Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Reader, I will be honest with you: My eyes turned to little wads of chalk and I lapsed into a coma for 50,000 lifetimes of the earth while trying to read this ESPN.com feature about the twists of hotshot rookie Zion Williamson’s path to a sneaker endorsement deal. All I remember about it is the unbearably tragic…Read more...

If you were hoping to catch some fireworks after Saturday night’s Montreal Impact-Colorado Rapids soccer match, bad news: It’s off because of the damn plague.

While the rest of the sports world is deep in a summer lull, independent wrestling is in the middle of a hectic 10 days of notable shows. Last weekend, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, everyone’s favorite all-star indie, ran their usual buzzy, action-packed show in Los Angeles; DEFY, the top group in the pacific northwest,…Read more...

Some people are fans of the Denver Broncos. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Denver Broncos. This 2019 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Steve Ballmer said he is open to renaming/rebranding his basketball team, which would be noble if the rest of the sentence read, “because the amoral pig who owned this before me turned the enterprise into a urinal and even shouting like a lunatic and bringing Jerry West and Kawhi Leonard on board doesn’t erase that.”

Vic Fangio has been coaching football at the college and pro level for 40 years, and through all that time he’s never held a head coaching position, until this season. Fangio was hired to be the head coach of the Denver Broncos during the offseason, and last night’s preseason game against the Falcons was his first…Read more...

When Jim Spanfeller and a private equity firm called Great Hill Partners took over G/O Media—formerly Gizmodo Media Group—in April, their stated goal was to make the company profitable. It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under Univision’s doomed ownership. But as…Read more...

I was playing in NFL Europe in the spring of 2004, eating schnitzel in Düsseldorf for the Rhein Fire, when I learned that we had traded for Champ Bailey. I had just spent the year on the Broncos practice squad and Clinton Portis was my teammate. Now Clinton was gone and we had Champ coming to town.

Nathan Patterson hasn’t played high-level baseball since his senior year of high school, but after an impressive round at the speed pitch challenge at a Rockies game, where he hit 96 mph on the radar gun, the 23-year-old now has a signed contract with the Oakland A’s.Read more...

It’s been about three years since Rachael Denhollander called the Indianapolis Star and said she was sexually abused by the longtime doctor for the women’s national gymnastics team, Larry Nassar. Since then more than 300 women have said that they were abused by Nassar; the disgraced doctor has been sentenced to …Read more...

If you like cold brew coffee, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Bizzy, Amazon’s #1 seller of cold brew beans, concentrates, and ready-to-drink coffee. They sent me some to try out recently, and it was incredibly smooth and tasty. In fact, I readily admit that I enjoyed it more than my typical Amazon Fresh DIY…Read more...

Pelicans general manager David Griffin is one of the toasts of the NBA these days. He will be remembered as the guy who reversed the fortunes of that franchise at the end of the Anthony Davis era, by drafting Zion Williamson and by flipping Davis for a package of useful players and valuable draft assets, hopefully…Read more...

It’s been a turbulent few days for Trevor Bauer. His start Sunday was perhaps his worst of the year, and ended with Bauer angrily chucking the ball all the way over the wall in center. For that he was chewed out by manager Terry Francona, and later fined by MLB. Before Francona could decide whether to hit Bauer with…Read more...

MLB has announced the fallout for Tuesday night’s brawl during Pirates-Reds: Six players and both managers have been suspended. Pittsburgh relief pitcher Keone Kela “won” with the longest punishment at 10 games, but all the players are appealing theirs.

Offensive lineman Trent Williams’s holdout from Washington’s training camp doesn’t look like it’s going to end anytime soon. But Williams’s issues with the Skins appear to date back much further than previously believed, and the relationship may indeed be broken beyond repair.Read more...

In June, the Chicago White Sox became the first MLB team to announce that they would expand protective netting all the way to the foul pole. During today’s Mets-White Sox game, New York right fielder Jeff McNeil used the Chicago ballpark’s recent addition to make a beautiful, innovative circus catch on a ball in foul…Read more...

A summer day of floating and chilling at Longjing, China’s Yulong Shuiyun Water Amusement Park earlier this week quickly turned dangerous when an oversized wave unexpectedly slammed through the crowded pool. Video from the park is rather quite scary, as people are launched out of the wave pool onto the concrete.Read more...

Some people are fans of the Buffalo Bills. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Buffalo Bills. This 2019 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Knicks owner and dedicated crooner James Dolan seemingly has an allergy toward playing his music in front of anyone who might be inclined to bring actual attention to it. Over the past month, at least three paying customers have been booted from three separate venues during Dolan’s shows. Two of those times, the…Read more...

At an AAU tournament when I was 16, just minutes before my third game of the day, I ate three slices of pizza and drank a sugar-free Red Bull. I nearly threw up twice during the game, but I got shots up and hit six threes. I think we won that game, but I don’t remember. I don’t remember anyone even looking at the…Read more...

According to a pair of reports from the Independent and the Sun, Danish PGA Tour pro Thobjorn Olesen was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport on Monday for a series of incidents on a flight that left from Nashville.Read more...

Nathan Peterman, America’s Quarterback and Oakland’s either second or third, is growing on Jon Gruden. Not like Kuato in Total Recall, although that is nice to think about—to be clear, Gruden is Kuato in this scenario; just slap a visor and a critical sunburn on this little guy and it’s easy to see—but in the way that…Read more...

On Wednesday, FIFA approved the expansion of the 2023 Women’s World Cup from 24 teams to 32, ignoring concerns about match quality and financial investment in an attempt to capitalize on the growing popularity of women’s soccer. It’s a very FIFA move, as no entity is better at taking a good idea and ruining it than…Read more...

When Arsenal lost in the Europa League final, it felt like the Gunners were well and truly fucked. That defeat, coupled with a third-consecutive Premier League finish outside the top four, consigned Arsenal to life outside the Champions League for the third year running, presumably a massive setback in the club’s…Read more...

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Three-time U.S. national champion figure skater and 2014 Olympic bronze medalist Ashley Wagner wrote in USA Today on Thursday that she was sexually assaulted by the late former pairs skater John Coughlin when she was 17 and he was 22.

In the 1981 offseason, feeling underpaid and unhappy about Oilers owner Bud Adams’s treatment of former coach Bum Phillips, Earl Campbell asked for a raise. Only a year earlier, at the close of Campbell’s second season, the normally tightfisted Oilers had agreed to restructure Campbell’s rookie contract, adding…Read more...

Of the enduring images that make live sports television great, few rival the trade deadline shows for pure unalloyed reality. Men in coats staring at phones that don’t ring, then looking plaintively at each other and the hosts as if to say, “We got nothing here. Go to break, do a puppet show, crack a beer, we don’t…Read more...

During the top of the third inning of Wednesday night’s Cubs-Cardinals game, I briefly slipped into a coma and dreamt of Eduardo Pérez and Jon Sciambi facing off in the kal-if-fee. In the bottom of the third inning, Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas totally cheated and got away with it.Read more...

In the third inning of Wednesday night’s Cubs-Cardinals broadcast on ESPN, play-by-play guy Jon Sciambi brought up an interesting stat about the lousy season-long performance of the second-base and center-field positions for the Cubs. This line of thought led fellow commentator Eduardo Pérez to bring up Chicago’s…Read more...

Tonight was the fourth 2020 Democratic presidential debate we’ve sat through. It was pretty boring! There was much debate about the particulars of various shitty healthcare plans, Joe Biden came off like a doddering old man, and various men with through-the-floor poll numbers tried in vain to claw their way out of…Read more...

Boston Red Sox starter Rick Porcello has had a rough season. His 5.55 earned run average entering Wednesday night’s start is a career-worst; his WHIP is the highest it’s been in going on four seasons in Boston; his strikeouts per nine innings are the lowest they’ve been since 2015. To make matters worse, the situation…Read more...

According to a report from the New York Times, soccer federation and bribe repository FIFA is considering moving away from its longtime headquarters in Switzerland and setting up shop elsewhere. The Times speculates that potential host countries could potentially engage in an Amazon-style competition of who can most…Read more...

In 1992, when I would have been 11 years old or so, I went with my family to the theater to see the movie Radio Flyer, starring Elijah Wood and the annoying dinosaur enthusiast kid from Jurassic Park (Joseph Mazzello) as brothers in an abusive household in... probably the late 1950s or early 1960s? This was a late and…Read more...

A few East-Coast ballparks have come up against their arch-nemesis this afternoon—falling water—as an onslaught of thunderstorms have conspired to threaten, at least, an ongoing game in the Bronx and an upcoming one in Philadelphia.Read more...

The start of Christian Pulisic’s first Premier League season is just 10 days away, though the former Wonderteen has only spent a few weeks with Chelsea after the USMNT lost the Gold Cup final. Has he had time to get up to speed and prepare for a grueling campaign? With the obvious caveat that preseason friendly…Read more...

Justin Verlander’s still got it. The 36-year-old Houston Astros starter flexed his muscles once again on Tuesday night, striking out 13 Cleveland Indians over seven innings of scoreless two-hit ball as his team picked up its 10th win in the past 12 games. It was the Astros’ fourth straight win with Verlander on the…Read more...

Attention all baseball men! Have you been outside? It is thousands of degrees outside and somehow even more humid. Terrible! It is almost August. And so I say to you: it is time to stop wearing these ridiculous t-shirts under your jerseys.Read more...

Deadspin is currently in the process of reporting a story on its owners, an exercise that we’ve done in the past to varying degrees. In a total coincidence, the folks in charge have started pushing for a “public editor” to ensure that all future articles that may include reporting on ourselves would be “objective.”…Read more...

Some people are fans of the Detroit Lions. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Detroit Lions. This 2019 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

The footage is dark, but the figure is large and fleshy enough to rule out the possibility that it is anyone but Nuggets center Nikola Jokić.Read more...

The NFL’s current collective bargaining agreement has largely made training camp holdouts a thing of the past. By codifying significant daily fines, docking a regular-season game check for each preseason game missed, and placing limitations on the accrual of service time toward free agency, this CBA has mostly made…Read more...

An HP Gaming Computers and Redragon Accessory Gold Box, a printer that is actually good, and Star Wars: The Complete Saga lead off Wednesday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

Turkish side Fenerbahce took on German giants Bayern Munich in a preseason friendly yesterday. Things did not go well for the Fenerbahce players, who were dominated throughout the game and lost 6-1. That performance earned them plenty of boos from the home fans, which were enough to drive team captain Nabil Dirar to…Read more...

The Trevor Bauer trade was at least a little overshadowed, because within minutes of the news breaking, one of its major pieces was involved in a big ol’ brawl. Understandable, but it really is a fascinating trade that confounded expectations and may have made the Indians—ostensible sellers here—an even better team…Read more...

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Literally as I was hitting publish on a blog about Trevor Bauer being fined for a meltdown, and how it might’ve been his final act as a member of the Cleveland Indians, Bauer was traded by the Cleveland Indians. I did that! Sadly, Bauer was not traded to the New York Mets. Even more sadly, he was traded to a team even…Read more...

Trevor Bauer was fined by Major League Baseball Tuesday for his tantrum on the mound Sunday, when Bauer chucked the ball over the wall in center at the end of a brutal outing against the Kansas City Royals. Bauer apologized for the meltdown after the game, but MLB apparently still felt he needed to be taught a lesson. …Read more...

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have effectively neutralized an onslaught of attacks from their Democratic competitors all night. This has been entirely facilitated by the feckless CNN moderating team, who seem to be doing as much as possible to represent bad-faith Republican talking points as well as possible,…Read more...