Hillbilly Blues, The Peacock Olympics, Louvre After Hours

Happy Friday and welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon download of Puck’s best new reporting.

First up today, John Ourand chronicles the inside story of how David Zaslav lost the NBA: the missed signals, the Spulu trigger, the Zaz-Silberwasser good-cop-bad-cop-routine, and the now seemingly inevitable litigious endgame.

Plus, below the fold: Lauren Sherman reveals the latest China-adjacent anxieties consuming luxury fashion executives. Matthew Belloni rings up NBCU’s Mark Lazarus to candidly assess Peacock’s goals for the Olympics before detailing Zaz’s after-hours party at the Louvre. Tara Palmeri documents how the Trump camp is modulating to both Kamala Harris and their own V.P. pick. On Impolitic, John Heilemann is joined by Maya Wiley and Tim Ryan for an authoritative conversation surrounding Harris’s ascension and Biden’s Oval Office address. And on The Powers That Be, Julia Ioffe joins Peter Hamby to offer her frank assessment of Harris’s foreign policy bona fides.

JOHN OURAND

The inside story of testy dealmaking and re-trading: the missed signals, the Spulu trigger, the Zaz-Silberwasser good-cop-bad-cop routine, and all the slights that now point to a litigious endgame.

LAUREN SHERMAN

The slowdown in China has everyone worried, even the brands that shouldn’t be. And it’s all manifesting itself in the latest iteration of designer musical chairs, which favor a reversion toward the traditionalists and a lot of fear-based mis-hiring.

MATTHEW BELLONI

NBCU Media Group chairman Mark Lazarus offers a candid assessment of his goals for the Olympics, how the Games’ value proposition has changed over the years, and A.I. Al Michaels.

TARA PALMERI

With Democrats celebrating a post-Biden move toward parity in the polls, Republicans inside Mar-a-Lago are navigating how to modulate their messaging, and vice president, in a race that’s been transformed overnight.