America’s Long War Against Soccer Joon Lee 2026-06-05 | Thanks to Monarch for sponsoring sports journalism with no gambling ads. Start your free trial and get 50% off your first year of total money clarity using my link https://monarchmoney.yt.link/2IMFp3L or code jl50 for 50% Off Monarch Core tier.For decades, American sports media told us soccer would never work here. They were wrong — but not for the reasons most people think. This isn't a story about a sport finally breaking through. It's about what happens when a generation decides the old idea of America no longer fits. Using new polling data that reveals the most dramatic generational divide in American sports history, and through the stories of the people who actually built American soccer culture from the ground up, this video makes the case that the generation gap in soccer fandom isn't really about sports at all. It's about two different ideas of what this country is.Sources:Seton Hall Sports Poll:https://blogs.shu.edu/sportspoll/2025/04/22/if-it-were-a-league-the-nfl-draft-ranks-5th-in-america/The Death of "American" Sports:youtube.com/watch?v=l8aLHHcrTOYSubscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
The Analytics Takeover of Sports Joon Lee 2026-09-18 | The Moneyball revolution promised that everyone else was thinking about sports wrong. It was right. Analytics exposed decades of bad assumptions, changed how teams were built, and made sports smarter in ways that are genuinely hard to argue with.And then everyone figured it out at the same time.Now every team has an analytics department. Every broadcast has exit velocity and win probability. Every argument on sports Twitter gets settled with a stat. The ideas that once got you laughed out of the room became the only ideas allowed in it.So what happens when the market corrects for everything analytics made legible? Where does the edge go when everyone's running the same models?Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
The Collapse of College Sports Joon Lee 2026-09-11 | Thanks to Vaer Watches for supporting sports journalism with no gambling ads. vaerwatches.com/joonleeIn April 2024, thousands of Arkansas basketball fans packed into Bud Walton Arena to welcome their new head coach John Calipari. But the crowd stood up for someone else — John Tyson, the chicken billionaire bankrolling the roster. There's not a better image of what college sports has actually become.For most of its history, college sports insisted it wasn't professional sports. That fiction held for decades. When it finally broke, everything changed at once — NIL, the transfer portal, the House settlement, conference consolidation, and now a Senate bill moving through Congress this week that the White House wants to sign on live television at a college football game.The people running college sports say the system is broken. But who is it actually broken for?Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
The Uncertain New Era of Tennis Joon Lee 2026-09-04 | Thanks to Monarch for supporting sports journalism with no gambling ads. Start your free trial and get 50% off your first year of total money clarity using my link https://monarchmoney.yt.link/YUsKALA or code jl50 for 50% Off Monarch Core tier.Tennis has never made more money — a record $108 million US Open purse, a 12-year, $2 billion ESPN rights deal, and record attendance at majors across 2026. So why does it feel like the sport is missing something?I sat down with Chris Eubanks — who was playing on tour eight months ago and is now covering it for Tennis Channel — to find out. His answer: tennis didn't lose anything. The kind of everyone-knows-your-name stardom Federer and Serena had was a product of a media era that doesn't exist for any athlete anymore, in any sport.But the deeper we got into it, the messier the picture got. Sinner and Alcaraz's rivalry only works when both of them are healthy, and the tour's own injury data says that's getting harder every year. One half of that rivalry is playing every match with a WADA settlement attached to his name. And the players suing their own tour for a bigger cut of all this new money keep quietly dropping off the case.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
How Stadiums Stopped Being For Fans Joon Lee 2026-08-28 | The American sports stadium used to be one of the cheapest nights out in the country. Today, if you spend enough money, you can watch the game from inside a private nightclub without ever setting foot in your seat.This is the story of how that happened — and why it goes back a lot further than you'd think.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
How The NBA Lost Control Of Its Owners Joon Lee 2026-08-20 | Steve Ballmer is the richest owner in professional sports. Now, allegations involving Kawhi Leonard, the Clippers and millions of dollars in outside payments have created one of the biggest tests of Adam Silver’s tenure.Building on the original reporting of @PabloTorreFindsOut, this video examines what the NBA’s investigation has—and hasn’t—proven, why serious punishment appears unlikely, and the structural problem beneath it all: the commissioner is responsible for policing the same billionaire owners who employ him.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
What Sports Gambling Really Wants From You Joon Lee 2026-08-14 | Thanks to Vaer Watches for supporting sports journalism with no gambling ads. vaerwatches.com/joonleeI talked to FanDuel executives and employees about how sportsbooks actually work. What they described explains every sports gambling scandal of the last three years — and what's happening to American sports right now.FanDuel was built around one mandate: normalize. Make betting feel like pizza and wings. Make it part of your Sunday routine. It worked so completely that 52% of Gen Z has redirected investment funds to sports betting. The normalization machine didn't just change how fans watch games. It changed what players do on the court, what reporters cover and whether any of it can be trusted.This video covers the behavioral surveillance architecture, the VIP program, Jontay Porter, Terry Thompson, the Bryce Harper Cameo, the Amazon data partnership, the college basketball fixing scandal, Malik Beasley, the regulatory gap between sportsbooks and prediction markets, and what Giannis owning a piece of Kalshi means for the trust collapse happening in real time.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meSOURCESSports Handle — Jontay Porter VIP account:sportshandle.com/jontay-porter-vip-fanduel-accountAmazon Prime Video / FanDuel bet tracking terms:amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=211745810011FanDuel Sportsbook Privacy Policy:fanduel.com/fanduel-sportsbook-privacy-policyFanDuel data preferences / "sale or sharing" admission:support.fanduel.com/s/article/How-do-I-update-my-personal-data-preferencesFanDuel / Amazon partnership announcement:prnewswire.com/news-releases/fanduel-and-amazon-announce-exclusive-odds-provider-partnership-for-nba-and-wnba-on-prime-video-302571186.htmlDanny Funt / Everybody Loses:simonandschuster.com/books/Everybody-Loses/Danny-Funt/9781668062029Washington Post sports gambling series:washingtonpost.com/sports/sports-bettingCBC — sportsbook account restriction after winning:cbc.ca/sports/opinion/sports-betting-winning-bettors-restricted-1.6662775Terry Thompson / Bryce Harper lawsuit coverage:inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/bryce-harper-fanduel-vip-video-gambling-addiction-20260709.htmlBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
The Sports Card Gold Rush Joon Lee 2026-08-08 | Thanks to Monarch for supporting sports journalism with no gamblings ads. Start your free trial and get 50% off your first year of total money clarity using my link https://monarchmoney.yt.link/z393jT9 or code jl50 for 50% Off Monarch Core tier.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
How the WNBA Became Its Own Worst Enemy Joon Lee 2026-07-24 | Thanks to Monarch for supporting sports journalism with no gambling ads. Start your free trial and get 50% off your first year of total money clarity using my link https://monarchmoney.yt.link/NTw56C0 or code jl50 for 50% Off Monarch Core tier.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Twenty million people watched Caitlin Clark play college basketball. Then she entered the most niche fandom in professional sports — and brought all of them with her.What followed wasn't just a culture war. It was thirty years of unresolved institutional problems surfacing under the brightest spotlight women's sports had ever seen. This video is about those problems, where they came from, and why the league that should have benefited most from Clark's arrival kept getting in its own way.I talked to Seerat Sohi, host of The Ringer WNBA Show, for the most honest and incisive conversation about this league I've encountered. Her answer to my first question about the state of the WNBA is something you need to hear.Follow Seerat Sohi on X:x.com/seeratsohitheringer.com/podcasts/the-ringer-wnba-showProduction Credits:Writing/Editing: Joon LeeAnimation: Meredith RobertsConsulting Producer: Vayne OngFollow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
What The World Cup Revealed About America Joon Lee 2026-07-17 | Thank you to Mint Mobile for supporting sports journalism with no gambling ads. Visit our partner https://mintmobile.yt.link/tAPUk1k to get 3, 6, or 12 months of premium wireless for just $15 a month.That's any plan, even unlimited! Upfront payment of $45 required (equivalent to $15/mo.). Limited time offer. Upfront payment of: $45 for 3-mo., $90 for 6-mo., or $180 for 12-mo. plan req’d ($15/mo. equiv.). Taxes & fees extra. Initial plan term only. 50GB may slow when network is busy. Capable device req'd. Availability, speed & coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 A German tourist in a rental car became the most beloved person in America this summer. At the same time, the President personally called FIFA to overturn a World Cup red card — and it worked. This is the story of how the 2026 World Cup became the biggest geopolitical event on earth, and how it exposed three separate institutions — two presidential administrations and FIFA itself — all failing to protect the one thing that actually worked: the people who showed up.This video traces how FIFA, expecting to steamroll its first Western democracy host, instead ran into a system it couldn't control — and rewrote its own contract to keep nearly all the money while host cities absorbed the cost. It's about a Biden administration that had written warnings and a live dress rehearsal for disaster and still let the World Cup drift down the priority list. It's about a Trump administration that understood the tournament as a stage from day one — a trophy ceremony, a Peace Prize, a phone call that reversed a suspension live on air. And underneath all of it, it's about the fans, strangers, and neighbors who built more genuine goodwill in six weeks than any institution managed on purpose.Production Credits:Writing/Editing: Joon LeeAnimation: Meredith RobertsFollow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
What Happened To Footballs Chosen One? Joon Lee 2026-07-14 | In 2017, Kylian Mbappé sat down with me for his first interview with an American reporter. He was 19, unknown outside France, and already telling me he wanted to be more than a great player, but a symbol.Eight years later, he's the best individual player at the 2026 World Cup, the reigning Champions League top scorer, a two-time Pichichi winner at Real Madrid — and he has zero major trophies since he left Paris to go chase them. The club he left has won the Champions League twice without him. And on Tuesday, Lamine Yamal's Spain ended his World Cup in the semifinal.This is the story of the kid from Bondy who was supposed to inherit football from Messi and Ronaldo — using footage and interviews from his hometown, his first coach, and Mbappé himself at 19 years old — and the question hanging over him now that the crown hasn't fully arrived.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
How To Not Ruin a Childhood Classic Joon Lee 2026-07-11 | For a lot of kids, Backyard Sports was the first time sports felt like it belonged to them. And then one day, it disappeared.So when I heard someone was trying to bring it back, I flew to Pittsburgh to find out if they could actually pull it off. This video is sponsored by Backyard Sports, who gave me full access to document what they're building. What I found in Pittsburgh wasn't a corporate revival. It was a school teacher who hired a private investigator to track down who owned the IP. A game studio operating out of a house in the suburbs. A team that spent a year on Pablo Sanchez's design alone.And a philosophy about children's entertainment that feels genuinely radical in 2026.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
Everyone Was Wrong About America’s Men’s Soccer Team Joon Lee 2026-07-03 | Thank you to Odoo for sponsoring sports journalism with no gambling ads. Check out Odoo’s all-in-one business management solutions here: odoo.com/r/j3kRSubscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 For almost thirty years, American soccer has been waiting for a savior. Freddy Adu was supposed to be him. So was Christian Pulisic. Every few years, a new teenager gets anointed as the one who'll finally make the United States a real soccer country — and every few years, the story falls apart.I sat down with Doug McIntyre, who's covered the U.S. men's national team for FOX Sports across five continents, to trace how a program that failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup — losing to Trinidad and Tobago on a night that by rights shouldn't have gone wrong — became a team that looks nothing like the ones that came before it. The answer isn't a superstar. It isn't even Mauricio Pochettino, the most decorated coach the U.S. has ever hired. It's something slower, quieter, and a lot less marketable than a chosen one.The United States finally got good the moment it stopped needing someone to save it.Follow Doug McIntyre: https://x.com/bydougmcintyreFollow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
Why NBA Stars Are Choosing Chinese Sneakers Joon Lee 2026-06-26 | When Stephen Curry left Under Armour, everyone assumed he'd sign with Nike. Instead, the greatest shooter alive chose a Chinese brand called Li-Ning — and left money on the table to do it.For most of our lives, "Made in China" meant cheap, disposable, a knockoff.This is the story of how that changed — told through basketball sneakers, the people who test and sell them for a living, and the twenty-year climb from a $9.99 shoe nobody wanted to the one the best player in the world picked on merit.But the shoes are just the version you can see on TV every night.The same shift is happening across the whole economy: the cars Elon Musk laughed at now outsell Tesla, the drones America tried to ban instead of out-building, the AI model that wiped hundreds of billions off a single American company in a day. And underneath it all, a second story — why the most valuable sneaker brand on Earth is having its worst year in decades, and who it stopped building for.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
How The Knicks Went From Laughingstock to Champions Joon Lee 2026-06-15 | Thank you to Odoo for sponsoring sports journalism with no gambling ads. Check out Odoo’s all-in-one business management solutions here: odoo.com/r/j3kRThe New York Knicks are NBA champions for the first time since 1973. But this story isn't really about basketball. It's about what happens to a city when the one team that belongs to all of it finally wins — and what it costs to keep believing in something that keeps letting you down. I talked to people inside the Knicks organization about how Leon Rose and Worldwide Wes actually run this franchise and tried to figure out what this team means to New York City.I've lived in New York for almost ten years. I grew up in Boston. Part of me wanted the Knicks to lose. And then OG Anunoby tipped that ball in, and I walked out into the street, and something happened that in ten years of living here I had never felt before. New York felt like a small town. This is the story of how the Knicks got there. And why it mattered to a city that needed it more than anyone knew.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
Why Everyone Watches The World Cup Joon Lee 2026-06-12 | Thanks to RateGame for sponsoring sports journalism with no gambling ads. Use the Letterboxd of sports, and rate every World Cup match: rategame.onelink.me/ySCx/joonThe 2026 World Cup will be the biggest event in human history — 6 billion viewers, 48 nations, more money than most countries produce in a year. This is the story of how a 13-team tournament nobody wanted to attend became a global eclipse: the heartbreak that gave it mythological power, the television revolution that gave it reach, the Brazilian businessman who sold it to the world, and the machine that grew so large it stopped answering to the game itself.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
What Taylor Swift Revealed About Sports Joon Lee 2026-05-22 | Thank you to SeaVees for sponsoring sports journalism with no gambling ads. Head to https://yt.link/hV6xc9L to receive your 15% off your first pair of shoes.Check out @SportsGossipShow on YouTube Sports has quietly become one of the last places in American culture where mass attention still gathers in real time. As Hollywood, television, and music fragmented, the celebrity-industrial complex — paparazzi logic, parasocial fandom, gossip ecosystems, reality-TV storytelling, civilian sleuthing — migrated into the only venue with the audience left to sustain it. The Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini story is what that migration looks like at full operating capacity. Civilians took the photos. Tabloids published them. Strangers built the forensic case through playlists, timelines, and social-media breadcrumbs.By the time sports media reacted, the story already existed. This video traces how we got here — from Babe Ruth to Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, from Broadway Joe to Wilt, from Magic and Bird to OJ to Jeter, from Tiger to the Kardashians to Travis and Taylor — and what it means that the apparatus that once produced Hollywood scandals now runs through the sports section.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
How Sports Video Games Stopped Getting Better Joon Lee 2026-05-16 | Thank you to Odoo for sponsoring sports journalism with no gambling ads. Check out Odoo’s all-in-one business management solutions here: odoo.com/r/j3kRSports video games used to be the fastest-improving creative product in entertainment. Every year, something genuinely new. Then, somewhere between the PS3 and PS5 era, they stopped. Not all at once — slowly. The leaps got smaller. The features disappeared. The games got harder to love. To find out why, I talked to Kofie Yeboah, who covers sports gaming on YouTube, and traced the story through the exclusivity deals that ended competition, the business model that replaced creative ambition with card packs and the volunteer community that spent twenty years keeping a dead game alive on a borrowed server, until that too was gone.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
Why Everyone Throws 100 MPH Now Joon Lee 2026-05-11 | Thank you to SeaVees for sponsoring sports journalism with no gambling ads! Head to https://yt.link/QSvuVYo to receive your 15% off your first pair of shoes.Fifteen years ago, a pitcher throwing 100 was a once-in-a-generation arm. Today the mop-up guy in a blowout throws 99, the September call-up nobody's heard of throws 100, and nobody in the building reacts. Something enormous happened to baseball — and almost nobody outside the sport has tried to explain how, or what it cost.Subscribe for my next video: youtube.com/@iamjoonlee?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://x.com/joonleeIG: https://instagr.am/joonTikTok: tiktok.com/joonleeSubstack: substack.com/@joonleeBusiness/Sponsors: joonleeteam@itsgoodstory.comMedia Inquiries: workwith@joon.meBio: Joon Lee is an independent sports journalist reporting on YouTube. He’s written op-eds for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and worked for ESPN, Bleacher Report and The Washington Post, where he’s interviewed and photographed sports & pop culture figures like Kylian Mbappe, Shohei Ohtani, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Action Bronson. He previously was a contributor to SportsCenter, Around the Horn and First Take. His work has been featured on The Best American Sportswriting series and recognized as a finalist for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting.
