Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Robert Williams III is going to feel pressure — much of it from himself — to get back on the court for Game 4 against the Miami Heat. The Boston Celtics lost at home on Saturday and surely do not want to go down 3-1 heading back to Miami. Kyle Lowry returned to the floor for the Heat in Game 3 and he played better…Read more...

The Miami Heat resemble a team that won on the scorecard instead of the scoreboard. In the 2022 Eastern Conference Finals cage match, the Celtics have a few lumps on their skulls.Read more...

In the age of social media, there are some things you just shouldn’t say aloud (or in writing), and certain celebrities and athletes you want to steer clear of when it comes to particular commentary. Golden State Warriors beat reporter Mark Haynes found this out the hard way Saturday night, after answering a question…Read more...

Our media apparatus remains completely unprepared to deal with the challenges it faces, out of fear that calling things what they are — telling the truth — will be too controversial and cause a backlash.Read more...

WWE just made things worse with Sasha Banks and Naomi. Much worse. What were the options considered by Vince McMahon and discarded? I can’t think of how Friday’s actions on Smackdown! make things any more amicable after two of the company’s standout performers walked out, due to bad creative plans, earlier this week.

Cue the “old man yells at cloud” Simpsons headline — Hall of Fame coach Bud Grant, who turned 95 yesterday, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he thinks the “boring” parts of football, including fair catches, kneels to end the game, and touchbacks, should be removed from the game. Now, to you and I, those things…Read more...

The road to the College Football Playoff got more direct Wednesday with an announcement from the NCAA that conferences with at least 12 members were no longer required to decide their football champions by splitting its league into two divisions and the winners compete in a conference championship game.

Roger Angell loved baseball in its purest form. Throughout over half a century of covering the sport for ‘The New Yorker’, Angell saw the game dip, duck, dive, and dodge its way through rule changes, scandals, and fundamental changes, yet his love for America’s pastime never faded.Read more...

It’s tempting to try to glean some kind of lesson from big games. We all try to do it, all the time, just as fans. The playoffs are not all that different from the final few episodes of a prestige television series’ season. You know there’s not much left, and you’re looking for any clues you can get about how it’s…Read more...

Everyone has had that coworker who kind of sucks but is really good at his job so the manager looks the other way when Glen takes 20 minute out of the weekly staff meeting to brag about his weekend jet skiing. Yeah, he’s annoying, but holy shit can he sell the hell out of reasonably priced Kias. Dwight Howard was the…Read more...

Twenty-one cigarettes, 12 Diet Cokes, six packs of peanut M&Ms, and zero ounces of water — that was the John Daly special at a full 18-hole practice round during the Wyndham Championship in 2008, per a CBS Sports reporter reminiscing on a weird and wild summer day. And in true John Daly spirit, the 56-year-old has…Read more...

When news first broke that Russell Wilson had been traded to the Denver Broncos, Seahawks fans were sad to see their franchise QB sent away but were also optimistic about the return. I mean, two first-round picks and two second-round picks is a lot. Plus, Shelby Harris ain’t bad. Yeah, and you know, that Noah Fant…Read more...

Now that the tornado of dust whipped up by that Jimbo Fisher press conference has somewhat settled (don’t worry, there’s still plenty of other kinds of dust still floating around), the reality of what just happened is setting in. As thrilling as it was to watch adult men worth millions get up in front of a camera and…Read more...

We’ve all done it the past couple days. Even though it’s pretty much impossible, we’ve all dreamed of WWE executives losing their minds, or Sasha Banks finding some loophole in her contract, and somehow instantly getting out of it. And then at Double Or Nothing, Thunder Rosa successfully defends her women’s title in a…Read more...

Every bad call for one team is a great call for the opposing team. That’s why fans always get upset when umpires make bad calls against their team, but stay silent when the same is done against the opposition. Players act the same way. That’s what made Anthony Rizzo’s ejection in Thursday’s game against Baltimore all…Read more...

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Can you imagine signing a $597,000 contract to play in the New York Yankees minor league system right out of college, only to ruin it all by scamming fans and stealing bats, gloves and equipment? Jake Sanford, the Yankees third-round pick in 2019, was cut by the club on May 12 for multiple infractions, including…Read more...

Football has seen many evolutions in its time, and a kid in Nebraska may be introducing the next one to the game. Mikey Gow (class of 2025), Bellevue East QB in Bellevue, NE, started on varsity as a 14-year-old freshman last season and can throw the ball with either arm. Yep, that’s right. Gow could be the first known…Read more...

Pete Alonso’s two-run walkoff homer in the 10th inning Thursday improved the New York Mets’ record to 26-14, which is good for the second-most wins in baseball and a six-and-a-half-game lead in the NL East. They have a +44 run differential, put up the fourth most runs in the MLB, and boast the league’s fourth…Read more...

For a second there, Derrick White’s child was going to be the most interesting and discussed birth in the world. The Boston Celtics tweeted out shortly before 10 a.m. that Derrick White would be missing Game 2 due to personal reasons. That’s quite a blow to their roster the morning of Game 2 of the Eastern Conference…Read more...

Winning the MVP award isn’t about taking home a chunk of metal sponsored by Kia. It’s about being able to hold the distinction of “Best Player in the World” over the competition’s heads. Nobody cares about winning something, they care about the distinction that comes with winning that thing. They care about the title,…Read more...

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John Stockton is the reason why people delete their Facebook accounts. Every white person’s most obnoxious uncle by marriage is at it again, firing off right-wing disinformation at all hours of the night. This time he made use of his Microsoft Office subscription and typed up a nice Word doc, intended to serve as a…Read more...

Black people have it hard. Black women have it harder. Black gay women have it the hardest. It’s tough being a triple minority in America, but especially in Russia.Read more...

For the second straight time that All Elite Wrestling’s weekly flagship television show, Dynamite, was held in Texas, CM Punk, arguably the company’s biggest star, wore a t-shirt to support abortion rights.Read more...

You know what? Maybe everyone getting along wasn’t so great after all. When you think about it, there haven’t been any real true, deep-down, openly public, hate-filled coaching rivalries in college for awhile. Jimbo Fisher blew all of that up today in about 11 minutes, between 10:04 and 10:15 a.m. central time. He is…Read more...

As people at all points on the political spectrum believe that America is in a godless state, I would like to share a portion of one of my favorite scriptures from the Christian Bible. I believe that I Thessalonians 4:11 can be shared in a public forum of people with various points of view without pitchforks, stones,…Read more...

Carson Wentz is one of those lucky individuals who’s received chance after chance to prove himself as a starting NFL quarterback. Hall of Famer Troy Aikman even suggests this is likely Wentz’ last opportunity to show the league he’s a franchise QB.Read more...

There was a time where Saints cornerback Marshon Lattimore was considered one of the top young shutdown corners in the league. During his rookie season, Pro Football Focus gave Lattimore an 87.7 grade in pass coverage, the highest among rookies that year and the highest of Lattimore’s career. After that incredible…Read more...

Sporting leagues should enact a per game minimum of fun-yet-stupid plays attempts. For the NBA, each squad should be required to take at least 15 30-foot plus jumpers. There should be at least two trick plays per team in NFL games. I don’t know what it is for soccer or hockey. Maybe it’s something along the lines of…Read more...

The NHL’s second round hasn’t gotten off to the most rousing start. The Lightning did that efficiency thing where they play just well enough for just long enough to win, even if it did involve Nikita Kucherov turning Aaron Ekblad into a tetherball set. The Avalanche looked unstoppable, and the Rangers tried and failed…Read more...

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Deshaun Watson can take the entire Browns team to Abu freaking Dhabi for all we care — it’s not going to erase the 22 ongoing sexual misconduct and assault cases that he’s still facing. Whether the announcement that he was treating his new offense to a Bahamas trip was an attempt at garnering an ounce of positive…Read more...

Tom Brady’s love affair with the spotlight will take yet another form come 2023 — Netflix announced yesterday that the recently unretired QB will be the executive producer and first subject of a new series, Greatest Roasts of All Time.

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Year Three will be a make-or-break year in Miami for Tua Tagovailoa. While the former Alabama QB has been decent for the Dolphins, he’s yet to lead them to the postseason. There’s absolutely no reason that shouldn’t change in 2022 with how the team has been restructured to focus more on the offensive side of the ball.

What happened to Tarik Cohen is part of the game. Whatever you might consider the game to be. Whether it’s just professional athletes — especially football players — being more susceptible to bodily injury than those who don’t move at 99 miles per hour aiming for each others’ chests to earn a living, or any person…Read more...

Society has a long history of normalizing domestic violence, especially when an athlete is involved.Read more...

The ability of the sports world to churn on through societal decay is dismaying or courageous depending on how you frame it. Oscillating between the stoicism of the Ukrainian national team playing through an invasion, and Black athletes being asked to perform in front of white people a day after a racially motivated…Read more...

Baseball is wacky nowadays. Just a few nights ago we watched Tampa Bay outfielder Brett Phillips pitch to reigning AL MVP Shohei Ohtani. The very next day, Ohtani was on the mound pitching to Phillips. When was the last time something like that happened? We’ve got a universal DH now. This stuff shouldn’t be happening!

The Sacramento Kings received another undeserved lifeline during Tuesday night’s NBA Draft Lottery in the form of a three-pick bounce from their projected slot at 7th to the 4th overall pick. Cue the PTSD. The 2022 Western Conference Finals is a testament to how badly the Sacramento Kings have bungled their past…Read more...

Today is the first day that the US men and the US women’s soccer teams will earn the same wages for performance on the field. The US women’s team has won four World Cup gold medals and four Olympic medals. In 1930, the US men had their best result in World Cup play, finishing third.Read more...

This is going to sound like a conspiracy theory, but hear me out. If you only put your best players in your lineup, you tend to do well. I know, right! Insane! Call me crazy, but so too did they call Galileo crazy when he said the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe, and look where we are now. Basically, I’m a…Read more...

It’s often stated that pitchers are weird, which helps explain why they tend to wet themselves every time it’s even suggested they need to change their routine. Just watch what happens when MLB tries to put in a pitch clock next season. The streets will run yellow with hurler urine!Read more...

After three years of embarrassing tanking, GM Sam Presti and the Oklahoma City Thunder have returned to relevance. They came into the NBA Lottery with the sixth-best odds at the top pick in the 2022 NBA Draft and ended up with the second pick in the draft. The Orlando Magic won the first pick and will have first dibs…Read more...

For most of his career, it was impossible to picture Lionel Messi in any other jersey than the blue and maroon of Barcelona. Nine months into his stay with Paris Saint-Germain, transfer talk for one of the best to ever lace up a pair of boots is surfacing once more, with a report coming out on Tuesday that Messi will…Read more...

The Minnesota Timberwolves were eliminated from the playoffs on April 29, and with that 114-106 loss to Memphis, we thought all aspects of the T-Wolves franchise would be gone until next season. For those of us who enjoy Anthony Edwards putting guys on posters and stupid fouls from Karl Anthony-Towns, it was a mildly…Read more...

This year’s Eastern Conference Finals matchup should be a rough, rugged, defensive series that will most likely come down to game seven. The Heat and Celtics are pretty evenly matched and familiar, having faced off in the ECF just two years ago. This will be the third meeting for the Heat and Celtics in the conference…Read more...

The second round of the playoffs worked, in part, the way that the NHL dreamed up when it went to this postseason format of divisional brackets. You can question the wisdom of it happening in the second round, but we’re getting the Battle of Alberta and the Battle of Florida now.Read more...