Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

We get caught up in a lot of drama and narrative when following the NBA, and that’s a lot of what makes it fun. Sometimes, though, there’s something neat about going over the bedrock numbers.

The announcement by MLB on Wednesday that the 1920-1948 Negro Leagues would be recognized as major league was very welcome news.

Citing loyalty, Giannis Antetokounmpo found 228 million reasons to remain with the Milwaukee Bucks for the next five seasons.

Giannis Antetokounmpo saved the NBA.

I don’t want to be hard on James Harden. We all ... look different after this year. Cooped up in our house, downing comfort foods more often than we have in the five years previous combined. For me, it’s peanut butter M&Ms. You have yours. Something you run to when it all gets too much, which it does every couple days…Read more...

In wonderful news, University of Florida star basketball player Keyontae Johnson is in stable condition and is breathing on his own and “even FaceTimed the team,” according to his parents, Nika and Marrecus Johnson.Read more...

Karma always finds a way to win.Read more...

If it feels like MLB owners are always coming here for an argument, that’s pretty much because they always are. While the comatose-snail-slow free agent and trade market can be partially traced to the usual, contemporary miserliness of the cabal of 30 (though most certainly not collusion, no sir), another percentage…Read more...

Sooner or later, it all comes crashing down.

Back-to-back MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo rolled the dice and decided that he will stay a Milwaukee Buck for the foreseeable future.

In a seemingly never-ending debate, there appears to be a new king of the mountain each week for who the best wide receiver in the NFL is. Ask 10 people and you’ll get 10 different answers — some prefer size, some prefer route running, some prefer speed. It’s like asking me what my favorite kind of whiskey is — the…Read more...

It’s no secret that the NFL wants a piece of the younger demographic. But SpongeBob graphics and slime won’t cut it.

There are a lot of stunning things about the way hockey is unable to be more than a niche sport. At least stylistically, it is probably the most advanced sport, or could be. The jerseys are the best in sports, should be fashionable, and with the white playing surface, it’s the one that pops off the screen the most in…Read more...

October 18, 2019, dawned the final preseason game for the Miami Heat of last year. Kendrick Nunn earned the starting nod alongside Justise Winslow, Duncan Robinson, Bam Adebayo, and Meyers Leonard. The Heat did battle with the Houston Rockets, who played Russell Westbrook and James Harden a combined 61 minutes, with…Read more...

Just two weeks after the Philadelphia Eagles had a meaningless, miraculous cover against the Seattle Seahawks, Monday Night Football delivered an even more ridiculous bad beat.

Let’s get this done at the top. This is how you greet a player returning from the locker room after “cramps”:

Things are never as good as they seem, and so it has proven with Cleveland’s MLB team’s name change. The hunch was that they would always wait until 2022 to actually change the name, much like how the Washington Football Team couldn’t find another one for this year. The excuse they’ll trot out is the “logistics” for a…Read more...

[Update]: According to a statement put out by Florida Men’s Basketball, Johnson is now able to follow simple commands.Read more...

Kyrie Irving spoke to reporters for the first time this season on Monday afternoon, clarifying his ‘pawn’ comments in the process.

It really does suck to be the middle child.

In some ways, anything like this is folly when a team has already hired Dave Dombrowski as President of Baseball. The Phillies clearly aren’t going to wait around for Theo Epstein to finish his year with a Eurorail pass as he takes up poetry or dyes his hair purple or whatever means of self-discovery he has planned…Read more...

It’s time once again to highlight the teams stinking up the joint every single week.Read more...

Sports broadcasting continues to be an incestuous display of nepotism, and it’s nauseating. At 25 years old, Jac Collinsworth magically gets to work alongside his daddy Cris on Sunday Night Football, because of course he does.

I can see that some of you have already found the podcast, ahead of the announcement, because you’ve downrated it with one star before the first episode even went up. Kudos to you for having such initiative! Seriously though, stop being so weird.

Ain’t nobody gonna start defending Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, or as my homie Jarod Hector of TrueHoop calls him, “The Broke Boy.” There’s no “but,” either, that’s just the opening disclaimer to the following passage.Read more...

In sports, it’s not about how you start. More often, it’s about how you finish.

I’ve been looking forward to this game ever since I realized that the NFL’s kings of folding under pressure would face off against each other.

The NFL seemed to get full control over its COVID situation in Week 14, after a week that saw players literally being pulled out of pregame warmups because of positive tests.

I thought y’all said this whole team was trash?

Whatever you or I may think or know, the Steelers will retire Ben Roethlisberger’s No. 7 one day, and maybe even one day soon. We can’t win. He’ll be revered by perhaps the most slovenly and up-its-own-ass fanbase in American sports, he’ll probably get a TV gig if he wants one (the fact that he can’t string four words…Read more...

It’s not all that surprising after the Washington Football Team, belatedly, saw the light of the indecency of its name. Cleveland’s MLB team had been moving toward changing its name for a while now, as they began to de-emphasize their Chief Wahoo logo with hats and jerseys that just featured the block “C” or the…Read more...

For the past few years in the Premier League, there’s been a “Big 6” and the rest. The hope has been that some team from outside that aristocratic cabal could crash the party and stay, like Everton or or Leicester or West Ham, all teams that have at least the resources to compete at that level. Anything to break up…Read more...

You can set your watch to Minnesota sports. The Twins will never win a playoff game, the Timberwolves will see anyone with a name you can remember leave to accomplish anything, and no one will ever remember the Wild even exist, as everyone is more concerned with the Gophers anyway. And the Vikings will watch their…Read more...

A taped-on mask is probably the best metaphor we have for the 2020 NFL season.

In one of the trolliest moments of the year, Josh Jacobs, running back for the Las Vegas Raiders, took to Instagram before today’s game and instilled panic in the hearts of fantasy managers everywhere.Read more...

The Dolphins’ Xavien Howard just gave us one of the most spectacular defensive plays of the season.

Florida basketball standout and NBA prospect Keyontae Johnson remains in critical but stable condition on Sunday, one day after he collapsed in the middle of a game and was rushed to the hospital.Read more...

Just after Sarah Fuller calmly kicked her first extra point for Vanderbilt yesterday in a game against Tennessee, ESPN sent out the alert. “With her successful PAT, Sarah Fuller becomes the 1st woman to score in a Power 5 game.”

You know Charley Pride, the country singer. The three-time Grammy winner recorded over 40 No. 1 hit country songs and became the genre’s first Black superstar. But before his music career, Pride was a professional baseball player.

Putting up the first winless season in school history, even in a pandemic year, and capping it with a 70-7 loss to your top rival is a surefire way to lose your job as a college football coach, and that’s exactly what happened to Kevin Sumlin, who got fired by Arizona on Saturday, following the Wildcats’ demolition at…Read more...

Over/Under: 45Read more...

The entire NFL season could’ve been avoided, but here we are somehow nearing its completion. Hard to believe there are just a few more weeks with the Sunday Scaries.Read more...

The first time I mentioned Joe Hall on this website was in my first week here, which was also the first week of the coronavirus pandemic shutting things down. I’d done some research at the New York Public Library, the day before it closed its doors, looking at microfilm of century-old newspapers to learn more about…Read more...

Sarah Fuller became the first woman to score in a Power 5 football game on Saturday, kicking an extra point as Vanderbilt took a first quarter lead against Tennessee.

WNBA players stood in solidarity with two high school girls student-athletes from American Heritage School near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., after the school suspended their basketball game Thursday because they wore #BlackLivesMatter black t-shirts.

Meet the new Mets… same as the old Mets?Read more...

Jeff Ermann of Inside MD Sports broke the news on Saturday that Terrapins quarterback Taulia Tagovailioa, linebacker Chance Campbell, “plus another starter and a coordinator” tested positive for COVID-19 and would have to miss Maryland’s game against Rutgers.Read more...

Utah State football players are using their power to take a stand against what they perceived as religious discrimination by their university president.Read more...