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Vicki White remembers a letter she once received from an incarcerated woman asking for help. 

“She needed glasses, but she had to pay for them herself and couldn’t afford them,” White said. 

The woman was asking for large-print books so she could still continue to read, even though the prison she was at wouldn’t provide her with the seeing aids she needed. 

These are the types of stories that drive the mission of White and her organization, Chicago Books to Women in Prison.

As the name indicates, the nonprofit focuses on providing books to incarcerated women, transgender, and nonbinary people across the country. 

What began in 2002 as a local effort to bring literature behind bars in Illinois has since expanded to send books to women, transgender, and nonbinary people in prison in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio, as well as all federal prisons. The organization also hand-delivers books to Cook County Jail. 

“We all, I think, would prefer not to have this mission,” White said. 

White feels strongly that books and literature should be readily available to all people in prison. But that’s not always the case. 

Some prisons have libraries but many don’t. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many prisons closed their libraries to decrease high-touch spaces. 

A woman held at Folsom Women’s Facility, a prison in California, wrote to Chicago Books to Women in Prison that the library in her prison had closed during the pandemic and access to books was impossible. Another woman held at a federal prison in Aliceville, Alabama, said she and other prisoners were only allowed out of their cells for one hour a day to shower and use phones during the pandemic, and she needed books to read. 

In February 2022, the Illinois Department of Corrections relaxed some COVID-19 restrictions and began allowing those incarcerated to access prison libraries again, according to the department. Even still, with the initial wave of the pandemic shifting to the back of many people’s minds, access to books behind bars remains a challenge for many. Most prisons require books to be new. No hardcover books are allowed. Many individual titles and genres remain banned. 

White and her organization are working to fill that gap. 

When someone in prison sends a letter to the organization requesting a certain type of book, a volunteer workforce of about 30 will then gather a selection of three books related to the prisoner’s interests, package them, and ship the books to the prison. 

“A few months ago a woman in a California prison asked for books in Vietnamese and we put out a call on social media and found some we were able to send to her,” White said. “And we got a nice thank-you note from her last week.”

Some genres or types of books are more popular than others.

“Education books are big,” White said. “We send a lot of GED books and language learning books.” 

The books people ask for often hold a mirror to the prison industrial complex. 

Between 1993 and 2013, the number of people in state prisons over the age of 55 increased by 400 percent, according to data from the National Institute of Corrections. 

“The prison population is aging and we get orders from people well advanced in age,” White said, noting the growing number of requests for large-print books. “It reflects the typical poor state of health in prisons.”

Another important need to many in prison is queer literature. The partnership between Chicago Books to Women in Prison and Women and Children First helps fill that niche. 

LGBTQ+ people are overrepresented in all stages of the legal and criminal system, and prisons are no exception. According to data from Prison Policy Initiative, a national nonprofit criminal justice think tank based in Easthampton, Massachusetts, a third of all women in prison identify as lesbian or bisexual. This statistic doesn’t accommodate for transgender and nonbinary people in prison. 

It’s important to White to make sure incarcerated women, trans, and nonbinary people know there are queer books available to them. 

Lynn Mooney has been a co-owner of Women and Children First, with business partner Sarah Hollenbeck, since 2014, but the partnership between the bookstore and White’s organization dates back “years and years,” Mooney said with pride. 

“They decided to center incarcerated people and what they wanted and needed and were asking for, and then put the work on all of us to come up with those books,” she said. “And I just think that is so smart, and so right.”

It’s not only the bookstore itself that is helping out. Customers can purchase gift cards to donate to the organization or buy new books off of the organization’s running wishlist. The list varies in nature, and includes popular titles like The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, as well as crochet and calligraphy books, Mooney said. 

The numbers show the level of community support. 

In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nonprofit mailed 1,964 orders of books and notebooks to women and trans people in prisons across the country. Another 1,600 sets of composition books, crayon packs, and folders went to the women and trans prisoners at Logan Correctional Center in Illinois. The organization also delivered three individual orders of 600 books and 700 composition books to the women’s division of Cook County Jail. 

These days, White estimates that the organization fills about 80 orders every weekend. 

Sending and receiving mail in the corrections system in any state is a slow and convoluted process. Sending books to prisons often adds extra complications. On average, an order is received, filled, and returned in about a three-month time period, White said.

But having books and shipments rejected by prisons is a common issue.

“Some states are harder to deal with than others, some prisons are harder to deal with than others,” White adds. “There’s one federal prison that does not allow any organization to get books inside. There is a state prison we have to deal with that continually rejects books that every other prison accepts. It’s a constant challenge.”

It’s easy to feel powerless when so much of the system works to keep people out, Mooney notes. Doing this work helps her and her customers feel like they are achieving meaningful change.

“It’s not my destiny to, you know, solve the problem of the prison industrial complex,” Mooney said. “But a lot of us working around the edges can make real differences.”

Read More

Vicki White remembers a letter she once received from an incarcerated woman asking for help. 

“She needed glasses, but she had to pay for them herself and couldn’t afford them,” White said. 

The woman was asking for large-print books so she could still continue to read, even though the prison she was at wouldn’t provide her with the seeing aids she needed. 

These are the types of stories that drive the mission of White and her organization, Chicago Books to Women in Prison.

As the name indicates, the nonprofit focuses on providing books to incarcerated women, transgender, and nonbinary people across the country. 

What began in 2002 as a local effort to bring literature behind bars in Illinois has since expanded to send books to women, transgender, and nonbinary people in prison in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio, as well as all federal prisons. The organization also hand-delivers books to Cook County Jail. 

“We all, I think, would prefer not to have this mission,” White said. 

White feels strongly that books and literature should be readily available to all people in prison. But that’s not always the case. 

Some prisons have libraries but many don’t. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many prisons closed their libraries to decrease high-touch spaces. 

A woman held at Folsom Women’s Facility, a prison in California, wrote to Chicago Books to Women in Prison that the library in her prison had closed during the pandemic and access to books was impossible. Another woman held at a federal prison in Aliceville, Alabama, said she and other prisoners were only allowed out of their cells for one hour a day to shower and use phones during the pandemic, and she needed books to read. 

In February 2022, the Illinois Department of Corrections relaxed some COVID-19 restrictions and began allowing those incarcerated to access prison libraries again, according to the department. Even still, with the initial wave of the pandemic shifting to the back of many people’s minds, access to books behind bars remains a challenge for many. Most prisons require books to be new. No hardcover books are allowed. Many individual titles and genres remain banned. 

White and her organization are working to fill that gap. 

When someone in prison sends a letter to the organization requesting a certain type of book, a volunteer workforce of about 30 will then gather a selection of three books related to the prisoner’s interests, package them, and ship the books to the prison. 

“A few months ago a woman in a California prison asked for books in Vietnamese and we put out a call on social media and found some we were able to send to her,” White said. “And we got a nice thank-you note from her last week.”

Some genres or types of books are more popular than others.

“Education books are big,” White said. “We send a lot of GED books and language learning books.” 

The books people ask for often hold a mirror to the prison industrial complex. 

Between 1993 and 2013, the number of people in state prisons over the age of 55 increased by 400 percent, according to data from the National Institute of Corrections. 

“The prison population is aging and we get orders from people well advanced in age,” White said, noting the growing number of requests for large-print books. “It reflects the typical poor state of health in prisons.”

Another important need to many in prison is queer literature. The partnership between Chicago Books to Women in Prison and Women and Children First helps fill that niche. 

LGBTQ+ people are overrepresented in all stages of the legal and criminal system, and prisons are no exception. According to data from Prison Policy Initiative, a national nonprofit criminal justice think tank based in Easthampton, Massachusetts, a third of all women in prison identify as lesbian or bisexual. This statistic doesn’t accommodate for transgender and nonbinary people in prison. 

It’s important to White to make sure incarcerated women, trans, and nonbinary people know there are queer books available to them. 

Lynn Mooney has been a co-owner of Women and Children First, with business partner Sarah Hollenbeck, since 2014, but the partnership between the bookstore and White’s organization dates back “years and years,” Mooney said with pride. 

“They decided to center incarcerated people and what they wanted and needed and were asking for, and then put the work on all of us to come up with those books,” she said. “And I just think that is so smart, and so right.”

It’s not only the bookstore itself that is helping out. Customers can purchase gift cards to donate to the organization or buy new books off of the organization’s running wishlist. The list varies in nature, and includes popular titles like The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, as well as crochet and calligraphy books, Mooney said. 

The numbers show the level of community support. 

In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nonprofit mailed 1,964 orders of books and notebooks to women and trans people in prisons across the country. Another 1,600 sets of composition books, crayon packs, and folders went to the women and trans prisoners at Logan Correctional Center in Illinois. The organization also delivered three individual orders of 600 books and 700 composition books to the women’s division of Cook County Jail. 

These days, White estimates that the organization fills about 80 orders every weekend. 

Sending and receiving mail in the corrections system in any state is a slow and convoluted process. Sending books to prisons often adds extra complications. On average, an order is received, filled, and returned in about a three-month time period, White said.

But having books and shipments rejected by prisons is a common issue.

“Some states are harder to deal with than others, some prisons are harder to deal with than others,” White adds. “There’s one federal prison that does not allow any organization to get books inside. There is a state prison we have to deal with that continually rejects books that every other prison accepts. It’s a constant challenge.”

It’s easy to feel powerless when so much of the system works to keep people out, Mooney notes. Doing this work helps her and her customers feel like they are achieving meaningful change.

“It’s not my destiny to, you know, solve the problem of the prison industrial complex,” Mooney said. “But a lot of us working around the edges can make real differences.”

Read More

Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based rapper Open Mike Eagle is a seemingly inexhaustible font of laugh-out-loud one-liners, and he delivers as always on his latest album, Component System With the Auto Reverse (on his own Auto Reverse label). You need to be careful drinking anything while listening to it, lest uncomfortable snorking ensue when the rapper gets to the best lines in “Peak Lockdown Raps”: “I got a discount code for therapy / I hit go and got Rickrolled, apparently / It was a big blow.” But funny as he is, fans don’t just tune in for the laffs. Inspired by the likes De La Soul and They Might Be Giants, Mike writes loopy gags that float and bob and tie themselves together into surprisingly thoughtful reveries on aging, mental illness, disappointment, and hope. His flow feels laid-back even as he chews up syllables at a rapid clip—as if he’s a stoned nerd who almost apologetically has to get out everything on his mind. On “79th and Stony Island,” he starts musing on watching the Kanye West documentary Jeen-Yuhs, goes on to cheerfully explain he’s got “memories like flesh wounds,” and finishes up by listening to his son laughing. Throughout the album, Mike weaves his thoughts on COVID, racism, and our bleak political landscape in and out of pop-culture references and goofball nonsense—which he uses less as distractions than as ways to hold firm to his humanity under threat. “It’ll be endless, I will fight you every day,” Mike croons on the hook of “I’ll Fight You.” It’s a joke, but he also means it.

Open Mike Eagle’s A Tape Called Component System With the Auto Reverse is available through Bandcamp.

Read More

Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based rapper Open Mike Eagle is a seemingly inexhaustible font of laugh-out-loud one-liners, and he delivers as always on his latest album, Component System With the Auto Reverse (on his own Auto Reverse label). You need to be careful drinking anything while listening to it, lest uncomfortable snorking ensue when the rapper gets to the best lines in “Peak Lockdown Raps”: “I got a discount code for therapy / I hit go and got Rickrolled, apparently / It was a big blow.” But funny as he is, fans don’t just tune in for the laffs. Inspired by the likes De La Soul and They Might Be Giants, Mike writes loopy gags that float and bob and tie themselves together into surprisingly thoughtful reveries on aging, mental illness, disappointment, and hope. His flow feels laid-back even as he chews up syllables at a rapid clip—as if he’s a stoned nerd who almost apologetically has to get out everything on his mind. On “79th and Stony Island,” he starts musing on watching the Kanye West documentary Jeen-Yuhs, goes on to cheerfully explain he’s got “memories like flesh wounds,” and finishes up by listening to his son laughing. Throughout the album, Mike weaves his thoughts on COVID, racism, and our bleak political landscape in and out of pop-culture references and goofball nonsense—which he uses less as distractions than as ways to hold firm to his humanity under threat. “It’ll be endless, I will fight you every day,” Mike croons on the hook of “I’ll Fight You.” It’s a joke, but he also means it.

Open Mike Eagle’s A Tape Called Component System With the Auto Reverse is available through Bandcamp.

Read More

Vicki White remembers a letter she once received from an incarcerated woman asking for help. 

“She needed glasses, but she had to pay for them herself and couldn’t afford them,” White said. 

The woman was asking for large-print books so she could still continue to read, even though the prison she was at wouldn’t provide her with the seeing aids she needed. 

These are the types of stories that drive the mission of White and her organization, Chicago Books to Women in Prison.

As the name indicates, the nonprofit focuses on providing books to incarcerated women, transgender, and nonbinary people across the country. 

What began in 2002 as a local effort to bring literature behind bars in Illinois has since expanded to send books to women, transgender, and nonbinary people in prison in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio, as well as all federal prisons. The organization also hand-delivers books to Cook County Jail. 

“We all, I think, would prefer not to have this mission,” White said. 

White feels strongly that books and literature should be readily available to all people in prison. But that’s not always the case. 

Some prisons have libraries but many don’t. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many prisons closed their libraries to decrease high-touch spaces. 

A woman held at Folsom Women’s Facility, a prison in California, wrote to Chicago Books to Women in Prison that the library in her prison had closed during the pandemic and access to books was impossible. Another woman held at a federal prison in Aliceville, Alabama, said she and other prisoners were only allowed out of their cells for one hour a day to shower and use phones during the pandemic, and she needed books to read. 

In February 2022, the Illinois Department of Corrections relaxed some COVID-19 restrictions and began allowing those incarcerated to access prison libraries again, according to the department. Even still, with the initial wave of the pandemic shifting to the back of many people’s minds, access to books behind bars remains a challenge for many. Most prisons require books to be new. No hardcover books are allowed. Many individual titles and genres remain banned. 

White and her organization are working to fill that gap. 

When someone in prison sends a letter to the organization requesting a certain type of book, a volunteer workforce of about 30 will then gather a selection of three books related to the prisoner’s interests, package them, and ship the books to the prison. 

“A few months ago a woman in a California prison asked for books in Vietnamese and we put out a call on social media and found some we were able to send to her,” White said. “And we got a nice thank-you note from her last week.”

Some genres or types of books are more popular than others.

“Education books are big,” White said. “We send a lot of GED books and language learning books.” 

The books people ask for often hold a mirror to the prison industrial complex. 

Between 1993 and 2013, the number of people in state prisons over the age of 55 increased by 400 percent, according to data from the National Institute of Corrections. 

“The prison population is aging and we get orders from people well advanced in age,” White said, noting the growing number of requests for large-print books. “It reflects the typical poor state of health in prisons.”

Another important need to many in prison is queer literature. The partnership between Chicago Books to Women in Prison and Women and Children First helps fill that niche. 

LGBTQ+ people are overrepresented in all stages of the legal and criminal system, and prisons are no exception. According to data from Prison Policy Initiative, a national nonprofit criminal justice think tank based in Easthampton, Massachusetts, a third of all women in prison identify as lesbian or bisexual. This statistic doesn’t accommodate for transgender and nonbinary people in prison. 

It’s important to White to make sure incarcerated women, trans, and nonbinary people know there are queer books available to them. 

Lynn Mooney has been a co-owner of Women and Children First, with business partner Sarah Hollenbeck, since 2014, but the partnership between the bookstore and White’s organization dates back “years and years,” Mooney said with pride. 

“They decided to center incarcerated people and what they wanted and needed and were asking for, and then put the work on all of us to come up with those books,” she said. “And I just think that is so smart, and so right.”

It’s not only the bookstore itself that is helping out. Customers can purchase gift cards to donate to the organization or buy new books off of the organization’s running wishlist. The list varies in nature, and includes popular titles like The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, as well as crochet and calligraphy books, Mooney said. 

The numbers show the level of community support. 

In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nonprofit mailed 1,964 orders of books and notebooks to women and trans people in prisons across the country. Another 1,600 sets of composition books, crayon packs, and folders went to the women and trans prisoners at Logan Correctional Center in Illinois. The organization also delivered three individual orders of 600 books and 700 composition books to the women’s division of Cook County Jail. 

These days, White estimates that the organization fills about 80 orders every weekend. 

Sending and receiving mail in the corrections system in any state is a slow and convoluted process. Sending books to prisons often adds extra complications. On average, an order is received, filled, and returned in about a three-month time period, White said.

But having books and shipments rejected by prisons is a common issue.

“Some states are harder to deal with than others, some prisons are harder to deal with than others,” White adds. “There’s one federal prison that does not allow any organization to get books inside. There is a state prison we have to deal with that continually rejects books that every other prison accepts. It’s a constant challenge.”

It’s easy to feel powerless when so much of the system works to keep people out, Mooney notes. Doing this work helps her and her customers feel like they are achieving meaningful change.

“It’s not my destiny to, you know, solve the problem of the prison industrial complex,” Mooney said. “But a lot of us working around the edges can make real differences.”

Read More

Vicki White remembers a letter she once received from an incarcerated woman asking for help. 

“She needed glasses, but she had to pay for them herself and couldn’t afford them,” White said. 

The woman was asking for large-print books so she could still continue to read, even though the prison she was at wouldn’t provide her with the seeing aids she needed. 

These are the types of stories that drive the mission of White and her organization, Chicago Books to Women in Prison.

As the name indicates, the nonprofit focuses on providing books to incarcerated women, transgender, and nonbinary people across the country. 

What began in 2002 as a local effort to bring literature behind bars in Illinois has since expanded to send books to women, transgender, and nonbinary people in prison in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio, as well as all federal prisons. The organization also hand-delivers books to Cook County Jail. 

“We all, I think, would prefer not to have this mission,” White said. 

White feels strongly that books and literature should be readily available to all people in prison. But that’s not always the case. 

Some prisons have libraries but many don’t. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many prisons closed their libraries to decrease high-touch spaces. 

A woman held at Folsom Women’s Facility, a prison in California, wrote to Chicago Books to Women in Prison that the library in her prison had closed during the pandemic and access to books was impossible. Another woman held at a federal prison in Aliceville, Alabama, said she and other prisoners were only allowed out of their cells for one hour a day to shower and use phones during the pandemic, and she needed books to read. 

In February 2022, the Illinois Department of Corrections relaxed some COVID-19 restrictions and began allowing those incarcerated to access prison libraries again, according to the department. Even still, with the initial wave of the pandemic shifting to the back of many people’s minds, access to books behind bars remains a challenge for many. Most prisons require books to be new. No hardcover books are allowed. Many individual titles and genres remain banned. 

White and her organization are working to fill that gap. 

When someone in prison sends a letter to the organization requesting a certain type of book, a volunteer workforce of about 30 will then gather a selection of three books related to the prisoner’s interests, package them, and ship the books to the prison. 

“A few months ago a woman in a California prison asked for books in Vietnamese and we put out a call on social media and found some we were able to send to her,” White said. “And we got a nice thank-you note from her last week.”

Some genres or types of books are more popular than others.

“Education books are big,” White said. “We send a lot of GED books and language learning books.” 

The books people ask for often hold a mirror to the prison industrial complex. 

Between 1993 and 2013, the number of people in state prisons over the age of 55 increased by 400 percent, according to data from the National Institute of Corrections. 

“The prison population is aging and we get orders from people well advanced in age,” White said, noting the growing number of requests for large-print books. “It reflects the typical poor state of health in prisons.”

Another important need to many in prison is queer literature. The partnership between Chicago Books to Women in Prison and Women and Children First helps fill that niche. 

LGBTQ+ people are overrepresented in all stages of the legal and criminal system, and prisons are no exception. According to data from Prison Policy Initiative, a national nonprofit criminal justice think tank based in Easthampton, Massachusetts, a third of all women in prison identify as lesbian or bisexual. This statistic doesn’t accommodate for transgender and nonbinary people in prison. 

It’s important to White to make sure incarcerated women, trans, and nonbinary people know there are queer books available to them. 

Lynn Mooney has been a co-owner of Women and Children First, with business partner Sarah Hollenbeck, since 2014, but the partnership between the bookstore and White’s organization dates back “years and years,” Mooney said with pride. 

“They decided to center incarcerated people and what they wanted and needed and were asking for, and then put the work on all of us to come up with those books,” she said. “And I just think that is so smart, and so right.”

It’s not only the bookstore itself that is helping out. Customers can purchase gift cards to donate to the organization or buy new books off of the organization’s running wishlist. The list varies in nature, and includes popular titles like The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, as well as crochet and calligraphy books, Mooney said. 

The numbers show the level of community support. 

In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nonprofit mailed 1,964 orders of books and notebooks to women and trans people in prisons across the country. Another 1,600 sets of composition books, crayon packs, and folders went to the women and trans prisoners at Logan Correctional Center in Illinois. The organization also delivered three individual orders of 600 books and 700 composition books to the women’s division of Cook County Jail. 

These days, White estimates that the organization fills about 80 orders every weekend. 

Sending and receiving mail in the corrections system in any state is a slow and convoluted process. Sending books to prisons often adds extra complications. On average, an order is received, filled, and returned in about a three-month time period, White said.

But having books and shipments rejected by prisons is a common issue.

“Some states are harder to deal with than others, some prisons are harder to deal with than others,” White adds. “There’s one federal prison that does not allow any organization to get books inside. There is a state prison we have to deal with that continually rejects books that every other prison accepts. It’s a constant challenge.”

It’s easy to feel powerless when so much of the system works to keep people out, Mooney notes. Doing this work helps her and her customers feel like they are achieving meaningful change.

“It’s not my destiny to, you know, solve the problem of the prison industrial complex,” Mooney said. “But a lot of us working around the edges can make real differences.”

Read More

Chicago Bulls basketball is finally back. The Bulls opened up their preseason in a home matchup versus the pesky New Orleans Pelicans. While the Bulls did fall 129-125, there was a lot to dissect from this game beyond who won and who lost.

The Chicago Bulls showed a lot of grit today, especially the bench players

The Bulls were getting blown out for most of the game. The starters did not do anything spectacular, but Demar Derozan and Nikola Vucevic played up to par with what is expected from them. Demar finished with 21 points, 5/9 FG, and 11/12 FT. Vuc finished with a double-double, 15 points, 11 rebounds, and his defense was spectacular tonight, as shown by his three steals and four blocks. Vuc was a pleasant surprise tonight was a lot more confident than we saw last season.

The rest of the starting lineup did not do anything too noteworthy, but Ayo Dosunmu did have 10 points and flashed a new confidence in his jumper. What really stood out was Javonte Green’s energy off the bench. He scored 18 points off the bench and was all over the place chasing down rebounds and getting to the basket offensively. He is such a great player to have on your team because he just makes winning plays.

Another bright spot was Dalen Terry, who got 17 minutes in his first NBA game, all in the second half. Terry finished with 11 points, seven rebounds, and two assists, along with two steals. He showed the type of player he is right off the bat, as he was targeted in isolation by Davonte Graham. Terry was clamping Graham, but unfortunately reached just as Graham was about to hold his dribble. That energy though was there the whole night from Terry, especially after he flashed some offensive prowess that surprised me to say the least.

Andre Drummond and Goran Dragic made their Chicago Bull debuts today, and neither really was anything to write home about. Dragic showed that he still can lead an offense, but he has lost some of his craftiness that made him a star in the league. Drummond demonstrated his physicality in the paint and his tenacious rebounding, but he is a liability with the ball in his hands. Poor passing and bad footwork led to a plethora of Drummond turnovers.

Overall, the team seemed to lack some chemistry tonight, especially on offense. Things were a bit stagnant in the first half, with the starters showing a lot of the same weaknesses we saw at the end of last year. The defense also was porous tonight, as expected with preseason play.

Pay attention to the point guard rotation next game against the Nuggets, as well as how much playing time Dalen Terry gets compared to other wings on the team. After his performance against the Pelicans, Terry might get the Ayo treatment that we saw last year. Still lots to learn about who the Chicago Bulls will be this year.

Read More

The NBA was without its full slate of stars for much of last season, as a number of the league’s best players missed extensive time. But the start of the 2022-23 season marks a fresh start and return to the court for those stars.

Marquee veterans such as Kawhi Leonard and John Wall, who are typically counted on to carry their respective teams, didn’t play in 2021-22 and their teams failed to make the playoffs as a result. Leonard’s return and the addition of a well-rested Wall automatically make the Clippers a title contender in the West.

Meanwhile, young stars Jamal Murray and Ben Simmons will slide into lineups in Denver and Brooklyn that made the playoffs last season. Neither will be leaned on to lead their respective squads, but their returns are expected to help push their contending teams even further when the postseason comes around.

2 Related

And all eyes will be on Zion Williamson this season. Williamson, who signed a five-year $193 million rookie max extension with the Pelicans this offseason, missed all of last season with a foot injury. The 22-year-old big man will be looking to shake the concerns over his durability and justify his selection as the first overall pick in the 2019 NBA draft, all while trying to lead New Orleans on a deep postseason run.

With the preseason underway, fans are getting their first look at a number of players stepping on the court for the first time in months. Our NBA insiders recap what they’ve observed this week.

Zion Williamson scored 13 points in 15 minutes on Tuesday night for the New Orleans Pelicans. Kamil Krzaczynski/USA TODAY Sports

Last time he played: May 4, 2021

What we saw: From the first play of the game, it was clear the Pelicans wanted to get Williamson involved. Off the opening tip, the Pelicans ran a play designed to get Williamson a touch and he was promptly swarmed by Chicago Bulls’ defenders. Williamson’s two biggest plays — perhaps the primary indicators that he was going to be the Williamson of old — came just a minute apart in the second quarter.

First, the play was called a defensive goaltending against Williamson but he showed off his athleticism as he chased down Patrick Williams on a layup attempt and swatted his shot. It showed Williamson’s bounce was back on that end of the floor. One minute later, Williamson caught the ball on the right wing, faced up, took one hard dribble with his right hand to blow by Williams and exploded for a two-handed slam. In 15 minutes, Williamson had 13 points and four rebounds. He was 4-of-6 from the field and 5-of-5 from the line. If his free throw percentage can climb this season (he’s shooting 68% for his career), Williamson can become even more dangerous this season.

— Andrew Lopez

Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based rapper Open Mike Eagle is a seemingly inexhaustible font of laugh-out-loud one-liners, and he delivers as always on his latest album, Component System With the Auto Reverse (on his own Auto Reverse label). You need to be careful drinking anything while listening to it, lest uncomfortable snorking ensue when the rapper gets to the best lines in “Peak Lockdown Raps”: “I got a discount code for therapy / I hit go and got Rickrolled, apparently / It was a big blow.” But funny as he is, fans don’t just tune in for the laffs. Inspired by the likes De La Soul and They Might Be Giants, Mike writes loopy gags that float and bob and tie themselves together into surprisingly thoughtful reveries on aging, mental illness, disappointment, and hope. His flow feels laid-back even as he chews up syllables at a rapid clip—as if he’s a stoned nerd who almost apologetically has to get out everything on his mind. On “79th and Stony Island,” he starts musing on watching the Kanye West documentary Jeen-Yuhs, goes on to cheerfully explain he’s got “memories like flesh wounds,” and finishes up by listening to his son laughing. Throughout the album, Mike weaves his thoughts on COVID, racism, and our bleak political landscape in and out of pop-culture references and goofball nonsense—which he uses less as distractions than as ways to hold firm to his humanity under threat. “It’ll be endless, I will fight you every day,” Mike croons on the hook of “I’ll Fight You.” It’s a joke, but he also means it.

Open Mike Eagle’s A Tape Called Component System With the Auto Reverse is available through Bandcamp.

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