The battle of La La land renews Thursday night when the Clippers take on the Lakers for the first time this season. This has recently been a critical matchup in the NBA, especially in Los Angeles. But reports have already surfaced that Clippers star Kawhi Leonard, who’s returning from an ACL tear that forced him to miss all of last year, could come off the bench to begin the season as a way to “manage” his minutes.

That’s not an issue, as many players who return from more severe injuries are on a minutes restriction when they return to action. But let’s be honest for a second. We know where this is going to lead. Leonard has been the poster child of load management and once played for load management’s poster team, the San Antonio Spurs. But hey, if you can get away with it then do what you need to do. I’m not begrudging Leonard for doing what he’s been allowed to do for years.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver comes out every year and talks about managing players’ minutes, but nothing has changed. We constantly hear about how today’s athletes are so much bigger, faster, stronger, and more skilled in the NBA. Yet, no one seems to care about playing an entire 82-game schedule.

In fairness, it isn’t every player, but load management usually comes up with star players, who have the ability and freedom to pick and choose when they play. But that’s who fans go to see — the stars in the NBA. Over the past few years, a shortened NBA season has been thrown around, and Commissioner Silver addressed that over the summer.

“I’m not looking to shorten the season, but it’s a conversation we should all have,” Silver acknowledged. “What’s optimal in terms of a number of games on a player’s body? Let’s be

realistic about that.”

Sure, it’s a conversation that needs to happen, but unless the NBA can continue to get the same money from their T.V. partners, it won’t happen anytime soon. Professional sports is still a business, and the association is just trying to make a few billion bucks like anyone else. I believe the commissioner wants to do away with load management, but we’re so far along at this point it’ll be tough.

A couple of years ago, the league added the play-in tournament as a purgatory-like setup between the actual playoffs and hitting Cancun in April. So far, the play-in has provided some exciting moments, like LeBron James vs. Stephen Curry two tournaments ago, but it’s nothing more than a money grab. Play-in teams have little hope of advancing past the first round once in the playoffs.

Now the NBA is looking into adding a midseason tournament on top of making the play-in a mainstay. Another attempt at more revenue is fine, but none of this feels like it will incentivize players to play more. Even if you remove 10 games from the regular season schedule and add this tournament, that doesn’t create much rest time. It depends on how many teams are in this tournament, although it sounds like a bandaid with dollar signs all over it.

Silver and the league’s office don’t have a clue about how to tackle this load management issue. The bottom line is that he’s let it happen far too long, and turning back now is nearly impossible. I don’t see the NBA reducing the regular season schedule by more than 12-15 games. They’d lose too much money in that process. But you can’t talk about taking a few games away only to add an in-season tournament like these guys are back in college or high school.

For PR purposes, Silver probably has to speak out against it publicly and act tough. Still, in reality, anyone who follows this league closely knows who runs it. It’s called a players’ league for a reason. When Robert Sarver was accused of throwing stereotypical slurs at nearly every minority group in America, Silver acted like there was little to “nothing” he could do. The players had to speak up, and that got the ball rolling. Now, Sarver is on his way out. In 2014, players threatened to boycott after a Donald Sterling recording leaked, in which Sterling said he didn’t want his girlfriend bringing black people to games, before Silver banned him and forced him to sell the Clippers.

However, in this situation, Silver will need to stand on his own two feet to find a way to rid the league of load management. Players want this, and many have adopted it as a regular part of their regimen during the season. Although it’s not just the players. Many teams seemingly encourage it, taking a page from the San Antonio Spurs playbook.

Silver has expressed his thoughts on the origins of load managing:

“There’s nothing more frustrating also for our fans than having players, frankly, who aren’t injured following some program schedule for rest. I’m looking at [Spurs executive] R.C. [Buford], you started this all. That isn’t clear, at least to me. Whether it’s serving a useful purpose. So figuring out a way to create that right healthy balance.”

Silver knows the deal, and he knows coaches, general managers, and owners are just as much to blame as the players. If the commissioner really wants to stop this, he probably could. If he cares about the fans’ enjoyment of the game, he’ll step up to the plate and get this worked out. Otherwise, it’s time to quit talking about it and accept this as the league’s reality. 

While often depicted, lamented, and sanctified as liberating, hope can also be a virus. It can rot rationality from the inside. It can lead to danger, injury, and death. As Ellis Boyd Redding, best known by his friends and fellow convicts at Shawshank State Prison as Red, once said… “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

Throughout the decades, NBA fans have seen it all too often. Memories of Chris Washburn, Kwame Brown, and Sam Bowie still haunt the hallowed halls of the franchises that selected them. In the modern era, Derrick Williams, Hasheem Thabeet, Greg Oden, and Anthony Bennett have become just as forgotten to neophyte fans born after the turn of the millenium. And yes, many of these names were snakebit by injury, or simply by being drafted by the wrong team. Yet, one slot above or below could have changed the entire fate of many a lottery pick.

Like former Knick Kevin Knox, others showed promise for a season before fading into obscurity. Some went as far as two or three, like Michael Beasley. All were selected on the fumes of hope. Hope was placed on these young players’ backs like a target, praying they would individually change the course of their respective team’s history. Turn bleakness bright, or make sorrow soar. Hope can be a hell of a drug.

Such dreams are only reserved for the sure thing. The NBA fan base at large, meaning worldwide, only dares utter the phrase for players like LeBron James, Zion Williamson, Lamelo Ball, Ja Morant, and currently, Victor Wembanyama. Before being drafted, none of Luka Dončić, Nikola Jokić, or Giannis Antetokounmpo were sure bets. In the modern era, perhaps no team has had more lottery luck than the Cleveland Cavaliers. First, LeBron James. Then Kyrie Irving. Yea, the Cavs squandered that Bennett pick, but they also drafted, then flipped Andrew Wiggins for Kevin Love. In last year’s draft, the Cavs once again got lucky and drafted a player worthy of the gamble on hope. His name is Evan Mobley.

At just 20 years old, Mobley delivered a dominant rookie year for the Cavs at seven feet tall with a 7-foot-4 wingspan. It all began in high school when Mobley won California Player of the Year as a junior and senior. He averaged 18 ppg and 2.7 blocks as a senior, making him a top-three national recruit, going as high as No. 1 in ESPN’s rankings. After choosing USC, he delivered prodigy-like numbers of 16.4 ppg and 2.9 bpg, earning Pac-12 Player of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, and Freshman of the Year. The last collegiate player to hit those high standards? Kentucky’s Anthony Davis — a champion and newly minted Top 75 Player of all-time.

When Mobley was being interviewed on draft night, he was asked what skill he would bring to the NBA as a rookie. His answer was simple, yet rare for a projected top-three pick — defense. Most eager rookies cite their off-the-dribble offense, IQ, leadership, or DAWG mentality when asked. But Mobley is not like other highly/touted prospects. He moves quietly, and subtly, but when he plays, he smacks you in the mouth, metaphorically speaking of course. Sound familiar? Tim Duncan was the same. Mobley is unique in his ability to switch on all five positions. He has the lateral footwork to stay with attacking guards, the wing space to sag off drives and close out on shooters, and the balance to recover on high-octane guards with the ball on a string. His ability to outjump driving bigs, simply off of standing two feet, puts him in elite company. The last rookie to do this? Duncan in 1998. Most rim-protection bigs can only meet their opponent mid-air with a running start. Mobley can stay grounded, avoiding fouls, flowing like water to whoever has the ball before slapping the rock into the stands off a jump.

It was no surprise when he went third overall last summer to Cleveland. After breaking up the LeBron James-led championship roster, the Cavs overcame the usual decade-long period of depravity. But losing LeBron to free agency in 2018 put them right back amid lottery luck, landing Collin Sexton with the 8th pick in 2018 (who would be used this summer in a trade to land Donovan Mitchell), current All-Star Darius Garland with the 5th pick in 2019, and taking elite perimeter defender Issac Okorro with the 5th pick in the 2020 Draft. They also acquired Jarrett Allen in a trade two seasons ago, who blossomed into an All-Star last year. So when they selected Mobley, he entered a stable situation that allowed him to utilize his elite defensive instincts right off the bat, while having the grace not to be an immediate savior.

In year one of their pairing, Mobley and Allen developed into one of the elite defensive frontcourt duos in the NBA, becoming essential to the Cavaliers’ return to the playoffs. He cemented his rookie season averaging: 15 PPG, 8.3 RPG, 2.5 APG, and 1.7 BPG on 51 percent shooting. This earned Mobley First-Team All-Rookie honors. His blocks per game average tied him for the fifth-highest in the league, and his 115 blocks were good enough for eighth best. As a rookie, his defensive rating of 107.3 placed him in the Top 20 players in the league. Even more impressive, it was the highest placement for a rookie in defensive ratings since LeBron ranked seventh in 2003. So, about that hope, it’s obvious Mobley was one of the rare immediate-impact rookies. But can he be more? Can he achieve greatness in a city that has only had it once with LeBron?

To find out, let’s return to Duncan, who Mobley mirrors as a willing and skilled passer. Mobley is a deadly short-roll passer while equally capable of quick-thinking give-and-go, which made for an easy high/low game with teammate Allen. He anticipates reads better than most bigs but will need to tighten his handle and gather on drives to unlock another level. He’s already comfortable utilizing his size, but needs to sharpen his on-ball/off-ball scoring. Once he does, he will become unstoppable. The Cavs are full of ball-dominant guards, but Mobley will need chances to have the ball in his hands to take advantage of his passing and intermediate game. Adjustments will need to happen this season, but all the pieces are there for Mobley to become the best player on a team with three other All-Stars.

Mobley is an anomaly because he’s barely stretching the surface of his talent. So much of what he has been able to accomplish defensively is on his rare combination of athleticism and instinct. But much of his offensive game is still raw. In college, the knock was his 30 percent shooting from 3-point range. He was even worse his rookie year, averaging a paltry 25 percent. He hasn’t been much better inside the arc, hitting 33 percent of shots outside of 15 feet. He shot 41.2 percent on short mid-range jumpers, counting anything between the restricted area and inside the free-throw line.

His true shooting percentage of 54.9 was two points below the league average of 56.6. Once he speeds up his release off the bounce and in catch-and-shoot opportunities, he will improve. The Cavs employed a ton of double-drag screens last season, where Mobley worked out of the high post in dribble-handoff scenarios. He needs to work on popping out of those screens and drilling 3s when he’s involved in that kind of action. He has a lot to work on offensively, but his size and passing skills give him a great floor to build upon. In his first season, he developed a fadeaway from the elbow, a right-handed hook shot, and the upper-body width to bang in the paint while jockeying for position. While he lacks the bulk to get what he wants down low, he gets by with body control and a soft touch around the rim.

When it comes to how he plays with his fellow starters, he’s honed an excellent two-man game with Garland last season in the pick-and-roll, showing off a forward push shot as the roll man. Playing next to an elite rim-protector in Allen gives Mobley the freedom to move around the court in a switching defense, using his length to disrupt passing lanes and providing weak-side coverage, like Draymond Green has done for a decade with the Warriors. The real unlocking of Mobley’s game will be when he’s slotted in at center. Last season, he averaged 25 percent of his minutes at the five, where he was surrounded by spacing, which should only be better this year after adding the elite play of Mitchell. Playing next to high-end guard play will give him opportunities to unlock his secondary playmaker abilities.

For anyone who loves watching a ball go through the hoop in the most elegant way possible, hope keeps us watching, even when it’s false hope. It’s also why we contextualize would-be generational ball players as our raison d’être, even when it’s a mirage. Where others possessed one or two unique sensibilities, Mobley is an enigma. Where other prospects failed at fulfilling the auspice of hope, Mobley embodies it as flesh and bone. And as Red’s good friend Andy Dufresne put it… “hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” 

The match had a simple, yet effective, build. It made All Elite Wrestling’s fan base excited because of the easy-to-spot ramifications. AEW World Champion Jon Moxley put his belt on the line against former champion Hangman Page in a first-time matchup, a dream clash for fans — on television for free. The winner would be the top guy heading into the company’s next quarterly pay-per-view, Full Gear, and the other would be pushed aside. Except ending the epic encounter with a clean result didn’t happen. And it was absolutely the right decision.

Professional wrestling has predetermined results. The best wrestlers can communicate on the fly and pull off their enticing-looking arsenal without risking their own safety or the health of whoever they’re in the ring with. Page and Moxley are great examples of grapplers who can make their moves look devastatingly painful but have the respect of the locker room to get out of the squared circle unscathed most of the time, no matter if CM Punk doesn’t like Cowboy Shit. In the real-life crash test dummy world of pro wrestling, accidents happen, as evidenced by Moxley’s mid-match lariat that connected with Page’s head and sent him spiraling to the canvas without a clean landing. It’s unclear if Page was dazed before impact or if the odd bump caused the head or neck injury. Either way, it’s obvious Page wasn’t alright moments after hitting the mat.

AEW referee Paul Turner recognized Page’s distressed state immediately. After checking on Hangman, he called in Michael Sampson, the company’s ringside doctor, to check on him. At that point, longtime wrestling fans know the protocol: The show comes to a halt. Everything is secondary to caring for Page. A similar situation happened with former WWE star Enzo Amore, ending a tag team championship bout at Payback in 2016 because of a head injury. Turner called for the bell to end the match shortly after Sampson entered the ring. It led to a spine board being brought onto the mat to support Page getting onto a stretcher with minimal movement. AEW officials also loosened the bottom rope to make sure Page’s escort out of the arena was as smooth as possible.

Page was taken to a local hospital, diagnosed with a concussion, and subsequently released. Things could have been so much worse if not for the awareness of Turner, Sampson, and Moxley, who all made sure to tend to Hangman in their own ways before the show could move on. And it did with Moxley and MJF cutting a great impromptu promo setting up their main-event match for Full Gear. By the time Moxley had a microphone to start the dialogue, Page was nowhere in sight. Hangman tweeted Wednesday night that he was in good spirits. There has been no timetable set for Page’s return to the ring, but he was placed in AEW’s concussion protocols.

AEW has now given us a pristine example of how to handle signs of head injuries and concussions amid the NFL’s investigation into how badly it failed Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. If Page took that lariat, was checked on by Turner and Sampson, continued to wrestle the match, and then strapped up his boots again to fight in a few more days willing to be dropped on his head with a vicious piledriver, that would be the equivalent of how the NFL’s medical practices harmed Tua. Under the circumstances, the NFL has as much time to react to concussions as AEW had. One company’s safeguards clearly saved one of its employees from further damage. It also shows how AEW learned from putting Matt Hardy back in harm’s way two years ago after hitting his head onto concrete.

There’s a direct route for how AEW can help the NFL. Tony Khan, AEW’s CEO and president, is the son of Shad Khan, who owns the Jacksonville Jaguars. Not all concussion cases are the same, obviously, but several measures to prevent maximizing the damage of head injuries, are. The NFL could learn a thing or two from how AEW handled this situation, like letting Colts’ running back Nyheim Hines walk to the locker room under his own power after showing gross motor instability. What a disgusting showing that was. And you can bet based on how delicately it handled Hangman’s injury, letting an athlete trot off the field wouldn’t have happened on an AEW show. 

When something is too good to be true, it usually is. Like earlier this season when Washington Commanders’ mugs with the state of Washington outline were being sold outside the stadium — except they were bootlegs, not official team merch. What a royal fuck up that would’ve been if they were real, right?

Well, I don’t know, six or seven weeks later someone kept giving the organization rope, and they hung themselves — again. From the franchise that brought you such films as “The Owner from Hell,” “The Owner from Hell: Resurrection,” and “The Owner from Hell: Afterlife,” comes the new comedy, “Bounced Check.” It’s basically a reboot of “Blank Check,” but instead of a child gifting himself $1 million, a raffle-winning Commanders fan has gifted us his story of trying to cash a $14,000 check that he won from a team raffle.

Season-ticket holder Drew Shipley phoned into The Team 980, a D.C. sports talk radio station, and shared his tale of woe. He told host Chris Russell of Russell & Medhurst about the ordeal, saying he won a prize worth $14,822 at a charity raffle during the season opener against Jacksonville.

Shipley then shared the receipts, or in this case, a picture of the check.

“It took 35 days to get the [first] check,” Shipley told Deadspin. “And a three-day bank hold, and for good reason.”

Working in the Commanders’ media relations department is like being a firefighter in California during an especially hot and dry July, and they blamed the bank and wired the fan the money directly.

Shipley, whose phone has been ringing off the hook, said the money was delivered within two hours of calling into that radio station. He also wanted to clarify one thing. Contrary to what he’s seen out there on social media, he says he had not spent a dollar of the money from that first check that bounced. Smart.

If Dan Snyder was running any other business the way he runs the Commanders, it would’ve filed for bankruptcy years ago, and he probably would’ve been indicted (this is where we are legally obligated to tell you that Dan Snyder has denied all allegations of wrongdoing). This is professional sports though, and no matter how much of a colossal fuck up you are, the leagues make so much money there are minimal consequences for being a disaster of epic proportions.

This sort of malpractice could only occur under two, maybe three other owners in sports, but Snyder definitely would’ve been my first pick had you told me the story and not named the team. What’s next? Are repo men going to show up and take back the gobs of Commanders’ gear that their supporters aren’t buying?

Like the loyal, mistreated fans of the DMV, one can only hope they take that and more.

As for Shipley, and his feelings about the Commanders, this team he roots for, he summed it up like this: “You can change the name, but you can’t change your spots.”

Nothing goes right for the Vancouver Canucks. This is an immutable law of hockey and the NHL. It’s mostly comedy fodder for everyone outside of British Columbia, and probably for more sadistic jokes within. It becomes less funny when you’ve spent a decade or two listening to Canucks fans bemoan their very existence at volume levels that rival the voice of God, Dogma-version. But that sort of background noise is part and parcel of following the league.

Anyway, whatever they’re trying, the Canucks are almost always a sure bet to fuck it up somehow. This is a team that had an absolute powerhouse of a roster in 2011, lost Game 7 at home when Roberto Luongo shit a chicken every time he stepped foot in Boston and then in the deciding game. They haven’t won a real playoff round since, and no, 2020 doesn’t count.

There was some hope for this year’s squad, mostly built through the excitement of d-man Quinn Hughes, a goalie in Thatcher Demko that looked poised to be the next big thing wearing a mask, and forwards like Elias Pettersson, Bo Horvat, Brock Boeser and the like. It was also partially fueled by the Pacific Division being the remedial class of the NHL, where you can only really count on the Flames to be good (you depend on the Oilers to be anything and watch your sanity go right into the toilet).

Well, this season could not have started worse for the Canucks, who are 0-3-1. That’s a bad start, but not one that couldn’t become a footnote in the long run. However, the Canucks don’t just do badly when they do badly. And they don’t just crash when they crash. They make it epic. Last night, the Canucks became the first team in NHL history to lose their first four games of a season when they held a multiple goal lead IN EVERY GAME.

That’s right, the ‘Nucks have blown at least a two-goal lead to everyone they’ve faced. You can somewhat understand that when it’s against the Oilers or Capitals, who have a fair amount of firepower. When you also spit up regurgitated foodstuffs against the Flyers and Jackets, you have a real problem.

It’s already rattling brains within the team, as it caused a players-only meeting just three games into the season, which is hardly ever a good sign. Usually players-only meetings mean everyone hates the coach and they’re trying to figure out how they’re still going to play for him or how they’re going to go about getting him fired. Naturally, the rumors are already flying that Bruce Boudreau should start preparing his resume. It’s certainly not helping that Boudreau is calling his team mentally weak, because mentality is sort of near the top of a coach’s to-do list.

Overall, there really isn’t that much to worry about in Vancouver’s game. Their shots, shots against, attempts-share, and expected goals-share ranks anywhere from 10th to 16th in the league, which is about where you’d have this team pegged. But that whole mentality thing shows up when you see how badly they’ve gotten clocked in the 3rd period, giving up over 65 percent of the expected goals in the final frame in three of their four games. Even with a lead where you’d expect an opponent to attack more feverishly and get more chances, getting flattened like that is not how you hold leads or win games.

The biggest problem is that Demko has been a court jester in net so far this season, with an .847 save-percentage and already conceding -4.5 goals than expected, third-worst in the league. Most of the Canucks’ problems will be fixed when Demko starts facing the right way, though there has to be a little worry if something isn’t truly off here.

Beyond Demko though, this team has defensive issues. The entire top four of Hughes, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Riley Stillman, and Luke Schenn (by minutes played) break even when it comes to attempts, but they are giving up far better chances than are being created when they’re on the ice, at least according to xGF percentage. Only Stillman is above water in the latter category. Tyler Myers has only played one game through injury, but as anyone who has seen Tyler Myers play will tell you, he’s not going to solve any of your defensive issues.

Not helping matters much is that the top line with Horvat and Boeser has been getting kicked around heavily, with a 41 percent xG percentage. Topping off this pungent cake is that usual two-way dynamo J.T. Miller, fresh off inking some flashy new paper, has been seeing his skull turned into putty, with a 29 percent expected goal share. The combination of Demko’s reverse-Matrix act in net and their defensive helplessness has meant that their penalty kill is running at a cool 50 percent right now. Which is another way to blow leads.

But this is kind of the deal with a Boudreau-led team. He’ll take all the handbreaks off for a team offensively, which generally leads to his players having a ton of fun. But his defensive structure has always been a helping of “whatever” and that’s generally why his teams eat it in the playoffs. At this rate, the Canucks won’t have to worry about that, and Boudreau won’t have to worry about being around to watch it.

Luckily for Vancouver, the Pacific still sucks ass. There’s plenty of time for them to right themselves, and Demko won’t be this bad forever. But when the coach is already calling the team soft between the ears and the players are discussing amongst themselves, it doesn’t feel like a change is too far off in the future.

If you spend too much time arguing about the macro, you miss out on the micro. And it is in the micro that the real enjoyment can be found in any sport. Whether it’s a silky drive to the hoop and layup, a cross-seam pass to set up a one-timer, a perfectly-timed tackle, the sort of things top-tier athletes do in an instant that we can’t really fathom.

It has not been a great year for Juan Soto. While he was the main cog in one of baseball’s biggest trades in years, he didn’t really immediately convert the Padres into a powerhouse upon arrival. Much like the start of his season in Washington, he walked a ton, but his power seemingly went away, and his value was really tied up in his ability to get on base while not doing the heavy damage we were used to. He was also, quite simply, woeful with a glove on his hand, to the point where he probably shouldn’t have bothered having that glove on his hand. But his defense isn’t why the Padres harvested a good portion of their system to bring him to town.

We saw some of that defense early in Game 2 on Wednesday, when he lost a ball in the sun in the top of the second to allow a run on what should have been a sac fly and gotten Blake Snell closer to an escape of the inning. That’s OK because when you’re Juan Soto, you’re always likely to make amends when you come to the plate.

He did that in the Padres’ raucous and chaotic fifth inning, where they put up five runs to take the lead they would never give back and allowed them to tie the NLCS with the Phillies, 1-1. Soto came up with runners on first and third and one out, and the Padres down one. Aaron Nola got Soto down to 0-2, and threw a really good pitch to end the at-bat, or so he thought:

That’s a really good pitch! Look at it!

That’s a 95 MPH fastball barely scraping the inside corner and supposed to be right on Soto’s hands. While Soto does crack pitches in that part of the zone (.315 average and .648 slugging according to baseball savant, very few of those pitches in that zone that are measured are slicing a facial hair off the inside corner. That’s where Nola wants that pitch.

To be able to pull one’s hands in and through to get the barrel to that ball, and keep it fair, is the exact kind of skill that landed Soto numbers that compare to Ted Williams through the same age. It’s what made every team try and set the axis of the planet askew in an effort to get him (or at least teams that are actually run well and by an adult). You are not supposed to get to this pitch, and even if you get to it, it’s supposed to break your bat and leave your hands feeling like they were being attacked by bees from the inside. The bat speed on this swing is simply mean.

I am guilty as anyone else of spending too much time worrying about playoff formats and what the regular season and postseason should mean and how it’s viewed and rules changes. The reason we get so worked up is that we soak in moments like this. This is unique and wonderful, and a reminder of what should actually matter in this sport.

FU FS1

Though speaking of things that really matter, it’s more than awkward and actually sickening that during MLB playoff games, FS1 is only too happy to air anti-immigrant ads that sink into some of the vilest misconceptions and hate that the right can produce. I know it’s hardly a surprise, given that FS1 is a Fox station after all.

But it’s certainly an insulting juxtaposition for an ad to be declaring all immigrants tools of the demon during the broadcast of a sport where a third of the participants are immigrants themselves. And yes, MLB absolutely has the right to veto what ads are shown during its broadcasts. They just haven’t here, no matter how it looks.

But I guess MLB not caring about optics isn’t much of a surprise either.