{"id":924180,"date":"2026-10-07T15:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T15:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/924180\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T15:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T15:42:08","slug":"ray-lebov-on-how-basketball-intelligence-picks-nba-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/924180\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray LeBov on how Basketball Intelligence picks NBA stories"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Ray LeBov founded Basketball Intelligence<\/a>, a daily NBA newsletter that links to the day\u2019s best basketball writing and has more than 5,000 subscribers on Substack. In a 2026 interview on The Knick of Time Show, LeBov told Lee Escobedo of The Kot Show that he looks at about 2,500 stories on a typical day. <\/p>\n

He links a piece only when it passes what he calls the four I\u2019s test. The piece must be informative, intelligent, insightful and interesting.<\/p>\n

Ray LeBov looks at about 2,500 basketball stories on a typical day. People tell him that\u2019s impossible. He does it alone anyway, with a first cut the night before and a morning session that starts around 6 a.m. and usually wraps up when Basketball Intelligence<\/a> goes out, about 10:30 a.m.<\/p>\n

LeBov, a former lawyer, spent years as a lobbyist in Sacramento. In a 2015 Capitol Weekly profile<\/a>, he said Basketball Intelligence had about 180 official subscribers. It now has more than 5,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I consider Basketball Intelligence the most important basketball newsletter in the country, so having LeBov on The Knick of Time Show was a blessing and an honor. By the time we sat down, The Kot Show had made six of the last eight editions. <\/p>\n

That put my writing on the same list as Marc Stein and Zach Lowe, two of my heroes. I told LeBov on the show that it\u2019s the greatest achievement of my life, and I wasn\u2019t exaggerating.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve talked openly on the channel about my mental health. Mental illness runs in my family, and I\u2019ve fought anxiety and depression my whole life. Writing about the Knicks is how I make sense of what I feel, and at times this team has kept me alive. <\/p>\n

The KOT crew knows that when I start writing a lot, I\u2019m probably not doing well. I write with more passion in those stretches, and when that work makes LeBov\u2019s cut, I feel it.<\/p>\n

Most of the people behind KOT are young Black and brown men and women, and we built it out of nothing. We\u2019re just a Substack and a YouTube channel. LeBov gives a newspaper beat writer and someone who posts on Patreon the same read. \u201cI tried very hard to apply the same test to everyone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He calls that the four I\u2019s test. A story must be informative, intelligent, insightful and interesting, and he admits the last one is the most subjective. For him, that one comes down to whether he learned something and whether the piece felt fresh. <\/p>\n

He skips anything that repeats what everybody else already said. Some pieces are such obvious picks that he links them and never gets back to finish reading them himself.<\/p>\n

As a kid, he rooted for the Philadelphia Warriors. These days, he doesn\u2019t root for anybody because he thinks fandom would bend his picks one way or the other. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m the opposite. I write about the Knicks as a fan first and always will, and he links me anyway. He even named New York as one of the teams with consistently strong writing.<\/p>\n

Watch the full conversation on The Knick of Time Show<\/a>. Then subscribe to Basketball Intelligence<\/a> and pay for it if you can.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Make sure you subscribe to Basketball Intelligence<\/a> on Substack!<\/p>\n

I would love to hear your thoughts on this interview. Drop a comment and a like!<\/p>\n

The Kot Show made six of the last eight Basketball Intelligence editions before the interview.<\/p>\n

LeBov looks at about 2,500 stories on a typical day and runs the newsletter by himself.<\/p>\n

Every link has to pass his four I\u2019s test.<\/p>\n

He grew up a Philadelphia Warriors fan but stopped rooting for teams so fandom wouldn\u2019t bend his picks.<\/p>\n

He wants to train someone to take over someday, but only once he can afford to pay them.<\/p>\n

Basketball Intelligence is a daily NBA newsletter on Substack that rounds up the best NBA reporting and analysis published each day. Ray LeBov curates it, and it has more than 5,000 subscribers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ray LeBov founded Basketball Intelligence. He\u2019s a former lawyer who spent years as a lobbyist in Sacramento<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ray LeBov uses what he calls the four I\u2019s test. A story must be informative, intelligent, insightful and interesting, and he applies that test the same way to a newspaper beat writer and an independent writer on Substack or Patreon.<\/p>\n

LeBov told The Knick of Time Show that he looks at about 2,500 stories on a typical day. Many take him only a couple of seconds because the headline or byline settles it fast.<\/p>\n

No. He grew up a Philadelphia Warriors fan, but he keeps fandom out of his work because he believes it would bias his picks. Court vision is the skill he loves watching most, so he followed Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets closely during their title run.<\/p>\n

The full conversation is on The Knick of Time Show<\/a> YouTube channel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ray LeBov founded Basketball Intelligence, a daily NBA newsletter that links to the day\u2019s best basketball writing and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":924181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-924180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}