August 15, 2026
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Michael's Daily Notes
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On-court tension is the WNBA story of the summer, and nearly every incident that goes national pairs a black player with a white one.
Reese and Clark. Carrington and Cunningham. The framing implies racial animus. I suspected something else: that it reflects what draws media interest, not what happens on the court. So I went looking for foul data broken down by the race of both players. It doesn't exist — nobody tracks it, not the league, not academia. So I asked an AI, Anthropic's Claude (Fable 5), to build it.
Here is what I learned:
Three seasons of play-by-play, 2024 through August 1: 792 games, roughly 26,000 defensive fouls — 16,134 with both players identifiable, because a free-throw shooter is, by rule, the player who was fouled. All 296 players were coded by perceived race: about 70 percent Black, 28 percent white, mirroring the league. The underlying play-by-play is public — and the full analysis, including the coding table so you can check the work, accompanies this essay.
The test for animus: given who commits fouls and who draws them, do players "choose" victims of the other race more often than chance? They don't. Black-on-white fouls ran at 1.00 times the random-pairing expectation — 2,391 observed, 2,390 expected. White-on-Black: identical. Nothing.
White players are actually fouled about 20 percent less than their minutes predict — but the shortfall is the same whether the fouler is Black or white. That's playing style, not targeting: whistles follow players who attack the rim. And flagrant-foul victims are 29 percent white, against a 28 percent white share of minutes. Proportional.
Here's what stopped me: the players who have absorbed the most flagrant fouls since 2024 aren't named Clark. They're Allisha Gray, Chelsea Gray, and Kelsey Mitchell — all Black, none the subject of a single national targeting story.
The caveats: the coding is perception-based, aggregates can't judge any single play, and the data predates Monday's ejection game. Still, the conclusion holds. The tension is real on television. In the foul data, it does not exist.
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DAILY POLL
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Do Luigi Mangione's grievances with the health care system mitigate his crime in any way?
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TOP STORY
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The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to lift a lower-court order pausing above-ground construction of President Trump's planned 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom, arguing the project is a national-security priority already 65% complete after the East Wing was demolished last October.
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TODAY'S YOUTUBE
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SPONSORED BY PARX CASINO
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Luigi Mangione, 28, pleaded guilty Friday to federal stalking charges in the December 2024 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, admitting he posed as a $50 billion investor to track Thompson's location before killing him on a Manhattan street.
President Trump said he isn't worried about the USS Abraham Lincoln after nine months at sea, brushing off reports of sailors going overboard, mental health cases, and family complaints about food and supply shortages as lawmakers from both parties call for investigations.
The USS Abraham Lincoln’s prolonged deployment, supply shortages and crew strain are tied in part to the loss of a key Navy logistics hub in Bahrain after Iranian attacks forced the carrier to rely on the remote island Diego Garcia.
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A MESSAGE FROM COMCAST
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President Trump is pressing Senate Republicans to pass the House-approved Sunshine Protection Act making daylight saving time permanent, but push-back persists from northern state GOP senators, including Majority Leader John Thune and Conference Chair Tom Cotton, who insist the change would leave kids waiting for school buses in near-total winter darkness.
Jason Arday, who had been Cambridge University's youngest Black professor ever, was found dead at 41 in South London days after resigning amid plagiarism allegations and a university investigation into his academic qualifications and honorary appointments.
Federal regulators have opened an inquiry into prediction market wagers on what public figures will say, prompting Kalshi to pull its sports 'mention markets' after President Trump's teleprompter operator was caught betting on the words he'd utter.
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MORE NEWS
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Paramount CEO David Ellison blasted the 12 state attorneys general suing to block the $111 billion Paramount-WBD merger, citing "needless costs" from penalty fees and litigation as Mexico became the latest jurisdiction to approve the deal ahead of a March 2027 antitrust trial.
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Judge Debra McCaslin ruled Alex Murdaugh cannot get a fair second murder trial in the 14th Judicial Circuit, set an April 5 start date, and will soon name a new venue as defense attorneys floated claims about a missing rifle and a cousin's failed polygraph.
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For the Left
Senator Susan Collins turned up the heat on political rival Troy Jackson, chosen to replace Graham Platner as Maine’s democratic Senate nominee, over a resurfaced police report from 1988 which accused Jackson of assaulting a man and pushing his longtime partner during a late night incident in Fort Kent, accusations that both Jackson and his partner deny.
For the Right
RFK Jr., who leads the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, revealed on Wednesday that he’s seen Trump travel with ‘Boxes and Boxes’ of McDonald’s, citing the president’s preference for national chains and highlighting the tension between the administration's health policy agenda and Trump's personal eating habits.
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