What if I told you the NBA Finals are about communism?
Mamdanistan vs. WembanyaMAO in Trump's America
This is going to be the most important piece I’ve ever written.
Not because I got a career-defining scoop or uncovered a massive scandal or landed my holy-grail interview, though any of those would be nice. It’s important because today I can finally put to rest my eight-month-long, (and until now) fruitless pursuit … of finding a way to talk about the NBA in a politics-focused Substack publication. Deliverance is sweet.
The first piece of video content I ever produced for The Recount five and half years ago was a product of the same persistent basketball mania I suffer from today. The WNBA’s Atlanta Dream put the clamps on their owner’s bid for Congress (she now heads the Small Business Administration in the Trump admin).
I don’t see eye-to-eye with people who take politics to be an invasive species in sports, especially basketball. There are political forces underlying box scores, conference records, trades, and triumphs — from Michael Jordan’s infamous “Republicans buy sneakers too” quip to Steph Curry’s freshly inked $400M Chinese shoe deal.
Ultra-crazed basketball fans on the internet behave in a similar manner to the average Swiftie: sniffing out the most covert hints at a player’s ideology, worldview, or party preference from the stockpile of content available. Listen, it’s a long season. We have weird ways of trying to keep ourselves sane. Almost none of them work.
That’s how you end up with a flourishing ecosystem of creators producing an abundance of communist NBA memes on social media. The casual fan might point to LeBron James’ 2019 critical comments about Hong Kong free speech protests (and the subsequent trolling) as the origin point of this trend. Fortunately, I am no casual fan.
In 2018, “Weird Celtics Twitter” started to tickle the curiosity of NBA bloggers, in part because of its very bold, repetitious “Marxist” motifs and “Soviet-style propaganda.” I scrolled for way too long trying to find examples from way back when, but most of the pioneers’ accounts are no longer with us. Only one that I know of is still going strong.
But these left-of-center teachings and traditions have survived long enough to find a newer, younger, brighter, bigger host. One who is willing to offer a more overt declaration over that pesky covert hinting I previously mentioned.
Whether it’s an IG post in front of that famous portrait in Tiananmen Square or selecting George Orwell’s “1984” as his pregame accessoire du jour, one thing’s for sure: Victor “WembanyaMAO” is becoming a political torchbearer for leftist NBA fans. Whether he wants to be or not.
How the new face of the NBA got sucked into commie content, who framed the Knicks and Mamdani as the socialist counter, and why Trump’s unwelcome MSG sleepover awakened fans to class struggle on display at the NBA Finals … all below!
THE SPUR AND HAMMER
To the untrained eye, 7’5”, 22-year-old Victor gives off anthropomorphized Gumby energy, making the nickname Wemby a thrilling and fortunate fit. He vaporizes this cuteification attempt as soon as he steps on a basketball court — a skill he honed after two weeks of training with Shaolin monks in the mountains of central China last June. Based.
I came across my first WembanyaMAO edit on TikTok a month after, in July of 2025. I threw it into my saved folder in case it became more than a one-off — a skill I’ve honed after years of developing my internet trend radar. In January of this year, I noticed the pace of these edits picked up after Wemby was one of the only NBA stars to share his horror in response to ICE’s “murder of civilians” in Minnesota. Tens of millions of views across social.
A nameless, faceless Twitter user called “Wemby Central” fuels a significant amount of the memes and discourse. The account’s bio reads:
The PRSA? Y’all are in-fucking-sane.
When the Spurs reached the Western Conference Finals,1 consider the political-ideological fever pitch reached. I thought I was a genius when I said to friends that the best repellant to the steady creep of fascism in America would be the Spurs beating the Oklahoma City Thunder. Shocked to learn I’m not a genius and I wasn’t having an original thought. In fact, people were posting the historic “Hitler is dead” photo immediately in celebration.
An Instagram Reel with more than 50,000 likes delivers this message: “The most leftist, radical thing you can do right now is support Maoist Victor Wembanyama combat the forces of capitalistic, greedy evil of the Oklahoma City Thunder.” A tweet deemed this effort “a civilizational struggle between Wembanyama Enlightenment and the petrofascism of the American heartland.”
Again, you people are crazy … but as far as unhinged fanbases are concerned, New York will always have something to say.
NOW ENTERING MAMDANISTAN
On the day of Game 1 of the NBA Finals, June 3rd, a 100% heavyweight cotton diptych came across my feed. Means Workwear’s tagline for the t-shirt face-off: “Are you with Chairman Wemby or do you see Mamdanistan on the horizon?”
Naturally, I had to reach out. I chatted with the Creative Director of the Means Cooperative and self-described “full-blown communist” James Harr, who bravely admitted to me he didn’t know who Wemby was until three weeks ago. Comedian Kal Penn had just shared a Mamdanistan tee fit pic to his 423,000 Instagram followers.
The company has received “thousands” of pre-orders for shirts, with Comrade Wemby outselling its Knicks counterpart by more than 2x. I asked if buzz has converted to followers. James reports a gain of around 2,000, “really solid.”
“It’s really easy as a political content creator to get views and engagement because of the nature of the types of content that we put out. But, you know, when you see a music person or a comedy person, there’s a sense of being like, ‘I want more of this,’ and I don’t think anyone really wants more politics in their life right now. So, gaining followers as a lefty content creator is harder.”
Even if followers aren’t converting, which I can say first hand he’s dead on about, does he see the content and the clothing as an unexpected way to get good PR for the socialist or communist cause? I’ve never asked a question like that before. How exciting. He said:
“I think that it creates this very sort of funny and approachable moment for less political people [...] to have like a lighthearted touch point with it that makes it safer to engage with that.
For the broader American public — which is, like, pretty openly hostile to a lot of socialist iconography, history, whatever — I think it softens their relationship with it in a way that I think is largely positive for the movement as a whole.”
He and his crew are offering a rendition of choose your own adventure, in the form of a viral meme placing Jalen Brunson + Zohran on one side under “reform” and Wemby + Mao on the other under “revolution.” This is a boomer Republican’s literal worst nightmare, but James is right — it does feel like a lighthearted touch point through social media content, more than toxic, infectious exposure to radical ideas.
Now … I don’t know if you’ve heard … but Zohran Mamdani … is actually … a literal … Democratic Socialist.
And let me be the first to say, he is putting his whole ass into the NYC propaganda during these ongoing NBA Finals and upcoming World Cup.2
Repealed bedtime for kids to be able to watch the games: 14.3M views on X, 1M likes on IG
Premiered a basketball-themed campaign ad for primary candidates he’s endorsing: 4M views on IG
Dropped a Finals hype video, featuring and endorsed by the preeminent Knicks postgame content collective, Sidetalk — whose nine clips of the mayor during the playoffs have netted over 7M views.
This has paid off in dividends (is that the right finance term? idek). The biggest viral moment of these playoffs so far permanently enshrines him at the peak of this rare form of New York happiness: My mayor Muslim / my bagel Jewish / my Christian Dior / Knicks in 4. I am physically incapable of totalling the engagement on the Knicks in 4 (RIP) chant. Gave up in the hundreds of millions, including offshoots, copycats, and revisions.
All of this has led me to conclude that this was, indeed, the wokest NBA Finals ever. Until Trump came to town.
Speaking of going out in New York … I’m hosting The Recount’s next event, featuring Gianmarco Soresi, Ashley St. Clair, Peyton Dix, and LizaBanks Campagna. I can contractually assure you it will be an utterly unhinged night of politics, comedy, drinks, and special guest appearances from beyond the grave. June 23rd at NeueHouse! Don’t miss it.
TAKING A BITE OUT OF THE BIG APPLE
I’m going to hand over my playbook to you, the way no good coach ever would. But I want you to see the volume of what we’re dealing with here. Behold: My spreadsheet of 160+ pieces of content that I consider “viral” related to the politics of the playoffs. Mostly Trump.
My top takeaways:
Sleeping and booing dominated all platforms last night. No matter how many times different posts came across peoples’ feeds, they were smashing that like button like Chairman Wemby was overseeing them in the content mines.
34 posts came up in my feeds authentically (no search), the tweets totaled 71M views when I gathered the numbers this morning, which means they’re out of date. Conservatively speaking, I think we could safely double it.
Total likes adding Instagram in the mix: 1.2M. Again, double it.
Other high-concentration subjects:
Missing Don Jr.’s wedding but making time for NBA games
He’s “ruining” the “vibes” for everyone” — “ruining bucket list experiences,” “ruining the experience,” “all time great vibes … coming to fuck it up,” “absolute vibe squasher,” “atrocious vibe shift”
My favorite:
Epstein focus, calling on Benson and Stabler sitting courtside to get the “pedophile” in the building
What if “it happens,” will Mike Breen on the broadcast do a “single or a double bang”
The sentiment was overwhelmingly that “the standing fascist regime is in the house,” as fanatical Knicks fan, William D. Hendrix, put it to me over DM. As I zig-zagged through thousands of line-waiters and half a dozen police barricades by MSG before Game 3, I could palpably feel the vibe shift from the consistent blissed-out hum of the week before.
When I yelled out to the (mostly older white men) ticketholders if anyone wanted to talk about the gargantuan elephant shacking up in their team owner’s box, they were mum as fuck. Then it clicked, these aren’t the people you see in video content, tearing up the sidewalks in an almost psychoactive frenzy. All the regular degulars, as halftime performer Cardi B would say, were priced out.
Access — what it costs, what it gets you, which of your values you may have to compromise to get it — Tommy Beer of Knicks Centric put that word in my head thanks to a viral tweet he wrote about it. So, I gave him a call too. This is the most talking on the phone I’ve ever done. Shutting down the watch party, he said, was “particularly distasteful.”
That upper echelon of wealth and power removes you from awareness of the inconvenience you’re causing — a word Spurs player De’Aaron Fox used. Tommy said:
“I joked with my wife. It’s the person who gets engaged at your wedding, you know? You spend time and energy and thought and, you know, it’s the biggest day of your life and somebody is so … doesn’t have the social graces or the empathy to understand, “okay, I’m going to take a step back.”
Of course, the president left the game with seven minutes to go in the fourth quarter. They say the camera adds 10 pounds — the many viral clips of him gobbling down french fries and pizza show he’s making quick work of it.
LOOSE ENDS
📰 Something you should read today: ‘The whole of New York is stressed right now’: how Knicks finals fever reached Rikers Island — Bryan Armen Graham, The Guardian
🕵️ Someone you should know today: Gonna add some comments to this post tomorrow from a personal favorite prolific poster of mine Molly Morrison. She is religiously committed to bringing us all the best insight, analysis, and humor when it comes to the game we love and the culture around it. I’m saying thank you in advance!
🥹 Something to make you smile today: Just to make sure you all know my close-out game is not to be messed with, I’m gonna beat the dead horse here. Who knows when I’ll get to again. Do you know how lucky we are that two men who front these two teams are extremely committed to honoring their emotions in public? They might double-handedly save despairing young men. KAT talking at length, multiple times, postgame about feeling the presence of his mother he lost due to COVID. Wemby, shedding tears about his former coach, weeks after declaring, “Personally, I refuse to carry the burden of having to hide my emotions.” I feel euphoric levels of hope when I think about this.
i’ve had to explain this to a number of people in my life — reaching the conference finals in an nba playoff is like reaching a runoff in a primary election. who from your party (conference) will make it to the general election (against the other party/conference) and potentially win
we'll have to go full bore into the world cup when it kicks off! already collecting content
Such a brilliant article: entertaining, informative and creative. One of your best pieces yet!