Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Late on during a tight and tense cup match between PSG and Rennes, Neymar—trying to wrangle a long punt and wind down the clock to protect his team’s 3-2 lead—was whistled for what he believed to be a soft foul on Rennes’s Hamari Traoré. To whittle away even more time, Neymar kicked away the ball before Rennes could…Read more...

If you’re someone who goes to a lot of basketball games—professional or college—there’s a good chance you’ve seen Red Panda. Rong Niu, a native of China’s Shanxi province who performs as Red Panda, has an amazing act: She rides a seven-foot tall unicycle while balancing bowls on her head. She also kicks bowls from her…Read more...

Last night’s megatrade that will send Alex Smith to Washington ensures that this offseason is almost certain to feature that rarest of NFL species: an experienced starting quarterback venturing into unrestricted free agency. Brace yourself, gentle reader: We live in a world in which Kirk Cousins will likely soon be…Read more...

Watching Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in a 7,000-seat arena for 24 hours over the course of three days made me feel like I was 19 years old again. I don’t miss it, especially after being surrounded by fans around that age at Eleague’s CS:GO major in Boston.

Houston-based radio guys Josh Innes of SportsTalk 790 and Seth Payne of SportsRadio 610 spent time at Radio Row today being loud at each other on air. It created a weird, beautiful situation where the radio shouters were shouting live on radio while other radio shouters around them focused their attention on the…Read more...

I remember the moment well, save for all of the details. It was a bar with food, or maybe a restaurant with drinks. It was for sure on the North Side of Chicago. There was beautiful reclaimed wood everywhere, with tables to match. Big windows looking onto the street covered all of one wall. I was there with one, two,…Read more...

According to TMZ Sports and CBS2, longtime NBA player Rasual Butler and his wife Leah LaBelle died in a car crash around 2:00 a.m. this morning in Los Angeles. Butler was 38, and LaBelle was 31. Their car apparently hit a parking meter, flipped over, and slammed into a wall after the driver lost control on Ventura…Read more...

A friend of mine pointed out that Mirka Federer, after attending her 30th Grand Slam final, still bothered to record the trophy ceremony for her husband—whose every offhand utterance, let alone metal-hoisting victory speech, is documented by a flickering panopticon of cameras and instantly cemented into Tennis…Read more...

All Larry Nassar had to do to get investigators off his case in 2004 was say he was doing medical treatment, according to police documents released by Meridian Township police. The reports, released today, catalogue the steps police took when Brianne Randall (now Brianne Randall-Gay) came to them with her mother in…Read more...

Pierre Agnes, the 54-year-old CEO of surfing company Quiksilver, has been declared missing at sea by French authorities, after his fishing boat washed ashore Tuesday without him inside.Read more...

Former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez has been dead for nearly a year. He’s been out of the NFL since 2012, was put away for life in 2015, and realistically, the time to litigate Aaron Hernandez has long since passed. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Bob Brookover disagrees.

Washington and Kansas City are reportedly set to pull off something of a blockbuster trade, with the Chiefs sending quarterback Alex Smith to D.C. in exchange for a third-round draft pick and cornerback Kendall Fuller. Upon learning that Fuller was included in the deal, Skins safety D.J. Swearinger’s tweeted “Never…Read more...

Well, well, would you look at that. Ol’ Arsène had an ace up his sleeve after all, and Arsenal have locked in two players on this transfer deadline day who will give Gooners everywhere something to cheer for once and, even more importantly, some much needed hope.Read more...

After only two days on Australia’s Survivor-like reality TV show called I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Outta Here!, 25-year-old tennis player Bernard Tomic, Australian’s non-Kyrgios bad boy who’s best known for tanking matches and acting like a jerk, quit the show saying it made him depressed and that he wanted to return…Read more...

The A.V. Club It turns out that people don’t really want to spend $1,000 on an iPhone | Jalopnik Harley-Davidson Is Sad And Getting Sadder | io9 Updates On The First Purge, Channel Zero, And More | Kotaku Nintendo Printing Money, Profits Up 261 Percent | Lifehacker I Made My Girlfriend Choose Between Me and Weed |Read more...

Here’s a familiar song in an unfamiliar setting:Read more...

Here is a post-all-star-break sentence that absolutely nobody in hockey could have predicted at the start of the year: with their 4-2 win last night against the Calgary Flames, the Vegas Golden Knights added two more points to the best record in the Western Conference. We’re far enough into the season now that this…Read more...

After some consideration, Formula One has finally decided to end its use of grid girls starting with the 2018 FIA F1 World Championship season. About freaking time.Read more...

There’s always that one person in your life that has nothing on their walls. Add some awesome infographics to gifting list with 25% off sitewide at Pop Chart Lab. Check out their newest prints, like the Permutations of Pasta and the Magnificent Multitudes of Beer. Enter the code GROUNDHOGDATA at checkout to see your…Read more...

Fox will reportedly be a new home for Thursday Night Football next year, taking over from two seasons of split custody by NBC and CBS. Bloomberg initially reported that the network was close to a deal, and John Ourand of Sports Business Journal followed up:Read more...

There are several ways to express that James Harden’s performance tonight was historic—a personal high score, a franchise high score, the first 60-point triple-double in NBA history—but there’s maybe nothing that’s quite so impressive as just looking at the stat line itself:Read more...

According to the Kansas City Star, the Kansas City Chiefs have reached an agreement to trade longtime starting quarterback Alex Smith to Washington, freeing the Chiefs from a $17 million cap hit.Read more...

Kevin Love will reportedly be out for six to eight weeks after injuring his hand in the first quarter of tonight’s game against the Pistons. He left the game shortly after making contact with Andre Drummond while trying to grab a pass, and initial x-rays showed a fracture.Read more...

Tonight we will be subjected to a word stir-fry (Trump would never have anything to do with a salad) of nationalistic, xenophobic, dog-whistle prose, delivered by our reluctant president, a congealed adult-shaped mound of the grease run-off collected by a George Foreman grill.Read more...

The South Carolina and Missouri women’s basketball teams have played and split two heated games this month, and in each match-up, fans from both sides have been accused of increasingly shitty and racist behavior. In the first game, a Missouri fan reportedly called USC players “thugs.” In this past Sunday’s game,…Read more...

Stefan Loibl of the Straubing Tigers was just giving a routine interview in the second intermission of a 4-2 loss to fellow German hockey club Kölner Haie. But just when you’re feeling safe—that’s when Der Eismaschine will strike.Read more...

The Rays have cut ties with team doctor Michael Reilly, who’s worked with the franchise since its 1998 inaugural season, after a former employee at his private practice accused him of sexual abuse that began when she was a teenager.Read more...

Famously star-crossed Premier League club Arsenal have already had a bad winter transfer window. Just last week the Gunners let Manchester United Debo them out of their best player, Alexis Sánchez, and the only thing that could even kind of almost halfway redeem them from that humiliating chump move was the promise of…Read more...

Foxtrot Alpha A Russian Fighter Jet Just Came Screaming Within Five Feet Of An American Navy Spy Plane | Gizmodo Naked Mole-Rats Could Theoretically Live Forever, Study Suggests | Kotaku People Are Putting Video Game Faces On Real Porn, The End Is Nigh | The Takeout Ask The Salty Waitress: What should I do if my food…Read more...

Canadian 22-year-old Cyle Larin—MLS Rookie of the Year in 2015, and leading scorer for Orlando City in all three of his seasons with the club—decided he’d had enough of his MLS team this offseason. Larin, presumably seeking a step up from a bad American squad and into potential Champions League minutes, went overseas…Read more...

Being unfamiliar with Peter Brock is pretty much unthinkable to Australian auto racing fans, but for much of the rest of the world, that’s the sorry state we live in. This is a shame, not just because Peter Brock was a truly gifted driver and ran a great factory-approved tuning company, but because the story of his…Read more...

If you’re in South Carolina on Super Bowl Sunday and you hear the national anthem start, stand up and yell every last word, or else the patriotism police will take you to the office of Governor Henry McMaster for a spanking. Today McMaster issued a proclamation, which means nothing, that everyone in his state should…Read more...

Fabiano Caruana is the No. 2-ranked chess player in the world. He achieved Grandmaster status just before his 15th birthday back in 2007. In the 2016 Chess Olympiad he represented the United States on the first board as the Americans took home the gold for the first time since 1976. In March, he will compete in the…Read more...

After the Cleveland Indians announced that they’ll be taking Chief Wahoo off of team uniforms by 2019, the Washington NFL team naturally drew scrutiny. Would they follow suit and ditch their comically racist name for something more palatable, or at least scrub their logo for something more neutral?

If the Eagles do the unthinkable and actually win the Super Bowl, Philadelphians will rush out onto the streets in celebration. If they want to climb some light poles to celebrate, they will be able to do so unencumbered: Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross announced today that the city won’t be greasing up…Read more...

Time for your weekly edition of the Deadspin Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. Today, we’re talking Garys, hats, fried rice, telecommuting, and more.Read more...

Some people have “good” skin, some people have “bad” skin, some people just don’t give a shit about the visible condition of their skin. Personally, I have what I call “problem skin” and boy, do I like buying a bunch of random chemicals to try to beat it into submission.Read more...

The most moneyed Goliath in prep school athletics needed help from above, or from somewhere else, to vanquish a relative David in parochial hoops over the weekend.

When you pee into a drug tester’s cup at the Olympics, you don’t just pee into a plastic cup labeled “ATHLETE PISS,” you pee into state-of-the-art BEREG-KIT Geneva bottles made by Swiss manufacturer Berlinger. They have a locking top that can only be opened by a machine that destroys them, which would seem to…Read more...

Update: This deal is back, if you’ve already made it through your first bag.Read more...

On Sunday, French mountain climber Elisabeth Revol was rescued by a team of Polish climbers on the slopes of a mountain in northern Pakistan and airlifted to a hospital in Islamabad. The rescue effort involved the Pakistani Army, an urgent crowdfunding campaign, diplomatic intervention, and the abandonment of an…Read more...

In November, Uproxx editorial director of music Caitlin White published “Breaking Up In Joshua Tree Helped Me Understand My Own Twisted Heart,” originally under the third-person headline “A Writer Finds Loss And Rebirth In A Road Trip To Joshua Tree.” The post was a true original, alternating intense and writerly…Read more...

Stealing packages seems like a scummy, straightforward two-person operation: One briskly walks up to the house, while the other keeps the car running. This one on Friday quickly fell apart due to an unforeseen variable: wet grass.Read more...

Former Padres and Diamondbacks general manager Kevin Towers died Tuesday morning of thyroid cancer, which he was diagnosed with in late 2016. Towers was known as a popular and insightful executive, first entering the front office ranks as a scout before he became the Padres’ GM in 1995.

It can’t be easy coming up with new in-arena gimmicks to entertain NBA fans during stoppages in play—there is only one Red Panda to go around, after all—so kudos to the Atlanta Hawks for a new recurring segment in which street ball legend and AND1 Mixtape star Philip “Hot Sauce” Champion embarrasses people from the…Read more...

Manchester City are one of the biggest and most ambitious clubs in world soccer. In order to realize their silver-lined aspirations, they need lots and lots of money to invest in the team. Luckily for them, they have more money than god thanks to the backing of the Abu Dhabi royal family which owns the club—an…Read more...

Washington Wizards guard John Wall will miss six to eight weeks for a “procedure to clean up” his sore left knee, the one that has now been interfering with his career on a dismally regular basis since at least as far back as 2012. In related news [long anguished scream, tapering away to silence].Read more...

WWE has been in Philadelphia for the last few days, and things have been generally well-received. The card on Saturday included what some people are calling two of the best NXT matches ever. The Royal Rumble on Sunday included a men’s Rumble that people generally loved, and a first-ever women’s Rumble that was…Read more...

Suzann Pettersen, with 15 LPGA Tour wins to her name, is also a good friend of Donald Trump. Has been for a decade. So when she talks about him being an inveterate cheater at golf, understand that she’s painting just about the most sympathetic picture possible of his game.

Gizmodo Artificial Intelligence May Have Cracked Freaky 600-Year-Old Manuscript | Kotaku Shadow Of The Colossus: The Kotaku Review | Jalopnik I Just Made My Final Car Payment And I Now Vow To Never Take Out A Car Loan Ever Again | The A.V. Club Netflix will just keep making Fuller House, and…Read more...