Sep 8, 2026 · 45 min · 10 segments
The Athletic's Marcus Thompson II discusses his great new book 'Game Changers: The GOATs Who Revolutionized Basketball,' including what makes a player a revolutionary, how NBA storytelling evolves…
Marcus Thompson IIGuestChuckHostThe off-season is still upon us, but basketball is starting to peek over the horizon, and what better time to remind ourselves how we got here and why we love the game? Welcome to Chuck and Darts, a podcast of informed, rigorous, reckless, harmless, speculative, and fun predictions about the game we love, and you can call me Chuck.
This is ep- this is episode number 248.
Number 247 was with Sam Sheehan of You Know Ball.
That was going over basically the major off-season transactions and looking forward specifically to the Eastern Conference and how we expect it to shake out in the '26, '27 regular season.
Uh, so please check that out when y'all have a moment.
But this is a special episode and one I'm, uh, very excited to have.
Marcus Thompson II of The Athletic, author of Golden: The Miraculous Rise of Stephen Curry, uh, as well as his biography on Kevin Durant, is joining me to talk about his new book, Game Changers: The GOATs Who Revolutionized Basketball.
And, uh, I want to be very respectful of his time, as I've already told him off mic, so I wanna get right to it, man.
I really enjoyed the book.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Marcus, how are you?
[laughs]
I didn't wanna be too flowery up front, man.
I didn't wanna make you feel uncomfortable.
But the book's, the book's incredible.
And why don't we start with, uh, what you did all pour into it? How long a gestating project was this? How did it come about?
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The off-season is still upon us, but basketball is starting to peek over the horizon, and what better time to remind ourselves how we got here and why we love the game? Welcome to Chuck and Darts, a podcast of informed, rigorous, reckless, harmless, speculative, and fun predictions about the game we love, and you can call me Chuck.
This is ep- this is episode number 248.
Number 247 was with Sam Sheehan of You Know Ball.
That was going over basically the major off-season transactions and looking forward specifically to the Eastern Conference and how we expect it to shake out in the '26, '27 regular season.
Uh, so please check that out when y'all have a moment.
But this is a special episode and one I'm, uh, very excited to have.
Marcus Thompson II of The Athletic, author of Golden: The Miraculous Rise of Stephen Curry, uh, as well as his biography on Kevin Durant, is joining me to talk about his new book, Game Changers: The GOATs Who Revolutionized Basketball.
And, uh, I want to be very respectful of his time, as I've already told him off mic, so I wanna get right to it, man.
I really enjoyed the book.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Marcus, how are you?
[laughs]
I didn't wanna be too flowery up front, man.
I didn't wanna make you feel uncomfortable.
But the book's, the book's incredible.
And why don't we start with, uh, what you did all pour into it? How long a gestating project was this? How did it come about?
