Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Arguably the best HBCU track program of the past decade just made history again.

Bill Walton wants you to know he’s smoked weed before. It’s a shocking development, I know.

It’s been two years since we got to have an NCAA Tournament, and this one is going to be different, staged entirely in Indianapolis and entirely without Duke and Kentucky. Oh, and even though it’s in one city, that doesn’t mean a pandemic isn’t still happening, so who the hell knows what will happen with that?

Darren O’Day has been in the major leagues since 2008, he was an All-Star in 2015, and he’s been to the postseason with Texas, Baltimore, and Atlanta. The well-traveled and well-decorated righty reliever signed with the Yankees this offseason, and his role in the New York bullpen is clear.Read more...

Updated, March 13, 2021 at 8:40 p.m.: I need to get something stupid off my chest. It’s been bugging me for years. And the unlikely title won tonight by Coach Paaaaatrick Ewing and No. 8 seed Georgetown, repping the old school Big East, over the more new-school, reshuffled conference squad Creighton, seems the…Read more...

On the day that Tiger Woods crashed his car in Los Angeles, winding up with a rod in his leg and several broken bones, sheriff’s deputy Carlos Gonzalez told reporters at a news conference that he regularly writes tickets to drivers on that stretch of road for going 80 miles per hour when the speed limit is 45.Read more...

This season has been a great big ball of suck for the Buffalo Sabres. They’re stuck in the loaded East Division, have played 25 games, won an NHL-worst six, and they don’t exactly have a lot of hope for the future.Read more...

Sigh.Read more...

There’s a moment in 1986 Mets: A Year To Remember, the greatest sports year-in-review video ever made, when, as Ray Knight hits a walkoff homer to beat the Astros on July 3, Tim McCarver crows, “They’re spreading the news that they are right now the dominant team in this game — in either league!”Read more...

Joel Embiid needs an MRI on his hyperextended left knee when the 76ers get back home. This after he just got back from health-and-safety protocols and having to (getting to?) sit out of the All-Star Game.Read more...

I’ve never seen racism blamed on blood sugar, but here we are. During the NFHS Network stream of a game between Norman High and Midwest City that was covering the Class 6A girls state quarterfinals on Thursday night, a hot mic caught a commentator being a disgusting human being and launching into a racist rant during…Read more...

One of the most asked questions of the last few weeks have probably been: What the hell is an NBA Top Shot?Read more...

I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog’s day.

P.J. Tucker’s never been a basketball player you could define solely by numbers.Read more...

It’s one of the oldest clichés in sports: There’s no “I” in team.Read more...

Small sample sizes are perilous for any kind of analysis, but sometimes, it’s all you have to go on.Read more...

Major League Baseball’s takeover of the minor leagues has paved the way for the 2021 season to be one of experimentation on the farm, with different rules being tested at different levels in the developmental circuits.

In the same week that the NCAA disclosed that they don’t really have a plan if anything goes sideways at their Indiana NCAA Tournament, and Les Miles and Jeff Long showed what kind of people are really in charge, Michigan State may have taken the cake. That is, if the cake were sponsored by Betty Crocker.

Remember when you heard that young, healthy people would have an easy time with the coronavirus? Looking back, it’s as ridiculous as comparing COVID to the flu or saying the country would open by Easter. But that’s what some thought around this time last year.Read more...

We are in the throes of NFL speculation season. So much so that, as I’m writing, I feel as though it’s entirely possible I will have to scrap this entire article because Russell Wilson may have been traded to the Bears. Seriously – Chicago Bears Reddit is literally tracking a private jet flight from Seattle to Chicago…Read more...

The March shenanigans are already underway.

Remember when we all made fun of Lonzo Ball’s shot?

I know that right off the top, being a Bears fan means that A) I assume everything will go wrong no matter what happens, and B) I don’t have a true appreciation of what it means for an NFL team to have a top-tier quarterback. I’ve never seen one up close. I thought I did once, and it turned out all that guy was really…Read more...

Mississippi State ended Big Blue nation’s hope of a tourney run this season after Iverson Molinar hit two clutch free throws to give the Bulldogs the 74-73 win over Kentucky.

The NBA has decided that using an antisemitic slur is worth the same fine as violating COVID protocols or violating anti-tampering rules.Read more...

It’s been a year since NBA player Rudy Gobert smeared his hands on reporters’ microphones at a press conference and then tested positive for the coronavirus. A year of lockdowns and masking and handwashing and flouting mask-wearing protocols.

On the one-year anniversary of Rudy Gobert testing positive for COVID-19, which led to a suspension of the 2019-20 NBA season, we were reminded this morning that we’re still in this same nationwide pandemic.

Before my trip to Salt Lake City, I signed up for Delta SkyMiles I would never use.

Look, I know you’re expecting a rant and a rave and perhaps for your laptop to start emitting smoke from this, but that would just be wasted emotion. Justin Bieber wrote a song about the Leafs, because of course he did.

On April 3, the national championship trophy inside of the Breslin Center at Michigan State University will be old enough to drink. When that day arrives in three weeks, it will mark 21 years since the Spartans, led by Mateen Cleaves, won their last national title.Read more...

It was the only logical conclusion, probably should have happened weeks ago, but there’s still some spiritual affirmation with the news that Jeff Long was shitcanned as AD of Kansas University.

College athletes are challenging the NCAA to stand up for the rights of transgender athletes.

ESPN Colombia anchor Carlos Orduz was able to escape, largely uninjured, after a horrifying set accident yesterday. Part of the set fell on him from behind, crushing him against the desk. The camera immediately cuts away from him.Read more...

In the fallout of Meyers Leonard using an antisemitic slur during a livestream, further adding to a resumé of ignorance, Jewish NFL wide receiver Julian Edelman has posted a compassionate statement to Leonard with an offer to meet and discuss antisemitism.

James Wiseman is on the clock.

Who wants Victor Oladipo?Read more...

I know you’ll have to get over the shock that someone who spent their whole career trading on the label of “idiot” got arrested for a DUI. It’s a cold world. That’s what Johnny Damon did last month in Florida, as well as resisting arrest without violence. Damon’s blood-alcohol level was .30, some four times over the…Read more...

Today is the anniversary of two of the most iconic basketball moments in the 21st century.

The franchise tag deadline was yesterday and, without languishing too much over the fact that it’s an unfair practice that is designed strictly for the benefit of the team and not for the player, let’s get into what transpired yesterday.Read more...

Blame Steph Curry.

There’s no such thing as buzzer beater season. But if there was, it would start around championship week (now) and wrap up in early April. You and I have seen plenty of game-winning shots in our time. Do buzzer beaters ever get old? You know the answer. (They do not.)

The NBA trade deadline is on March 25. It’s reasonable to anticipate ample movement in a standard NBA season, but because of COVID, we’re obviously in unique times. Are teams going to be hesitant to make moves while pushing for the playoffs because of the lingering disease and all that comes with it? Or are so many…Read more...

For fans my age, the soundtrack of hockey, when we get wistful, can at times still be Steve Levy and Darren Pang calling yet another multiple overtime game. Or Bill Pidto hosting NHL 2night. It was eons ago now, but when ESPN launched ESPN2 “The Deuce,” one of its main tenets was that it was to show more hockey. At…Read more...

I’ve been dreaming of doing one of these “Old Lady” headlines ever since I started here, so thank you for coming on this journey with me.

It’s only fitting that the NCAA is very concerned with dicks. The NCAA is petitioning to cancel a urology center’s trademark for “VASECTOMY MAYHEM” – which is a phrase that honestly shouldn’t exist and especially shouldn’t exist around the word “vasectomy”– because they’re concerned that people will confuse it with…Read more...

Whatever holiday you’re having, whatever group you’re honoring, you can expect hockey to somehow completely step on a rake before falling off a cliff and into an open sewer.

Most Japanese citizens don’t want the large international event to begin with. But now, according to the Kyodo News, the Japanese government will not allow foreign spectators to attend this summer’s Olympics and Paralympic Games. The decision to bar overseas fans, according to the report, stems from lingering concerns…Read more...

You may remember Meyers Leonard as the one guy who stood during the National Anthem during the NBA bubble last summer. He claimed at the time it wasn’t due to a lack of respect or dismissal of Black Lives Matter, but an attempt to thread a needle apparently only he could see. Somehow he was let off the hook for it.…Read more...

Philadelphia 76ers general manager Daryl Morey sat down with Sports Illustrated NBA Senior Writer Howard Beck for a recent si.com story. Within the interview, Morey knowingly referred to Sixers star center Joel Embiid, as in, not James Harden, as the most impregnable offensive force he’s seen.

Late Monday night, the University of Kansas announced it had “mutually agreed to part ways” with head football coach Les Miles. The fact that Miles is out as head coach on International Women’s Day is truly a delightful display of life imitating art.Read more...