FiveThirtyEight’s top stories this week

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular This Week] Sunday, August 27, 2017 [1. The Cavs Thread The Needle With Kyrie Megadeal]( No matter who you feel won Tuesday’s blockbuster Kyrie Irving-Isaiah Thomas trade — the likes of which were unprecedented in NBA history — there is an irony worth considering in all this. [Read more]( [2. 7 Rules For Reading Trump’s Approval Rating]( It still isn’t entirely clear how much President Trump’s reaction to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — which was criticized by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers after he blamed “many sides” for the violence there — has affected his job approval rating. As of Wednesday evening, Trump’s approval rating was 36.9 percent, according to the FiveThirtyEight average, down only slightly from 37.6 percent on the day before [Read more]( [3. The Celtics Didn’t Mortgage Their Future — They Insured It]( Danny Ainge finally made a trade, and now he’s getting killed. The guy can’t win. [Read more]( [4. Mayweather. McGregor. What’s The Worst That Could Happen?]( On Saturday night, in the T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip, Floyd Mayweather will defeat Conor McGregor. The great old pro will dismantle the MMA vet turned boxing newcomer, securing a 50-0-0 record that will stand alone in boxing’s record books. McGregor will be outpaced, outclassed and, most simply, outboxed. Mayweather will win — every expert says so. [Read more]( [5. Fake Polls Are A Real Problem]( Is Kid Rock leading the U.S. Senate race in Michigan? A story like that is essentially designed to go viral, and that’s exactly what happened when Delphi Analytica released a poll fielded from July 14 to July 18. Republican Kid Rock earned 30 percent to Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s 26 percent. A sitting U.S. senator was losing to a man who sang the lyric, “If I was president of the good ol’ USA, you know I’d turn our churches into strip clubs and watch the whole world pray.” [Read more]( [6. Trump’s Reluctant Voters Are Getting More Reluctant]( In this week’s politics chat, we check back in on the voters who helped put Donald Trump over the top in 2016 and may prove crucial in 2018 and 2020. The transcript below has been lightly edited. [Read more]( [7. How Big Is The Bannon Wing Of The Republican Party?]( President Trump’s firing of White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon is the latest in a string of major administration departures over the last month. But unlike others who left (Reince Priebus, Anthony Scaramucci and Sean Spicer), Bannon was a clear fan of Trump since the primary campaign. Indeed, Bannon’s website, Breitbart.com, was instrumental in supporting Trump long before any members of the Republican establishment got behind him. [Read more]( [8. Baseball Is Overrun By Adam Dunns]( When Adam Dunn came to the plate, he would pretty much always do one of three things: He would strike out; he would walk; or he would hit a baseball some 400-odd feet. With his propensity to produce these so-called “three true outcomes” — the three types of plays in which fielders play no role — the former Cincinnati Reds outfielder known as “Big Donkey” was the poster boy for a new generation of batters who swung for the fences and didn’t mind a strikeout or two (hundred). [Read more]( [9. Believe The Meteorologists. Harvey Is Incredibly Dangerous.]( [Read more]( [10. Which College Football Teams Do The Most With The Least Talent? (And Vice Versa)]( College football can feel like a hopelessly deterministic sport sometimes. In this week’s preseason AP poll, for instance, it was revealed that the recruiting machines at Alabama, Ohio State, Florida State and Southern Cal are also the top favorites to win the College Football Playoff. Ho-hum. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: How Trump Talks About Race]( Lastly, The Riddler Edited by Oliver Roeder From Alex Vornsand, a puzzle for your daily routine: You take half of a vitamin every morning. The vitamins are sold in a bottle of 100 (whole) tablets, so at first you have to cut the tablets in half. Every day you randomly pull one thing from the bottle — if it’s a whole tablet, you cut it in half and put the leftover half back in the bottle. If it’s a half-tablet, you take the vitamin. You just bought a fresh bottle. How many days, on average, will it be before you pull a half-tablet out of the bottle? Extra credit: What if the halves are less likely to come up than the full tablets? They are smaller, after all. [Solve it!]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ESPN]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 147 Columbus Avenue, New York, NY 10023.