#NPRreads: 3 Great Stories To Bounce Around This Weekend

#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and The Two-Way. The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories.

From Miles Parks, associate producer for Here & Now:

If you've been a Los Angeles Lakers fan for the past three seasons, I should begin by saying sorry. Anyone who's loved sports for an extended period of time has seen some rough patches (I certainly have), but watching Kobe Bryant's career disintegrate into a barrage of ill-advised three-pointers and surly press conferences as the team won less than 30 percent of its games couldn't have been a blast.

That said, look no further than this fantastic analysis by Kevin O'Connor in The Ringer for a glimmer of hope.

Second-year player D'Angelo Russell is not as good as Golden State's Steph Curry, O'Connor explains, but the Lakers could use him similarly to how the Warriors use their star. The Lakers' new head coach, Luke Walton, is a former Warriors assistant, and Los Angeles just drafted a big man who can drain threes. Sound familiar?

LA won't challenge for the Western Conference title this year, but they might once again be watchable. For all of us that love to hate them, that just makes basketball more fun.

From political reporter Sarah McCammon:

This is a piece that may physically hurt to read if you're a parent. The heartbreak of the mother is all too easy to imagine. What really moved me about this essay was the simple, specific, almost mundane detail with which the writer described what must be one of the worst parts of any ER doctor's job. The white coat, the broken chair — the emotional toll you take home. It's a different perspective than we usually focus on in tragedies; appropriately, we think about the families of those lost first. This piece honors that perspective while sharing a fresh insight — the painful, delicate job of the doctor in walking families through the worst days of their lives. It's hard to read, but deeply human: as healthcare providers, social workers, clergy, teachers, and yes — journalists — certainly know, even at work we are human, and being close to another person's pain takes a toll.

From Andrew Jones, an editor with Morning Edition:

The New York Times Magazine has done a great profile of some refugee students in Boise, Idaho. According to the piece, of the 26,000 students in Boise, roughly 1,300 are refugees. The article does a really nice job of highlighting their diverse experiences in acclimating to life in the American heartland. High school is hard enough without being a refugee, so it's a fascinating peek into the lives of these teenagers.