Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

OK, we have our first villain of the NIL era.

The MLB suspended Dodgers starter Trevor Bauer for two seasons over sexual assault allegations Friday.Read more...

The Ravens, Jets, Chiefs, and Giants were a few of the clear winners during Day 1 of the NFL Draft. Whether it was trading up to get high-end cornerbacks or pass rushers, or just making solid decisions with the picks they already had, those teams won the night based on who they added to their rosters and how little…Read more...

Round 1 is done, and it came with drama, surprise picks (you don’t see a Chattanooga guy in the first round to the Patriots every day), and some big names left on the board for Day 2. Before the second and third rounds kick off tonight at 7 p.m. EST, we’re looking at some of the best players left on the board and…Read more...

It’s a widely known fact that Kyrie Irving is delusional. He’s a man of the people while walking among them unvaccinated. He thinks the Earth is flat, and has the NBA figured out even though he’s essentially a losing player without LeBron James. However, when he said he was going to keep “managing” the Nets franchise…Read more...

Don’t talk about it. Be about it.

The first 10 picks of the NFL Draft are the Oscars in reverse. The biggest honorees are rewarded first. Fans show up and shout insults at the host and bone-rattling contact with Roger Goodell is encouraged.

There is a storm coming and Day 1 of the 2022 NFL Draft is just a fraction of what is to come. Tonight showed that the wide receiver market has become so inflated that teams would rather take a risk on young, unproven rookies than proven Pro Bowl-caliber veterans.

The NFL Draft, one of only two days on the NFL calendar that provides good endorphins for every single NFL fan. The other is when Scott Hanson returns to NFL Red Zone Week 1 to say for the first time nine months, “seven hours of uninterrupted football.” At both moments, there is no concrete knowledge about how fans’…Read more...

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Whenever I see sports media beef, my reaction is to wonder what’s for dinner or daydream about literally anything else. So when I saw that Draymond Green ripped Bill Simmons for Simmons’ saying, “Fuck Jalen Green,” I looked out the window and pondered whether this spring sprinkle in Chicago was going to develop into a…Read more...

The New York Mets have been hit by a lot of pitches this season. Currently, Mets are being hit by pitches about 0.95 times per game. They’ve been hit 19 times in 20 games. That’s six more hit batsmen than the next closest team, Baltimore, and 30 points higher than the most plunked team of 2021, Cincinnati.

It’s hard to know what standards soon-to-be former NCAA President Mark Emmert held himself to. His idiocy, incompetency and overall aloof nature have been well documented. It’s an interesting topic in the changing landscape of college athletics what the role of overseeing those sports and athletes should be. Whatever…Read more...

Andrew Whitaker, a championship-winning track star and cornerback from Washington University in St. Louis, has a Masters degree and a plan to go to medical school. But for now, his focus is on becoming one of the few Division III athletes to get signed to the NFL. Med school can wait.Read more...

Doc Rivers sounded more shook than ever on Wednesday defending his history of coaching teams who have flamed out after taking resounding leads in past playoffs series’. His voice typically cracks, but in defending himself from criticism of his numerous shortcomings, he sounded more like a First Take guest debater…Read more...

Will it be Travon Walker? Aidan Hutchinson? Kayvon Thibodeaux? Whoever your gut is telling you is probably a safe bet — well, safer than most bets, anyway.

Let’s be honest, the only way the 49ers get to a Super Bowl next season is if their defense stays healthy and Deebo Samuel has another MVP-type season. And the only way he does that is if he remains healthy while being used like a pee wee team’s best player. He’s the answer to the question, “What are we going to do,…Read more...

These kids know their worth.

One of the unfortunate results of new technology is that a person’s worst moments live on forever on video. Getting beat up used to only live in the memories of the people who witnessed it, but with camera phones, the entire world can now watch someone get clocked on demand.Read more...

Will 2022 be the year that New York NFL football finally gives its metropolitan area something to watch on Sundays? Following double-digit victory seasons from the Jets in 2015 and the yacht club Giants in 2016, neither franchise has sniffed a .500 record since. At first glance, tri-state area residents waking up on a…Read more...

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Look at these dumb fuckers! They’re $10 million over the salary cap and still couldn’t finish in the top three of a division full of fuckwits and bindle-carriers! They couldn’t finish ahead of the Kings! The Kings who are led by Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty, whose tires are so bald they make sparks on…Read more...

It’s no secret that the Oakland A’s are struggling with attendance. They’ve been struggling in that department for years. 2022 is a whole different monster for the A’s, though. After two series on the road to open the season, the A’s came back home to a modest crowd of 17,503. That number dropped drastically for Game…Read more...

It appears Russia’s hardline obsession with punishing drug offenders has its limit after all. On Wednesday morning, Russia released a U.S. citizen and former marine, Trevor Reed, as part of prisoner exchange. In July 2020, Reed was sentenced to nearly nine years in prison following an altercation with Russian police…Read more...

Remember when the NBA tried new basketballs, and the response was so overwhelmingly negative that the league switched back to the old balls midseason? If you fall into the Venn diagram of baseball and basketball fans, you probably recall this story, but if you’re strictly a baseball person, what happened is the ball…Read more...

The playoffs have started, and it’s been one of the most chaotic first rounds in recent memory. Both conferences feel very wide open thanks to critical injuries and various superstars playing underwhelming basketball. Going into this year’s postseason, it felt like a rematch of last year’s Finals between the Phoenix…Read more...

That isn’t to say that Madrid won last night, because they most certainly didn’t. 4-3 results when you have the three is a loss in the scorebook. And it’s that kind of biting analysis that keeps you coming back. But Madrid “won” in that a one-goal deficit when the second leg is at home, where white-shirted gremlins…Read more...

Mark Emmert announced his resignation yesterday, stepping down as president of the NCAA, a position he’d held since November 1, 2010.

In Minnesota, chicken lives matter more than Black ones.Read more...

I do appreciate that Jerry Jones will actually get in front of a microphone and talk to the people. It’s something that his brethren in NFL ownership refuse to do, and maybe if they did they would have the most valuable sports franchise in the entire world. Is Jones talking for the sake of transparency in a way that…Read more...

The annoying after effect of the Los Angeles Rams winning the Super Bowl is we have to pretend that everything they do is cute or cool. Matthew Stafford’s appearance in an AT&T commercial was the first ad I can remember seeing him in, and now I have to laugh at him winking at the camera until the NBA Playoffs end in…Read more...

If nothing else, you have to respect Kevin Durant for staying on brand at all times. The Brooklyn Nets completed one of the most disappointing seasons of all time by being swept in the first round by the Boston Celtics, and being the first team eliminated from the 2022 NBA Playoffs. Their experiment didn’t work. They…Read more...

This time of year is far and away the most frantic for a sports fan. Usually both the NBA and NHL are in their playoffs, with three or four games per night each. This year, the NHL is dragging ass a bit, and there really is only one playoff race, but it still means one has to keep tabs on it. The NBA is now deep into…Read more...

After months of speculation concerning the contents of the “scandalous” sealed letter that supposedly contained evidence of a previously unknown cheating scandal involving the New York Yankees, the contents were allegedly revealed in a report by Andy Martino, an MLB Insider for SportsNet New York, in which he says SNY…Read more...

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Mental health issues aren’t unheard of in the NBA. All-Stars like Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan have openly discussed their battles in recent years. However, Ben Simmons’ inability to play through a mysterious mental block and his reticence to speak about it has turned him into an NBA medical mystery.Read more...

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As gunshots rang out near a recent Little League game in North Charleston, S.C., every kid in sight knew how to act immediately. The game was no longer important. Get down and wait until the adults around them have deemed it’s safe to get up from sprawling on the ground. And try to stay alive.

Since Joel Embiid hit that incredible dagger 3 to beat Toronto in Game 3 and give the 76ers a 3-0 advantage in the series, his team has dropped back-to-back games and held a lead for five minutes and 17 seconds out of a possible 96 minutes. Philadelphia has won exactly two of the past eight quarters against the…Read more...

Priorities, right? Let’s ban all Russian and Belaruisan athletes who are blameless, even if they’ve spoken out on national television against soulless Vladimir Putin in Russia’s brutal ongoing war against Ukraine. But unvaccinated Novak Djokovic is allowed to compete at Wimbledon without getting a jab in his arm, a…Read more...

It is hard to miss that Monday Night Raw has been built around, in large part, Riddle and Austin Theory of late. Riddle is one half of the wildly popular RK Bro tag team champs with legend Randy Orton, and appears to be on his way to headlining the company’s next PPV. You might wonder why he isn’t “Matt Riddle”…Read more...

The NFL Draft is all about predicting the future. There are countless guesses as to which players will fit in a certain system or what position groups have the deepest talent pool that could affect where the league trends down the line. In preparation for those hypotheticals, most will look back at what worked and…Read more...

Everybody on earth may be into sports, but those that aren’t are about to be introduced to the quintessential sports-owner type. While there are a small number of unfathomably wealthy people, very little brings out the personalities in these gluttonous capitalists like owning a professional sports franchise. Bill…Read more...

And thus ends yet another attempt by the Brooklyn Nets to skip the line and crash into the NBA penthouse. Actually, “another Nets experiment” sounds a little more apt. Because the Nets, the Brooklyn version, have always felt like one.

Ime Udoka is who so many fans — and media members — desperately wanted Brad Stevens to be.

Even after the New Orleans Pelicans’ disastrous 1-12 start to the 2021-22 season, it’s not as if there was some seismic shift. Their first winning streak came in mid-December when they tallied four victories in a row. Before that, they were still only 9-21 on the season. Since that streak they have been a better team,…Read more...

What’s a Point God to a nonbeliever? Going into last night’s Game 4 against the New Orleans Pelicans, a 118-103 New Orleans win, Chris Paul had already put together a pair of impressive fourth-quarter performances to help the Phoenix Suns go up 2-1. It looks like that may not happen again this series though as the…Read more...

See? It’s an altitude joke! Because they play in Denver, see? Pretty genius, huh? I know, I’m great. Yes, it is a burden, but one I carry for you. Because you deserve it.

The sports calendar makes it so that you always know what time of the year it is based on which games are being played. The NFL is trying to make every season its own.

If you’re trying to blow your own face off and fall down a sewer for comedic effect instead of securing a playoff spot, you’d have to give the Vegas Golden Knights an Emmy for their performance last night. Needing just about every point they can get to pass the Dallas Stars for the last wildcard spot in the West, and…Read more...

If you’ve followed this NFL Draft closely, you know that consensus isn’t exactly a thing. There’s no quarterback prospect worth lusting over, and even if that won’t stop teams from reaching on one, we won’t have a storyline until Chicago actually drafts Mitch Trubisky with the No. 2 overall pick.