nba

The moment Ben Simmons, alone under the basket in the fourth quarter of a Game 7 against Atlanta on 20 June 2021, passed instead of dunking — the clip that ended his Philadelphia career and became the internet's shorthand for a man declining the obvious. The record notes his coach was asked afterward whether Simmons could be a championship point guard and said 'I don't know', and that the pause was the meme.

Winning when it counts, against the odds — a clutch play, to clutch it — from sport into gaming and out again into anything done under pressure at the last moment. The record's entry for the word that means 'when it mattered'.

Finished, doomed, beyond help. Applies to a person, a country or a group project with equal ease, which is why it stuck.

A basketball legend's tearful face pasted onto every loser in sport. Jordan himself is reportedly fine with it, which is somehow the most surprising fact on record.

Damian Lillard's wrist-tap — 'Dame Time' — for a late shot that ends a game, first properly named after his 0.9-second series-winner against Houston on 2 May 2014 and made permanent by the 37-foot shot over Paul George on 23 April 2019 and the wave goodbye that followed. The record's entry for a clock that only one man is allowed to read.

A post number ending in repeated digits — 22, 777, 8888 — treated as a lucky omen and greeted with 'checked'. The record's entry for the numerology of a message board, and for the only luck that was entirely automatic.

'Greatest of all time' — from a boxer's company name to a rapper's album to the argument that runs every sports comment section, and the goat emoji that settles it. The record's entry for the superlative that became an animal.

Excessive, unearned praise — and, from April 2025, the word for what a chatbot does when it tells you your business plan is genius. Sam Altman used it about his own model, which is how slang gets into the minutes.