You know Malcolm Gladwell has become fully tippy, or should I say pointy, when Sports Illustrated is tossing off references to him as if they were so many dodgeballs. In a piece about Shaquille O’Neal and how he’s “single-handedly changed the culture of the franchise” (as a carrier, as it were, ha), Chris Ballad muses:

Call it the Shaq Effect, or, in honor of author and New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, the Shaq-ing Point—that precise point in time at which a decent NBA player becomes a good one, perhaps identifiable as the first moment when O’Neal draws a double team that creates an eight-foot halo of wide open space for his teammates.

The Shaq Effect [Sports Illustrated]
Can You Buy an NBA Championship? [Gladwell, Slate]
Q. & A.: The Ming Dynasty [Ben Greenman and Peter Hessler on the Houston Rockets’ Yao Ming, New Yorker]
Sports Dept.: The Floor Moved [Ben McGrath on Madison Squ. Garden moving to Radio City during the Republican Convention, New Yorker]
Women in sports: New Yorker cartoon sends wrong message [Stephanie Salter, ASNE]