More Lunch KMARK. We’re going to get to the Thunder. Cool your jets. First, let’s preview a future Hard in the Paint. Here’s a mini-hard:

NFL Approves New Minority Owners

Sales:

- 49er’s, $8.6b valuation (highest ever). York family sells 6% of the club to 3 Financiers including mega-VC chief Vinod Khosla.

- Browns, 0.1% sale to Charles Woodson. As per league rules, Woodson will no longer be able to use his name and likeness to market alcohol. Woodson is the face of Intercept Wines. Look to stash the last remaining vintages in your cellar. They’re now one of a kind.

- Dolphins, 1.1% of Joe Tsai’s stake (2% remaining), to local businessmen (prob crypto bros).

- Chargers, 8% to Arctos Partners.

Let’s get into the Chargers sale. The Spanos family is one the least wealthy, most frugal, and infamously bitter ownership groups in the league. They squeeze a little juice from their equity and partner with a PE firm. Perhaps for succession planning. Perhaps for yacht buying. We don’t know. F1 in Monaco this weekend. Yacht required.

The bigger story is that Arctos already owns 10% of the Bills. You read that correct. One PE firm now owns two teams. The NFL (and NBA) permits a few (~6) PE firms buying into multiple franchises, but only in minority positions. Chew on that cap stack and we’ll go deep later this week.

TRIVIA: Who said this quote:

“A lot of people want to see great offense. You see great offense all the time. People running through zones and guys not being able to cover them. We stand up there and have a dogfight every play”

HINTS:

- Pacific Northwest, current Amazon Studio analyst, football.

ANSWER:

-Richard Sherman!

The year was 2014 and the Legion of Boom was wrecking havoc to opposing offenses. The underlying strategy was simple. Test the officials to see if they dared call holding or pass interference on every single play. Spoiler: they didn’t. And the Seahawks went to two Super Bowls. NBA playoff officiating is obviously no different. Hand checking, grabbing, holding are all permitted at levels not seen in the regular season. The Thunder are uniquely positioned to exploit the permissiveness for two reasons:

- They’re deep as all hell. They haven’t even faced foul trouble. In the event that Caruso picks up early fouls, the Thunder can turn to Cason Wallace, Isiah Joe, or Aaron Wiggins. That’s three guys who easily would get 20 minutes on any other playoff team. Caruso (and all the Thunder) are incentivized to scratch, claw, ride and rip any opposing offensive player because they’re protected by the Thunder depth.

- Watch for the officials to tighten the whistle early in Game 2. Listen for groans from the crowd. The problem: if the refs try to establish a new baseline of physicality, they have to apply the same baseline to SGA. In a tighter called game, SGA becomes more of a weapon because of his ability to draw fouls. The Thunder have the refs cornered and either flex their advantage in a loosely called game on defense or a tightly called game on offense (free throws for Shai).

The refs aren’t going to decide the outcome. Both teams play under the same conditions. That said, it’s hard enough to beat a juggernaut like OKC. If they have a strategic advantage coupled with their structural advantages, then the Wolves have a massive mountain to climb. Six more games.