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Rugby union is the closest sporting equivalent to a demolition derby. Why are they lifting each other up in the air? Why was that not a penalty for straight-up killing someone? Why am I hurting just watching it on TV?

Yesterday, on Twitter, Peter King of Sports Illustrated indicated his agreement with the idea that health care should be guaranteed for everyone in the United States.

Rockies relief pitcher Adam Ottavino entered the seventh inning of Sunday’s game with two outs, two men on, and a two-run lead. He walked Dodgers second baseman Austin Barnes, and then everything fell apart.Read more...

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The Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg draws our attention to a section of the NFL’s official online store, in which fans can buy novelty license plates in order to express pride in their home state and their team. The Skins’ version of the plate is above, and as you can see, that’s, uh, Washington state. The Skins play…Read more...

No empire, from Sargon’s Akkadian Empire to the Soviet Union, lasts forever. There’s always an expiration date.

Martha, a 3-year-old Neapolitan Mastiff, took first prize at the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest, held annually at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in California. It was something of an upset—older, smaller, often hairless dogs tend to win these. But Martha reportedly impressed the judges by farting and flopping down on the ground…Read more...

The last time Deadspin really checked in on the Philadelphia Phillies, it was the end of May. And the Phillies were terrible! They went 6-22 in that month, a disappointing drop-off after a bad-but-not-horrible 11-12 April. Now we’re coming up on the end of June, and have the Phillies turned it around? No, they have…Read more...

io9 More Clarifications About Both Venom and Silver and Black’s Place in the Marvel Movieverse | Jalopnik Foolish Rental Truck Drivers Are Still Crashing Into This Low-Ass Bridge | Kotaku Nintendo Switch Versus PS4: An Updated Japanese Sales Comparison | Lifehacker How to Keep Your Rolling Suitcase From Tipping Over…Read more...

You’ve encountered enough blog posts with video clips of NBA players goofing around at a basketball camp to know how this is supposed to go. A small child sizes up Victor Oladipo just beyond the three-point line, and you start to get ready for the child to have his shot swatted into the next court or pinned against…Read more...

At 3 p.m. Eastern the Hockey Hall of Fame will announce its class of 2017. Teemu Selanne is the only lock, but other possible inductees include Daniel Alfredsson, Jeremy Roenick, Mark Recchi, Dave Andreychuk, Alexander Mogilny, Paul Kariya, Chris Osgood, and Curtis Joseph. [NHL.com]Read more...

The NBA offseason is the best and wildest of all sports offseasons, and by a long shot. Even the deals that don’t get made are endlessly fascinating. To wit: In some parallel universe, a three-team draft-night trade got done that sent Paul George to Cleveland and Kevin Love to Denver.

Clint Dempsey silenced a Portland crowd—briefly, before they picked up a chant telling him to fuck himself—with a stoppage-time goal that earned his Seattle Sounders a 2-2 draw in their rivalry matchup against the Timbers.Read more...

Russian-American kickboxing specialist Justine Kish squared up with UFC veteran Felice Herrig in Oklahoma City during tonight’s UFC On Fox event. Herrig won in a unanimous decision, although the previously undefeated Kish did an admirable job of wriggling out of a rear naked choke late in the third round and avoiding…Read more...

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Beloved geezer Ichiro Suzuki is very nearly a mascot at this stage of his career, appearing in just 62 games so far for the crummy Marlins, and entered today with an abysmal .209/.242/.297 line that does not suggest he is a man who any longer belongs in the majors. But he’s still plugging away, and today he got a very…Read more...

Hearthstone lesson #43: don’t bet the farm against a Mage with secrets in play.Read more...

The World Taekwondo Federation has changed its name to “World Taekwondo” in response to the “negative connotations” associated with its former name’s initials, according to this BBC report:Read more...

Anthony DiComo of MLB.com is reporting the New York Mets are promoting Tim Tebow from Columbia to Class A St. Lucie, because he is a very good baseball man.Read more...

Scintillating 3-on-3 basketball action is going down right now—right now!—in Brooklyn, at Barclays Center. Probably this or that former NBA star you remember fondly is doing a cool basketball move as I type this. Why aren’t you watching? You should definitely be watching. You should go right now and open up your cable…Read more...

The Minnesota Vikings wrote a letter in support of Michael Floyd’s defense motion arguing that he did not violate his probation by consuming alcohol, because all the alcohol consumed was in a few bottles of kombucha, according to a report from the Pioneer Press.Read more...

Being on the receiving end of a long combo chain is never a great feeling, so I can only imagine what was going through Inuchiyo’s head when Goichi “Go1" Kishida unleashed a flurry of kicks and punches on him.Read more...

The Mail on Sunday today reported that FIFA is investigating the Russian 2014 World Cup soccer team for doping—literally every member of Russia’s 2014 World Cup team:Read more...

Michael A. Taylor of the Nationals spent Saturday pounding the bejeezus out of Cincinnati pitchers, to the tune of four hits, a double, two dingers, and four RBI, in a game the Nationals won by 15 runs.Read more...

I am beginning to lose faith in The Freeze, and that is a terrible thing.Read more...

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Enjoy the weather!Read more...

James Shields took the mound today for the sad-sack White Sox, and in the course of pitching three brutal innings gave up a two-run dinger to Matt Olson, another two-run dinger to Franklin Barreto, and a solo dong to Jaycob Brugman. Olson, Barreto, and Brugman are rookies. It’s wild enough to give up three homers in…Read more...

Get a load of this humpback whale, sending inches of seawater and a few fish into this vessel, and me into cardiac arrest:

Show them the skills that have made you a rich and famous basketball man, Klay:Read more...

Fitbit’s Alta is one of the first fitness trackers that actually looks nice on your wrist, owing largely to its fashionable interchangeable bands, and you can pick one up on Amazon for $70 brand new right now. That’s by far the best price ever; it’s actually $15 cheaper than it was on Black Friday, and $30 less than…Read more...

Mets infielder Asdrubal Cabrera was activated from the disabled list Friday and slotted in at second base, a move that was so unwelcome that Cabrera requested a trade, according to various reports.Read more...

Moto2 qualifying for tomorrow’s Dutch Grand Prix came to a halt today as Italian rider Lorenzo Baldassarri launched his bike, and himself, high into the air in a crash that left this viewer assuming he must be completely broken. Baldassarri later tweeted from the hospital that he’s “almost like new”:Read more...

You can feel however you want about LeBron James—he’s maybe the greatest professional basketball player of all time, so some of your feelings are going to fall under the category of “wrong”—but you can only feel one way about this tattoo. It is perfect.Read more...

Cranky uncle John McEnroe is a Knicks superfan, and has ringside seats at Madison Square Garden, and he recently shared some sweet and sad lamentations about the state of his team in this report from Brian Mahoney, in which McEnroe describes the Knicks as “a total train wreck.”Read more...

Super Smash Bros. Melee may be sixteen years old, but frame data analysts are still tearing the game apart to find new techniques to use in competition.

Here’s Lakers legend and president of basketball operations Magic Johnson, explaining the trade that sent D’Angelo Russell to the Nets and cleared the way for second overall pick Lonzo Ball to supplant him as the team’s point guard of the future:Read more...

Celtics GM Danny Ainge has established a bit of a routine as he’s spent the past few years running the rich-getting-richer version of Sam Hinkie’s Process: The Celtics are rumored to be targeting this or that star or star-in-making in a potential trade, the gossip rises to a fever pitch, and then nothing happens, and…Read more...

ESPN human ringtone Stephen A. Smith is responding tonight to a letter from Lamar Odom’s lawyer, tweeted Friday by Odom with the hashtag “#slander,” saying that his comments were meant solely to attack Phil Jackson and not the former NBA star’s struggles with drug addiction.Read more...

Heather Connor is a 26-year-old personal trainer and weightlifter from North Carolina. She is also the 2017 International Powerlifting Federation’s Open Raw World Champion, yesterday beating out 12 other women from countries around the world with her raw power and propensity to like, yelp, while lifting a bunch of…Read more...

While all I can really pick up from this equal parts bizarre and amazing live performance of these two Colombian rappers for an audience of one Paul Pogba is that they think Pogba is the best, that he has cool hair, and something-something “James Rodríguez,” I love it all the same—mostly because their flows are tight…Read more...

Jalopnik The Shady Way Shops Beat America’s 25-Year Car Import Rule | Kotaku Pokémon Go Players Are Fighting Gym Raids Against Magikarp, Of All Monsters | io9 Elmer Fudd Hunting Batman Through the Streets of Gotham is Terrifying and Amazing | Lifehacker These Are the Best Cities Around the World for Drinking on the…Read more...

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Go ride a bike this weekend.Read more...

It’s been less than a week since Bill Cosby’s trial for sexual assault ended in a mistrial, but the public relations campaign to reclaim his image as America’s father figure is already well underway. Though more than 50 women have accused him of sexual misconduct, his spokesman told Fusion this week that Cosby…Read more...

A Michigan judge ruled Friday that Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State doctor facing dozens of allegations of sexual assault from former patients spanning the past two decades, will stand trial for 12 counts of criminal sexual conduct.Read more...

Dustin Pedroia, Anthony Mackie, Bill Burr, and improvisational quarter keg Rob Gronkowski showed up at a roast for David Ortiz yesterday. Gronk’s material was clearly prewritten; Pedroia’s was supposedly not. One was clearly funnier than the other.Read more...

Everything you need to host a great poker night (except for snacks and drinks) is only $23 today. That gets you 500 casino-quality chips, two decks of cards, and dealer and blind buttons, all in a heavy-duty case.

Sports Illustrated experimented with just what you can put on a supermarket rack without a plastic cover way back in 2015 when the cover of their swimsuit issue featured model Hannah Davis (now Jeter) pulling her bikini bottoms down to her vulva, but have you checked in lately? At this point, the SI swimsuit Twitter…Read more...

The Baltimore Orioles have allowed five or more runs in each of their last 19 games, and tonight, they have a chance to tie the all-time record for most consecutive games with five or more runs allowed.Read more...

In a surprise move, the Chiefs fired general manager John Dorsey yesterday. The decision is odd enough on its own, considering Kansas City had made the playoffs in three of Dorsey’s four seasons, to say nothing of the late-June timing of it all. But that’s not even the weirdest part. Dorsey’s firing is the capstone of…Read more...

Today at the Halle Open, Robin Haase dug around and came up with one of the most inventive and uncomfortable-looking shots of the season: