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In retrospect, maybe we should have kept those Knicks tickets. In the early 1990s, three college buddies and I took the plunge and shelled out around $850 per seat for the full 41-game NBA season (not including playoffs). This was shortly after a bit of controversy when, as the New York Times put it:
The owners of Madison Square Garden, which is in the process of an unexpectedly costly overhaul, are preparing a plan for luxury courtside and rinkside seats that could cost as much as $70 apiece for Knicks and Rangers games … it would represent a sharp increase in costs for the spectator and perhaps a radical change in the atmosphere at the events as well.
Well, yeah, about that atmosphere ...
But where’s Fat Joe? Photographer: Al Bello/Getty Images
Our purchase paid off, as I saw live some of the greatest moments in Knicks, and actually NBA, history over the next decade: The Starks Dunk, the O.J. Game of the 1994 NBA Finals, Jordan’s Double Nickel return from retirement, Reggie Miller’s 8 points in 18 seconds. But after the Latrell Sprewell-led Knicks were fully dominated by Tim Duncan’s San Antonio Spurs in 1999, the magic was gone, pretty soon so were we. As I write this on Thursday, the 2026 NBA champion Knicks are having a victory parade (rained upon, natch) a couple of miles downtown, I’m inevitably thinking … what if? And I answer myself, what an enormous waste of time and money that would have been for the last quarter-century. Besides, the Knicks took the championship in an away game. Still, as hard as it is to think of any team (or anything) from NYC as being the underdog, the little guy, this team was. [1] And, as the week wore on, they were hardly alone — everything was looking up for the little guys. Hooray! Well, maybe. We’ll start with another guy it’s hard to picture as an underdog: Steven Spielberg. In an age of cookie-cutter superhero movies powered by young audiences, the old-timer who invented the blockbuster got us old-timers into the seats for Disclosure Day — which at $44 million was his best-ever debut for an original film. Given that Gen Z is by far the most active moviegoing demographic, Hollywood pretty much writes off older audiences. “Disclosure Day’s numbers complicate that assumption. The film’s audience breakdown almost exactly mirrors that of Top Gun: Maverick, where nearly 40% of the audience was also 45 or older, and Elvis, where audiences 45 and up accounted for 45% of ticket buyers” writes guest columnist Miles Surrey. “Across multiple genres, the same pattern holds. When a film is positioned as a genuine cultural event — be it a revival of IP from an earlier era, a biopic of a legendary musician, or the latest release from a brand-name director — older audiences can still show up in droves.” Another creaky oldster scoring a victory was … the Kingdom of Denmark?? Between President Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland and his “Liberation Day” tariffs, Danish government bonds lost 2.8% of their value last year, “making them the worst performer among 31 European governments,” Matthew A. Winkler informs us. Things are changing fast:
Hamlet’s little nation is showing another strength as well. “Contrary to Trump’s assertions that Denmark isn't doing enough to protect the Arctic from Russian and Chinese inroads, the 424 publicly traded companies in Denmark, Norway and Sweden that have a market value of at least $200 million include 109 industrial firms,” Matthew writes. “They contribute record resources to regional security, including the production of advanced drones and ice-breaking equipment.” Can the governor of America’s most populous state be an underdog? A full-on Trump assault makes anybody look like the little guy, including Gavin Newsom, who is fighting back against what he calls a federal “fishing expedition” against his family. “Newsom has decided to go on offense,” writes Erika D. Smith. “He announced what little information he had himself, beating the Trump administration to the punch. In doing so, Newsom has managed to shape his own narrative as a defiant victim of the president and a clear threat to MAGA.” OK, in this week of little-guy victories, we all know who the biggest winner was: Iran. I’m old enough to remember when private citizen Trump, in 2015, insisted that the nuclear pact the Barack Obama administration had forged with the Islamic Republic would “go down as one of the most incompetent ever made.” [2] Now Trump has one-upped his predecessor in historical incompetence. “Donald Trump is already congratulating himself on being the first US president to have made peace with Iran since the country’s 1979 revolution. That’s wrong. He is the first to have taken America to war with Iran, and therefore the first to have needed a truce to stop one,” writes Marc Champion. “None of this would be cause for criticism if the decision to attack the Islamic Republic were to leave the US in a substantially better negotiating position than it enjoyed before the start of hostilities … the fact that the Iranians are gloating, while Israelis are horrified, strongly suggests that isn’t the case.” In Hal Brands’ opinion, the deal will entrench, rather than end, the decades-long struggle between America and Iran. “The war has both bludgeoned and emboldened an Iranian regime bent on evicting America from the Middle East — if anything, the government seems to have been further radicalized,” Hal writes. “Hardliners will tout that government’s survival, and its success in punching back against an American onslaught, as a landmark victory in a long struggle against US power.” The Editorial Board is looking for something, anything positive to come out of this. “If the deal the US has struck with Iran to end hostilities in the Persian Gulf is welcome, it’s far from a victory,” they write. “Any hopes of achieving more rest on whether the White House is willing to learn from this self-created mess.” John Authers weighs in on the trade front: “Countries that enjoy some form of chokepoint in the global economic system have the green light to exploit it. China’s control of rare earths and Iran’s power over Hormuz have both now forced a US climbdown within the space of 12 months. The cost of trade will continue to rise.”
John also has a wonderfully pithy encapsulation of what the underdog overcame. “Three months ago, President Donald Trump announced that conflict with Iran could only end with ‘unconditional surrender.’ Few thought that it would be the US, not Iran, waving a white flag,” he writes. “It’s hard to see what the American escapade has achieved, beyond killing a very old man.” Trump promised to be the future of US dominance. Now he just looks bullying, dirty, defeated and embarrassed: He’s the Victor Wembanyama of geopolitics. Bonus Harder They Come Reading:
- Trump’s Iran Deal Comes With Great Risk — for JD Vance — Nia-Malika Henderson
- America’s Loss to Iran Will Unravel Geopolitics — Andreas Kluth
- China Has a Powerful New Oil Price Weapon — Javier Blas
What’s the World Got in Store?
- FedEx earnings, June 23: Driverless Trucks Can Save Lives on America’s Roads — Thomas Black
- US PCE, June 25: RFK Wants You to Eat Real Food. MAGA Is Making It More Expensive — Abby McCloskey
- US GDP, June 25: Warsh Just Passed His First Independence Test at the Fed — Jonathan Levin
Of course, not every bully had a bad week. There’s the world’s first trillionaire.
Remember the DOGE days? Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
SpaceX, which is a rocket company that’s really an AI company — kinda like Allbirds is a shoe company that’s really an AI company — had an IPO that made it bigger than Amazon, despite posting a $4.3 billion loss last quarter. I guess Amazon lost money for years also, but it had, y’know, a totally logical game plan: to conquer the world, one yodeling pickle at a time. Whereas Musk’s stated purpose — “Make our Sun sentient to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars” — seems less bankable than the Snuggie.
Of course, Musk’s real plan is no secret: Merging SpaceX with Tesla, a car company that’s really an AI company. “In any normal situation, a cash-burning company buying another cash-burning company at a premium, and both of them run by the same person, would trigger a selloff and shareholder revolt,” writes Liam Denning. “But none of this is normal — we’re talking about the biggest IPO in history, for a loss-making company, and then nearly $900 billion added to the market cap in three days. SpaceX investors not named Elon Musk happily signed up already for a shareholder structure that makes their Class A position essentially powerless when it comes to votes.” It’s also a shareholder structure that makes your 401(k) kinda powerless. “Indexes should be a great way to manage risk, and balance between different geographies,” writes John in a separate column. “Now that a few ultra-cap companies dominate them, that’s no longer the case.” Finally, Gautam Mukunda has some advice for those serving under the world’s first trillionaire. “You used to be a businessperson or a soldier but now you’re a courtier. You work for a king. You used to be judged by your ability to make a profit or win a war. Now your real job is gaining the king’s favor,” he writes. “This is an eternal problem for republics. Marcus Crassus was the richest man in ancient Rome. So rich that, by Plutarch’s account, he thought no man truly wealthy unless he could pay an army from his own purse. He spent that fortune bankrolling Julius Caesar and building the triumvirate that sidelined the Senate and, in fact if not in name, overthrew the republic.” Crassus was killed in 53 BC after being captured in battle against the Parthians, who by some (probably apocryphal) accounts poured molten gold down his throat and used his head as a prop in a performance of Euripides’ The Bacchae. It’s a play about hubris leading to disaster. I doubt Musk will ever see it, but Trump is already living it. Note: Please send yodeling pickles and feedback to Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net
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