Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

So far, the Major League Baseball lockout is only really hitting home for 19 of the 30 franchises. That’s because, with only the first week of games canceled – so far – there still are 11 teams who don’t yet have to deal with the mess of rescheduling a home opener.Read more...

James Harden made his much-anticipated home debut for Philadelphia on Wednesday in a win over the hapless Knicks. He delivered a casual 26, 9 and 9, and could be seen smiling and giggling like a sociopath who just stepped on a couple children to get to the front of the ice cream line.Read more...

Remember when NCAA programs, basketball or football, would impose sanctions on themselves in the hopes it would keep the NCAA’s great wandering eye from looking at them too closely? And then if that didn’t work, the coach would have to fall on his sword? That’s sort of what’s happening with Roman Abramovich and…Read more...

Somewhere at the beginning of his head coaching career, Lovie Smith got the label of being a pretty good guy. Maybe it’s because he went to church. Maybe it’s because he has a soft delivery when he speaks. He certainly commanded respect from his players, though that’s not indicative of much. Lovie certainly never blew…Read more...

Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire aren’t walking through that door.

Welcome to March! Selection Sunday inches closer. The upsets, heart-racing moments and brilliant individual performances are also near. We’re looking at ten of the best individual NCAA Tournament performers of all-time, with one big qualifier — their teams actually won the national title.

Sorry, Phil — Tiger might be out of the game for now, but you’re still sitting at second best.Read more...

Former UFC champion Cain Velasquez was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder Tuesday, after police ID’d him in a shooting that sent a man to a San Jose-area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. He is being held without bail and an arraignment was set for Wednesday afternoon.

The Major League Baseball lockout isn’t ending anytime soon. There was some hope that the Jupiter meetings could lead to a new CBA, but those meetings proved as useless as Pat Light against anyone not named Mike Trout. Now, with Opening Day canceled along with the first two series of the season, some MLB players…Read more...

The Arizona Cardinals are a team on the verge of ruin, draped in Gucci. Their situation appears ideal from the outside looking in, but underneath the aesthetic of an exhilarating No. 1 overall pick and a stacked offense is a team who took a dirt nap after their 10-2 start. Going 1-5 in a crucial portion of their…Read more...

The NFL Scouting Combine starts this week, and top prospects from colleges throughout the country will travel to Indianapolis to perform a series of physical challenges and medical evaluations that may determine their future in the NFL.

I almost wrote about the Celtics on Tuesday because I heard about these projections that had them with heavy title odds, but when I went to FiveThirtyEight to try to find them, it felt like I was trying to decipher binary code. So I held off to wait to see if anything came of the research I loosely started.Read more...

For the first time this year, the NCAA Women’s Tournament will expand to 68 teams, matching the men’s showcase, which expanded to that number of teams chasing a national championship in 2011. That’s more chances for a longshot to make a run and take down the sport’s elite.

We’re going to be without big league baseball for the foreseeable future, launching a sport that’s already been on the decline into what feels like its death throes.Read more...

Once again, the Colorado Avalanche are the Showtime of the NHL. They were last year, though last season being what it was it doesn’t really count for evaluation/analytic purposes. But reverting back to an actual NHL schedule (or something closely resembling one) hasn’t slowed the Avs much. They picked up their 83rd…Read more...

The NFL Scouting Combine starts this week, and top prospects from colleges throughout the country will travel to Indianapolis to perform a series of physical challenges and medical evaluations that may determine their future in the NFL.Read more...

Not that Rob Manfred would care, but his smirking and laughing visage as he announced the first cancellations of the 2022 regular season, which caused just about every baseball fan to have an urge to reach through their screens and thrust their fist through to the back of his skull, is the image that will endure. The…Read more...

Wait, there’s still a debate about the quarterbacking abilities of Kirk Cousins? I thought we were past this, like the, “Is Joe Flacco elite?” argument. Apparently, new Minnesota coach Kevin O’Connell will continue living out a Twitter argument in real time.Read more...

It wasn’t supposed to go this way. This essay was going to make a case for why the Utah Jazz could finally win a championship this season. But when it was all written out, the facts just didn’t line up. Can the Utah Jazz do it? Can they win it all? It seems unlikely, doesn’t it? Especially with the Warriors, Bucks,…Read more...

The new USFL is bullshit.Read more...

Rob “Piece of Metal” Manfred came out into the Florida sun, made an announcement that everyone knew was coming about the cancellation of Opening Day, as well as the first two series of the season, and then proceeded to tell some lies, which everyone should have known was coming.

The WNBA is apparently trying to compete with the MLB for how much it can hate its own players.

San Francisco 49ers’ Twitter woke up this past Saturday and chose violence.

A self-made superstar has propelled the Memphis Grizzlies’ upward trajectory.

The Hawks are lucky the Knicks are so disappointing or Stephen A. Smith would be melting down about them instead. The team that ended the Ben Simmons era in Philly, banished Julius Randle to a place from which he has yet to return, and competed with eventual NBA championship Milwaukee in the Eastern Conference Finals…Read more...

Sure, the 2022 QB class isn’t the best we’ve ever seen. There’s not a Trevor Lawrence to fight over or a Joe Burrow to trade picks for. But is it really so bad that we have to continue to manufacture drama over poor Kenny Pickett’s hand size?

You can’t accuse Jesse Marsch of being unambitious. He replaced Julian Nagelsmann at RB Leipzig, and Nagelsmann had only left for Bayern Munich — one of the biggest jobs in the world — and is considered maybe the leading young genius on the European continent (whether this letterman’s jacket is evidence of that, I…Read more...

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On the last day of the shortest month of the year, (that’s supposed to be dedicated to the contributions that Black people have made to this country), America’s largest entertainment and sports programming network decided that it would announce that they were changing the name of the highest-profile Black sports and…Read more...

Welcome to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE MONTH, our monthly series (hence the name!) in which we make fun of people in and around the sports world. And, boy, are the pastures green this month. But first: an honorable mention!

This time, Shaq is the fool.

At the time of writing on Monday night, there still isn’t an agreement between the MLB owners and the MLBPA. When I finally gave up waiting, things were moving toward beating the arbitrary deadline the owners had set up to start the regular season on time (extended to 5 p.m. EST today). Not that they could enforce…Read more...

The combine giveth and the combine taketh away. As prospective NFLers from colleges throughout the country come together to mark down 40-yard dash times, 225-lb bench press reps, broad and vertical jumps, and more, there’s a real pressure to perform, particularly for those right on the cusp of getting drafted.Read more...

The reckoning has finally come for the sports organizations that have played footsie with autocratic nations. And not just FIFA and the International Olympic Committee, but for the Premier League, Formula One, and any sports league that has cashed checks from questionable international sources while pretending…Read more...

The NHL would love for you to believe that Toronto’s 10-7 win/what-have-ya over Detroit on Saturday — and to a much lesser extent the hapless Devils and Hawks hurling themselves at each other to the tune of an 8-5 scoreline on Friday — as evidence that it’s goal-apalooza on the ice these days. The reality is that…Read more...

Glenn Jacobs sounds like the name of a serious-minded small-town Southern mayor with libertarian sensibilities but a stable worldview. That is until you realize that he spent the last three decades playing Kane, a character who can best be described as Michael Myers but obsessed with fire instead of sharp knives;…Read more...

You know you shouldn’t have hired someone if you have to release a statement days after you hired them to explain why you hired them.

Part of it was due to still being on vacation, and the other part was my general obliviousness. But I only realized at the last minute that MLS started its season this weekend, about 12 minutes after the last one ended with NYCFC’s manager in his undies in the rain in Portland, thanks to having to wrap up before…Read more...

Zion Williamson’s absence from the New Orleans Pelicans has of late led to tons of speculation about his future. Former teammate JJ Redick made the rounds on ESPN shows to talk about Zion’s lack of professionalism, even saying on First Take that he had even addressed it with Zion in front of the team when he was still…Read more...

It is so simple, at least to anyone not entangled in the middle of the mess. All of Poland, Czechia, and Sweden have said they will refuse to play Russia in World Cup qualifiers at the end of March. While a ban from FIFA isn’t going to end Russia’s occupation of Ukraine, there is no pressure point that shouldn’t be…Read more...

Since spectators have returned to high school sporting events, hate speech and verbal abuse from fans has become more noticeable, if not more common. It’s almost as if the decline in social interactions reset fans to their baser instincts, and they forgot how to at least act civilized. Across the country, fans have…Read more...

If Saturday was a precursor to March Madness, then all of our brackets are more doomed than usual. Seven of the AP top 10 teams fell in a wild day of upsets, including every top six team. No. 1 Gonzaga, No. 2 Arizona, No. 3 Auburn, No. 4 Purdue, No. 5 Kansas, No. 6 Kentucky, and No. 9 Texas Tech all caught Ls.Read more...

The NCAA Tournament has become one of the most unpredictable, edge-of-your-seat sporting events of the year due to its knockout nature. It’s a clash of college basketball styles coming together as the calendar turns from winter to spring, pitting teams that usually never see each other on the same court with their…Read more...

Good things come to those who are great. Paige Bueckers made her return from injury Friday night in a 93-38 runaway win over St. John’s. Despite playing on a minutes restrictions, the sophomore, reigning national player of the year, and “Walking highlight” couldn’t help but highlight.Read more...

Sacramento Kings’ guard De’Aaron Fox has been picking pockets both on and off the basketball court lately. After announcing his NFT program “SwipaTheFox” in December and launching it in January, it took less than two months for Fox to shut down the program with more than $1.5 million unpaid to its nearly 100,000…Read more...

Yes, it’s only one game. But what a game it was.Read more...

Middle America’s most depressing battle of in-school ineptitude — Fred Hoiberg versus Scott Frost — has been extended. Nebraska announced Hoiberg is coming back, and he’s bringing his six Big Ten wins in nearly three years with him. Will Scott Frost, an awe-inspiring 10 conference wins over four seasons, finish his…Read more...

Alexander Ovechkin finally addressed the crisis in Ukraine, saying some words in a press conference in Philadelphia that sounded nice but were ultimately meaningless.

Oh goodie, misery. The last portion of the NBA season kicked off Thursday, and that means Cancun is in sight for at least 10 franchises. With their seasons already in the blender, they might as well add ice, Cointreau, Casamigos, agave, and an FT of lime juice before kicking back in the training pool with a tank-arita…Read more...

Think what you want about Bronny James’ NBA prospects, one thing that isn’t a question is his entrepreneurial spirit, much like his father, LeBron James. But before Bronny gets anywhere close to the NBA, he’s taking his talents to the undergarments business.Read more...