Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Down 25 points to start the final frame in Sacramento, the Nets looked dead, their fight for a more secure playoff footing just as hopeless. The Kings were supposed to be one of the few uncomplicated games remaining on their schedule; they still have to tackle the top five teams in the East in the home stretch. And…Read more...

The New Jersey high school wrestling referee, who forced a teen to cut his dreadlocks or forfeit a wrestling match in December, has begun the process of filing a lawsuit, claiming that he suffered “emotional distress” and “defamation of character” in the aftermath of the incident, according to The Inquirer, which…Read more...

After defending his UFC bantamweight championship against Cody Garbrandt last year, T.J. Dillashaw sought to shut down the flyweight division by whooping on Henry Cejudo then possibly move up to 145 pounds and fight Max Holloway. But now, instead of having three title belts, he has zero.Read more...

Bolivian club Nacional Potosí hosted Venezuelan club Zulia last night in a Copa Sudamericana match, South America’s equivalent to the Europa League. Nacional had 79 percent possession of the ball and popped off a staggering 54 shots. Zulia took just six shots all night and completed just 47 percent of their passes.…Read more...

The Oakland A’s and Seattle Mariners played a real, regular-season baseball game in Tokyo this morning, but it still had the whiff of an exhibition game. That’s probably due to the fact that it took place so far away and so long before MLB’s actual opening day, but it was also due to Ichiro Suzuki’s involvement.

Beto O’Rourke, candidate for president and naughty Great Dane who keeps jumping up on the counter, was asked about student debt last night at an event at Keene State College in New Hampshire. Other candidates’ proposals to counter student debt have so far ranged from tuition-free public colleges (Bernie Sanders) to a…Read more...

Sure, CBD products are blowing up right now, but they actually can provide major relief for people experiencing everything from aches and pains to anxiety and insomnia. So if you’ve been thinking about jumping on the CBD bandwagon, now’s your chance: Hemp Bombs, a producer of premium CBD products, is taking 25% off…Read more...

If the season ended today, the Carolina Hurricanes would be in the playoffs—and thank goodness, because this young-but-rising Canes team is easily hockey’s most fun right now. Not just because they’re good (they are) and not just because they’ve rekindled excitement in a town that hasn’t seen the postseason in a…Read more...

A discounted mesh WiFi system, Perry Ellis’s suit sale, and a wine refrigerator lead off Wednesday’s best deals.

io9 In the First Stranger Things Season 3 Trailer, It’s All Fun and Games Until the Monsters Show up | Jalopnik Meet Japan’s ‘Mr. Ferrari’, Who Drove His F40 At 197 MPH On a Motorway To Prove a Point | Kotaku Google Stadia Boss Answers (And Dodges) Our Questions | Lifehacker What’s Coming and Going From Netflix in…Read more...

Bolton Wanderers were one of the founding members of the world’s first soccer league. They won the first match held in Wembley Stadium. And now they might go into administration, effectively bankrupting the club and taking them out of England’s second division, the Championship, and into a murky financial future.

I’ve been FOIAing viewer complaints to the Federal Communications Commission about the Super Bowl every year since M.I.A. flipped off the world in 2012, and this edition was bountiful indeed, drawing the most complaints since that first year. The FCC received 94 complaints regarding last month’s CBS broadcast, and 58…Read more...

Sleep! Kind of important. Kind of hard to come by at times.

San Francisco Giants CEO Larry Baer was involved in an ugly public fight

The St. Louis Blues should be heading to the playoffs next month, and the Oilers are definitely heading back home to lick their wounds and wonder what went wrong again this year, and the difference between those two outlooks was on full display in Missouri tonight. Blues forwards were practically laughing at Oilers…Read more...

Ben Simmons, the terrific Australian point-forward capably leading the mostly Joel Embiid-less 76ers down the stretch in the East’s playoff race, used a pen and some spectacularly clashing yellow sneakers Tuesday night to shout out Will Connolly, the 17-year-old hero who smashed an egg on the head of vile Australian…Read more...

In his introductory press conference after being traded from the Philadelphia 76ers to the Orlando Magic, way back on February 7, Markelle Fultz announced that his rehabilitation from chronic shoulder crabmeatitis would continue indefinitely in sunny California. The Magic were cool with this plan, evidently…Read more...

Ignore the seedings. According to the analytics, one of the most evenly matched games of the NCAA Tournament’s first round isn’t an 8-9 or 7-10 match-up, but the battle between Villanova, the sixth seed in the South Region, and 11th-seeded Saint Mary’s. Kenpom, which rates Villanova as 26th in the country and Saint…Read more...

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

New York State Amateur Hockey Association West Section President David Braunstein, who did essentially nothing after a parent complained that an opposing team made racist noises at his son throughout a game, has resigned after 19 years on the job. He didn’t provide a reason for his resignation, according to the …Read more...

On Oct. 3, 1974, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then the 27-year-old reigning MVP of the NBA and the biggest star the sport of basketball had ever seen, told the brass of the Milwaukee Bucks that he didn’t want to play for them anymore, and requested a trade. He had one year left on his contract and, as he recounted to the Los Angeles TimesRead more...

PlayStation Japan recently invited two high-level fighting game competitors to showcase a special Ryu-on-Ryu mirror match in Street Fighter V. But this wasn’t a normal exhibition. Instead of playing out the kind of fight you would see at the Evolution Championship Series, the Japanese maestros demonstrated their…Read more...

Florida prosecutors have offered to drop the solicitation charges against Patriots owner Robert Kraft on the condition that he admits he would’ve been found guilty of receiving sex acts had the case gone to trial, according to the Wall Street Journal.Read more...

In addition to the standard bodybuilding competitions, dumpling eating contests, and dance battles, the Siberian Power Show last weekend in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, also hosted a “Sport slapping tournament for men,” with 30,000 rubles ($465) at stake. The event may have cribbed the idea from the Sarychev Power Expo, which…Read more...

Our beloved colleague Dave McKenna tells good stories. He’s done a lot of cool shit, met many weird people in weird ways, and had his run-ins with the law. And after selfishly squirreling all his stories away in Slack and our brains for years, we’ve realized we have a societal obligation to share.

Last night, after a big herb named Kevin Draper pointed out that a Los Angeles Times report about USC’s role in the college admissions cheating scandal was written by a USC professor and included no disclosure of this brazen conflict, the writer of the piece, former ESPN writer and current Los Angeles Times columnist…Read more...

Today, we’re talking about chicken pot pie, the NCAA tournament, dirty belts, and more.

The schools caught in the college admissions bribery scandal have so far mostly involved private universities like Stanford, USC, and Yale. However, one family was accused of getting their daughter into UCLA via the soccer team with a bribe Facebook stock, and now fellow California public school UC Berkeley has been…Read more...

Colquitt County (Georgia) High School football coach Rush Propst has been fired after 11 successful seasons, following an investigation which determined that the 61-year-old coach had given pills to students, overstepped his position in at least one school personnel matter, and attempted to use school funds for a…Read more...

These days it’s hard to believe that J.R. Smith and the Cleveland Cavaliers were ever at the center of NBA fans’ attention, but it wasn’t so long ago that this was the case. Of course I am not referring to the time LeBron James was Smith’s teammate and brought a title to Cleveland, but to the time J.R. Smith threw a…Read more...

There are so many ways to consume the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of scam blood-testing company Theranos and Steve Jobs cosplayer: you can return to the archives of the Wall Street Journal for its formative reporting on the company, read the book that journalist John Carreyrou wrote after breaking…Read more...

ESPN’s Jeff Passan is reporting that the Los Angeles Angels and Mike Trout are finalizing a contract extension worth $430 million over 12 years. This deal would become the richest in American pro sports history.

An L.L.Bean sale, microSD cards, and discounts on DEWALT lead off Tuesday’ best deals.

Former pro wrestler Eric Angle, brother to WWE star Kurt Angle, currently coaches a youth wrestling team in Pittsburgh, Penn. At a tournament on Saturday, Angle was captured on camera lifting up one of his wrestlers by the neck and tossing him back down to the mat.

No one in the world is better at creating needless controversy and riling up its own athletes and fans than USA Track & Field. Their latest hit: nuking by far its single greatest asset, the Olympic Trials.

Gizmodo NYC’s New Tourist Trap Claims the Rights to Every Photo You Take Inside of It | Jalopnik How Much Are You Bothered By Your Car’s Rusty Rotors? | Kotaku Ocarina Of Time Is Now Playable In Co-Op | Skillet Sprinkle Ramen Powder on French Fries | The Takeout Cooking from Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook: Finding…Read more...

In Los Angeles! After five extremely eventful seasons in Jacksonville, Blake Bortles will be a Ram. He’s reportedly finalizing a one-year deal to be L.A.’s backup. That means that one year after opening the season as defending AFC runners-up, Bortles will start this year with the defending NFC champs. Does this make…Read more...

We’ve seen several deals on high capacity microSD cards lately, but Samsung’s EVO is one of the fastest models out there, and its 256GB variant just dropped to $40, a new all-time low for the U3-rated card. If you need a ton of storage for Switch games or GoPro footage, this is definitely worth a look.

In the second quarter of an eventual home win over the Pacers, Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts dialed up a delicious little inbounds play to get reserve center Enes Kanter a point-blank look at the basket. The play involves very little movement and trickery, and mostly relies on two tall dudes working together…Read more...

The Lakers have lost eight of their last nine games to fall to 11th in the Western Conference, and eight games below .500. The organization appears to be in a state of ugly collapse, helped along by the distracting, doomed courtship of Anthony Davis. Luke Walton is rumored to be on his way out. LeBron James now places…Read more...

Steph Curry opened up Monday night’s road game in San Antonio freezing cold, by his standards. He missed seven of his first eight shots, including all four of his three-point attempts. He blew a point-blank layup, and had another slapped off the glass, and bricked a wide open three from the top of the arc. There are…Read more...

Gizmodo Some Humans Can Sense Earth’s Magnetic Field, Fascinating Experiment Suggests | Kotaku Smash Bros. Player Leaves Pivotal Tournament Match After Getting Frustrated With Audience Member | Jalopnik Watch F1 Champion Lewis Hamilton Bring Up the Moon Landing Hoax to Actual Astronauts | Lifehacker Don’t Crush Cans…Read more...

SLAM magazine has a cover story about Kobe Bryant out today titled “MAMBA 101: Welcome to Kobe Bryant’s Next Chapter [book emoji].” Tzvi Twersky’s profile is half sycophantic run-through of Bryant’s new projects as a self-appointed visionary-style filmmaker and storyteller and half soft-focus look at Bryant’s turn…Read more...

The rate of improvement seems frankly unsustainable. But Zion Williamson, who was once known for his comically improbable high school basketball highlight reels, is now cutting similarly ridiculous ones at the damn ACC Tournament. Can he just keep scaling up to new plateaus of competition? It’s hard to know at this…Read more...

John Engler, Michigan State’s former interim president who had to resign in disgrace because he was so repulsive and incompetent at filling in for his repulsive and incompetent predecessor Lou Anna Simon (who had also resigned in disgrace), still somehow isn’t toxic enough to not get courtside treatment at Michigan…Read more...

Thank goodness Murray State made it into the NCAA Tournament, because before last Saturday it seemed worryingly possible that Ja Morant and his Racers might be hanging out in the NIT this postseason. But after finishing as OVC regular-season co-champions with Belmont and then winning their conference tournament over…Read more...

If you tuned in to ESPNU this afternoon for a show called Bracketology, you apparently got an added bonus: A reveal of most of the bracket for this year’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament!

*Seasons available on U.S. Netflix onlyRead more...

Eighteen-year-old Bianca Andreescu started out the 2019 season at 152nd in the world. At Indian Wells, as big a tournament as exists outside the majors, she came in as a wild card. Like so many promising young players, she was granted entry to a huge event she wouldn’t have qualified with just her ranking.Read more...

At long last, Tottenham Hotspur have a home. After years-long saga to get their new stadium ready for actual soccer, Spurs’ new grounds will be ready in time for an April 3 Premier League match-up against Crystal Palace, according to a statement put out by the club on Sunday:Read more...