Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Athletes are organizing on social media, using the hashtag #NotNCAAProperty to advocate for name, image, and likeness reform in college sports. And you love to see it.Read more...

The Dallas Mavericks issued a press release on Wednesday afternoon, sharing the news of a tragic car accident involving former NBA center Shawn Bradley. According to the Mavs, with whom he played from 1997 through 2005, the former shot-blocking leader is paralyzed from the accident.Read more...

A Houston-area masseuse has accused Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual assault in a lawsuit filed Tuesday night and announced in a social media post from the accuser’s attorney, Tony Buzbee.Read more...

LeBron James is about to face LaMelo Ball for the first time in his career. And LaMelo Ball ... doesn’t really give a shit.Read more...

Your well-considered bracket is try-hard garbage. Admit it. With all your esoteric knowledge of basketball — and possibly even due to it — you will inevitably sit slack-jawed in the coming weeks as your “lock” of a team gets melted by a 5-foot-3 point guard from Southwest Rando State University.Read more...

You know when you talk to your dog like a human and they tilt their head in confusion? I made the same move when I heard about NASCAR’s plan to bring very good boys and girls to detect COVID at Sunday’s Cup Race in Atlanta.

Even if you’re a hockey fan, it always takes a second to remember that the Minnesota Wild exist and what their jerseys look like. In all of the four major sports, the Wild are the most guy-in-the-work-kitchen that no one really knows. You see him there, he might nod to someone once a month, and then he goes back to an…Read more...

Far too often in America, racism is thought of as something that only Black people endure. But, as history and the present have always proved, hate has no color.

A Houston-area masseuse has accused Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual assault in a lawsuit filed Tuesday night and announced in a social media post from the accuser’s attorney, Tony Buzbee.Read more...

We covered all the teams to make two NCAA title games in a row in this article… except... I left out one on purpose with the way I worded the question. Because there has only been one team since the 1985 expansion to make THREE final games in a row. They won it, lost it (in overtime), and won it back. The first…Read more...

Back in ancient times — you know, the ’60s and ’70s — UCLA won the damn NCAA title every year and twice on Sundays. The modern era (since the brackets expanded in 1985) has seen more parity, and the number of repeat champions has been slim. Most people can name the two teams that have done it: Duke in 1991-92 and…Read more...

There are a lot of words you could use to describe a college basketball season that has been wrecked by COVID-19, but the best one is “weird.” Besides the blue bloods of Duke and Kentucky missing the tournament, and North Carolina and Michigan State having subpar years with even lower seeds than usual, freshmen aren’t…Read more...

The Chicago Bears are officially the Bad News Bears of the NFL. Their free-agent signing of quarterback Andy Dalton was hardly a solution to this franchise’s ongoing QB dilemma.Read more...

Well, this is a hell of a way to bounce back.Read more...

As everyone knows, the St. Patrick’s Day tradition is to wear green. While Ray Ferraro and the 1989 Hartford Whalers did this for every road game, what can a sports fan pick out of the closet to garner the luck o’ the Irish and avoid the dreaded pinches for those who forget to don the right apparel? Here are the best…Read more...

Fuck my entire life.

The NCAA tournament is one of the most captivating sporting events of the year. For an entire month, the world of college basketball takes center stage and the world is introduced to young, new stars trying to make a name for themselves. Many players have had great NCAA tournament performances over the years, but only…Read more...

If there’s one thing Twitter is good for, and it might not be, it’s alerting you when you might miss something. The Blazers were down 17 last night to the Pelicans with just six minutes to go. They won by one, thanks to a 25-7 run, in which Damian Lillard was involved in 18 of those points. He finished with 50 points…Read more...

The Wizards’ biggest problem is they don’t stink enough.Read more...

The Chicago Bears have put all their eggs in the Russell Wilson basket, and if that trade doesn’t pan out, they will find themselves in the same quarterback purgatory where they have largely resided for decades. The cycle restarted itself in the 2017 NFL Draft, when the Bears traded four picks to move up from third to…Read more...

Last night’s 128-97 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers was the Golden State Warriors’ fourth loss of 20 or more points in their past six games — and Steph Curry is over it.Read more...

Most teams have never won an NCAA title, either in the modern era or in old-timey cager days. That’s just a sad fact of haves and have-nots. But most teams can at least say they had a chance to win one. Even if it’s like a Dumb & Dumber “chance.” Then there are four serious have-nots out there who have never even had…Read more...

Oh, sure, everyone loves a good Cinderella run. And if you’re like me and take the NCAA Tournament, and its history, seriously (you are reading this) you can no doubt rattle off the biggest underdogs to crash a Final Four, like Loyola and George Mason.

If you talk to anyone who went to an HBCU, they will tell you that it is a completely unique college experience. There are things that happen on these campuses that secondhand accounts won’t ever do justice.Read more...

So it is madness!

MLS would love to shirk the label of being a retirement home for the stars. Though the label of being a “selling league” isn’t too much better when trying to rope in the casual fan. But that’s not a debate the league needs to have right now. While signing aging former colossuses (colossi?!) lowers the league’s rep in…Read more...

For whatever reason, RJ Barrett’s an easy target.Read more...

This hasn’t been the best year for college basketball’s blue bloods. Kentucky had its first losing record since 1989. Duke is missing the NCAA field for the first time since 1995. North Carolina has been unranked all year, and the only reason Kansas has avoided a similar fate is how weak the Big 12 has been in general.Read more...

Remember that article I wrote yesterday about Jonnu Smith signing with the Patriots, and how Bill Belichick finally had an athletic tight end to build his offense around again? Well, good ol’ Bill woke up this morning and chose violence, asking himself, “What’s better than one tight end? Two tight ends.”Read more...

They say time heals all wounds but even after nine years, I know Duke and Missouri fans are still salty after becoming victims to some of the biggest upsets in tournament history on the same day.

It’s been over a month since Britt Reid, a former outside linebackers coach with the Kansas City Chiefs and son of head coach Andy Reid, pulled onto southbound I-435 from Stadium Drive, near Arrowhead Stadium. Ahead, two cars were pulled off to the side of the road, one having run out of gas, the other there to help.…Read more...

As the NCAA Tournament returns next week after missing a year due to COVID-19, one of the conversations that have been hovering over the sport is when will the NBA get rid of the “one-and-done” rule.Read more...

Grabbag style today, as not a whole lot going on last night.Read more...

Hours before the Women’s Basketball selection show, UConn announced that head coach Geno Auriemma tested positive for COVID-19. According to the school, the coach received a positive test result on Sunday. As far as we know, he did not come into contact with anyone since Friday, March 12. All Tier I personnel…Read more...

Jimmy Butler is putting the Miami Heat on his back once again.

If you’re at all serious about it, you’ve probably taken your first stab at filling out a bracket by now. If you were as serious ludicrous as I am about it, you’d have done it in real time as it was announced. I’d hear Greg Gumbel say, “Now ... the 15 seed in the West…” and immediately see an entire regional battle…Read more...

It’s March Madness for coaches, too.

Erik Karlsson has always generated an infuriating debate amongst hockey observers, where the “old school” — i.e. Molson-filled and incontinent old Canadians who somehow fell out of a duck blind and into a TV studio — could never reconcile Karlsson’s style of not eating pucks regularly and his desire to get into the…Read more...

The Patriots were lost in the dark in the first year of their post-Brady era. The Cam Newton experiment didn’t work, in part because of his battle with COVID, and the roster proved to have incredibly uninspiring weapons to work with. In atypical fashion, Bill Belichick has stormed into the free agency legal-tampering…Read more...

The Madness is finally back, and the matchups are finally set for what will be one of the strangest NCAA tournaments in recent history. Not only will COVID-19 likely have an impact on the games within the Indiana “bubble,” but this year we are missing some of the most storied programs in all of college basketball.…Read more...

Almost four years ago, the FBI dropped a bomb on college basketball. It turned out to be more like a janky firecracker.

The November friendlies against Wales and Panama could have been the biggest tease ever. They kind of felt like that at the time. It was the first time the US had called together only European-based players, which is what a lot of fans had been clamoring for. After all, who didn’t have fatigue of watching yet another…Read more...

If you lived through the ‘90s then you understand just how important and historic that decade was. And if you didn’t, someone who did has probably tried to explain it to you over, and over, and over again.Read more...

Tampa Bay announced Brees’s retirement before he ever did. While someone with the career of Brees wouldn’t want to go out on his back like he did in the Divisional Round this past January, it was clear that he was past it that afternoon. Brees hadn’t been particularly good, or up to his usual standards, all season and…Read more...

You know that saying about how you should never put all your eggs in one basket? Well, that’s the only way the NCAA knows how to operate..Read more...

Drew Brees has announced his retirement 15 years to the day that he joined the New Orleans Saints. Brees posted a video on his Instagram of his four kids breaking the news.Read more...

If you haven’t noticed, Ja Morant is really good at basketball.

If you’ve ever held a golf club (mini golf included) you know how frustrating the game can be. The pros usually make it look easy, but in the span of 10 minutes, we got to see a reflection of our hopeless selves on the screen.

One of the features of being a devoted supporter of a team is developing a love for a player that the outer world doesn’t really understand or appreciate. It’s something you can pick up only when you watch your team every game, to witness the nuances and habits of everyone that those who only drop in every so often…Read more...

Tom Garvey’s story, captured in his autobiography that has made the headlines in the past couple days, should make for some wild, inconceivable reading. Because no one much wanted to even attend games at Philadelphia’s Veteran’s Stadium, and that was only a stay of a matter of hours. An afternoon or evening in a cold…Read more...