Sean Ramosforhim

The NBA Finals tip off tonight.

The New York Knickerbockers have a shot at winning their first championship since 1973 if they can defeat the seven and a half foot Frenchman Victor Wembanyama and his San Antonio Spurs.

Nowhere to be seen though, last year's champs, the Oklahoma City Thunder, undeniably elite, but also hated on in just about any city outside Oklahoma because of flops.

For those of you who aren't familiar, flopping in the NBA is basically taking a dive.

You put up a shot and then on your way back down, you fall to the ground in hopes that the ref calls a foul and gives you the opportunity to score a few extra points.

And in this particular regard, the Oklahoma City Thunder have a lot in common with the President of the United States at the moment.

Not only have they both taken some huge L's in recent weeks, but on Today Explained from Vox, Donald Trump has officially entered his flop era.

Today explained here with Shelby Talcott, who's the White House correspondent for Semaphore.

Shelby, this whole 1.8 or 1.776 billion dollars slush fund fiasco, easy to forget.

It kind of started in a legitimate place.

Can you remind us where that was?

Someone leaked the president's tax returns to the New York Times.

They showed I pay a lot of tax.

So the president had a legitimate grievance.

Then, of course, he immediately transmutes this legitimate grievance into something that feels a little lopsided, a $10 billion lawsuit against the government that he runs, in which he pits his personal lawyers against Todd Blanche, eventually, who is also his former personal lawyer.

What pushes the president to settle this lawsuit with himself?

By the way, that election was totally rigged.

Tell us how this anti-weaponization slush fund was meant to work in theory.

Pretty incredible setup for January 6th.

There's other perhaps defenders, allies of the president.