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Mark Travis

@marktravis.bsky.social
44 followers 108 following 279 posts

NBA columnist. Dog Lover.

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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
Very nice! May I ask then how you pulled off the cascading topdown menu with the progressively revealed background?
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
Hi Brian, I hope you are well. Big fan of your writing. Are you able to share the designer responsible for the theme for Run of Play?
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
At least the Club World Cup had a better half time show than the Super Bowl.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
For anyone who wishes they had the chance to see Andrew Bynum unleashed in a Summer League setting, tune into this Suns-Wizards game.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Milwaukee isn’t doing a total teardown and could use a primary ball handler for the foreseeable future with Lillard gone. The Spurs should be calling and offering De’Aaron Fox as the main piece of a Giannis deal.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
The Lakers have LeBron James and Luka Doncic and might be a lottery team. Amazing work by Rob Pelinka.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
The Nets drafted a Russian, a Frenchman and an Israeli tonight. Not sure about their crunch time five but their mock UN assembly will go hard in this geopolitical climate.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
They should send one of those Knueppel kids to live with the Ball brothers for two weeks like an episode of Wife Swap.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
I don’t think a franchise has ever lost more in one game. It might be the most devastating game in NBA history. What a horrible way for the NBA season to end.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
This Pacers loss might be the worst of all-time. They lose a winnable game and a championship because of an injury that will likely prevent this team from ever getting close to this stage again. Never has more been lost in one night.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Didn't think I'd ever turn off an NBA Finals Game 7 after one quarter, but the Haliburton injury just ruins the game. OKC will be one of the most undeserved champions ever. Only tested twice all season and both times an injury eliminated their opponents for them.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
I’m surprised Carlisle hasn’t realized that McConnell cannot play in this building. He’s a home arena energy guy but he gets swallowed up in an environment like this.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Damian Lillard, Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton all in one postseason. Something has to be done this offseason about the amount of games played. It’s unsustainable with the pace the game is played at.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Playing on a strained calf in an NBA Finals game on the day Kevin Durant gets traded…devastating.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Obi Toppin’s first quarter shot making was absolutely essential for Indiana tonight. He’s had such a fun Finals run for a guy you could have easily pictured dropping out of the rotation after a really poor start in Game 1.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
That close to the second half was absolutely electric from Indiana - and only serves to make the Game 4 collapse hurt worse. Imagine that sequence to put them two quarters away from the title.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
From a logistics perspective, the only way to have a matchup like Mamelodi Sundowns vs Ulsan Hyundia (you don't even know what sport this yet, I'm guessing) in June in America and not have horrible attendance is to make it a double bill with PSG-Atletico. Can't schedule it alone.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Myles Turner is 4-of-20 from three in the Finals and is averaging 4 rebounds per game in around 30 minutes a night. Completely unacceptable performance and a big reason why the Pacers won't win this series.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
This is just an unthinkably bad defensive possession from Nesmith and Nembhard. Completely undoing all of the good they have done in this series and gifting OKC a game that it had no business winning. Conceding the switch is bad enough, but the hard show at the nail is foolish (and they do it twice)
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Carlisle has been horrendous in the second half. No sense of the moment. Playing McConnell and letting OKC erase leads playing 4-on-5 made this a close game in crunch time and going back to Turner has been a destructive decision.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
The Pacers just threw away an NBA championship with some of the worst execution you will ever see on both ends of the floor. Trace it back to SGA’s 3 with three minutes left. Unbelievably bad defensive execution from Nesmith and Nembhard down the stretch.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Carlisle keeps giving away leads with McConnell out there instead of Haliburton. Indy had a chance to keep that in the 8-12 range but you can’t keep letting McConnell run your offense. OKC knows he can’t do anything with the ball.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Carlisle with way too many minutes of McConnell in this quarter. Really missed a chance to take control of this game.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Toppin actually played the most of any Pacer in the final 17 minutes of the game (12:37 out of 17).
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Carlisle sticking with Obi Toppin a minute or two longer than you'd expect in crunch time was such a big call as well, and it paid off in spectacular fashion. This sequence here with a defensive rebound, putback dunk and block on Jalen Williams was massive.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Of all of the fun fourth quarter factors that contributed to that amazing Pacers win in Game 3, the biggest had to be the degree to which Myles Turner dominated Chet Holmgren.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
I think I want Durant to wind up in Minnesota, if only because that likely means Randle goes to Phoenix, and I don’t see any way for the Wolves to succeed with him on their cap sheet.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
Aaron Nesmith's rebounding in that fourth quarter was crucial.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
Wolves have a President who isn’t afraid to take big swings, which can be good. Unfortunately for Minnesota, he’s missed on both his big gambles. KAT trade was indefensible but Gobert will always top it for me.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
Can’t imagine any team with ready-made postseason rotation players would want Julius Randle. Gobert is even less attractive as a trade asset, and even less useful on the court. Just a really bad spot to be in when your franchise cornerstone is 24.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
This is a great series because the Knicks secretly want to be down 20 in order to win and the Pacers secretly want to be down 9 with less than a minute left.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
Was McCusker’s substitution strategic or did he leave with an injury?
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
It wasn’t Tristan Thompson by the way it was Ron Artest.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
So this judge deduced it was Tristan Thompson based on a bull being one of the clues. “Tristan Thompson played for the Bulls,” she says. To which Robin Thicke emphatically agrees. This is INSANE. I don’t even remember the 23 games he played for the Bulls. NO WAY Robin Thicke does. Rigged.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
I’m in the waiting room at a doctor’s office and I just witnessed the most insane thing I’ve ever seen. They are playing Masked Singer on the lobby TV and the singer is an NBA player.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
Gobert has 7 points and 12 rebounds in 51 minutes against OKC. Wolves have compensated him with $43 million this season. In order for that not to be an albatross, he'd have to be playing like a DPoY, and he isn't close to that. Gobert is due another $110 million in the next three seasons. Nightmare.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
Was it realistic to find someone who wanted Gobert? Maybe not. He's only been played off the floor in every postseason run he has been involved. Smart GMs have noticed that. But trading Towns, and for such a massive downgrade in Randle, was a big mistake.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
It was easy to see this coming, though. OKC just had a grueling seven-game test against a championship core that sharpened their habits. Minnesota has coasted here against a horrendously imbalanced Lakers team and the Santa Cruz Warriors.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
The Pacers finishes this postseason have made the Aaron Gordon moments feel like routine basketball endings.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
We’ve now seen fouling up three burn the Thunder in Game 1 against center and New York tonight. One thing analytics doesn’t account for, especially in the playoffs, is how much this strategy amplifies the pressure on the free throw shooter just to maintain that three-point lead.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
That was one of the great choke jobs in modern sports history.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
I suspect the idea that the Towns trade was a win-win move won’t survive the Conference Finals.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
I guess it’s a Canadian thing.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
Nikola Jokic has never beaten a team with more than 50 wins in the NBA playoffs.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
Fun to think that we probably should be getting Round 2 of Wolves-Thunder this year. If SGA doesn’t foul Washington in Game 6, Dallas would have had to deal with this Game 7 environment and might not have survived. Who would have won between Minny and OKC last year? Would either have beaten Boston?
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
It might not be as bad as blowing a 20-point lead in the fourth quarter on your home floor in a Game 7, but Jokic is putting together an atrocious Game 7 effort today.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
First possession of the half: A Lu Dort corner 3. Nuggets players stare at him as he winds it up as if the attempt itself is a victory.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
The Nuggets survived in Round 1 and might escape Round 2 despite playing a rudimentary zone defense for one primary reason: Lue and Daigneault kept letting Kris Dunn, Jones Jr, Lu Dort, Alex Caruso, etc fire away. You should see the looks on the faces of the Nuggets coaches when they take the bait.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
No, what I’m implying is the coach should either put better shooters on the floor or instruct his worst shooters to turn down open looks. Should have shown them Draymond/GPII tape to teach rejecting open looks and finding clever ways to utilize the space they’re given to benefit SGA/Williams.
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Mark Travis @marktravis.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
Crazy to me that JJ Redick played a 40-year-old out of position at center for an entire half in Game 3 in a first round series and yet Adelman really thought Jokic and Murray could sit in a second round Game 7.
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