Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

How did they not learn? One day after Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich smacked three taters and dropped seven RBI on them in a 10-7 win, the St. Louis Cardinals chose to pitch to him again. Why, idiots?Read more...

The Grenco G Pen Elite was already one of the best ground material vaporizers for the money at its usual $120 according to both Gizmodo and The Wirecutter, but now, you can get it for just $72 right now during the company’s sitewide 4/20 sale, in addition to deep discounts on the company’s other vapes and accessories.

The sixth-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder were such a popular pick to upset the third-seeded Portland Trail Blazers in the first round of the NBA Playoffs that it’s hardly fair to even call them the underdogs. Only one of ESPN’s panel of 20 analysts picked the Blazers to take the series, and the thinking was fairly…Read more...

Tell yourself you love basketball as a beautiful game, to watch the ball ping around the court as a team’s collective hive-mind hunts the best available shot. Then watch the last week of the NBA playoffs and see if you can stick to that conviction. Between Lou Williams’s rash of perverse leaners on Monday night and…Read more...

With plenty of real estate remaining in 2019, it’s masochistic to imagine what next year could look like. Emperor Trump? World Series champion Mariners? The mind reels! But whatever horrors might unfold in 2020, we have at least one pop culture stalwart to soothe ourselves in the post-Game of Thrones wilderness:…Read more...

When Barcelona purchased Philippe Coutinho from Liverpool back in the winter of 2018 for an eye-popping €160 million fee, Blaugrana fans thought they had found their next Andrés Iniesta. It made sense: Coutinho can dribble, create, and score all at elite levels, and though the Brazilian needed to work on his passing…Read more...

While Jamal Murray was catching fire late in the fourth quarter and leading the Nuggets to a dramatic playoff win over the Spurs, his teammates, Nikola Jokic and Gary Harris, were dealing with a separate problem.

A Nike sale at Zappos, the Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet, and a discounted deli slicer lead off Wednesday’s best deals from around the web.

It’s hard to overstate just how bad Jamal Murray was through the first three quarters of Game 2 against the Spurs. The numbers are as plain and grim as numbers get: 0-of-8 from the field, two assists, and a plus-minus of -18 in 24 minutes. But even those numbers don’t quite capture the depths to which Murray had…Read more...

Zappos is kicking off spring by discounting over 2,000 items from Nike—and it’s not just shoes. Tons of shorts, tees, sports bras, tanks, and more are on sale, along with loads of sneakers and sandals you’ll need this season. So run over to the retailer to take advantage of this sale now; it will only last through…Read more...

Six days in April can change a lot.

Ward off pesky mosquitoes with these discounted Thermacell options. Place these portable Thermacell mosquito repellers next to you when you’re outside, or throw in your hiking backpack and they’ll keep away flying insects (most notably, mosquitoes) as far as 15 feet away for up to 12 hours.Read more...

Damian Lillard absolutely torched the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday night with 26 points, six assists, five rebounds and three steals. It was a performance that came in a convincing 114-94 win that gave the Blazers an important 2-0 lead in the first-round series.

Late in the third quarter, the Nuggets were close to overcoming the 19-point deficit the Spurs had put them in just a few minutes earlier. Thanks to the efforts of Malik Beasley, Denver had whittled the lead down to six with about 1:30 remaining in the quarter, and San Antonio was forced to call timeout. Nuggets coach…Read more...

Baseball is perhaps the only sport where an act of self-preservation can lead to some really cool shit. Astros pitcher Collin McHugh became the latest example of this phenomenon on Tuesday against the Athletics.

Never has an NHL team had more reason to be embarrassed. First period of Game 1 aside, the Tampa Bay Lightning who won 62 games in the regular season failed to show up in their first-round series against the tremendously underestimated Columbus Blue Jackets, and they paid the price. As the Lightning’s biggest stars…Read more...

Just three days after Jason Vargas had to be yanked from a start when he gave up four earned runs in a third of an inning, Mets pitcher Steven Matz outdid his teammate against the Phillies on Tuesday with an even worse performance. In a zero-inning outing, he faced eight batters, gave up eight runs and recorded zero…Read more...

For only the second time in six seasons, Cristiano Ronaldo will not win the Champions League. For the first time in a decade, and only the second time in 13 years, he won’t even appear in one of the four semi-finals. Cristiano Ronaldo, the man who has loomed over the continent’s premier tournament like some giant of…Read more...

The red-haired skater drops in from the highest launch ramp. He accelerates through the bottom of the halfpipe, hurtling towards the lip only to launch himself into the air before cresting the wave. For a brief moment, our hero kisses the sky. It is at this point that something terrible happens.Read more...

Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl have put their heads together and made an ass of themselves yet again. The Goofus and Goofus of right-wing outrage added to their overstuffed portfolio of unnecessary and unwanted press conferences with a soft-hitting expose on corruption in the college recruiting realm.

WARNING: THIS POST IS NOT A JOKE.Read more...

Firstleaf is an online wine club that learns your preferences, offers tons of great wines from around the world, and most importantly, saves you money compared to buying from the store. It’s a solid deal any time, but it’s even better for our readers right now in preparation for Mother’s Day.

Manchester United came into the Camp Nou on Tuesday knowing that two goals would likely get them to the semi-finals of the Champions League. Not an easy task at all, but a doable one. But then United gagged up two awful first-half goals, one from an inexplicable David de Gea boner, and that looks to be that.Read more...

Here it is, the only reason to ever discuss First Take in a serious manner. During a characteristically loud discussion about Kevin Durant in Monday’s episode, it very much sounded like someone coughed as a maneuver to cover up a fart. But who was the culprit?Read more...

Drew wrote in this week’s Funbag about getting waxed by his own dang kid in FIFA 19. In our staff chatroom, I mentioned that the one time my own young son succeeded in beating me in Street Fighter II on the SNES Classic (after roughly 200 tries), I had to ruthlessly blank him in two straight rematches to reassert my,…Read more...

Well, this sucks. Seattle Storm forward and reigning WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart is probably going to miss the entirety of the upcoming season, because she tore her Achilles while playing for Russian team Dynamo Kursk in the EuroLeague title game on Sunday.Read more...

Today, we’re talking about Game of Thrones, pizza pilgrimages, movie knowers, bad candy bars, and more.

Clippers center Montrezl Harrell is a giant dude who will try to dunk on anyone and scrap for every rebound. He’s spent the first two games of the playoffs succeeding in both areas, going 20-for-24 from the field and causing trouble for the Warriors. He’s also rather fussy about how he is presented with the ball…Read more...

DeMarcus Cousins might be the unluckiest player in the NBA. After eight seasons on two of the NBA’s most cursed franchises, Boogie’s first-ever playoff run is almost certainly over after 25 minutes and 11 points, as the Warriors announced Tuesday that Cousins has a torn left quadriceps.Read more...

If you are familiar with the still boyishly handsome but extremely serious actor Ethan Hawke, you know that when stage directions state that a character he’s portraying onstage wields a golf club and then is “seen smashing typewriter methodically,” Hawke will absolutely be smashing the shit out of a typewriter, on…Read more...

No one could have been more delighted to hear that Crystal Palace goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey is apparently a huge idiot than Wayne Hennessey himself. That’s because the F.A. panel tasked with investigating a photo in which the Welsh keeper appeared to have been making a Nazi salute gesture cited that very stupidity as…Read more...

There are many things a pitcher can do on the mound that are cool as hell—we’re talking about throwing bending sliders and disappearing splitters, here. But the absolute cruelest thing a pitcher can do is smoke three guys with one 99 mph fastball.

Our readers’ favorite VPN, a Patagonia sale at Backcountry, and Sunday Scaries CBD products lead off Tuesday’s best deals from around the web.

By now you’ve seen that Notre-Dame de Paris, the historic medieval cathedral in Paris, spent much of Monday being consumed by an uncontrolled inferno. Its stone body, which dates back centuries, appears largely to have survived the conflagration, as did the bulk of the religious relics and art within the cathedral.…Read more...

Russell Wilson is now the highest-paid player in NFL history. Just before the midnight (PDT) negotiating deadline Wilson’s camp had set with the Seahawks, the two sides agreed to an extension with a max length of four years and a max value of $140 million. Wilson had indeed tried to use his extraordinary leverage to…Read more...

When Christian Yelich homered in the first four games of the season, all of which were against the St. Louis Cardinals, it was a fun curio—a hot streak carried over from the Brewers right fielder’s MVP season last year and a great player being great in an unusual way. Gabe Fernandez even wrote about it as such here, …Read more...

Tiger Woods sat back and said, “Well, what I did was pretty damned impressive, but that? Did you see THAT?” “That,” of course, was the most spectacular pipe job in NBA postseason history.

It’s been a busy few days for Cale Makar. On Friday, he was named the Hobey Baker Award winner for top college player. On Saturday, he and UMass played in and lost the NCAA Championship game. On Sunday, he signed an entry-level contract with the Avalanche, who had drafted him fourth overall in 2017.

Can billions of dollars buy permission not to abide by a state constitution? Robert Kraft—owner of the New England Patriots, overseer of one of the greatest dynasties in modern NFL history, and self-styled humanitarian (if you ignore the coziness with Donald Trump) is betting yes. He hired some of the best known…Read more...

The L.A. Clippers pulled off an absurd comeback victory against the Golden State Warriors on Monday night, tying the first-round series at one-all by winning 135-131 after being down 94-63 in the third quarter. They were aided by a DeMarcus Cousins injury and a late Kevin Durant foul out, but the Clippers couldn’t…Read more...

The Flames had one of those nights on Monday, going down 4-0 in 28 minutes before an eventual 6-2 Avalanche win to give Colorado a 2-1 series lead. They picked up two simultaneous penalties—including too many men on the ice—to give up the Avs’ first goal on a 5-on-3. They got outshot 56-29. They even let UMass product…Read more...

Joel Embiid got hit with a flagrant foul late in the first half of his Sixers’ eventual series-tying 145-123 win over the Nets on Monday night when he unleashed the full force of his elbow into Jarrett Allen’s neck while trying to beat him in the paint. Allen got up right away, but my goodness, that elbow looks like…Read more...

Yasiel Puig wasn’t exactly overflowing with love for his old club when he returned to Los Angeles on Monday as a Cincinnati Red. When talking about the crowds at Dodger Stadium, he said, “I’m sure that when I played here, there were more fans.” He also showed how little he cared for the past by showing up too late to…Read more...

The Warriors are facing a scary situation early in their Game 2 battle against the Clippers, because DeMarcus Cousins had to head back through the tunnel after injuring his left leg while trying to make a steal.Read more...

Probably the biggest story out of Monday night’s 3-2 Leafs win over the Bruins is the resurrection of Auston Matthews, who in the second period scored his first goal in the month of April to put Toronto in the lead for good. But if there’s an enduring image of this game for Leafs’ fans—particularly if they can hold…Read more...

The Carolina Hurricanes scored the first blow of their Game 3 matchup with the Capitals, getting a goal from Warren Foegele to go up 1-0. But Alex Ovechkin responded with a literal counterpunch—a whole bunch of them, in fact—to knock down Andrei Svechnikov.Read more...

As expected, the NHL hit Toronto Maple Leafs forward Nazem Kadri with a multi-game suspension on Monday evening for his high crosscheck on Boston Bruin Jake DeBrusk from Game 2 of their first-round series on Saturday:Read more...

Everyone’s eyes will naturally be drawn to the colonial-seeming fellow sliding into the background of Saturday’s postgame scrum for Mets pitcher Jason Vargas. Fine, that’s understandable. This blog will get to him shortly, but there are other things to appreciate here, too.

The NHL’s Department of Player Safety has been busy in this young postseason. Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov was handed a one-game suspension for boarding, Toronto’s Nazem Kadri is probably going to get something like five games for this, and now it’s Joe Thornton’s turn for a hearing.

Two weeks ago, before he was indicted in United States District Court for a wide variety of crimes, lawyer Michael Avenatti intimated that he had proof of Nike paying Zion Williamson to attend Duke, and doing so by paying Williamson’s mother for bogus consulting services. His threats were quite specific, and they…Read more...