NEW YORK — NBA officials opened a ceremonial time capsule from 2001 this week and discovered several artifacts from a mysterious basketball civilization that existed before podcasts, tracking data and same-game parlays.
Among the items were a flip phone, an oversized suit, a printed box score and footage of a guard taking a pull-up 18-footer with 17 seconds remaining on the shot clock.
Modern analysts immediately requested that the final item be resealed.
The capsule also contained references to positional basketball, illegal defense rules and a time when “stretch five” sounded like something a trainer asked you to do.
Perhaps most surprising was evidence that players occasionally completed entire interviews without launching personal media companies afterward.
League officials described the discovery as historically significant.
The artifacts will be placed on display beside other relics from early-2000s basketball, including low-resolution highlights, gigantic warmup jackets and the concept of a 92–88 final score.
