Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Oscar-winning cartoon maker Kobe Bryant was set to be a jury member on this weekend’s second annual Animation Is Film, a Los Angeles-based film festival, but organizers rescinded his invitation after the animation community protested the inclusion of “accused rapist and sexual predator Kobe Bryant.” The news was first…Read more...

As a general rule, vague political advertisements are vague for a reason. Everything is broken and sinking and extremely on fire, but we’re not yet at the level of Shitworld where unpopular and unappealing ideas can effectively be presented as themselves and on their own merits. We are heading in this direction, but…Read more...

My fellow shredders, get a load of Olympic conqueror Chloe Kim landing this super rad frontside double cork 1080 on a halfpipe in Switzerland.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, hey, maybe let’s not deceive people when it involves matters of voting, at all, period.

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

Serena Williams’s long-time coach Patrick Mouratoglou—who, during the U.S. Open final in September, was deemed by the chair umpire to have coached Williams from his seat in the stands, thereby earning her a code violation, which set off one of the weirdest and most controversial sports meltdowns ever—today posted a…Read more...

A great judgment call from a true professional.Read more...

The sorry-ass Mavericks lost to the sorry-ass Suns in Phoenix last night, thanks mostly to a fourth-quarter explosion from Devin Booker. These two teams will most likely be headed south sometime around the all-star break, so the only reason to tune in would have been to check out the NBA debuts of Luka Dončić and…Read more...

Some of the uncertainty coming into this season, for the New Orleans Pelicans, concerned the departure of Rajon Rondo, who played an important role in the team’s strong finish last season and then left in free agency, and his replacement, Elfrid Payton. If, like mine, your brain has been turned to slush by worms and…Read more...

Kudos to The Athletic’s Anthony Slater for inspecting a deeply unholy NBA rite closely enough to spot something wonderful. Had you watched the Warriors ring presentation as carefully as The Athletic’s Anthony Slater, you would’ve seen Kevin Durant walk over to Warriors owner Joe Lacob, only for the team’s head …Read more...

The combatants in last season’s Stanley Cup Final met a week into this young season and the rematch looked like a mismatch. The Capitals rode their hot offensive start to a 5-2 victory over the Golden Knights, who now have a 3-4-0 record that has commentators revving up their “I told you they were a fluke” takes. On…Read more...

By March 2015, wrestler Kyle Snyder was used to winning. He had gone 179-0 against high school competition and won the world under-20 championships at just 17. Then, in 2015, his freshman year at Ohio State, Snyder lost the NCAA heavyweight final to Iowa State senior Kyven Gadson. Immediately afterward, Snyder…Read more...

The NBA’s developmental league has unveiled a program that could greatly loosen the NCAA’s grip on top high school basketball prospects. The league will begin offering what it calls “Select Contracts” that pay $125,000 for one year to just-graduated high school players who would rather forgo a one-and-done year at the…Read more...

Wow, there sure are a lot of sports happening right now. Ordinarily that would be the sort of sentence that you’d end with an exclamation point, but honestly a period of this much sports—the giddy but tension-free start of the NBA season, which is already happening, the giddier and extremely tense end of baseball’s…Read more...

On the track, it racked up wins. Off the track, it racked up rumor. Its speed was a dream come true. Its handling could be a nightmare. And when the race car vanished, it became the stuff of legend and lore.Read more...

It’s the second episode of Emergency Football Show Weekly, and what are we talking about this week? Lots! We discuss Antonio Brown’s game-winning catch against the Bengals, the continued roughing the passer rule controversy and, of course, Dick Stockton calling the Denver Broncos “the Denver Nuggets.”

Nothing changes the complexion of an NBA game, or the welfare of its hoop apparatus, faster or more decisively than the release of Boban. The Nuggets knew this, but had no one who could impede him. The Clippers knew it, but they also know that Boban’s is a power that can be harnessed only for precious minutes at a…Read more...

Brocktober rolls on, as the Dolphins have announced that Brock Osweiler will be under center Sunday’s game against Detroit, his second straight start after replacing Ryan Tannehill, who was a game-day scratch with a shoulder injury in Week 6. What exactly Tannehill’s injury is, and how it got so bad so suddenly, is…Read more...

Earther Here’s Where the Post-Apocalyptic Water Wars Will Be Fought | Kotaku Red Dead Redemption 2 Developers Speak Out After Rockstar Lifts Social Media Ban | Jalopnik City Seizes and Crushes Dude’s BMW While He Was Getting Surgery | Lifehacker How to Demand Action on Climate Change | The Takeout 5 tips for choosing…Read more...

Former Manchester United star Wayne Rooney’s first season in MLS was already a huge success before last night’s game against Toronto. He came into it with nine goals and seven assists in 18 appearances, and as the owner of one of the best soccer highlights you’ll ever see. In the 18th minute of last night’s game,…Read more...

Cole Haan is definitely a brand that can make you think twice on account of the price. So when they kick off a semi-annual sale, it’s the perfect time to act. Every full priced item they sell is 30% off, including 2.ZERØGRANDs and the sweater-like ZERØGRANDs with Stitchlite wool, which I just wrote about yesterday.Read more...

The Red Sox took a 3-1 lead in the ALCS by winning Game 4 by two runs. The Astros had a two-run homer wiped out by a truly confounding ruling of fan interference. That’s the math for a call that could be remembered for a very, very long time.

Amazon’s Happy Belly brand makes some surprisingly good snacks, and a bunch of them are deeply discounted in today’s Amazon Gold Box. Save on nuts, sunflower seeds, and trail mixes, with extra discounts available if you use Subscribe & Save.

It’s certainly less-than-ideal for a team to be up less than four runs in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and an All-Star at the plate. It’s even worse when that All-Star is batting over .400 in the postseason. But that’s exactly where Craig Kimbrel was in facing Alex Bregman late Wednesday night with…Read more...

Former USA Gymnastics president and CEO Steve Penny has been arrested after a grand jury indicted him for tampering with evidence related to the investigation into years of sexual abuse of athletes by former national team doctor Larry Nassar, according to officials in Walker County, Texas. He was indicted by a Walker…Read more...

We all wondered what the high-flying Blake Griffin would look in the latter stages of his career when he could no longer consistently rely on his athleticism for buckets like he once used to. Thankfully, Jarrett Allen was there to answer that question for us tonight.

Jamaica’s women’s national team will be going to the World Cup for the first time in the team’s history after beating Panama on penalties in the third-place game at the CONCACAF qualifying tournament. With this win, the team also becomes the first Caribbean nation ever to qualify for the Women’s World Cup.Read more...

The Astros got off to a bad start in ALCS Game 4, going down 2-0 in the first inning. But in the bottom half of the frame, it looked like Jose Altuve’s mighty swing would quickly reset the score, when he smashed a ball into the first row in right field for what could have been a home run.

The NBA’s schedule-makers were kind to the New York Knicks, giving them an evenly-matched opponent for their home opener: the Atlanta Hawks. As expected, almost two minutes of game time passed before either team scored, but the Hawks soon took early control of the game. They went up 10-2 on the Knicks, forcing coach…Read more...

Marbella “Mar” Ibarra—one of the foremost promoters of women’s soccer in Mexico—was found dead early Monday morning in El Rosarito, Baja California, according to that state’s attorney general. Her body was found covered in a blanket, and her hands and feet were tied, El Sol de Tijuana reported. She previously had been…Read more...

No.Read more...

Yesterday, Iran put together a cheap little PR stunt in order to pretend the government cares about its wildly retrograde prohibition against women attending live soccer matches by allowing a handpicked selection of ladies to enter Azadi Stadium to watch a friendly match between Iran and Bolivia. However, Iranian…Read more...

Left-handed pitcher Wade Miley appeared to be the Brewers’ starter for Game 5 of the NLCS today. And technically, he was. But after Miley gave up a lead-off walk in the first, Brewers manager Craig Counsell immediately went out to the mound and gave Miley the hook, replacing him with the right-handed long reliever…Read more...

Six days ago, WWE was in an uncomfortable position regarding its upcoming Crown Jewel event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the second card in a 10-year contract with the kingdom believed to be worth $20–$50 million per show. Saudi Arabia’s brutal war of attrition in Yemen and, more recently, Turkey’s insistence that the…Read more...

Imagine you have have to go to the hospital for a bit of surgery. You leave your car safe and sound in its parking space, reasonably expecting it to be there when you get back. That wasn’t the case for a man only identified as “Mr. G,” whose BMW was mistakenly seized and crushed by his local government in a case of…Read more...

Andy Knox, a student at Da Vinci Charter Academy in California, told KRCA-TV how he came across the dead grandpa cookies. “Two weeks ago, I was just about to go into my sixth-period class, environmental science, and a girl who was also in the class stopped me and asked me if I wanted a cookie. And I knew her, so I…Read more...

In the second-pettiest looming controversy of this postseason, Houston had been accused by both the Indians and Red Sox of having a man working for the Astros standing in the camera well, using a cell phone camera to capture images of their dugouts. MLB has come out swiftly and strongly on the matter: It doesn’t care.

Kevin Durant and the Golden State Warriors yawned through their win in Wednesday’s season opener against the Thunder. Durant had 27 points, eight boards, and six assists, and he seemed to have a nice, chill time playing with his buddies after everyone received their championship rings. Fittingly, he celebrated with a…Read more...

A transcript to the best of our abilities, for the hearing impaired, can be found below:Read more...

Life came fast at Naomi Osaka. After she skipped the hype machine of the junior circuit, went pro, and won some local fame in Japan, Osaka won her first professional title of any kind at Indian Wells this year, and her second at (sheesh) the U.S. Open. Within days of hoisting that second trophy, she found herself on …Read more...

At a Sports Business Journal conference today, ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro— who said two months ago that ESPN’s future was in sticking to sports and kowtowing to the NFL’s interests—reiterated that ESPN was going to stay away from “pure politics.”Read more...

Rookie quarterback Josh Allen has an elbow injury, and bad quarterback Nathan Peterman shit his ass last Sunday, so the Bills will now turn to old quarterback Derek Anderson for their Week 7 game against the Colts.

An urban housing trend that has been growing for a while is now hitting prime time: “co-living,” a nice way of saying “dorms for adults living in major cities.” This is what housing policy failure in a free market looks like.Read more...

A full-strength Celtics team probably wants to run their offense something like this: Kyrie Irving penetrates or somehow initiates the action, then a Gordon Hayward–led cast of slashers takes advantage of whatever chaos Irving stirs up to knock down an open jumper or exploit a mismatch. However, the Celtics are…Read more...

Nobody wants to schlep to the gym in the dead of winter, but you can work out nearly every muscle group in your body at home with this $117 Weider gym. It uses your own body weight for resistance, but optional bands can add up to 50 pounds of force to your workouts. But the best part of using a home gym? You get to…Read more...

As soon as they’d had a chance to mop the sweat or rinse the vomit out of their mouth, the top finishers of the Chicago Marathon stiffly climbed to the stage in the media center to answer reporters’ questions that generally elicited thanks to the Chicago Marathon for putting on such a great race and magnanimous credit…Read more...

From the moment each team arrived in L.A., it was clear that nobody who actually lived there gave a shit about the Rams or Chargers. Both teams have struggled mightily to sell out their stadiums, and the fans who do show up tend to be fans of the opposing squads. It’s not all that surprising then to see something like…Read more...

In last month’s antitrust case in Oakland challenging the artificial caps on athlete compensation, the NCAA’s defense included the restatement of an imaginary economic principle that is fundamental to its existence: College athletes shouldn’t make money, the NCAA argued, because if players were paid above some magical…Read more...

Jimmy Butler went about trying to launch himself off the team he no longer wants to play for about as loudly and obnoxiously as possible. There was the trade demand, followed by the staged and vindictive practice, followed by post-practice shit-talking on national TV. Despite all that, the Minnesota Timberwolves are…Read more...

You’ve probably heard a lot about CBD oil lately, and its ability to relieve everything from pain to anxiety to acne. If you want to try it out yourself, Groupon’s discounting CBD-infused gummies right now, starting at $21 for a small jar with 250mg of CBD, ranging up to $54 for 1,000mg.