What if Generative AI does to schools what it's doing to the NBA?
Generative AI's impact on the league is worrisome.
Happy NBA Opening Day! I’m celebrating the inauguration of the New York Knicks’ third NBA championship season by sharing some concerns about how generative AI is affecting the National Basketball Association and how similar concerns exist for K-12 education.
How is generative AI affecting the NBA?
Trigger Warnings: There are references to suicide in this post. There are text references in the Lakers section and an AI-generated image of someone holding a gun to their head in the Mavericks section.
The 76ers president gives “AI” a vote.
Philadelphia 76ers President Daryl Morey said at a March 2025 conference, “We absolutely use models as a vote in any decision…It turns out LLMs do fairly well at prediction. They still are not beating human, like, super forecasters ... They do add signal over just scouts and things like that. So we’ll treat them almost like one scout.”
Morey’s conversation about AI starts at 4:43 of this video.
For an AI advocate, Morey has struggled with the human aspects of his job. Despite NBA writer Yaron Weitzman saying Morey will one day be in the Basketball Hall of Fame,1 in almost twenty seasons, Morey-built teams have made two conference finals and have never reached the NBA Finals.
Additionally:
Morey’s former players, such as James Harden, Chris Paul, Marcus Morris Sr., PJ Tucker,2 and Patrick Beverley, have questioned his trustworthiness.
When Ben Simmons was disgruntled with 76ers leadership, Morey could have explored trading him for outstanding player and New York Knicks-killer Tyrese Haliburton. He chose to trade Simmons for James Harden, despite not planning on giving Harden the contract he wanted.
When that reluctance led to Harden demanding a trade,3 Morey insisted on using the cap space it created in the 2024 offseason to sign a star player instead of a few good players to round out the team.
Morey used that money to sign Paul George despite his injury history. “Podcast P” has had a great career, but is not nearly as intense as Allen Iverson,4 the legend 76ers ticket-holders grew up idolizing.
Despite his injury history, Morey also signed Joel Embiid to a contract extension during the 2024 offseason before the team needed to. Embiid is injured so often that it was mentioned in The Naked Gun’s (2025) end credits. Embiid played 19 games and George played 41 because of injuries as the 76ers limped to a 24-58 record. Embiid’s and George’s contracts are now widely regarded as two of the worst in the NBA.
Morey offered Quentin Grimes $100,000 (paltry by NBA standards) to sign a one-year deal with the 76ers without a no-trade clause. Grimes was so offended that he signed the one-year qualifying offer, which means Grimes will likely leave the team next offseason as a free agent, and the 76ers will receive nothing in return.
Concerns for K-12: Personification and assuming the average of the past is the future.
Using “vote” when discussing Large Language Models (LLMs) is personification. So is, “So we’ll treat them almost like one scout.” People vote. People scout. LLMs do neither. LLMs generate text and do nothing more. How wouldn’t students personify LLMs if we attribute verbs such as “vote” and “scout” to them?
Generative AI generates an average or mean of its datasets. We don’t know if Morey gave LLMs a “vote” on the contracts, but considering their past success, LLMs would probably output rosy predictions about Joel Embiid and Paul George. Humans would consider injury history and a player’s fit for a team’s fan base. If teachers rely on generative AI, will they be stuck with the same dated thinking that led Daryl Morey to sign two of the NBA’s worst contracts during the same offseason?
NBC uses generative AI to generate the voice of a deceased person.
NBC is returning to broadcasting NBA games this season. The network will use an AI-generated version of deceased voice-over broadcaster Jim Fagan in its broadcasts.
California recently passed a law protecting actors against digital recreations. Does this law apply to voice-over work?
Concerns for K-12: Lack of innovation and having generative AI voice the dead.
NBC returning to the NBA would be an excellent opportunity for a new voice-over broadcaster. Instead, we get an AI-generated version of the past. Where’s the innovation? What happens when students receive AI-slop versions of the past in classrooms?
Additionally, there is the ickiness of generating the dead. Unfortunately, this is happening in classrooms. I wrote about it happening with Anne Frank.
Please Don't Use Generative AI To Mimic Historical Figures
Trigger Warning: An AI-generated image of Anne Frank and “activity” from SchoolAI in very poor taste.
Zelda Williams has forcefully defended her deceased father, Robin Williams, from icky AI generations.
The Lakers head coach talks to ChatGPT.
JJ Redick, head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, recently said, “I’m the type of person who spends an hour and a half going down a deep, deep rabbit hole on ChatGPT. It used to be Wikipedia, but now it’s me and my friend Chat.”
Redick is only a season into coaching the Lakers, but last season’s playoffs raised concerns beyond his referring to ChatGPT as a “friend.”
In game 4 of the Lakers first-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Redick played only five players in the second half. No substitutions. Not surprisingly, those five gassed players scored only 19 points in the fourth quarter on 5-for-18 shooting and lost the game.
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst was scathing in his assessment of Redick’s performance and how he handled media questions about it. NBA head coaches are not often called childish or irrational.
Concern for K-12: The effects of LLM chatbots on students and teachers.
Chatbots may be harming frequent users like Redick. Adam Raine’s family is mourning their loss and considering the role ChatGPT played in his death. The same goes for Sewell Setzer’s family and CharacterAI.
There is no documented association between frequent chatbot use and self-harm. We do have examples of chatbots generating text encouraging self-harm, as in the cases of Raine, Sewell, and the time Google Gemini generated text telling a college student using it to study, “You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please.”
Journalist Karen Hao documented mental health crises among frequent chatbot users.
I wrote about what we know (and don’t) about the impact of frequent chatbot use on mental health in May.
Are we sure the impacts of frequent chatbot usage on students and teachers will be positive?
The Mavericks generated an AI hype video.
After trading superstar Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers at a discount, the Dallas Mavericks stepped on another (admittedly smaller) rake: They generated a hype video with AI.
Mavericks release AI video with scene where star player aims guns at himself by Michael Shapiro for the Houston Chronicle, March 18, 2025.
The video’s quality is so poor that it has to be seen to be believed. At one point, it looks like Mavericks player Anthony Davis is pointing a gun at his own head. An NBA franchise valued at billions of dollars played this slop for their paying customers.
A fan captured the entire thing. Watch at your discretion.
Concerns for K-12: Devaluing creativity and an abundance of slop.
This video is a good introduction to the concept of AI slop. Teachers can use this video to show students that humans create and computers generate, but what happens when students think they can complete an assignment by entering a prompt into Sora 2, getting a result like this, and sending it to their teacher? What happens when students think that prompting is creativity? What happens if a teacher opens an assignment in an LMS and sees a stream of slop in the student submissions?
The track records (long in Morey’s case, short in Redick’s) of those championing generative AI in the NBA are concerning. We’re seeing fans treated to slop video and AI-generated voice-overs. These impacts raise concerns about similar things happening in K-12 classrooms.
Let’s Talk
What do you think? Do you share the same concerns about generative AI and K-12 education? How are you mentally preparing for the New York Knicks 2025-26 NBA championship run? Comment or ask a question below. Connect with me on BlueSky: tommullaney.bsky.social.
Does your school or district need a tech-forward educator who critically evaluates generative AI? I would love to work with you. Reach out on BlueSky or email mistermullaney@gmail.com.
AI Disclosure:
I wrote this post without using generative AI. That means:
I developed the idea for the post without using generative AI.
I wrote an outline for this post without the assistance of generative AI.
I wrote the post using the outline without using generative AI.
I edited this post without the assistance of any generative AI. I used Grammarly to help edit the post. I have Grammarly GO turned off.
How often are we told that Black team executives with zero conference championships are Hall of Fame-bound?
Tucker once said, “Italian food in America is way better than Italian food in Italy.” I want to sit down and talk with him about this.
Morey may not have any conference championships, but he racks up disgruntled players like few others.
Let me be clear: Tom Mullaney respects the hell out of AI. AI is the coolest.