Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

It’s that time of year again, hoops fans! The NFL season is in full swing, baseball’s playoffs start next week, and the NBA regular season won’t tip off for another month. You know what that means: It’s time to rank the top 100 active NBA players!

Deadspin is on the record about our belief that indirect free kicks rule, and the rocket blast that gave Creighton an overtime victory over Tulsa on Tuesday was a perfect example of why we so love these kinds of goals:

The most important thing to know about the Miami Dolphins is that their new coach, Brian Flores, treats every game like he will be held criminally liable if anything interesting happens. Dolphins fans, befitting a franchise that hasn’t won a playoff game in 20 years, have extensive experience with coaches who may be…Read more...

Winter Clearance Sale | BackcountryRead more...

One day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Democrats were launching a formal impeachment inquiry into president Donald Trump, the White House on Wednesday released the much sought-after memo describing a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. In it, the president…Read more...

For my money, there’s no better exercise during the NFL season than to look at the bottom of the standings in order to wonder, Would Jim Tomsula, right now, be better than that team’s head coach?Read more...

Much has been made of the ways in which the juiced ball and hitters valuing power over contact has mutated MLB offenses, but the game’s drastic evolution has effects all over the field. In fact, part of the reason why so many guys go up to the plate only swinging for the fences now is that they increasingly have to…Read more...

The Nationals clinched a National League Wild Card berth Tuesday, via a doubleheader sweep of the Phillies. It’s not exactly a towering accomplishment—it earns them one do-or-die game and nothing more—but it’s worth remembering that the Nationals were at one point 19–31 on the season and looking totally cooked. At any…Read more...

A funny moment occurred in the seventh inning of Tuesday night’s game between the Washington Nationals and the Philadelphia Phillies. Bryce Harper, pinch-hitting in the night game after starting the first leg of today’s doubleheader, came to the plate to face Nationals reliever and personal nemesis Hunter Strickland.…Read more...

The NBA Board of Governors tweaked the rule book last week in order to, among other things, “help eliminate the gap between the [traveling] rule as written and how it has been applied in NBA games,” according to a summary distributed by the league. The tweak defines the concept of the gather, which is a basketball…Read more...

Auston Matthews, Toronto’s 22-year-old center, has a pretrial conference scheduled for Wednesday morning in Scottsdale, Arizona, related to a strange incident alleged to have taken place in a condominium complex at 2 a.m. back in May. Matthews, who may have been intoxicated at the time, is accused of subjecting a…Read more...

I can’t remember the last time both of these games so underwhelmed.Read more...

Last Saturday’s UFC card in Mexico City ended with a wet fart of a main event. Yair Rodriguez got the walkout of a lifetime in front of thousands of hometown fans, only for his bout against Jeremy Stephens to end as a no contest in 15 seconds when Rodriguez swiped across Stephens’s face and gouged his eyes. The crowd…Read more...

At a time when it feels like any comedy, great or up-and-coming, could be cut down at any moment, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia stands tall. The FXX series, which premiered on FX in 2005, is now in its 14th season, tying the record for longest-running live-action sitcom set by The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet…Read more...

The possibility that the NBA’s dumb new tampering rules would be enforced in the dumbest possible fashion has quickly come to fruition. Per a league press release today, the Milwaukee Bucks have been fined $50,000 for “violating league rules governing the timing of discussions regarding future player contracts and…Read more...

The Chicago Bears keep a rowdy locker room after wins, and after they smoked Washington on the road Monday night, they turned the visitor’s locker room into “Club Dub.” Everyone had a good time! Head coach Matt Nagy threw his arms around a bunch! Running back Tarik Cohen accidentally showed his teammate’s penis to…Read more...

In what universe is Marcelo still one of the best defenders in the world? Not in this one, or any other where performances on the field or even the amorphous “club success” criteria apply. The only place where Marcelo could be considered a starter in a world’s best XI is one where nothing matters today as much as…Read more...

This is an excerpt from Eric Nusbaum’s new weekly Substack newsletter Sports Stories, where he’ll be writing about sports, history, and sports history. He hopes you will subscribe here, and share these stories with your friends, families, and table tennis practice partners. The version of this in the newsletter has…Read more...

Tom Brady was watching Titans-Jaguars Thursday night and, like every other person with functional eyes, did not enjoy the experience. Only he overcame his revulsion and fear of being found out, tweeting about it and saying all the holding penalties were ruining his fun.

Today, we’re talking about pickles, basketball hoop design, BIG WEDDING, and more.

Apologies to Kevin Garnett, but he’s been upstaged by Mike Francesa as the most intriguing sports-adjacent figure to appear in the upcoming movie Uncut Gems. In the anxiety-inducing trailer, radio’s drowsiest fella dons pinstripes, fits the film’s NYC milieu perfectly, and nails his line delivery: “Well I’ll tell you…Read more...

Look closely at this past Saturday’s sports page of the Washington County (Penn.) Observer-Reporter. There’s something off about that photo accompanying a recap of the game between between Peters Township and North Hills.Read more...

Malcolm Gladwell emailed me last Thursday, in response to a blog post I had written about his recent appearance on Bill Simmons’s podcast, in which he dusted off a tired defense of Joe Paterno’s role in the Jerry Sandusky abuse scandal. He offered to send me a copy of his new book, which he said might “modify [my]…Read more...

Here is the most disgusting video I’ve watched on the internet in a long time:

If the above image fills you with confusion, fear, repulsion, and curiosity: Congratulations, you’re human, and you understand how physics work. If you already know exactly what you’re looking at: Welcome back to Action Park, motherfuckers.Read more...

College football coaches, as a general rule, are a weird group of people. The job seems built to attract a specific type of deeply strange person—take the most obsessive and ambitious and aggressive gym teacher possible, then pay him millions of dollars and make him one of the most recognizable and relentlessly public…Read more...

End of Summer Sale | Zappos | Promo code ENDOFSUMMERRead more...

The Swiss Army said it could reprimand world champion mountain biker Nino Schurter for posting a picture of his ass, along with the asses of three others, in front of the White House and tagging Donald Trump.Read more...

Case Keenum declared that Washington’s dead-on-arrival loss to the Bears Monday night was “all on me.” That is absolutely false. Any truly great or truly awful team is just that, a team effort— it requires 53 men, plus coaches and front office and even ownership. And the Skins are a unicorn turd of a football team: a…Read more...

In what is absolutely not a metaphor for Jay Gruden’s coaching and [gestures vaguely at Washington’s routine ascendance to new frontiers of dysfunction], the Monday Night Football broadcast caught a team employee on Washington’s sideline stirring a cooler full of Gatorade with what appears to be a plastic bag of…Read more...

Dan Snyder’s football clown show spent halftime of their Monday night meltdown loss inducting retired linebacker London Fletcher into the Ring of Honor of their miserable, far-flung hell-hole of a stadium. Fletcher spent less than half of his career in Washington and won zero playoff games, but whatever, this…Read more...

If you, like me, find yourself yearning for a throw that did not result in an interception tonight, I give you this Mookie Betts outfield assist from Boston’s game against Tampa Bay, which is so cool it should be illegal.Read more...

The Cubs were all but eliminated from playoff contention over the weekend, thanks to a four-game home series sweep at the hands of the dreaded Cardinals. To add, uhh, injury to injury, third baseman Kris Bryant nuked his ankle Sunday and stands a good chance of missing all of Chicago’s remaining six regular season…Read more...

I do not advise tuning in for the Monday night matchup between Washington and the Bears for any reason. Those deranged enough to watch this horror show have seen the Bears pound the bejeezus out of the home team in every phase, starting with a first-quarter pick-six to open the scoring. The especially diseased among…Read more...

The situation seemed like it was getting contentious, but Andre Iguodala and the Memphis Grizzlies have arrived at a resolution of sorts. Per the Daily Memphian, Iguodala will remain on the Grizzlies’ roster when the 2019-20 NBA season begins, but he won’t report to training camp or Media Day. Instead, he’ll be…Read more...

The return of fall also means the return of MASTERCUP, an annual team-based Tekken competition that often provides some of the scene’s greatest moments of the year. As a prelude, the organizers held a special event called MASTERCUP Try that allowed players to compete for the chance to get a professional esports…Read more...

Late last week, LSU offensive lineman Ed Ingram was reinstated to the program following a lengthy suspension that began in August of 2018, when Ingram was charged with two felony counts of aggravated sexual assault of a minor. The charges against Ingram were dropped last Friday, which preceded his reinstatement.

It’s more than a little ironic that the definitive proof that the Premier League truly is as comprehensively and inarguably supreme as its fanboys have long contended it to be has come in the exact form many of those same fanboys shitted on Spain for back when La Liga was top dog.Read more...

Fall Oxford Dress Shirts | Jachs | Promo code OXGMGRead more...

Down 2-0 to the Connecticut Sun in the WNBA Semifinals, the Los Angeles Sparks played out the last quarter and a half of their season Sunday night without Candace Parker, to the surprise of everyone involved, including Candace Parker.

Man, this is a fantastic comedy of errors for anyone not involved, and it all kicked off because of a poorly written piece of satire about T. Boone Pickens.Read more...

Russia has three weeks to explain how positive drug test results were deleted from data sent to the World Anti-Doping Agency, which is still investigating Russia’s intricate years-long doping scheme that involving passing urine samples through a secret hole in a laboratory wall and got the country …Read more...

The Laver Cup, which took place this past weekend in Geneva, is the most entertaining exhibition format tennis has devised to date. The semi-scripted feel hits the spot, and by recasting the tour’s most famous rivals as allies, there’s an element of fan service. You get to watch 39 majors’ worth of talent shoot the…Read more...

UCF’s 27-game unbeaten run in regular-season play ended this weekend, as the Knights lost on the road to Pitt in a dramatic 35-34 stunner. The Panthers marched down the field on a 12-play game-winning drive late in the fourth quarter, and capped it off with a trick-play touchdown catch by QB Kenny Pickett on fourth…Read more...

This is why the Chicago Cubs should not have been permitted to win the 2016 World Series: Their fans can no longer appreciate the Cubs of the last week.Read more...

Here’s Dennis Smith Jr. taking some free throws which bear the troubling artistic influence of Markelle Fultz. The clip comes from a Redditor who claimed to spot the Knicks point guard at school—judging by the banners, it’s the Manhattan private school Avenues—and some credibility is gained from the fact that three…Read more...

If any Democratic presidential candidates are looking for the next big proposal to get one over on their rivals, the UK Labour Party just handed out a great idea: a 32-hour workweek, or the equivalent of four days a week for people who currently work eight hours a day.Read more...

In a garden-variety suburb outside Albany—a recent July morning, but it could have been any morning—Patrick Battuello woke up at five, brewed a cup of coffee, and then sat at his computer to review the previous day’s horse races. He’s done this every day for the last six years. This was a Monday, and so there were a…Read more...

An Anker USB-C battery pack, ANC headphones, Philips OneBlade, and a Lucky Brand sale lead off Monday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

Own goals usually leave defenders red-faced, but the cheeks of Sparta Prague defender Michal Sáček’s ass were most likely the redder after his butt scored an own goal in Sunday’s match against Slavia Prague:Read more...