Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

High school basketball player R.J. Hampton is the No. 5-ranked prospect on ESPN’s list of 100 recruits from the class of 2019, and this morning we all found out that he will not be playing college basketball next season. Instead, he will be playing in the Australian pro league as a member of the New Zealand Breakers.

LAS VEGAS — All Elite Wrestling’s inaugural event on Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas gave fans a lot to digest, but more importantly it delivered a well-balanced and suitably fulfilling feast. What was supposed to be a taste of what’s to come from AEW, both in the ring and outside of it,…Read more...

Call ‘em the Showtime Lakers again, not because their utter organizational collapse of this past season was fun to watch—though it was definitely fun to watch—but because they melted down with levels of violence and obscenity that belong on premium cable. Luke Walton is gone as coach, replaced with a third-choice…Read more...

Boulder attorney, Christopher Kulish, added to one of the deadliest climbing seasons in Mt. Everest history, becoming the 11th person to die on the mountain in 10 days. A news release from his brother said Kulish died early Monday morning on his way back down the mountain after reaching the summit earlier in the…Read more...

Aston Villa have made their way back to the Premier League after defeating Derby County 2-1 at Wembley in the Championship playoff final. The club joins Norwich City and Sheffield United as the three clubs heading to the top flight and replacing Huddersfield Town, Fulham and Cardiff City.

While he may not be carving up defense in MLS like he was during the second half of last season anymore, old man Wayne Rooney is still one of the league’s top scoring threats and teams are still figuring out the best way to stop him. The latest creative attempt came from New England Revolution keeper Matt Turner.

Yet another relative of a Hall of Famer was promoted to the majors this past weekend. Mike Yastrzemski, grandson of Red Sox great Carl Yastrzemski, got the call up to join the dysfunctional Giants on Saturday, where he made his debut against the Diamondbacks. Yastrzemski finally got the first hit of his MLB career on…Read more...

An Eufy Gold Box, a discounted Logitech Crayon, and a J.Crew Factory sale lead off Monday’s best deals.

Anker’s Eufy brand makes a range of solid smart home products, and today, a whole bunch of them are up for grabs at all time low prices in the Gold Box. Pick up an Eufy RoboVac, baby monitor, smart scale, or night light this Memorial Day, and live smarter every day to come.

Baltimore’s trip to Coors Field has been a relative success by the realistic standards the team has likely set for themselves—Baltimore not only took one of the three games in the series, but also allowed fewer than 50 home runs during that span—so it was only a matter of time until the Orioles regressed to their …Read more...

The Toronto Blue Jays made history on Friday when they called up Cavan Biggio to the Majors. If Cavan’s last name sounds familiar to you, it’s because Cavan is the son of Astros legend Craig Biggio. As a result of that connection, the Blue Jays became the first team in Major League history to have two sons of…Read more...

The Raptors took down the Bucks on Saturday, 100-94, to clinch an NBA Finals berth for the first time in franchise history. With that series victory, Toronto seemingly vanquished the infamous Drake curse, exorcised the demons of past postseason failures and even vindicated Kawhi Leonard’s place as one of the top-5…Read more...

The time in a kid’s life where a tooth becomes loose at seemingly a biweekly rate can be quite intimidating, but it can also lead to some wonderful ingenuity. Case in point, we have this young Rangers supporter named Luke, who figured that instead of just reaching into his mouth and yanking out something that was once…Read more...

Clear the Rack, a WEN generator Gold Box, and discounted Dynaudio speakers lead off Sunday’s best deals.

Rod Bramblett, the prominent voice of Auburn sports for the last 16 years, and his wife Paula died from injuries sustained during a car crash on Saturday. They were 52 and 53 years old, respectively.

Recall the joys of memory foam with today’s Tempur-Pedic Tempur-Cloud Mattress Gold Box on Amazon. The 10-inch Cloud Mattress is available at an almost 50% discount for any size bed, and it promises to relieve pressure on your back by conforming to your body for a great night’s rest.

Football season’s not quite here, but you can get ready power your fall tailgates with this surprisingly portable 1600 W (2000 W surge) generator.

The search for hiker Amanda Eller came to an end on Friday after a helicopter crew found her alive near a waterfall deep in the Hawaiian forest that she began hiking 17 days ago.

Kansas forward Silvio De Sousa will not have to sit out for a second consecutive season as the NCAA announced Friday that his appeal against the association was approved. The decision came just hours after the Jayhawks officially appealed the NCAA’s two-season suspension on Friday, almost as if the basis of the…Read more...

After years of scheduled practices, workouts, and games, the unstructured life of retirement can be a shock for any professional athlete who decides to hang it up for the last time at the end of their season. But for some, the shock of adjusting to everyday life doesn’t have to be a bad thing, as Dwyane Wade has…Read more...

On a Friday evening news dump just before the start of a holiday weekend, the Mt. Vernon Independent School district announced that it had hired ex-Baylor coach Art Briles to lead the Texas high school’s football team. Superintendent Jason McCullough said during a Facebook live session that the school board approved…Read more...

Baggu’s Memorial Day Sale, PowerBlock adjustable dumbbells, and discounts at Joe’s New Balance Outlet lead off Saturday’s best deals.

Texas softball pitcher Miranda Elish was taken to a hospital on Friday during her team’s NCAA super regional game against Alabama after taking a throw directly to the face. The injury occurred in the second inning when Longhorns catcher Mary Iakopo fielded what she thought was a live bunt and tried to turn the double…Read more...

Here is a delightful story about psychedelics to ease you into the long weekend.Read more...

Kawhi Leonard has been doing a lot that’s reminiscent of Michael Jordan. The raw scoring—Leonard is up to 31.4 points per game this postseason—the shimmying midrange work, the perimeter defense. Add a new entry to the list: ball fakes only possible with enormous mitts. Check out this possession in Game 5 where the…Read more...

Dennis Rodman’s travel schedule can seem pretty hectic these days. Two weeks ago he was in Newport Beach, California, moseying nonchalantly around a yoga studio while several associates crammed un-purchased merchandise into handbags and reduced a huge amethyst geode crystal to a fine powder. Ten days later Rodman was…Read more...

Rudy Giuliani, a poorly preserved bog corpse, burped up a response of some kind to a video that was disrespectful to Nancy Pelosi.

Since the Toronto Raptors have Drake cheering them on, the Milwaukee Bucks need their own celebrity row. Green Bay lineman David Bakhtiari has filled a spot more than once, and he’s excelled at acting as a Rally Packer for the crowd. All he has to do is chug beers, and the crowd gets fired up.

Where there are people, there are rats. Or, more accurately: Where there are well-off white people, there are complaints about rats. It’s just that two of the country’s biggest newspapers can’t seem to tell the difference.

Hockey is almost over, and the NBA is basically done, so now all we have to look forward to over these impending hot summer months is a World Cup, the ability to blast Bad Girls out of our apartment windows, and some goddamn WNBA basketball. That last thing starts tonight, folks! Let’s get to the preview.Read more...

A Leesa Gold Box, Backcountry sale, Doom Eternal pre-order, and Thermapens lead off Friday’s best deals.

If you are the type of person who does not enjoy watching people experience self-inflicted embarrassments in public, heed these two warnings: Do not listen to this clip of an author finding out live on radio that the entire premise of her latest book is false, and do not watch this clip from yesterday’s SEC…Read more...

One party animal on screen tells another that “It’s the end of everything,” and I finally lose count of the number of films at this festival that have vocalized the fatalism of our time, the nagging feeling that we all may be hurtling toward a point of destructive conclusion. Uttered during one of the last screenings…Read more...

Memorial Day weekend is once again upon us. Americans across this great nation reserve this time for 72 somber and solitary hours spent quietly honoring the sacrifices of those who gave their lives in service of the United States Armed Forces, or alternately for several bitchin’ barbecues. Whatever your holiday plans,…Read more...

We here at Deadspin have spilled a lot of digital ink on the genesis of All Elite Wrestling, especially considering that the startup wrestling promotion has yet to produce any actual wrestling to date. That will change on Saturday, when the company airs its debut show, Double or Nothing, from Las Vegas. There’s a…Read more...

One of the hardest things to do in the NHL is to rebuild a team on the fly—to remake the roster, usually younger and cheaper, while still remaining competitive. The Blackhawks are the success story of the salary cap era, but even they had to pay the piper eventually. Now it’s the Penguins’ turn, though they don’t…Read more...

The Raptors beat the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals last night, and Drake, the Raptors’ rowdy uncle/human mascot, was not in the building. He was back home in Toronto, watching the game with thousands of Raptors fans in an outdoor square. He was so excited after the win that he descended…Read more...

If you’ve ever laid on a Leesa mattress in a Pottery Barn or West Elm store, and somehow managed not to buy one immediately, you’re in luck, because Amazon’s offering bigger savings on them today than you’d ever get from Leesa.com (or Pottery Barn, for that matter).

The Milwaukee Bucks, the best team of the 2018–19 regular season and by far the best team through the first two rounds of the playoffs, find themselves in the deepest of caca following a 105–99 loss to the Toronto Raptors in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals. The Bucks will have to stave off elimination Saturday…Read more...

The National Women’s Hockey League, facing more than a little uncertainty about its future amid upheaval across North American women’s hockey, reached an agreement Thursday with its players association on an improved compensation package for players headed into the league’s fifth season of existence, according to an…Read more...

The Nationals, sitting at 19–31 on the season and having won just one series since mid-April, very much have the look of a pile of crap. It’s not clear that the organization has accepted this as anything other than a phase, but the time is fast approaching when denial will no longer be possible. Unless things turn…Read more...

American 800-meter specialist Alysia Montaño has won six national championships, but she may be most famous for running the 2014 race while eight months pregnant with her daughter. Montaño, a 2012 Olympian, also ran in 2017 while five months pregnant with her son. It takes incredible physical effort to perform like…Read more...

Leidy Asprilla, a 22-year-old soccer player who had represented Colombia in youth international tournaments, was found dead off the side of a road yesterday. Her family reported her missing on Sunday after Asprilla left home to pick up a teammate for a training session but never arrived.Read more...

The All-NBA teams came out today, and Golden State Warriors guard Klay Thompson isn’t on any of them. While teammates Steph Curry and Kevin Durant made the first and second teams, respectively, Thompson couldn’t even sneak onto the third team. Those honors went to Russell Westbrook and Kemba Walker.Read more...

We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.Read more...

It’s been a busy week or so for the Jets. Eight days have passed since general manager Mike Maccagnan was fired, after he had been kept on to lead such minor team-building exercises as the search for a head coach, a free-agency spending spree, and a draft in which the Jets possessed the No. 3 pick. Adam Gase, the head…Read more...

For those of you clamoring for the autographs of both a serial killer and a Baseball Hall of Famer, here’s a way to, well, kill two birds with one stone. You can buy this “original acrylic painting of an Oriole by John Wayne Gacy, which prominently features the autograph of Cal Ripken Jr.” for $9,999.95.

It hate how much I love my DUDE Shower Body Wipes.Read more...

Here’s some news that, perhaps perversely, should increase interest in the upcoming NBA Finals:

PITTSBURGH— In April, the staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue last October. The win caught much of the staff by surprise, and, according to a staff writer who was there, the office erupted in havoc. Executive editor Keith…Read more...