Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

If for whatever reason you still doubt ESPN pundit Stephen A. Smith’s abilities as a performer, please see the clip below, in which Smith effortlessly snaps into character while shouting all of his signature catchphrases in front of a green screen:

A good way to tell that Major League Baseball’s free agent marketplace is not working the way that it’s supposed to work is the insistence of various establishment baseball media types that it is in fact working just fine. “Free agency is alive and well,” the former MLB GM Jim Bowden tweeted after Bryce Harper…Read more...

Former MLB outfielder and former Washington Nationals assistant hitting coach Jacque Jones was found liable last month in a San Diego civil court for distributing a private intimate photo without consent. The verdict stemmed from a lawsuit filed two years ago in which a woman going by Jane Doe said Jones sent a photo…Read more...

With 7.6 seconds left and a 109-106 lead against the Kings Wednesday night, Gordon Hayward committed a cardinal sin of NBA defense: he fouled a three-point shooter. The contact was soft, but Buddy Hield got himself to the line for three shots and tied the game up, leaving the Celtics without any timeouts to move the…Read more...

Dorco, the best deal in razor blades, and the only company crazy enough to make a 7-blade razor, will sell you their take on the safety razor complete with a mirror and 30 blades for $17 today with promo code Kinjaprime. That’s an all-time low, and you’ll even get free shipping.Read more...

When the first Avanti finished in Youngstown, Ohio, rolled off the line on Sept. 30, 1987, it was touted as a rebirth for both a once-revolutionary car and for a region ravaged by the closure of its steel mills.Read more...

However we got here, we’re certainly here now. When the Champions League announced that it would introduce VAR—Video Assistant Referee, essentially soccer’s answer to the instant replay challenge—midway through this current campaign, the system brought years of baggage with it. Its deployment at last year’s World Cup…Read more...

“It was the first R-rated movie I was allowed to see in theaters, which was a big deal to me at the time,” Blake, now a marketing and PR professional in Chicago, says of The Passion Of The Christ. Blake was 12 and, as a budding horror fan, felt he could handle the violence everyone was talking about. Besides, like so…Read more...

Clear the Rack, Instax cameras, and a toilet paper sale lead off Thursday’s best deals from around the web.

Calgary Flames forward Matthew Tkachuk, one of the most annoying dudes to play against in the NHL, picked up a ticky-tack goalie interference call that disallowed a goal in the first period of the Flames’ eventual 2-1 loss to the Golden Knights on Wednesday. So naturally, Tkachuk decided to go back out and try to do…Read more...

Google defines NFL Draft 2019 as “Apr 25- Apr 27,” and already people are “mocking” who the Jacksonville Jaguars will select, in the NFL Draft. The following “fan-alysis,” combining history, metrics, and knowledge, reveals the fact that there is only one smart choice.Read more...

If you are an NFL fan who has spent any amount of time looking at Twitter over the last few days, you have surely been exposed to some amount of chatter about vague rumors concerning something that the Cleveland Browns are about to do. There was probably an emoji involved. Things really heated up, though, when a few…Read more...

The beginning of spring is the best time to save on winter clothes for next year, and REI’s end-of-season clearance is proof positive. For a limited time, over 5,000 cold weather products are on sale, with an extra 25% off at checkout.

If you’re on the market for a new, classy everyday work bag, today’s the day to buy it. Several leather and canvas bags are on sale in Amazon Gold Box, including affordable $22 messenger and $26 toiletry bags. Genuine leather items are, of course, a tad more expensive than the canvas options.Read more...

The Lakers lost again Wednesday night, their fourth loss in a row, and eighth in ten games. Since January 1 they’re a crummy 9–19, and they’re now five games under .500 with 17 left to play, and 6.5 back of the Western Conference eighth seed. They’re dead.Read more...

The 76ers lost by a point to the lowly Bulls Wednesday night, 108–107, in Chicago. Whatever. The Sixers have performed admirably during this suddenly indefinite stretch of games without Joel Embiid, and the Bulls are much better now than they were before the trade deadline, and the Sixers were on the second leg of a…Read more...

The whole Anthony Davis trade deadline saga was twisted up and poisoned by posturing and strategic leaking and all the passive-aggressive indirect communication that could be crammed into a day, each day, for a solid two weeks. But Brian Windhorst’s delicious scoop—that the Pelicans conducted trade negotiations with…Read more...

While Manchester United was handing PSG yet another hilarious Champions League collapse in Paris, another, similarly entertaining match was going down 985 miles to the southwest of Europe. Porto hosted Roma at the Estádio do Dragão in Portugal, with the home team needing to make up a 2-1 first leg deficit, albeit with…Read more...

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and The Ringer CEO Bill Simmons had a surely scintillating discussion at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference last weekend, where Silver said something mildly newsworthy and kind of bizarre about how players today are unhappy and anxious as “a direct product of social media.”

Paris Saint-Germain, the most inept great team in Champions League play over the past handful of years, saw their dreams dashed in the competition once again as Manchester United orchestrated a shock comeback by winning today’s round of 16 second leg by a score of 3-1.

I came in third on Jeopardy! That’s another, less blunt way of saying that I got my ass beat. So I have no Alex Trebek stories; they film five episodes a day, so each and every day, 10 hopeful contestants go home immediately and disappointed. It’s a well-oiled machine. My interactions with Trebek were limited to…Read more...

If you don’t suffer from dry skin, congratulations, and I hate you. Leave now. The following content is not for you.

We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.Read more...

As Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray has moved on up from A’s draftee to intriguing NFL draft possibility to likely first-rounder all the way to potential first overall selection, the noise around him has grown louder and dumber. At this time of year, the cabal of anonymous NFL scouts loves nothing more than to…Read more...

Last month, Paris 2024 organizers voted to include breaking in the 2024 Summer Games. If the IOC votes next year to make it official, breaking will be in the program for 2024 Olympics.

Around 40 or 50 students from the University of Tennessee showed up Tuesday night to the Volunteers’ men’s basketball game against Mississippi State, and protested how the school handled, or didn’t handle, a recent blackface photo involving four people all believed to be UT students.Read more...

For those of us who revel in kneejerk stupid on a daily basis, so, for everyone, the NBA is the perfect training ground for any anti-PhD candidates. Every game is a daily rectal thermometer to be wielded as a way to measure teams’ futures, with the benefit of that being that each subject is an endless supply of…Read more...

Watch enough professional darts competitions, and you will be treated to one of the most iconic calls in sports: “OOOONE-HUUUUNDRED-AND-EIIIIIGHTEE!” The call, shouted by referees around the world, tends to follow a similar cadence and inflection: starting as a bass-rattling bellow, soaring in pitch and volume to hit…Read more...

Late last week, military news site Task & Purpose confirmed a disturbing fact: the newly created U.S. Space Force has no intention of fighting aliens. Despite the recent uptick of military UFO sightings, the Pentagon appears uninterested (at least officially) in the possibility of hostile aliens. But if an alien…Read more...

Before Game 3 of the 1956 NHL semifinals between Detroit and Toronto, an unhinged Maple Leafs fan phoned the hotel the Red Wings were staying at to inform whoever would listen that if Ted Lindsay and Gordie Howe took the ice, they’d be shot on sight.

Brand new Philadelphia Phillie Bryce Harper caught everyone’s attention when he told reporters that he plans on calling Angels superstar Mike Trout to recruit him to Philadelphia when Trout’s contract expires in 2020. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Angels were not very happy about this, and have reached out…Read more...

Going from a No. 1 overall pick on a team with legitimate NBA Finals aspirations to one scrapping for the chance to get swept in the first round felt like just the right amount of pressure that Markelle Fultz’s flimsy shoulder could bear to hold. Unfortunately, a month after the trade that sent him from the Sixers…Read more...

A Simplehuman trash can, Thermapen Mk4, and LEGO’s Paris Skyline architecture set lead off Wednesday’s best deals from around the web.

Recent Boston Bruins pickup Marcus Johansson had to leave Tuesday night’s eventual 4-3 win against the Carolina Whalers with an upper body injury, after Micheal Ferland crunched him with a clean but brutal body check in the game’s opening minutes. Johansson would stay down on the ice for a brief time, and then exited…Read more...

Barstool Sports, a site for boys who wanna grow up to be Donald Trump Jr., is getting shit on this week. This is a justified shitting-on, because comedian Miel Bredouw called out the site for using a video that she made without giving her credit—in fact, we found they sometimes upload pilfered content via a dummy…Read more...

The Phillies eventually got their man in Bryce Harper, even if it took all damn winter, but they were always favored to get someone, given that principal owner John Middleton perhaps unwisely admitted the team’s willingness to spend “stupid” money. What was in dispute was whether their primary target would be Harper…Read more...

There’s still time for Golden State’s all-All-NBA five-man lineup to coalesce into the world-vaporizing unit it appears to be on paper, but a few terrifying stretches aside that hasn’t happened yet. Inserting DeMarcus Cousins into their rotation has so far been a bit of a negative for the Warriors, who spent Tuesday…Read more...

It’s wild to remember that this time last season the Timberwolves were cruising to 47 wins in a deeper Western Conference, headed for their first playoff appearance in 14 years. With Jimmy Butler reunited with head coach Tom Thibodeau, and Karl-Anthony Towns ascending, and Andrew Wiggins uhh making a lot of money,…Read more...

In February of last year, the U.S. Center for SafeSport found that American weightlifter Colin Burns had committed “non-consensual sexual acts” with another weightlifter and banned him—but that ban didn’t even last six months, the Orange County Register reported yesterday. Instead, the ban was overturned that July by…Read more...

Wake Forest, a lowly 4-12 ACC squad that Kenpom said had a 99.6 percent chance of losing tonight, came achingly close to beating Duke on “Senior” night at Cameron. The Demon Deacons held with the Blue Devils all night, and even jumped out to a 10-point lead in the second half, but in the end the determination of R.J.…Read more...

Okay, this is a pedantic grievance, but if you’re on Deadspin you come here for or at least tolerate the pedantry. This tweet from NBC Sports’ Chicago Bears site is wrong as hell:Read more...

Okay, so Ajax’s amazing, unbelievable, thrilling 4-1 (FOUR to ONE!!!) upset over Real Madrid today wasn’t quite as amazing and unbelievable and thrilling as Barcelona’s 6-1 (SIX to ONE!!!!!) comeback a couple years ago, but it still has to go down as one of most improbable, well-deserved resurrection acts in recent…Read more...

Former Adidas director of global sports marketing for basketball James Gatto, former Adidas consultant Merl Code, and sports business manager Christian Dawkins were all sentenced to prison today for their roles in a college basketball corruption scandal that amounted to a few players and their families receiving a…Read more...

We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.

Real Madrid’s teenaged boy wonder Vinícius had to come out of today’s home Champions League match against Ajax after injuring his leg. Likely due to a combination of the physical pain of the injury, the emotional pain of having to leave such a big game, and the psychic damage the complete and utter ass-kicking Ajax…Read more...

Chiquita Evans, a 30 year-old professional NBA 2K player who splits her time between Chicago and Mobile, Kentucky, loves winning and really loves basketball. Today, she may become the first woman to be drafted in the NBA 2K league, and she’s more than ready to grab the W.

After last night’s loss to their co-tenant Los Angeles Clippers, the Lakers are 2-5 since LeBron James activated his “playoff intensity level,” a spell that means they’re probably super dead. As losses go, this one was perfectly emblematic of how the entire season has gone for both L.A. clubs; the Lakers didn’t give a…Read more...

The Mets announced today that ESPN baseball broadcaster Jessica Mendoza will be joining the team’s front office as an advisor while she continues to work for the network. Right after that, ESPN announced that Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia will be joining ESPN as a baseball analyst while he continues to play for the…Read more...

After months of head-scratching about what might have been up with Rams running back Todd Gurley in the playoffs and the Super Bowl, there’s finally an answer: His knee is pretty messed up.Read more...

The streets may still be cached in snow, but it’s never to early to start planning your glorious return to the outdoors. Right now, Massdrop’s offering a few colors of the Altra running shoe for just $60, in both men’s and women’s styles. These comfortable running shoes are designed to fit better and its mesh upper…Read more...