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Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where we are back on the grounds of the Leavy-berg Compound, returned from a one-week road trip to the tremendous Social Bar & Kitchen. We are back to get season seven off the ground and running, with a conversation show considering whether or not the NBA’s so-called era of player empowerment has made like Arthur Fonzarelli and jumped-the-shark. Where we begin with the conception of player-empowerment is up for some debate, may it be Kareem Abdul-Jabar’s move from Milwaukee to Los Angeles in the early 70’s, ascendent post-Jordan superstars Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter’s demand for respective departures from Toronto, or a LeBron James initiated play to make Miami the center of the basket-verse in teaming up with peers and fellow stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. A lot has changed since 1975; 2004; 2010. Individual player influence has grown exponentially, and as salaries have grown within some proportion to the NBA’s increasingly exorbitant televised rights’ fees, so have the influence of certain less-than-exemplary professionals:  namely Ben Simmons, Kyrie Irving and James Harden. But first, the rants are back, baby, and with a vengeance. Ed sounds off at the start with a heated condemnation of an anti-abortion rights’ amendment backed by both houses of Pennsylvania’s state legislature; Andrew sets the stage for the Wimbledon gentlemen’s final with long held animus for one finalist and begrudging fascination for the other less-accomplished, more mercurial opponent; and Zak brings it home with some dour news regarding the future of American democracy: the expected/pending outcome of Moore v. Harper in the Supreme Court likely coming down in support of independent state legislature doctrine.