Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Giannis Antetokounmpo laid waste to Al Horford with four minutes to go in Game 4 of Celtics-Bucks Sunday. It was devastating in real time, satisfying in slow-mo, and maybe at its most dramatic when slowed to a halt, thanks to Getty Images photographer Jonathan Daniel.Read more...

Outside the 3500-capacity AGP Arena in the modest suburban town of Billericay, Essex, a 100-foot-long, 20-foot-high mural depicts Glenn Tamplin’s dream. It begins with the Mayflower setting sail for the New World, jumps ahead somewhat to the formation of Billericay Town FC in 1880, and quickly addresses the club’s…Read more...

Alabama quarterback Jalen Hurts is 26-2 as a starter, the reigning MVP of the Sugar Bowl, and the 2016 SEC Offensive Player of the Year. And according to his dad, he’ll be the “biggest free agent in college football history” if he’s not starting come this August.Read more...

Friday’s Astros-White Sox game took a suddenly tragic turn in the sixth inning when Chicago reliever Danny Farquhar vomited and collapsed in the dugout. He was rushed to a local hospital, where tests confirmed that he’d suffered a brain hemorrhage and was in stable but critical condition. A few days later, Farquhar’s…Read more...

Bucks star and smoothie fiend Giannis Antetokounmpo had 27 points, including the game-winning bucket with five seconds left, in Sunday’s Game 4 104-102 home victory over the Celtics. And yet, this guy can’t find a table in the city he plays for.Read more...

Former Michigan linebacker Elysee Mbem-Bosse took “full responsibility” for a series of tweets he posted last week, in which he tagged Jim Harbaugh after posting about Michigan being open carry and someone being a “fucking [clown emoji].”

Sunday’s game between the Cubs and Rockies was an entertaining one, featuring some stellar defensive plays from Albert Almora, Jr. and a handful of dingers. Also, we have a middle-infielder beef!

io9 Yes, It’s Already Time for Some Really Wild Star Wars: Episode IX Rumors | Jalopnik The Cheap Alfa Romeo Giulias Are Coming | Kotaku Cats Vs. Nintendo Labo | Lifehacker How to See All the Apps That Have Access to Your Google Info |Read more...

No sport really needs four rounds of playoffs. Sure, you get the occasional good first-round series, but mostly it’s about weeding out the fatally flawed teams before they have a chance to shit up the later rounds, which in theory should be quality hockey all-around. The Flyers are out of the playoffs, thank goodness,…Read more...

If you’ve been putting up with streaks and squeaks for too long, today’s Michelin Radius sale on Amazon is the only excuse you need to replace your windshield wiper blades.

If your board game cabinet has been gathering dust, it’s time to freshen up your collection with today’s board game Gold Box sale on Amazon, the largest we’ve ever seen.

Brandon Belt of the Giants worked an insane 13-minute, 21-pitch plate appearance in the top of the first inning today, against Angels starter Jaime Barria. This strikes me as almost a troll move! Barria faced six batters in the inning, gave up three singles, and loaded the bases—he threw 28 pitches to players not…Read more...

Man, this Bucks-Celtics series is a hell of a lot of fun. Game 1 was a bonkers overtime affair that featured an insane glut of ballsy shot-making in the final minute of regulation. Games 2 and 3 were mostly wipeouts, but Sunday’s Game 4 had another incredible fourth quarter that came right down to the final possession.Read more...

Khris Middleton used a lovely up-and-under move to create a bucket out of Milwaukee’s last full possession of the first quarter of Sunday’s Game 4 between the Bucks and the Boston Celtics. Middleton’s basket left just 1.2 seconds on the clock—not really enough for the Celtics to generate much of a possession headed…Read more...

A standard competitive Rocket League team has three players, but sometimes it only takes one to slam the ball into the goal, even past all three opposing players.Read more...

A’s pitcher Sean Manaea no-hit the Boston Red Sox Saturday evening. It was Manaea’s third win in five starts, and Oakland’s fifth win in six games. Manaea had some help on the no-hit part from the umps and the scorekeeper, but the gem was a gem even if you happened to think Sandy Leon’s bloop to shallow center…Read more...

The joke at the heart of this prom photo is an old and basically harmless one—a father saying listen, young man, if you step out of line with my daughter tonight I will do you great harm is the setup of the best scene in Spider-Man: Homecoming and countless sitcom episodes—but someone should’ve politely told former…Read more...

Mets manager Mickey Callaway announced Saturday that Matt Harvey will be moved to the bullpen following a rough outing Thursday night and a generally uneven start to the 2018 season. The writing was on the wall Thursday, when Callaway said he couldn’t commit to giving Harvey another turn in the rotation. Harvey…Read more...

It can be a little disorienting to remind yourself that grim and gritty Ricky Rubio, the veteran point guard of the Utah Jazz, has played exactly the same number of playoff games over the course of his NBA career as Donovan Mitchell has. Rubio, whose transformation from doe-eyed, baby-faced sidekick to leathery,…Read more...

Sean Manaea, a rare bright spot on an otherwise mediocre A’s squad, threw the seventh no-hitter in team history against a Red Sox lineup that has averaged more than six runs a game this season.Read more...

Here is a section of a transcript of an interview Derek Jeter did with Bryant Gumbel, set to air on HBO Real Sports on Tuesday, courtesy of the Miami Herald.Read more...

White Sox reliever Danny Farquhar fainted in the dugout in the middle of the sixth inning of Friday’s loss to the Houston Astros, and was taken to a local hospital for what was described initially as “a precaution.”Read more...

You’d think Justin Verlander has played enough baseball in his career to no longer notice or care much whether this or that opposing batter pumps a fist after getting on base, but no: it turns out no amount of experience can toughen up the fragile ego of a true baseball man. Verlander pitched brilliantly in a 10-0…Read more...

So the Washington Wizards will not be swept by the Toronto Raptors. Friday night the Wizards got hot from the floor, survived several instances of their players being crabby, runaway buttheads, and grabbed Game 3 on their home court. Marcin Gortat shaved his mohawk; John Wall cooled it with the turnovers; Markieff…Read more...

Giancarlo Stanton socked himself a dinger last night, in the third inning of an 8-5 Yankees loss to the visiting Blue Jays. You want to see the dinger, don’t you. Fine. Here’s the dinger:Read more...

Humanoid soft-baked dough sculpture Glen “Big Baby” Davis is reportedly a suspect in an assault that took place in Hollywood this month, according to a report from TMZ:

The New Orleans Pelicans have a chance to sweep the Portland Trail Blazers out of the playoffs when the teams meet Saturday evening. It’s fair to say not many saw this coming, although the result will uphold at least one generally held maxim—that the team with the best player on it has the inside track to winning an…Read more...

LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers put their stamp on Game 3 early. The Cavs established a comfortable 57-40 halftime lead and looked more like the team that many expected to coast into a second-round series with the Raptors than the stuttering bunch that nearly lost both home games at the start of the first…Read more...

The NHL issued an alert today that the league would be investigating emails received by numerous people purportedly from commissioner Gary Bettman “requesting a phone call or other calls to action,” claiming the emails were being sent from fake accounts:Read more...

(NOTE: Beer and wine not included.)

Even a casual viewer of Olympic gymnastics knows that the gymnasts they watch are young. It’s the one thing that everyone knows about gymnasts, besides their being good at gymnastics—they tend to peak in their teens, and then leave the sport. This has been one of the main stories of the sport since Olga Korbut and…Read more...

The Boston Globe has placed columnist Kevin Cullen on “administrative leave” while it conducts a review of his work, after WEEI radio host Kirk Minihane scrutinized Cullen’s April 14 column about the five-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, and found several inconsistencies.Read more...

Umpire Jerry Meals is five feet eight inches tall. This is a perfectly respectable height, and one that has not kept him from achieving what we can presume was his lifelong dream of being a Major League umpire. Jerry Meals has made it.Read more...

It’s fuckin’ nice out, come yak with us.

A Palatine of Hungary crosses some boars and sows in some Austro-Hungarian barn. He creates a new breed of swine, the Mangalica pig. Upon seeing the result of his meddling with nature, the palatine claps his hands in delight—probably.Read more...

Bradley Beal, like his team in general, is not having a good playoff series against the Toronto Raptors. Beal shot just 3-for-11 in Game 2, scoring just nine points and picking up four fouls en route to an atrocious plus-minus of -34 in 25 minutes. Overall, Beal is scoring 14 points per game and has only made three…Read more...

That’s my guy. Looking like Crossfit Benedict Cumberbatch. Love to see this type of vigor.Read more...

Welcome back to Dead Letters, the feature in which we reprint our favorite reader mail. We should take this moment to remind you that all emails to Deadspin and its editors and writers are on the record unless otherwise specified. Now for your letters.

Two weeks ago, we saw the first glimpses of Simone Biles’s comeback after a full year off and it was impressive. In practice footage, Biles showed that she could still do most of her big skills despite the break from full-time training.

Hearthstone director Ben Brode announced today that he would be departing his job at Blizzard and plans “to help start a new company.” Brode’s departure comes as a shock to Hearthstone fans; the game designer has worked for Blizzard since 2002, starting out as an entry-level game tester and moving up the ranks and…Read more...

This Massachusetts high school baseball game happened last week, but the central story—trying really hard to let someone else have what should be best for them, only to watch them fuck it all up—is timeless. Old Rochester defeated Notre Dame Cristo Rey by a score of a 82-0 (eighty-two! a baseball game!), but the…Read more...

In the frenzied game of musical chairs that is the Trump administration, CIA Director Mike Pompeo is set to become the next Secretary of State. It’s an ideal time, then, to clarify details of his biography, including a rather major one: did Pompeo, as numerous profiles have stated, fight in the Gulf War? We asked the…Read more...

Enter Dominic Thiem, the dull boy who is good on dirt. For all his fits elsewhere, the Austrian has mastered clay, a surface that slows things down enough for his deep court positioning, thumping strokes, and one-track mind. He’s the only player who can justifiably hold any ember of hope when facing Rafael Nadal on…Read more...

At some point, it’ll be continuously warm enough to hike, and Marmot is thinking about getting you geared up and outside for less. Take 25% off all the apparel they carry, or if you need to re-up on your gear, it’s all 20% off too during their Friends & Family sale. Just use the code FRIENDS at checkout. It’s like…Read more...

It was more than five years ago when Lance Armstrong went on Oprah, looked her in the eye, and admitted to the world that his iconic comeback story was fueled by the most comprehensive doping regimen in cycling history. The seven-time Tour de France winner and cancer survivor had spent his career brashly denying that…Read more...

New York Times reporter Amy Chozick has a new memoir out called Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling, and in it she recalls being gaslit and harassed by Clinton’s male press aides, whom she refers to as “The Guys.”Read more...

Plenty of professional wrestlers were able to become kids’ heroes; it is, after all, a battle between good and evil. Being revered, however, is a different matter. Even when there were hundreds of full-time wrestlers across the United States, the overall reputation of the business as a sham and the outsized demeanor…Read more...

Unlike the introductions for the adult Jeopardy! contestants, who stand there with a slight smile indicating either either smugness or paralyzing terror and no emotion in between, the college kids are allowed to “have fun with it.” Last night’s trio put together a little routine involving an invisible basketball. You…Read more...

Former Ole Miss quarterback Shea Patterson penned a nine-page letter in which he claimed the Rebels coaching staff routinely lied to him to keep him on campus, according to CBS Sports, which reviewed a copy of the letter.

There’s probably nobody in the NBA more fun to interview than Steven Adams, who manages to be charming even when he’s quite pissed off, or being outright evasive. He always manages to shine brightest when the conversation turns to one of his favorite topics: anime.