Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

I guess he’s still got it.

If you aren’t in or around the Chicago area, you might not know about the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital. A gem of a building located close to Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, Lurie has been the gold standard for treating children with everything from “boo-boos to blood disorders,” as their website boasts.

I’m not a professional athlete. I’m not even an athlete. I used to be, back in my youth. You’ll hear a cornucopia of opinions on sports from me, from strategy to execution. When a player does something fantastic, I’ll say it. When a player does something awful, I’ll say it. What you will never hear me say, however, is…Read more...

When Kyrie Irving went down with an ankle injury halfway through the second quarter of Sunday’s Bucks and Nets Game 4 matchup, basketball fans simultaneously let out a loud groan. The injury bug had hit another star in a season that may be remembered for who was left standing, instead of who was the best of the best.

Who would have thought that Chris Paul would turn into the main character of an NBA fairy tale story?

Shortly after sports returned from their pandemic-enforced break, all leagues announced that media interactions would not take place in the dressing rooms or clubhouse or on the field while the COVID was still ever-present. Press conferences would be conducted in a Zoom-type fashion, and ever since that moment we fans…Read more...

Euro 2021 (technically Euro 2020, but whatever) just started and I think we’ve already seen the goal of the tournament. Maybe the year?Read more...

We are watching the worst NBA playoffs ever.

I’ve documented how on the field, the Chicago Cubs are quickly becoming one of the stories in Major League Baseball. This is a team that had been partially stripped for parts by its owner (even though he’s tried to duck that in recent days like the coward he is), who also left the roster high and dry by not providing…Read more...

The Denver Nuggets can’t go out like this.Read more...

When discussing tennis history, people’s tastes will always influence and muddy debates about who’s what and the places they hold. Because it’s an individual sport that incorporates so many styles among its players that what one individual prefers watching will always make them lean in one direction or another about…Read more...

Kyler Murray grew up around Dallas, but don’t mistake him for a Cowboy fan.

Nine years ago or so on some blog from a previous life, I wrote much of what’s to follow here when Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the field, much in the same way Christian Eriksen did yesterday. Whenever something like this happens, broadcasters, pundits, anyone forced to comment on things that really no one can get…Read more...

The greatness of HBCUs was on full display this weekend.

Thankfully, Denmark midfielder Christian Eriksen is alive after suffering what’s now been confirmed as cardiac arrest.

Only 29 percent of the people in Brazil want the country to host Copa America, with 64 percent opposed, but that’s what’s happening anyway, even with 2,000 deaths a day from COVID-19 in Brazil, even with 65,000 new daily cases of coronavirus, even after a dozen members of Venezuela’s contingent tested positive.Read more...

Born on death row, The National Sports Daily perished of its own hand 30 years ago today, June 13, 1991.

Former All-Pro running back Le’Veon Bell shouldn’t be burning bridges nowadays. The 29-year-old former Jet, Steeler, and Chief took to Instagram this last night and when asked by a fan whether or not he’d return to the Chiefs next season, Bell replied: “I’ll never play for Andy Reid again...I’d retire first.”

It’s been a minute … maybe even millions of them.

Boris Johnson is truly awful on a lot of levels, including in his approach to race, but even the English prime minister knows that it’s a bad look when fans boo athletes who take a knee as a form of peaceful protest.

American football is set to make its triumphant return to Europe in the European League of Football. That’s right — the ELF. Thirty years after the inaugural season of the NFL-owned World League of American Football, which hasn’t been operational since 2007, ELF will launch June 19 with eight teams, most of which are…Read more...

New York Mets’ starter Jacob deGrom is kinda having a pretty alright season. More than 60 games in, his 0.56 ERA is half that of Bob Gibson’s from 1968 (1.12 — the lowest single-season ERA in the modern era). He’s also striking out 14.48 batters per nine innings pitched, which would also be the all-time single-season…Read more...

The Denver Nuggets are down 3-0, meaning no team who reached the NBA’s Final Four in The Bubble has won a game past Round 1, and one of them didn’t even do that. But these four teams — the Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, and Boston Celtics — shouldn’t be diminished for accomplishing what they did in The…Read more...

The Denmark-Finland match at the European Championship was suspended on Saturday after Danish star Christian Eriksen collapsed on the field just before halftime.

As Maggie Hendricks of Bally Sports reported that 90 percent of the United States swimming team is vaccinated for COVID-19, she noted that “Ryan Lochte preferred not to answer the question on if he was vaccinated.”Read more...

It’s beginning to look a lot like a short second round of the NBA playoffs after the Suns rolled out to a 3-0 lead on the Nuggets with a 116-102 win in Denver on Friday night, behind 28 points from Devin Booker and a 27-point, eight-assist night from Chris Paul.Read more...

Jacob deGrom is incredible, that’s nothing new. Friday night, the best pitcher on the planet had his third game this season with double-digit strikeouts and no walks, lowering his ERA to 0.56 with six innings of one-hit ball against the Padres.Read more...

Ryan Butcher started the 10th inning for the Diamondbacks in their game against the Angels on Friday night, with Jared Walsh serving as the courtesy runner at second base. But it was another of baseball’s unnecessary and irritating new rules that really wound up causing trouble for Arizona.

Twenty-four years ago today, Michael Jordan played in Game 5 of the NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz while being — as the band Disturbed would say — down with the sickness after getting food poisoning from a pizza delivered to his hotel room the night before by five randos.Read more...

It’s so unfair, man.Read more...

Julio Jones isn’t the first big name wide receiver to be traded. In fact, of the top skill positions on the offensive side of the ball, I feel like marquee receivers get moved more than any other position. Whether it’s due to contract disputes, diva personalities, or clashes with coaches, it’s always a shock to see a…Read more...

This 0-2 hole, in some ways, isn’t as dispiriting as the previous round’s seemed to be for the Los Angeles Clippers.Read more...

We all know it’s hard to leave when you can’t find the door. But sometimes you pay even more when you ignore the door that was right there.

The cool fact about the NHL’s semifinal round is that while the Islanders and Lightning are meeting for a trip to the Stanley Cup Final for the second straight year, the other series pits the Canadiens against the Golden Knights, a matchup featuring the largest gap between inaugural seasons in league history, as those…Read more...

Ever heard the term, “work smarter, not harder?” Well, the Milwaukee Bucks haven’t, as they love to make simple things complicated.

Hockey is a truly vicious sport, in that the team that wins the Presidents’ Trophy — i.e. the team that is best over the largest sample size — rarely “justifies” that achievement in the playoffs. You have to go all the way back to the Hawks in 2013, another shortened season, to find a team that was the best in the…Read more...

Remember Cars? Yesterday was the movie’s 15-year anniversary. In the 2006 film, after a full season of third-place finishes, a racer — Chick Hicks — is asked to compete with the top two racers for a chance to win the championship. That’s a plot hole that has bugged me for the last fifteen years. Why on Earth would…Read more...

Though the NFL is somewhat divided, Bruce Arians has a very simple idea as to how he could see things returning to normal.

You know what I hate? I hate seeing those grid posts on social media that give you a certain budget to create a lineup. Seriously, I don’t understand the point of them at all. Those websites should really stop posting these things.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it looks like a 12-team college football playoff format could be on the horizon.Read more...

Is there anything a mom can’t do? It’s an overused phrase, I know. But it’s pretty true. I’d like to imagine that someone, somewhere, actually has a list of all things the super-moms can do out there. Now, it’s time to add, “mom bare hands foul ball with baby in hand” to the file.

Bo must go.

Break out your tin foil hats, because we’re diving into the Major League Baseball conspiracy well. All the talk around baseball’s proverbial water cooler lately has been about pitchers using sticky substances to increase their grip on the baseball. However, according to 2019 NL Rookie of the Year, Pete “Polar Bear”…Read more...

After a tumultuous 2018-19 season with the Los Angeles Lakers, LeBron James tweeted this out, passive-aggressively declaring his intentions to change his number to six.

These primal athlete screams hit different with no fans.Read more...

I know umpires like to clear bats out of the way when they anticipate a play at the plate, but one would think that they would do so with a little bit of caution.

I know “Basketball Twitter” detests Rudy Gobert, but the fact of the matter is he deserved to win this Defensive Player of the Year Award.Read more...

TNT’s Inside the NBA is a wild show. But, like, the hilarious kind of wild. Or, the “watch Shaq and Charles argue about this dumb shit” wild. The 15-time Sports Emmy Award winning show is not really known for wild animals. But there’s a first time for everything, I guess.

The Green Bay Packers’ front office continues to squirm. As Aaron Rodgers doesn’t show up for mandatory OTA’s the Packers are getting dangerously close to having to live off the merits of their own decision-making in the form of Jordan Love starting Week 1.