Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Over the objections of players, MLB hopes to implement a pitch clock and tighter restrictions on mound visits this season, as first reported by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and then in greater detail by Yahoo’s Jeff Passan.

The NBA is doing something slightly different with their all-star game this year, where the two top vote-getters from each conference will serve as captains and draft a team of their fellow starters. They won’t broadcast it, which defeats the purpose, but whatever, LeBron James and Steph Curry are the captains.…Read more...

It’s cool. Tom Brady hurt his throwing hand in practice on Wednesday and didn’t practice today, four days before the AFC Championship Game. Don’t worry about it.Read more...

Making weight in the UFC is a brutal business. Many fighters train at a dozen or so pounds heavier than their fighting weight, then try to drop all their excess weight in the day or so before a weigh-in via severe dehydration. Middleweight contender Uriah Hall had to scrap his co-headlining bout with Vitor Belfort…Read more...

Just a few days after four-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles said that Larry Nassar—the former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics physician who has pleaded guilty to multiple counts of criminal sexual misconduct—sexually abused her at the in Karolyi Ranch in Huntsville, Texas, USA Gymnastics announced that it…Read more...

Of last night’s three Overwatch League matches, two were complete blowouts that left no doubt as to which team was leaps, bounds, and jetpack boosts ahead of the other.

We’ve seen lots of tricky free kick techniques over the years, but this one from Brazil takes the cake in terms of ingenuity and unexpectedness:

Larry Nassar, who admitted to decades of sexual abuse of girls and young women, often under the guise of medical treatment, wrote a letter to the judge in charge of his sentencing hearing in which he accused her of using the hearing to get media attention for herself and expressed concern about his mental capacity to…Read more...

Even though Austin Rivers didn’t play against the Rockets earlier this week, his very presence helped spark the Rockets’ furtive voyage to the Clippers locker room to cause a commotion and not actually fight. This is because, as Bill Simmons said on Zach Lowe’s podcast, Rivers would not stop talking shit to the…Read more...

Watch that clip up there. It says all there is to say about what Andrew McCutchen meant to Pittsburgh in general, and to Pirates fans in particular. For a long time, it was damn near impossible to imagine a Pirates player who possessed enough star power to affect young fans like that. Now that McCutchen is gone, it’s…Read more...

Raptors center Lucas “Bebê” Nogueira lives in Toronto, where “everywhere you go, it’s Drake, Drake, Drake,” as he explained to CBS Sports’ James Herbert. But Bebê’s tastes are different.Read more...

Burnley manager Sean Dyche seems like the kind of guy who would munch on a big bowl of tree bark, rocks, and beetles for breakfast every morning and make a big show of it if for no other reason than to prove how much of a hardass he is. Thus it wasn’t too much of a stretch to believe a former teammate of his, Søren…Read more...

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday during the NFL season. Email Drew here. Buy his book here.

Villanova beat Georgetown 88-56 on Wednesday night, but the score wasn’t indicative of how the Hoyas played. They played much, much worse.Read more...

There’s one MLS expansion slot left, and it’ll soon be awarded to Cincinnati, Sacramento, or Detroit. Sacramento once looked like a lock to get an expansion spot, but it’s now rather uncertain, likely because Sacramento’s ownership group isn’t as flamboyantly wealthy as their competitors.

Sports media outlet The Athletic is hiring at least five MLB beat writers in disparate markets to fill out its MLB coverage, Deadspin has learned.

One interesting new plot twist in tennis—I wish I’d been reminded of this before last night—is that every match between Gael Monfils and Novak Djokovic must be conducted in Hell. Like their last encounter in New York, the match must be as Lynchian and listless as possible, and the conditions must be inhumane: in this…Read more...

To be honest, I don’t really know why the Milwaukee Bucks, who sit at seventh in the weak Eastern Conference with a mediocre 23-21 record after last night’s home loss to the Miami Heat, aren’t particularly good. I only know that, between Giannis Antetokounmpo, Eric Bledsoe, and a roster crammed with length,…Read more...

Over the weekend, 36 Russian athletes withdrew from a track-and-field competition in Siberia at the last minute following the unexpected arrival of drug testers. Many of those who chose not to participate cited illness, but an investigation is already underway and even Dmitry Shlyakhtin, the President of Russia’s…Read more...

Neymar did an amazing thing yesterday in a game you almost certainly didn’t watch and probably didn’t even hear about. At one point in yesterday’s Ligue 1 match against Dijon, Paris Saint-Germain’s brightest star picked up the ball near the center line and sped his way down half the pitch, in the process breezing past…Read more...

Talent, to paraphrase a Justice of the Supreme Court’s aphorism on the topic of pornography, is something you know when you see. It leaps off the page and jumps through a TV screen or off a stage. It’s something felt; the wonder of truly special genuine talent should rock even the most jaded observer.

Unlike those disposable hand warming packets, this $35 Zippo hand warmer will keep your hands toasty for six hours, then can be charged with the included USB cord, and reused over and over again. Plus, you can use it year ‘round to charge your phone, as it doubles as a 5200 mAh USB battery pack. Today’s price is the…Read more...

Gizmodo Apple, Google Reroute Employee Buses After Series of Alleged Attacks Near San Francisco | Jalopnik Snow Toyota Supra Fools Canadian Police | Kotaku The Internet Reacts To Nintendo Labo | Lifehacker You Don’t Have to Pay to Check a Bag | The A.V. Club Sometimes the best-directed movie isn’t among the best of…Read more...

Layshia Clarendon of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream filed a lawsuit against the University of California yesterday, claiming that she was sexually assaulted by a school employee when she was a student at Berkeley. The suit was originally reported by ESPN.Read more...

During the first day of sentencing this week of Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics doctors who will spend the rest of his life in prison and is accused of sexually abusing more than 150 women and girls, no MSU officials were in the courtroom. A school spokesperson said they didn’t want to take…Read more...

Not only is Amazon currently discounting three month Xbox Live Gold cards to $15 from their usual $25, they’re also offering a BOGO promotion, meaning you’ll get six months for just $15, one of the best deals we’ve ever seen.

The Rockets’ Trevor Ariza and Gerald Green each got two-game suspensions handed down on Wednesday for their roles in the now almost-mythic “secret passageway” confrontation in which they allegedly tried to storm the Clippers’ locker room after a loss. The team, however, is reportedly “shocked and disappointed,” that…Read more...

Kris Dunn finished off a fourth-quarter dunk against the Warriors tonight by losing his grip on the rim and crashing to the floor, where he landed face-first on the court and ended up bloody:Read more...

Dwight Howard, who’s averaging 52.8 percent on free throws this year, made two meaningless ones towards the end of Charlotte’s 133-109 blowout of the Wizards tonight. Afterwards, like Sam Cassell and so many others before him, he wanted us to know how big his balls were.Read more...

The Bulls went into halftime with a three-point advantage over the Warriors, and besides Jordan Bell getting dunked off the court with a sprained ankle, a few other embarrassing things have gone wrong for Steph Curry’s team so far this evening.Read more...

Jordan Bell’s first start of the month started in the cruelest way possible. On the very first possession of the Bulls-Warriors game tonight, Robin Lopez got up a full head of steam, forcing Bell to help over from the corner a bit late. Not only did Bell not quite reach Lopez, he injured himself on the landing.Read more...

Paul Pierce has made a big stink about the Celtics having the audacity to briefly honor Isaiah Thomas with a short video tribute before the Cavs visit the Celtics next month, and now that Thomas has formally asked the Celtics not to thank him, Pierce looks like a selfish asshole. Rather, as Jalen Rose put it straight…Read more...

Icelandic handball genius Guðjón Valur Sigurðsson is one of the most accomplished players in the world, with an Olympic silver medal and the all-time record for most goals for a national team with 1812. I’m a mere quadrennial handball enthusiast, but I’d wager that this one he scored against Serbia during this week’s…Read more...

Per Adrian Wojnarowski, Houston’s Trevor Ariza and Gerald Green will be the only players getting discipline from the NBA after the Rockets’ reported invasion-by-secret-passage of the Clippers’ locker room following their loss in L.A. on Monday night. Chris Paul and James Harden, despite reportedly being a part of the…Read more...

Your continued existence in this world is in many ways determined by how fortunately things break for you in the aftermath of a mistake. Some people step into traffic while looking at their phone and escape with nothing more than the particular fright that results from an unseen car coming to a screeching halt. Some…Read more...

Kotaku Nintendo Announces Nintendo Labo, A Wild New Experiment For Switch | Gizmodo YouTube Unveils New Monetization Rules Killing Ad Revenue for Small Creators | Skillet This One-Pot, No-Roux Macaroni and Cheese Is Crazy Creamy | Jalopnik Here’s Why Space Starts At 62 Miles Up | The Takeout Ask The Salty Waitress:…Read more...

Vice President Mike Pence, an anti-gay zealot and restaurant freak, will lead the United States’ Olympic delegation in Pyeongchang next month, which has irked figure skating star Adam Rippon. After winning the 2016 figure skating national championships and finishing fourth at last month’s nationals, Rippon became the…Read more...

Before her second-round match against Elise Mertens in the Australian Open, No. 23 Daria Gavrilova fielded questions from reporters and apparently some guy who stumbled into the press room.Read more...

Nintendo today announced Nintendo Labo, a wild new experiment for the Switch that will allow players to insert the console into assorted pieces of cardboard, creating items like robots, fishing rods, and pianos.

Twenty-one more women spoke on Wednesday at day two of Larry Nassar’s sentencing hearing. The former U.S.A. gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor has pled guilty to decades of sexual abuse on women and young girls in his care, and the court has now heard 50 total victim-impact statements over the first two…Read more...

In this episode of Let’s Remember Some Guys, Tom Ley and I open a pack of 1991 football cards. We remember that time Mike Singletary coached the 49ers and pulled down his pants as motivation—he was still wearing underwear—and I struggle with Leo Goeas’s last name. And if that doesn’t whet your appetite, go to hell!Read more...

On Tuesday night, WWE’s new Facebook Watch series Mixed Match Challenge debuted to about 126,000 live viewers, with another million-plus later checking it out on demand. For all the rumblings about the WWE/Facebook deal’s possible larger significance, fans were authentically excited to see it. The more laid-back…Read more...

The last time Denis Shapovalov met Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, he could have easily been confused for a half-fluke, a lucky amoeba. At 18 and barely breaking the surface of the ATP tour, he’d been competing mostly at the Challenger level. A flip switched suddenly. Fresh off beating Juan Martin del Potro and Rafael Nadal in…Read more...

Merrell makes some of the best footwear in the game, and they’re knocking up to 30% off a bunch styles to help you hit the trails (plus some outerwear to help with the cold). It may not exactly be hiking weather, but if you’re a bold winter camper, these are the boots you should pick up.

There are a lot of ways for football fans to be insufferable. You have your fatalist fans like me who always expect the worst and expect you to pity them. And you have your loudmouth asswipe fans who brag about their team constantly and outright refuse to acknowledge when they’ve been owned on the field. Sometimes you…Read more...

Outside a squat, one-story building on Chicago Avenue on the south side of Minneapolis, Alexis Collins, a 20-year-old Taco Bell employee, stands holding her baby, both of them bundled up against the piercing Minnesota wind. On the wall behind her, stretching all the way up to the roof, is a multicolor mural of a woman…Read more...

It’s been nearly three whole days since Stefon Diggs caught the ball and turned around to find nothing but open field in front of him, and I’m not ashamed to say I’m still jazzed up about it! If you’re like me, then you will enjoy this latest video compilation of the play, courtesy of the Minnesota Vikings:

It’s weirdly easy to forget about Anthony Davis. The Pelicans big man has a fraction of the personality that DeMarcus Cousins does, he’s played in just four playoff games in his five-year career (all of them losses to the Warriors), and he’s been very good for long enough that the shine of an ascendant star is no…Read more...

The AHL’s Charlotte Checkers sold more than 7,000 hot dogs last night during their 3-0 win over the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. At today’s home game, they’ll sell zero.