100 Objects #14: Basketball Sleeve
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100 Objects #14: Basketball Sleeve

B2Upper-intermediateAugust 21, 202641 min

Producer and reporter Ramtin Arablouei (co-creator of the NPR show, Throughline) has a simple question: why are so many NBA players wearing a compression sleeve on their arm? It seems like everyone has one. Do they all have elbow issues? The answer is really the story of Allen Iverson, an underdog player who went from a prison cell to international fame in just a few years. And through the story of him and his sleeve, you can see the whole history of basketball’s relationship with race, with respectability politics, and who gets to look like what on the co...

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Sentence 6 of 12 · 0:16

And at some point during the game, my wife looks up at the TV and asks,

?

I told her that those are compression sleeves.

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B2

B2 · Upper-intermediate

Comfortable if you already follow TV news

A1 40%A2 38%B1 15%B2 6%C1 0%
  • 94% of the words are B1 or easier.
  • 141 words a minute: a natural pace.
  • 183 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

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0:00

During the last NBA season, I was sitting in my living room watching a random game on a random night with my son and wife. We do this all the time. She's sitting there grading papers. My son is doing his homework.

0:12

And at some point during the game, my wife looks up at the TV and asks, why are so many of the players wearing that sleeve on their arm? I told her that those are compression sleeves. They're like a medical thing.

0:25

medical thing. But then she's like, so all of them have medical issues like elbow issues? And that simple question kind of stopped me in my tracks. I started counting and eight out of the 10 players in the court had them on. At this point I'm like neurotically counting. Whoever subs in, whoever's sitting on the bench, how

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