Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Team USA had a seven-point lead over France with just under eight minutes to play in today’s FIBA World Cup quarterfinal game. From that point on, France went on a 22-5 run and advanced to the tournament semi-finals while leaving Team USA behind to make a new life for themselves in the trash.

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Of course, there’s the very sweet and good genre of fan-athlete interaction: kids meeting their heroes and melting down for lack of ability to regulate emotions. But there’s also the equally enjoyable, if perversely so, category of athletes dunking mercilessly on children.

Seth Dunlap is the host of weeknight sports show The Last Lap With Seth Dunlap on talk radio station WWL-AM, the radio home of the LSU Tigers and the New Orleans Saints. Last week, he wrote an open Facebook letter to Saints QB Drew Brees, discussing Brees’s video for Focus on the Family and subsequent public statementsRead more...

The woeful Pittsburgh Pirates fined relievers Kyle Crick and Felipe Vázquez for their roles in a locker room altercation prior to the team’s game against the Giants Monday night. Worse and dumber than that, the altercation led to an injury to Crick’s throwing hand, requiring surgery, and he is done for the year.Read more...

Well, this blows. The Milwaukee Brewers are very much in the hunt for the second National League Wild Card spot, trailing the Cubs by just a game and a half. But their pursuit from this point on will no longer include the services of reigning NL MVP Christian Yelich, who has been ruled out for the remainder of the…Read more...

Antonio Brown’s former trainer Britney Taylor is suing the wide receiver, accusing Brown of sexually assaulting her on three separate occasions—twice in June 2017 and again in May 2018.Read more...

You would think that robbing a home run at the wall comes down to getting a good jump, timing your leap, and having the insane hand-eye coordination to rip the ball out of the sky with your off hand, while crashing into a padded wall. Turns out that’s only most of it. As Ronald Acuña Jr. learned in a painful lesson…Read more...

The NBA 2K series has, for years now, been an excellent basketball game beset on all sides by predatory microtransaction practices. If you’re looking for a 2019 update on this eternal struggle, know that the core of NBA 2K20 is still rotten, it’s just not (from what I’ve played so far) quite as rotten as it’s been the…Read more...

Fans at Hong Kong Stadium turned their backs on the Chinese national anthem prior to a World Cup qualifying match against Iran on Tuesday, bringing the long-running pro-democracy protests to the sporting world, per the Associated Press. The fans not only turned their backs, but also held up signs with the word “Boo”…Read more...

Quarterback Nick Foles fractured his clavicle in the Jacksonville Jaguars’ first game of the season, and his injury meant the door was wide open for rookie Gardner Minshew to strut right through it, because Gardner Minshew looks like a guy who struts, or at least saunters.

J.R. Moehringer has a rich profile of Kevin Durant, in the middle of his Achilles rehab, up at the Wall Street Journal today. The new Brooklyn Net drains deep threes in a swimming pool, explains the decay of his relationship with Oklahoma City, details the purported offensive limitations of the Golden State Warriors,…Read more...

FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver’s math blog, published an article by Travis Sawchik yesterday under the headline “Do We Even Need Minor League Baseball?” In the piece, Sawchik argues that advancements in technology and data analysis have made both the discernment of genuine major-league baseball talent and the off-field…Read more...

Today, we’re talking about why baseball has no left-handed shortstops, flossing, Worcestershire sauce, toenails for teeth, and more.

A talented 17-year-old swimmer at Anchorage’s Dimond High School in Alaska was disqualified after winning the 100m freestyle event on Friday night because the referee overseeing the swim meet said she had violated “uniform regulations.” The teen’s one-piece swimsuit had reportedly bunched up and was showing her…Read more...

One good thing about the New York Mets, which is only good if you do not care about the team or its success, is that they always do just what the Mets are going to do. This does not necessarily mean Disappoint The Faithful or Screw Up Preposterously, either. That’s absolutely part of it, but there are subtler tasting…Read more...

Sahar Khodayari, a 30-year-old Iranian woman, has died after she self-immolated outside of a courtroom where she was being tried for attempting to enter a soccer match disguised as a man. Khodayari was arrested in March as she tried to attend a match featuring her favorite team, Esteghlal. She was facing up to six…Read more...

My only experience with professional wrestling is in the twelfth grade, when I had a crush on a football player who happened to really like the Rock. Because of my target’s passion, I engaged in the ultimately unrewarding activity of pretending to be into something for the interest of a man. I watched a wrestling…Read more...

When Texans QB Deshaun Watson got the ball down six with zero timeouts and 50 seconds remaining on Monday night against the Saints, it looked like he was entering an impossible situation. Since scoring a touchdown on their first drive of the second half, the Houston offense had been completely ineffective—turning the…Read more...

Sixers forward Mike Scott had a typical Philadelphia sports Sunday this week: He went to an Eagles tailgate, got into a fistfight, then brushed himself off and attended the game—a plot so hacky it’s straight out of the movie they made about Philly sports degenerates, Silver Linings Playbook. Mike Scott got the full…Read more...

Like many aces who have come before him, Noah Syndergaard prefers throwing to some catchers more than others. In Syndergaard’s case, he actually has two catchers that he likes more than Mets starter Wilson Ramos. When Syndergaard pitches to back-ups Tomas Nido and Rene Rivera, which he has done in 11 starts, he has a…Read more...

“Juiced” feels like the wrong word to describe what’s going on with the baseballs currently being put in play and mashed over fences in MLB. Not because what it’s describing isn’t real—it’s real all right—but because it makes it seem like the balls themselves have been injected with some kind of home run serum, when…Read more...

Breathe, we’ve almost made it. We’re two days from NHL players taking the ice at training camp; less than a week from the first preseason games; less than a month from the start of the regular season; and just about nine months from Kaapo Kakko winning the Calder Trophy.

I swear that headline up there is not the result of late night Mad Libs. Patriots tight end Benjamin Watson was on Fox News with conservative shithead Laura Ingraham Monday to discuss a recent article by Jemele Hill. It became clear almost immediately that Watson was expected to share Ingraham’s sneering contempt for…Read more...

The California State Assembly on Monday passed a bill that would allow college athletes to sign endorsement deals. SB 206, the Fair Pay To Play Act, cleared the Assembly by a vote of 72-0. A version of the bill passed the Senate by a similarly decisive vote in May.

Rookie Raiders safety Johnathan Abram made a number of noisy and violent hits Monday night. Late in the third quarter, with his team up 14–3, Abram drew a 15-yard penalty for lowering his head to initiate contact on a tackle of Broncos running back Royce Freeman, who was slowed up on the sideline by a sprawling…Read more...

Monday night’s Texans-Saints game ended with two incredible late drives and a dramatic walk-off 58-yard field goal to put the home team over the top, 30–28. However you feel about the Saints and their fans, one positive takeaway from their victory is it managed to wipe out a pretty significant refereeing error in the…Read more...

Hmm. Here is what I know to be true:

For reasons passing understanding, ESPN’s Monday Night Football presentation uses a sickly greenish-yellow color for the graphic showing the down and distance. It’s a big highlighter-yellow block on the bottom right of the screen, and it’s ugly, and I hate it. On top of being ugly, it looks like a penalty flag has…Read more...

Just when you thought Madden glitch season was over, here’s another entry sure to astound and amaze. A fumble after the catch turned into ... well, I’m not really sure what the hell happened.Read more...

Kosovo is taking on England in a qualifying match for the 2020 Euros tomorrow, and the game will as something of a coming out party for Kosovo, which has only had a national soccer team certified by UEFA and FIFA since 2016. If this is Kosovo’s chance to get some international attention, their manager, Bernard…Read more...

Tennis is the only sport where the loser of a championship has to stand next to the winner and praise them. It’s a contrived performance, and often feels unfair because the loser is judged not only on how courteously they accept a wrenching defeat, but also on how insightful they are in the moments immediately after…Read more...

The Titans delivered an absolute shitkicking of the Browns Sunday in Cleveland, and the cherry on top was Malcolm Butler’s game-sealing pick-six with three minutes to go. When Butler reached the end zone, he and some of his teammates jumped up to celebrate with a Titans fan in the front row. A Browns fan in a Baker…Read more...

Lost in the exciting new world of Antonio Brown the Patriot (can’t you just see the glint in Bill Belichick’s eye?) is what Brown left behind:

Saturday’s college field hockey game between Maine and Temple was called off in the middle of play after host school Kent State needed the field to set up pre-game fireworks for the football game next door, per the Bangor Daily News. While the teams were told of a potential scheduling conflict beforehand, the decision…Read more...

Lithuania’s run at the FIBA World Cup ended this morning against the Dominican Republic, though their chances of advancing through the second group stage were killed on Saturday when they lost to France by three points. The nature of that loss was highly controversial.

An alarm system is one of those things that you never want to need, but if you’re going to get one, consider this Ring Alarm Home Security System, now down to $139 — its lowest price ever — on Amazon. The five-piece kit includes a base station, contact sensor, motion detector, keypad, and range detector, all of which…Read more...

Daniil Medvedev’s run at the U.S. Open, the most absorbing of any men’s non-winner in recent memory, could have ended earlier—well before his final Sunday against Rafael Nadal had a chance to transform from old hat to modern classic. As late as the third set, the 23-year-old Russian was straight-up envisioning his…Read more...

Washington head coach Jay Gruden opted not to use Adrian Peterson at all in Sunday’s loss to the Eagles, despite the running back being healthy and ready to go. Gruden instead fielded Derrius Guice and Chris Thompson, who rushed a combined 13 times for 28 yards, and Wendell Smallwood, who didn’t have an offensive…Read more...

The Steelers got their asses kicked in by the Patriots last night, and you only need to take one look at Ben Roethlisberger’s big dumb head to understand just how poorly the game went for his team.

Jimmy Farris spent six seasons in the NFL as a receiver with the 49ers, the Patriots, the Falcons, Washington, and the Jaguars. He won a ring in Super Bowl 36, when he signed with New England just before the playoffs. As an undrafted rookie in 2001, Farris had an up-close look at the dynamic between a supremely gifted…Read more...

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Accept all the necessary caveats about how Week 1 can produce wonky results and how one game doesn’t make a season, and what you’re left with when examining the Cleveland Browns’ 43-13 loss to the Tennessee Titans is the understanding of just how Brownsy it was.

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No one is keeping tabs on the high schools. Title IX, passed in 1972, guarantees that all institutions that receive federal funding must provide equal opportunities, facilities, and supplies to students regardless of their gender. In athletics, that means that for every position on a team available to a boy, there…Read more...

Dolphins head coach Brian Flores declared on Friday, “I have a good team.” What a difference one game makes, especially when that game was Miami’s 59-10 loss to the Ravens, featuring the most points and the most yards (643) the Dolphins have given up in their history. Brian Flores on Sunday: “We’ve got problems on…Read more...

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Not even a full year after the Boston Red Sox won the World Series, they’ve fired president Dave Dombrowski, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan. Dombrowski had been with the team since August of 2015.Read more...

Adam Gase had a chance to set the tone for the Jets’ season. He was in position to win the first game with an impressive defensive performance, make everyone stop with the eyeball jokes, and show that he was different than former head coach Todd Bowles. Instead, Week 1 looked like more of the same.