Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Let me start off by saying I like Tesla. I really do. I was seriously impressed when I first drove a Tesla Roadster over a decade ago. That impression stayed with me all the way through to when I took the first ever lap of a Tesla at the Nürburgring. Tesla makes good, fast cars that I enjoy.

Manny Diaz, who was very briefly the Temple Owls’ head coach before he abandoned his contract without coaching a single game because he found a more appealing job with the Miami Hurricanes, would be better served staying away from demanding pledges of fealty from college football recruits, especially when they’re not…Read more...

Following a summer of renovations at Napoli’s Stadio San Paolo—a project that forced the team to play its first two games of the season away from home—the stadium’s locker rooms are still not ready for use. Which has manager Carlo Ancelotti absolutely furious.Read more...

I will not keep you waiting for an answer on this one. No, absolutely not and under no circumstances would it be a good idea for a homer to automatically end an inning in a big league baseball game. It seems important not to equivocate on this question. And yet this Funbag question, from a listener named Kacey who…Read more...

Team USA lost to Serbia, 94-89, in a consolation round matchup at the FIBA World Cup today, ensuring their worst-ever finish at any international tournament. The underperformance of an talent-depleted national team is less interesting to me than the physical prowess of one of basketball’s very largest. Big Boban…Read more...

The Mercury News has published a surprisingly entertaining story about a three-way spat currently raging between the Rolling Stones, the San Francisco 49ers, and the city of Santa Clara. The fight is over various logistical headaches that come with trying to put on a concert at the Niners’ stadium, and all parties…Read more...

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday during the NFL season. Email Drew here. Buy his book here.

Team USA lost its second straight FIBA World Cup game this morning in China, falling 94-89 to Serbia in a fifth-place consolation game, after yesterday’s embarrassing loss to France eliminated the American team from championship contention. Now the team cannot finish higher than seventh place in the tournament. That…Read more...

Last month, Brittney Griner of the Phoenix Mercury and Kristine Anigwe of the Dallas Wings got into a fight, which resulted in six ejections and five suspensions. It was the largest WNBA fight since 2008, when the Detroit Shock (now the Dallas Wings) and the Los Angeles Sparks were part of brawl that started between…Read more...

The third Democratic primary debate, live tonight on ABC News and Univision, will be the first time all of the major candidates have been together on one stage, and also Beto O’Rourke made it in. Many, many pundits are asking: How high are the stakes tonight? Oh ho ho boy let me tell you. They are HIGH. Astronomically…Read more...

At E3 in June of 2015, the game designer David Crooks was hanging out across the street from the L.A. Convention Center when he met a man named Tyrone Rodriguez. Crooks needed support for the console versions of his quirky top-down dungeon crawler, Enter the Gungeon, and Rodriguez’s company, Nicalis, seemed willing to…Read more...

Fifty years ago, on a drizzly Sunday afternoon in Manchester, Eva Haraldsted played soccer against George Best. Haraldsted was 21 years old. She wore a turquoise mini-dress, white soccer boots, and a high ponytail, and was captain of a women’s team called Blinkers United. Best, the shaggy-haired Manchester United…Read more...

Despite securing a Champions League spot for the second consecutive year and beating Barcelona in the Copa del Rey final last season, Marcelino is no longer the manager of Valencia. The club sacked him on Wednesday, on the eve of two massive fixtures against Barcelona in La Liga and Chelsea in the Champions League.…Read more...

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Because nothing can ever go right for the Jets, Sam Darnold has mono. Darnold, the man Jets fans are relying on to become a franchise-defining quarterback, has apparently been very busy smooching lately, and as a result has contracted the disease you probably haven’t thought about since that one time when all the…Read more...

The defending champion Seattle Storm took the expected fall that came with a pair of devastating preseason injuries, going a mere 18-16 in 2019 after dominating the league with a 26-8 record last year. But even without reigning MVP Breanna Stewart or living legend Sue Bird, the Storm managed to sneak into the…Read more...

Former No. 1 and four-time Grand Slam winner Kim Clijsters of Belgium has announced that she’s planning a return to tennis next year. In an extended interview with the WTA’s Courtney Nguyen, the 36-year-old mother of three, who retired in 2012, said she wants a “challenge.”Read more...

The home run that made baseball history was pretty workaday, as they go. Sure, it was a big moment in the game, breaking a seventh-inning tie to give the Orioles a 5-2 lead over the Dodgers. But this game didn’t really matter to either team, and Jonathan Villar’s homer—the 6,106th homer hit in MLB this season,…Read more...

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There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to enjoy the color purple. Among them, I look quite fetching in purple shirts, which is no small matter. It’s a lovely color. If I tell you that Dwight Howard enjoys the color purple, right away you are going to assume that it’s for a dumb and bad reason. Which might seem…Read more...

Explosive news out of the world of horse racing today: Justify, the colt that ruined the mystique of one of sports’ all-time legendary feats last summer, reportedly tested positive for a performance enhancing substance in the weeks ahead of the Kentucky Derby. Under the rules in place at the time, Justify normally…Read more...

Oftentimes, the worst examples of society’s despicable penchant for immediately blaming and/or discrediting women who report being victims of sexual assault are relegated to anonymous, obscure social media posters and website commenters. Other times, the dumbfucks embodying the trend are people with real names and…Read more...

Kobe Bryant, when not sloppily cosplaying Michael Jordan, has been sharing occasional updates on his Mambas youth team. Two days ago, the retired Laker congratulated the girls after they beat an opponent by 88 points. Yesterday, he shared an image of a fourth-place trophy they received two years ago, noting that the…Read more...

Right, right, right: It came against a crummy opponent whose ineptitude no doubt made things far easier than they had to be, and it was only Week 1. But in terms of personnel, play design, and execution, the Cowboys on Sunday showed they’re capable of being as forward-thinking and efficient as any offense in the NFL.Read more...

Behold this potato of a man. That’s 49-year-old Shane McMahon, son of WWE chairman Vince McMahon and also somehow an “active wrestling competitor” on SmackDown. The phrase is in quotes because Shane McMahon is not so much a wrestler as he is the beneficiary of a concoction of nostalgia and nepotism heretofore unseen…Read more...

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Having been surprised and inspired by Comrade Burneko’s scolding paean to the virtues of minor league baseball (namely, that it’s fun and people you don’t hang out with seem to like it so it deserves its continued existence based solely on that fact), I decided to avert my eyes from the smoldering ruins of Antonio…Read more...

In his first at-bat in an eventual Brewers win against the Marlins on Tuesday night, reigning NL MVP and 2019 MVP frontrunner Christian Yelich fouled a pitch off his right knee and fell to the ground in what looked like excruciating pain. The Brewers right fielder left the game, and not long after, the team broke the…Read more...

Although the Olympics are known more physical competitive pursuits like gymnastics and swimming, the organization has been inching closer and closer to the world of esports over the last few years. Its latest toe dip into the water comes in the form of a $500,000 gaming tournament hosted with Intel, held during the…Read more...

There are two versions of President Donald Trump that appear in public. They both inhabit the same body—the same Youppi-shaped torso pitched forward at the same implausible angles, same ghost-pale eyelids fluttering alarmingly, same resplendent candyfloss Kangol of hair stuck on top of it like a weird hat—but don’t…Read more...

Eighteen years ago this morning I awoke to shouts from the hall of my dorm. “We’re going to war! We’re going to war!” The origin of the shouting was my neighbor Brian, known for his histrionics, so I went back to sleep. But soon after, I received a call from my high school quarterback, Justin, living in New York and…Read more...

Pour one out for poor Eric Smith, whom the Cleveland Browns banned for life from their stadium for dumping beer on visiting Tennessee Titans players this past Sunday—even though he was nowhere near the stadium at the time. Just be careful not to get any on anybody, or the Browns will have some random sucker’s legs…Read more...

The only thing former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger likes to talk about more than the philosophical implications of life as a soccer manager is all the players he claims he narrowly missed out on signing. The latest addition to this nearly infinite list of Almost Gunners is former Manchester City academy prospect and…Read more...

Many people who visit Beijing take special pleasure in doing a thing they often do, but on the Great Wall. Shotgunning a beer on the Great Wall. Lighting a cigar on the Great Wall. Making a sandwich and then eating it on the Great Wall. I have personally seen a used condom on the Great Wall.

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The Rockies stink, but their star third baseman, Nolan Arenado, does not. Last night, he reminded everyone just how good he is by crushing a 482-foot homer that one-hopped its way out of the stadium:

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.