JAKE UITTI

Wow. That’s the only word that can be used to describe what happened Monday night in the National Basketball Association.

To start the night, the Dallas Mavericks, after trading away generational superstar Luka Dončić, won the 2025 draft lottery, giving them the right to take Duke standout Cooper Flagg. Then, just two hours later, Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum injured himself so badly that it’s likely he’s out for a long time. Things happen quickly in the NBA.

Welcome to Act III of the 2024-25 NBA season. It was a rough start for the league this year. People came out of the woodwork to criticize it, offering wild solutions, and pointing out the low early season TV ratings. But then the Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers and things got real interesting in Act II.

Now, though, we’re in the third portion of the season and it couldn’t be more exciting. Indeed, we seem far away from those calls for sweeping change. Let’s look at five players who have wowed us and taken us to the edge of our seats in this third act.

Dave Matthews, the recently inducted Rock & Roll Hall of Fame legend, says he still gets nervous before a gig. Talking backstage at the Wells Fargo Autograph Card exclusive event in Houston, Texas, on Friday night (May 2), Matthews joked about his fear of stepping on stage and bombing. But of course, that was the furthest thing from happening when the songwriter took up his acoustic in front of an intimate audience of a few hundred fans at the White Oak Music Hall over the weekend.

When Tarik El-Abour was in middle school, his teacher asked him and his classmates a simple question. What do you want to be when you grow up? When it was time for him to answer, El-Abour gave a reply that thousands of children have said before. He wanted to be a baseball player. But his teacher shot back with something less than encouraging: “You’d better have a Plan B.” El-Abour, who was diagnosed with autism at the age of three, remained undeterred. Rather than listening to his pessimistic instructor, he distanced himself from her.

In 2016, when songwriter and performer K.Flay released her hit single, “Blood in the Cut,” it marked a major moment in her career. The rhythmic breakup track and the album it was released on, Every Where Is Some Where, each earned Grammy nominations a couple of years later in 2018, including one for Best Rock Song. The future seemed bright.

This weekend, the NBA playoffs officially begin. After 82 games, the in-season tournament and the play-in games, it’s been a long trek to get here. But the reward is a rollicking couple of months of top-notch competition between some of the best athletes in the world. Incredibly, though, the field is as wide open this year as its ever been.

Rhiannon Giddens is a flame-keeper. At any given moment, she is keeping history alive. Music alive. Stories alive. Authenticity alive. But she does all this in a way that bridges academic prestige with pop culture sensibilities. After all, she earned a Pulitzer Prize and has been featured prominently on Beyoncé songs. Who does that?

If you were to find some mysterious, enticing doorway—maybe it shows itself along a path somewhere you’ve taken a million times before—would you open it and walk through? And if you did, as you meandered through the dimly lit tunnels, hoping to find some magical end, some pot of gold or key truth that would change you forever, who might you hope to see at the end of the long hallways to greet you? Probably someone like Bootsy Collins, that’s who. Collins, who released his latest studio album, Album of the Year #1 Funkateer, on April 11, is the type of person who can illustrate an idea as if reading it from a tome of spells. He can pick up a bass and mesmerize. Or you can look into his eyes and simply ask, “What is the secret?”And then he answers.

The business of sports is about winning. But that, of course, doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of losers out there. That’s most evident every year in the NBA around the first day of spring. With about a dozen games left in the regular season, it’s obvious which teams are also-rans – and they have probably known that for some time. But when a team are losing and losing often, how does that affect the roster? How do the players deal with the constant lows?

Sporting artifacts are a booming market. It’s no surprise that collectors and enthusiasts will pay a significant amount for a part of the big moments on the court or playing field: they are buying a piece of personal and collective history, putting the ‘memories’ in memorabilia.

Those who love Seattle’s live music scene know Shaina Shepherd’s name well. She’s been a sonic force on the scene for about a decade now, moving between you-can-hear-a-pin-drop solo jazz performances to raucous the-ceiling-might-be-crumbling-down rock gigs. But more recently, she’s taken on the role of fronting the iconic grunge rock band Nudedragons (aka Soundgarden).

On Sunday afternoon, two of the best teams in the NBA’s Western Conference faced off on national television. When it was over, the Oklahoma City Thunder had routed the Denver Nuggets 127-103, pulling away in the fourth quarter thanks to a barrage from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who had 40 points on the day. But because it was the NBA, the game was less about the teams and more about the stars at the center of the action – who just so happen to be the league’s top two MVP candidates.

It was December 2012, and Heart was on the road when they got the unexpected call. The offer? To perform as a surprise guest at the Kennedy Center to honor their rock and roll heroes, Led Zeppelin. No pressure, right? It would be a quick stopover—with giant ripple effects. “We didn’t have more than one rehearsal before the actual day when the show happened,” Heart’s vibrant lead guitarist, Nancy Wilson, tells American Songwriter. During that practice, the chill had set into her bones. Nancy remembers that it was “snow cold” in winter and that their sole rehearsal “didn’t go well for me because my hands were frozen.” The song the band was set to play was “Stairway to Heaven,” perhaps the most iconic rock song of all time for perhaps the most iconic rock band in history. What could go wrong?

Have you ever opened up a social media page with a clear intention of what you’re doing and then instantly become distracted? You end up fiddling around and then closing the page and realizing you didn’t even do what you’d originally logged on for? Yes, the internet is a place full of distractions. TikTok, Instagram, whatever Twitter (X) is? It’s hard to remember what you had for breakfast some days. The same, of course, goes for NBA history.

It’s funny—there are so many websites and devices and other efforts to bring people together these days. Yet, in some ways, it feels as if people are more divided than ever. It’s not connection to someone through a phone or email. Instead, it’s chance meetings. Face-to-face interaction. Spontaneous creative acts. Trust and empathy. You know, the tried-and-true things that have always bonded human beings. And an excellent example of that today is the collaboration between Reggie Watts and CAPYAC. Together, they are set to release a new EP, Songs From Celestial City, on February 28. And for the members of the collective, their bond feels like family.