Last Shot is a best-selling book set in a context well-known to fans of college sports. At the end of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball season in March, the best teams play in a single-elimination tournament. If a team wins their lone game, they advance to the next round. If they lose, their season is over. Typically, the tournament produces surprising victories, so in the US, March is known as March Madness. As the name implies, the Final Four consists of the last four teams in the tournament. The winners of the two semifinal games face off in the championship game.

The tournament has become a critical part of US culture. People fill out brackets with predictions about how the tournament will unfold and bet on the games; the NCAA, the schools, and the media make a lot of money from the tournament. The American Gaming Association estimated that $3.1 billion would be wagered on March Madness in 2022. As Dick Weiss tells Stevie, “CBS is paying the NCAA a billion dollars for the TV rights” (47). Weiss also tells Stevie that the presence of TV makes the games longer, since there are more time-outs to allow for commercial breaks during live broadcasts.