Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

The Washington Commanders proposed stadium in Virginia was already a boondoggle. Even before the Virginia state legislature paused its vote on the Commanders’ contentious stadium subsidy deal, support was dwindling. The Commanders know a little something about losing support. The team ranked 32nd in home attendance…Read more...

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Gregg Popovich is the winningest head coach in NBA history with 1,344 victories. Along with having the most wins for any coach in league history, we’re beginning to see another part of Popovich’s legacy take shape. The four head coaches involved in the last two NBA Finals have a tie to coach Pop, having either been on…Read more...

It’s a testament to their greatness that whenever Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic line up in a major, where everyone projects they might meet, everyone starts girding up for it. Be it the quarters, semis, or final, everyone knows to block out half a day and gather the supplies necessary. Because while it is almost…Read more...

Part of the charm of every FIFA World Cup is how it takes up a large chunk of summer. It either coincides with the tail end of the NBA and NHL playoffs, or misses it all together and only has to share sports airwaves with baseball’s slow ass. And it’s much more palatable to sit through a pair of 45-minute halves plus…Read more...

With less than 100 days before the 2022 season kicks off and a week after the NFL hosted a “diversity summit” for Black coaches, the NBA has shown us just how useless those summits are when you operate a league where the best person is hired for the job.Read more...

The playoffs just haven’t felt the same since that thrilling Game 6 between the Memphis Grizzlies and Golden State Warriors. Blowouts, unfortunately, littered the conference finals, especially in the east. The Dallas Mavericks only got thoroughly walloped in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, but it felt like…Read more...

The Boston Celtics have torn through the playoffs, eliminating each team that’s ousted them in the last three postseasons. After a seven-game slugfest with the Miami Heat, the C’s are in Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2010, led by Jason Tatum, who is making a strong case for entry into…Read more...

Fraud runs deep in the veins of professional Bulgarian soccer club, CSKA (Central Sports Club of the Army) Sofia. In 2009, former club president Alexander Tomov and former chief executive Alexander Garibov, were arrested and charged with embezzlement and document fraud. The pair had allegedly been misappropriating…Read more...

You have to hand it to Avalanche coach Jared Bednar. He does have one of the best checking centers in the NHL at his disposal in Nazem Kadri. It would be easy, explicable, and defensible to just toss Kadri over the boards every time the Oilers put Connor McDavid out there, and be done with it. After all, it’s pretty…Read more...

It’s that time again as we look at the buffoons of the past 31 days. This list has a number of swings and misses, whether it be Josh Donaldson opening his mouth, Greg Norman throwing up all over himself like it was the fourth-round at Augusta, or John Stockton supporting insurrectionists.

The NFL has a stranglehold on us as viewers, which has made it nearly impossible for another professional football league to make a lasting impression over the last three decades. The Fan Controlled Football League is one of the latest to make a run at competing on the big stage. Former quarterback of the Zappers,…Read more...

The Tommy Pham-Joc Pederson story did not end the Friday before Memorial Day. For those who still need to scrape the barbecue, or whatever else, from their brains to think back that far, Pham slapped Pederson in broad daylight on a baseball field, before the game even started. Pham raged on Pederson due to a dispute…Read more...

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It’s not often that we get the chance to live through the invention and ascension of a sport into popular culture. American football dates back to the Civil War era. James Naismith invented basketball in 1891. FIFA was founded in 1904. But thanks to a man named Joel Pritchard trying to entertain his kids one summer in…Read more...

The days of AEW running out “perfect” pay-per-views, where everything hits and the length is manageable, are probably over. The roster has grown to the point where a lot has to go into them, and not all of them are going to be collecting star-ratings like a hoarder. No company has amazing booking throughout. Some…Read more...

You might be surprised to learn how many teams have never had a player appear on the cover of Madden NFL

Six years ago, a Black football player decided he wasn’t going to stand during the national anthem because America wasn’t holding up its end of the bargain when it came to protecting the people he cared about. The country lost it, and he lost his job. Six years later, a white baseball manager has decided he’s not…Read more...

Earlier this month, FS1’s Nick Wright debuted a bit called the Superstar Club. I don’t usually endorse debate show takes, but this was a solid metaphor. Jimmy Butler was depicted standing in line, waiting for entry. In this year’s Eastern Conference Finals against the Boston Celtics, he nearly cemented his legacy,…Read more...

Perhaps there’s no bigger showcase of Lucy yanking the football away than Liverpool chasing The Quadruple. Because as it got closer, it only became harder and only felt further away. Which sounds stupid, because no team has gotten closer. But fatigue was clear for the last few weeks, and the more matches that piled on…Read more...

Ahead of a scheduled hearing in Arapahoe County, Colo., today, the prosecution dropped all charges against Denver Broncos’ wide receiver Jerry Jeudy, stemming from arrest earlier this month per an ESPN report.

The problem with upping the degree of difficulty on your playoff run is that no matter how good you are, eventually you’ll push yourself off the cliff. The NHL playoffs are hard enough as is without trying to navigate them like they were a bar bet. The Hurricanes didn’t bother to win a road game in the first two…Read more...

The NBA Playoffs are gradually winding down, and to be honest, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag where quality is concerned. Despite the rating increase early in the postseason, some of these games have been hard to watch. Injuries to stars and the lack of downtime between games have some thinking it might be time to…Read more...

Athletes and fans are a very superstitious lot, and if rituals and patterns are to be taken seriously, Suns’ guard Landry Shamet should be forced to play for lottery teams for the rest of his career. If your team is contending for a championship, needs a piece in the offseason, and picks up or trades for Shamet, just…Read more...

The thing about baseball is that sometimes you think a team will be good, but they’re not. Other times, you think a team will be bad, but they’re really good! O fortuna!Read more...

It’s about the quarter mark of the MLB season, with most teams surpassing 40 games played. There’s still a looooooong way to go this season and the trade deadline is still two months away so a lot can change, but now seems like an apt time to compare teams’ records to their preseason expectations.

While Memorial Day may be a uniquely American holiday, its sentiments — honoring those who have given their lives for their country in the line of duty — are global. America is no longer at war, having pulled out of Afghanistan, and if there was any positive to take away from that conflict that raged on for decades,…Read more...

It may be rare these days, but there was a time when some of the best athletes in America went off to fight in wars. Some did so willingly, others were drafted.

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We’ll likely never see a UEFA Champions League run like the one Real Madrid just completed. If only quality of play decided Los Blancos’ quarterfinal and semifinal two legged-ties, as well as Saturday’s one-game final against Liverpool, they would’ve lost each one. Real Madrid trailed late in each second leg against…Read more...

NBA Top Shot, a collection of NBA NFTs featuring highlights, GIFs, and other classic NBA moments, recently surpassed $1 billion in sales. There have been ups and downs during the company’s lifespan, and it surely hasn’t reached the same heights it teased in early 2021, but Top Shot has remained a viable enterprise…Read more...

If the recent sale of Chelsea FC taught us anything, it’s that sports franchises are as valuable as ever. The English Premier League club sold for $5 billion, and there was no shortage of suitors. That should make Portland Trail Blazers’ fans sleep better in the coming months as a sale of the team is inevitable.

Yes, I understand that Ryan Tannehill clarified his comments on Malik Willis just a few days ago, but his excuse for how those words got twisted just doesn’t make any sense.

It’s now a Memorial Day weekend tradition, as AEW has its other tentpole PPV (and they still call them “PPVs”) from Las Vegas. If you’re a weirdo like me, it’s no longer the holiday that kicks off summer but this event. It’ll actually be the start of a pretty frenzied summer of activity, given that “New York” will…Read more...

The NHL’s most prestigious individual award was first handed out in 1924. Calvin Coolidge just became President of the United States. It took until Barack Obama’s final year in The White House for someone born and raised in America to win the Hart Memorial Trophy, the league’s most valuable player award.

Athletes: they’re just like us! They play fantasy football, they get pissed over fantasy football, they physically assault each other over fantasy football — you know, just guys being dudes!

Every revolution begins with a single act of defiance - Mahatma Gandhi

Thirty years after the Dream Team introduced the NBA to the world at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, the league has transformed into something that the late David Stern would be proud of. Basketball has truly become an international game.

Deciding to be neutral and only point fingers after Tuesday’s senseless mass shooting at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school, which left 19 kids and 21 total dead, is a beyond puzzling stance for Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank to project.

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As we sit in states of grief, hopelessness, and disbelief after yet another preventable massacre of children in Uvalde, Texas, the New York Yankees shocked the nation by forgoing their usual Twitter programming during their game against the Tampa Bay Rays last night.

Sure he had to hear his eulogy while he was still living after Andrew Wiggins read him his last rites in Game 3, but Luka Dončić has nothing to be ashamed of. The Dallas Mavericks star led the NBA postseason in scoring, but his singular output was futile against a Golden State Warriors team that plays both sides of…Read more...

The Washington Commanders are a crumbling empire. The once thriving franchise has been reduced to something worse than a laughingstock over the last two decades. The Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Giants are a joke. Dan Snyder’s dysfunctional Washington Commanders are a waking nightmare. For someone…Read more...

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OK, obviously not. But maybe?

2021 saw the end of one of the most famous Finals streaks of all-time. Thirty-seven consecutive NBA Finals between 1984 and 2020 saw at least one teammate of Shaquille O’Neal’s on one of the competing rosters. No one on last year’s Suns or Bucks rosters had ever played with O’Neal during his career. “All streaks come…Read more...

It can’t be easy to be Shaquille O’Neal. I remember meeting him many years ago, and thinking, “that’s the biggest human being to ever live.” Factually, of course that’s not correct, but for those who have a friend who is 6-foot-5, and your life does not intersect with professional basketball often, think about how…Read more...

Three teams have been pillars of culture in the modern NBA: The San Antonio Spurs, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the Miami Heat. No matter the players, these three franchises have established systems where players come in to fill a role, commit to the vision, and buy in completely. Of the trio, only the Heat are…Read more...

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