Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

James Harden carried the sub-.500 Rockets to a much-needed win at home against the Lakers Thursday night, as Houston beat L.A. 126-111 in a game that was tight up until the last few minutes. It was a signature performance from Harden, who scored 50 points on 14-of-26 shooting and also picked up 11 assists and 10…Read more...

io9 Jason Momoa Has Even More to Say About Henry Cavill’s Superman Future | Kotaku Top Riot Executive Suspended Without Pay Following Investigation Over Workplace Misconduct | Jalopnik Germans Discover Military Jeep Hoods Used to Repair a Ceiling after World War II | Lifehacker What’s the Worst Advice You Hear All the…Read more...

In a just world, the Lightning and Maple Leafs would meet in the Eastern Conference final. But it is not a just world, and because the two clear best teams in the East also happen to be the two best teams in the Atlantic Division, the NHL’s playoff format puts the two on track for a second-round showdown. It’ll be…Read more...

Kershaw’s popular Leek knives are great general-purpose fold-out blades, and several different styles are on sale today in Amazon’s Gold Box. Prices start at just $24, but for $42, you can get the stunning Sandvik steel model, which is all matte black and impervious to fingerprints.

As far as I’m concerned, an enameled dutch oven is right up there with a good knife and great spatula in the hierarchy of must-own kitchen gear, and a few of Cuisinart’s iconic models are on sale in today’s Amazon Gold Box, along with a 12" chicken fryer.

“The Marvel Universe has gone nuts; we’re going to have a fricking Captain America movie if we’re not careful.” This was Zack Snyder speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2008. Every once in a while, that quote finds itself recirculated online, evidence of Snyder’s philistine ideas about superhero movies and what a…Read more...

The Chiefs went up two touchdowns with just over eight minutes left in the fourth quarter Thursday night, on a Damien Williams one-yard plunge to cap a 13-play drive. They’d put together three 10-play drives in the game to that point, and the drive they’d just wrapped covered 73 yards and almost eight minutes of…Read more...

Reports yesterday had Suns owner and overall dingus Robert Sarver threatening to relocate his shoddy-ass basketball operation to Las Vegas or Seattle if the city of Phoenix didn’t get behind a public financing plan to renovate the team’s current home. Also yesterday, Sarver was thrashed at a city council meeting by…Read more...

Keenan Allen has returned to form as Philip Rivers’s top targets on the Chargers following a slow start to the season. In shaking off the rust, he’s rattled off five consecutive games with a touchdown catch. Hunting for number six Thursday night, Rivers lofted a pass to the corner of the end zone on a first-and-goal…Read more...

Former Athletic Bruce Maxwell is currently without a team, and is distressed enough about it that he recently fired his agent. Teams need catchers—it seems like half the league is circling around Marlins catcher J.T. Realmuto—and Maxwell is a catcher, and while he would be exactly no one’s idea of a savior at the…Read more...

It’s no surprise that Mark Davis was asked about his recent thoughts on the Amari Cooper trade Wednesday at an NFL owners meeting in Irving, TX. Since getting shipped off to Dallas in October, the receiver has caught 40 passes for 642 yards and six touchdowns in six games. Those numbers clearly dwarf the stats he put…Read more...

It’s always a delight to see the irony-poisoned runoff of the internet seep into real life. Consider the case of “Time Lord,” or Robert Williams, the endearing Celtics rookie who before the season had some problems getting to team functions in a punctual manner (if at all).Read more...

Kotaku Don’t Expect The Outer Worlds To Be As Gigantic As Fallout: New Vegas | Gizmodo The Deadly Recklessness of the Self-Driving Car Industry | Jalopnik BMW and Porsche’s Three-Minute Ultrafast Charger Is Here to Cure Your Range Anxiety | Lifehacker Windows 10 Collects Activity Data Even When Tracking Is Disabled,…Read more...

The Phoenix City Council was supposed to vote Wednesday on a murky proposal to give Suns owner Robert Sarver $150 million in public money for arena renovations, but the formal vote was pushed back a month, in part because the plan, which is bad, would have failed. Citizens were still able to speak to the council…Read more...

Just three days after Blues players brawled during practice, the hockey team’s official Twitter account sent out this video of a puppy on the ice, during practice doing hockey puppy things like playing with a puck, chasing a stick, and just being all-around magical.

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

Joe Ricketts, personal net worth $2.2 billion, is a private man. With less name recognition than some dark money donors, yet a comparable interest in trading wealth for political influence, the 77-year-old conservative takes great pains to keep himself out of the press. He does not grant many interviews, preferring to…Read more...

After a brief hiatus for the Deadspin Awards, the Emergency Football Show Weekly is back, so try to contain your excitement. This week, Dan and I savor everything about the Miami Miracle and marvel at Mike Tomlin’s clock mismanagement. Also, Dan eats a little shit about the Cowboys, defenses finally get their due, and…Read more...

Last night, I, along with several other Deadspin idiots, went to watch the Islanders and Golden Knights play a hockey game. It was my first time watching live hockey and I don’t know a whole lot about the sport, although I gathered from the booing that the house lights failing and play being delayed for 15 minutes was…Read more...

Jahvon Quinerly’s freshman season with Villanova has jumped off the rails quickly. The former five-star recruit has seen his playing time steadily decrease over the course of the young season, and he logged 48 of his 69 minutes this season in early-season blowout wins over Quinnipiac, Canisius, and Morgan State. When…Read more...

Beyond the obvious broad comedy inherent in the words fuming baseball purists, one of the more amusing aspects of Harold Baines’s otherwise inexplicable selection to the Baseball Hall of Fame this week has been the sheer volume of discourse devoted to Harold Fucking Baines across various platforms. Even when Harold…Read more...

Eagles QB Carson Wentz has been dealing with back issues all season, and after undergoing a battery of tests earlier this week, he apparently has been diagnosed with a fractured vertebra. ESPN’s Adam Schefter got the scoop, and the injury seems like it will probably keep him out at least this weekend against the Rams,…Read more...

The Raiders have just one home game left in Oakland this year, Christmas Eve against the Broncos. The Raiders will begin play in their new domed Las Vegas Stadium in the 2020 season. And in between? Uhhhhhhhh...

A rumbling gut is probably enough to inform you that stadium concessions stands can really mess you up, but now you can check your gastrointestinal intuition against an ESPN survey of health violations at pro football, basketball, baseball, and hockey venues.Read more...

Last week, the Warriors traveled to Milwaukee and avenged their early-season loss to the Bucks with ease, dispatching one of their possible Finals opponents without ever having to do to much. They clearly made a point of putting the Bucks in their place—increasingly rickety Andre Iguodala played 28 minutes and hasn’t…Read more...

On this morning’s First Take, the ESPN show for people who really should have slept in, Stephen A. Smith broke down tonight’s Chargers-Chiefs throwdown by reminding us to keep an eye on Spencer Ware (out with a foot injury), Hunter Henry (out since May with a torn ACL), and Derrick Johnson (no longer in the NFL).…Read more...

In a profile of Steph Curry published earlier this week, Marcus Thompson II, a writer for The Athletic, described a scene between Curry and rapper Mistah F.A.B. in which the two were “laughing [...] about a certain tranny sex tape.” After facing backlash over the use of the slur, The Athletic changed the line and…Read more...

Back on Nov. 26, our Lauren Theisen published a blog on our website titled “Mike McCarthy Shouldn’t Be Coaching The Packers Anymore.” Based on the word “anymore” in the headline, and the accompanying photo (of now-former Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy), and also the text of the blog, which described at…Read more...

D.J. Durkin was finally fired by the University of Maryland in October after a player died on his watch, an investigative report found a “toxic” culture in the football program, much of the rest of his team threatened revolt, the university president resigned, and the state’s governor took him to task. Naturally, he…Read more...

Here is what would’ve been Paulo Dybala’s equalizing wondergoal in the last seconds of Juventus’s 2-1 loss to Young Boys in the Champions League yesterday, if only the referee hadn’t ruled it out for Cristiano Ronaldo’s offside interference, which maybe/probably wouldn’t have been called had Ronaldo not saw Dybala’s…Read more...

io9 Netflix’s Marvel Shows Can’t Come Back For at Least Two Years | Kotaku Ninja Addresses Fans Who Want The “Old Ninja” | Jalopnik What’s Up With This Green Ooze in a New York City Subway Construction Site? | Lifehacker Show You’re Serious About This Relationship With a Free Chipotle Burrito | The Takeout A field…Read more...

Washington is a half-game out of a playoff spot, and yet somehow it feels like they’ve been eliminated for weeks. It’s a function of vibe: This is a miserable team to be on or around right now.

The Calgary Flames are not hard to figure out. A young, explosive team that will go only so far as its goaltending will take it—which, in any half-logical outcome, is not very far. But inexplicably, old man Mike Smith has been red-hot over the last month, and unheralded backup David Rittich red-hot before that, and…Read more...

Kamado grills are so hot right now. Like literally, they get up to 750 degrees, or a whole lot cooler if you want to smoke something slow and low.Read more...

If you still haven’t bought a gift for your favorite outdoorsperson, this one-day Amazon sale is full of great ideas, and great deals, that could turn anyone into an aspiring Bear Grylls.

Be warned: What you are about to see will trouble your dreams for years to come. What the fuck. Two Indiana Pacers fans squared off in a game of tic-tac-toe, and the results are just fucking mind-boggling.Read more...

The Hornets came back from a 12-point second-half deficit to topple the Detroit Pistons Wednesday night, by the score of 108–107. The ending was dramatic: the Hornets went on a 13–0 run to go from down 101-91 with about six minutes on the clock to up 104-101 with 47 seconds left in regulation. The teams then traded…Read more...

Spencer Dinwiddie is a good basketball man with a good name and a slick, good-looking offensive game. He’s spent all but the first 46 games of his four-plus years in the NBA on miserable, rebuilding Brooklyn teams, which means neither his fun basketball skills nor his delightful personality have gotten the attention…Read more...

Longtime NBA guard, controversial Players Association president, and failed Knicks coach Derek Fisher has reportedly joined up with a shady alternative lender that targets professional athletes and other “high-net-worth individuals and families” who find themselves challenged by the “burdensome and invasive” process…Read more...

Bayern Munich will advance into the Champions League knockout rounds atop their group after a wild draw with Ajax today that saw two red cards within eight minutes of each other and four goals after the 82nd minute. Bayern had to score their equalizing and go-ahead goals without Thomas Müller on the field, since their…Read more...

Try, if only for a moment, to go inside the mind of a Manchester United fan.

Look, if a white guy and two of his black friends are going to dress up as the Celtics’ Big Three for Halloween, how will anyone know he’s Kevin Garnett—you know, aside from the name on the jersey and general context—unless he puts on blackface?Read more...

Okay, looks like this cycle has been compressed to just three days. On a Winging It podcast episode released Monday, Warriors star Steph Curry denied that man landed on the Moon. That night, right on cue, he went with the oh-so-cheeky “just asking questions” posturing:Read more...

Monday’s 252-page report from Ropes & Gray, the law firm contracted by the USOC to investigate the role of individuals and institutions in enabling Larry Nassar’s decades of sexual abuse of gymnasts, has so far led to widespread condemnation of the USOC and USA Gymnastics (again) and at least one firing—Alan Ashley,…Read more...

Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors will travel to Oakland tonight for a showdown with the suddenly healthy Golden State Warriors. As ESPN’s Brian Windhorst laid out in a report Tuesday night, nobody is more excited to attend the game than a bunch of front-office guys for the Los Angeles Clippers.Read more...

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

Thank the lord, the Edmonton Oilers are fun again. What was once a rudderless team that not even Connor McDavid could keep afloat is on a roll since the arrival of new head coach Ken Hitchcock, who was brought in after 20 mediocre games this season. Under Hitchcock, the Oilers are 8-2-1, riding a four-game win streak,…Read more...

It was terribly unfair of the “Today’s Game Era Committee” of the Baseball Hall of Fame to put Harold Baines in this position. When they elected Baines to the Hall on Dec. 9, the TGEC did him an honor, but also made him the foremost case study for the knowledge gap between those who control the Hall’s official…Read more...

This afternoon, the Phoenix City Council is set to vote on a mysterious bill that would authorize $150 million in funding for extensive renovations to the Phoenix Suns’ arena, which was most recently remodeled in 2003. The plan was apparently unveiled less than a week ago; it involves the city paying $150 million, the…Read more...

You are all living a lie. None of these stupid videos are real. David Roth’s plaid shirts? Not real. Barry Petchesky’s gag reflex while eating 50 eggs? Not real. Dan McQuade and Dom Cosentino talking about football under studio lights every week? I start to question how real that is as soon as I finish the sentence.