Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

We know which 20 teams won’t be heading for summer vacation after the last day of the NBA regular season on Sunday, but that’s about all we know.

The possibility of Albert Pujols returning to St. Louis to finish his career where he started it, this time as a bench bat for a Cardinals team that has title aspirations and Paul Goldschmidt at first base, was too good to be true.

The Stanley Cup playoffs started on Saturday, which is weird because the NHL regular season continued on Saturday, as the Canucks handed the Oilers a 4-1 loss that was notable only because Connor McDavid picked up his league-best 72nd assist, which also wrapped up the scoring title for the presumptive MVP with 105…Read more...

Rookie mini-camps are underway. It’s our first chance to see the stars of tomorrow in their new jerseys. It introduces the fans to new, fun characters — like Ravens’ OL Ben Cleveland and his squirrel-eating tendencies. Rookie mini-camps also deliver some intriguing storylines to follow.Read more...

Lamar Odom in Zach Randolph’s body did it again, y’all.Read more...

You know you’re getting old when you remember Doc Gooden’s no-hitter with the Yankees on May 14, 1996. It was now 25 years ago — so long ago that the Mets have gone through multiple waves of promising young pitchers who ultimately disappointed: Pulsipher, Wilson, Isringhausen. Harvey, etc.

There is NO such thing as a sure thing in betting until there are zeroes on the clock. Even if a team needs just three wins in 25 games, you might think, “Psssh, easy,” but you better make like Saint Nick and check that thing twice.

Calm down; it was just one game. (It was a damn good one, though.)

No matter how old (or young) you are, you’ve probably uttered one of Marv Albert’s famous phrases that he coined and/or popularized over the years. You may have not even realized it.Read more...

Sabrina Ionescu stole the show, but she wasn’t alone in making a significant impact on night one of the WNBA season.

Ja’Wuan James tore his Achilles while working out, and since the injury did not occur at the Broncos’ team facility, Denver was able to cut the offensive tackle, voiding his $10 million contract.

It doesn’t help anyone to act as if “you should get vaccinated” and “you don’t need to get vaccinated” are arguments that need to be treated as equal because of the archaic journalistic construct of giving equal weight to all sides of a story. Some stories have a clear right and wrong. YOU SHOULD GET VACCINATED.Read more...

Friday night was not Sabrina Ionescu’s first WNBA game, but it really might as well have been. Last year’s No. 1 draft pick only made three appearances in the Wubble last summer, and her rookie campaign came to an abrupt end on July 31 when she suffered a severe ankle sprain.

Urban Meyer says Tim Tebow is “the most competitive maniac you’re ever going to talk to.”

Quinn Meinerz gives us all belly laughs — literally

People have been calling Andrew Wiggins a bust for what feels like forever.

Rookie mini-camp is an exciting time for all involved. It gives the new guys their first opportunity to strut their stuff in front of their coaches and teammates. Plus, it gives football-hungry fans something to talk about for a little over a week until we inevitably realize that the NFL season is still multiple…Read more...

Today, Frank Gore is another year older. At a spry (by NFL standards) 38 years old, he’s at the age when he’s outlasting quarterbacks, which is just not something running backs get to do.

The Minnesota Twins probably weren’t expecting to be where they currently sit heading into this season. Minnesota reached the playoffs in three of the last four seasons, and were looking to return once again in 2021 in the hopes of actually winning a playoff series for the first time since 2003. So far though — 35…Read more...

You gotta respect your O.G.s.

“I take an inhaler before the game since I’ve tested positive.”

Udonis Haslem might have authored one of the best send-offs in team sports history last night.

The NFL season is still four months away, but with the draft, the schedule release, and most of free agency in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to start looking forward to a season with lots of storylines to follow, more games than ever before, and fewer preseason games than ever before (three is still too many…Read more...

So they finally agree on something?

The Chicago Bears have their quarterback of the future in Justin Fields. Nobody really questions that. I certainly don’t. However, the question remains — how long before he takes over, and are the Bears even capable of effectively developing a quarterback?

This NBA season has brought a fresh energy to the regular season. The new Play-In Tournament and the rise of new teams to prominence (the Knicks are good now, wut?!) have made this one of the most compelling NBA regular seasons in recent memory.

Look at what it takes to get a seat at the table.

The Buffalo Bills’ cheerleaders, the Jills, have been at the forefront of the fight for fair wages and treatment in their craft for years. Their cause has been the focus of lawsuits and a documentary film. Now, the legislature in New York State is picking up the cause.Read more...

There is unavoidable, though sickening, symmetry in the news coming out of the hockey world today. And there’s a good chance that the NHL will try to avoid commenting on any of it, hiding behind the “open litigation” shield as most organizations do. But it’s the silence and the hope it all goes away that keeps landing…Read more...

Move over LaVar Ball, there’s a new MPP “most problematic parent” in sports, and her son hasn’t even taken a snap in the NFL yet.Read more...

The Portland Trail Blazers are coming into the NBA playoffs on fire, in NBA Jam terms.

After being sidelined for more than a month, James Harden returned to the Nets lineup on Wednesday night as he came off the bench to score 18 points, dish out 11 assists, and grab 7 rebounds in a 128-116 victory over the Spurs.Read more...

Football people are weird people, because we get giddy over something as simple as a schedule release. That giddy feeling happened last night, as the NFL (and it’s teams’ social media departments) released their full 18-week slate for the upcoming season, which will be the first in which every team plays 17 regular…Read more...

You ever heard of a “Temp to Hire?” That’s what Victor Oladipo is with the Miami Heat.

An NCAA Women’s Division I golf regional in Louisiana was canceled yesterday before any college athlete could tee off.Read more...

I don’t mean to turn this into “Chicago Controversies This Morning,” but it just so happened that another pretty gross story broke out of these parts last night:

It’s still a week where some states’ proposals to “placate” athletes’ desire to be compensated for their work and likeness still involve schools poaching 75 percent of said athletes’ income from such things. But still, it’s fun and satisfying to mark when a school has to take a step back, admit it was wrong, and a few…Read more...

Thanks to the haphazard scheduling of this NHL season and the need to make up games lost to COVID protocols and the virus itself, it’s hard to mark exactly when the season ends for a lot of fans. Some teams are already in the barn, while others still have a handful of games to go. Which leads to pretty hilarious…Read more...

Trainer Bob Baffert’s horse, Medina Spirit, who won the Kentucky Derby on May 1, tested positive for a banned substance. Apparently, according to Baffert, this happened because one of the groomers decided to take a piss on the hay in the horse’s stall after taking cough medicine, and the horse consumed it. This seems…Read more...

The pandemic soccer season hasn’t thrown up a lot of drama across Europe. Either alongside or because of the oppressive schedule, which has led to exhausted players and pretty wretched games at various times, we’ve mostly gotten title processions instead of races. Bayern Munich sauntered to a ninth-straight Bundesliga…Read more...

They say all rappers want to be hoopers, and all hoopers want to be rappers.Read more...

This isn’t a column about Luka Dončić. But it is about how Luka Dončić is covered.

Only one horse has been disqualified for a drug test after winning the Kentucky Derby. That happened in 1968, when Dancer’s Image was DQ’d for testing positive for a banned anti-inflammatory. But Forward Pass, who finished in second was not declared the official winner until 1972.Read more...

You smell that?

Baseball can’t have anything nice. Jacob deGrom, who was doing his best impression of Bob Gibson circa 1968 so far this year, had to leave his start yesterday with discomfort in his side. This was just days after he had a start pushed back because of discomfort in his lat. We don’t know if it’s serious, and it might…Read more...

Not that the question needs answering. We all know. They haven’t been about the athletes for long before we were born. And now it couldn’t be clearer that they’re not for fans either.

DK Metcalf was not supposed to earn himself a shot at Olympic glory by winning today’s 100-meter qualifier event.Read more...

We need to push pause on the Tom Thibodeau slander.Read more...

You have to ask if there’s anything left of horse racing to kill. Perhaps it’s entrenched so deeply into irrelevance, outside of four or five days a year, that just about nothing can make it worse. This is an industry basically surviving on the courtesy of state governments, really.Read more...

“Safe is death.”