5 times this season (regular season and playoffs).

That's the most 15-point wins in a season for any team against the Lakers since the 1976 merger 😲

[Jeremy @Jeremybtc]

For 12 years, every major winner of McDonald's Monopoly was a fraud. The game was rigged by the one man hired to prevent rigging.

> McDonald's Monopoly launched in 1987.

> Peel a game piece off your fries or drink. Match the right properties. Win up to $1 million.

> The promotion was massive. Tens of MILLIONS of game boards distributed in magazines alone.

> McDonald's poured massive marketing behind it.

> By law, McDonald's couldn't run its own contest.

> A third party company called Simon Marketing handled the game pieces.

> The man in charge of security at Simon Marketing was Jerome P. Jacobson.

> Former cop. Everyone called him Uncle Jerry.

> His job was to make sure nobody stole the winning pieces.

> He stole the winning pieces.

> Starting in 1989, Jacobson figured out how to swap the high value game pieces during transit.

> He would duck into an airport bathroom stall, break the tamper proof seal on the case, pocket the winners, and reseal it.

> He got away with it because a supplier accidentally sent him a sheet of the tamper proof seals directly.

> That mistake gave him 12 years.

> At first he gave the pieces to friends and family. His step brother. His nephew. People he trusted.

> Then it grew.

> Jacobson started selling winning pieces to strangers for a cut of the prize.

> His network eventually included mobsters, strip club owners and a members of the Colombo crime family.

> One family connected to Jacobson's network claimed three separate $1 million prizes plus a Dodge Viper.

> Jacobson apparently even anonymously mailed a $1 million winning piece to St. Jude Children's Hospital.

> McDonald's honoured it and paid out the full amount over 20 years.

> The total stolen was over $24 MILLION in cash and prizes across 12 years.

> In 2000, the FBI got an anonymous tip about a man called "Uncle Jerry" rigging the contest.

> They looked at the winner list. Almost every major winner lived within 25 miles of Jacobson's house.

> The FBI convinced McDonald's to run the contest one more time. Wiretapped Jacobson's phone.

> Intercepted the name of the next $1 million winner before he even claimed it.

> Then they posed as a McDonald's film crew and interviewed the fake winner on camera. Let him tell his entire made up story about how he found the piece.

> Three weeks later, Jacobson was arrested in an early morning raid.

> The trial began September 10, 2001. The next day was 9/11.

> One of the biggest corporate fraud cases in fast food history got buried under the biggest news story of the century.

> Over 50 people convicted. Jacobson got 37 months. He was the only one who served more than a year.

> Every time you peeled a game piece off your fries and lost, the fix was already in.

The winning pieces were in Uncle Jerry's pocket before the food hit the tray.

[Michael Pelter @Mbpelter]

@Jeremybtc Legit so sad I used to love trying to win something in the McDonald’s monopoly game 😭

[Michael Pelter @Mbpelter]

@JBoudouris Had a similar dispute with them years ago and haven’t used them to buy or sell since. They absolutely don’t care about buyers or sellers.

[J.R. Boudouris @JBoudouris]

For anyone who uses StubHub to buy/sell tickets, a cautionary post...

I purchased four tickets to all three sessions of March Madness in St Louis on March 20 and 22 for $2000 total. When Illinois did not end up in the STL bracket, I sold the tickets on Stubhub on March 15...

[OKC THUNDER @okcthunder]

JWill has been selected as a finalist for the 2025-26 Twyman-Stokes @NBA Teammate of the Year Award 👏

[OBU @obunews]

🏀 Bison Nation, we’re headed to the FINAL FOUR.

Come together and support our Bison on the national stage.

🗓️ Friday, March 27
🕔 Watch Party at 5 PM
📍 Noble Complex
📺 Also streaming on ESPN+

This is a moment to rally — as a campus, as alumni, and as fans — behind a team that continues to represent OBU with excellence, character, and heart.

Join us in the Noble Complex or tune in from wherever you are, and let’s show our support in a big way.

📸 Share how you’re supporting the Bison:
Post your photos and videos, tag @OBUNews and @OBU_athletics.

#OBU #BisonNation #FinalFour #GoBison #OnToVictory