Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Thursday night Zion Williamson made his first appearance for Duke since the shoe explosion seen ‘round the world, helping the Blue Devils to a comfortable 84–72 win over Syracuse in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals. For those who were concerned a knee sprain might sap some of Williamson’s brain-scrambling athleticism,…Read more...

The dickweed Jazz fan who heckled Russell Westbrook until Westbrook threatened to kick both his ass and the ass of his wife has been permanently banned from Utah’s home arena. That’s fair and appropriate, but a lingering consequence of Monday’s exchange is an ongoing public discussion about the very shitty reputation…Read more...

The FBI recently busted a bunch of rich assholes who were trying to get their unsuspecting children into college the only way they knew how: by throwing money at the largely superficial roadblock life had put in front of them until it went away. At the center of this operation was an organization known as The Key, a…Read more...

At least 49 people have been murdered in shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. New Zealand’s prime minister called the killings a terrorist attack.Read more...

Cristina Ferguson, wife of UFC lightweight fighter Tony Ferguson, filed a request for a temporary restraining order yesterday against her husband in Orange County Superior Court. Online court records didn’t provide many details about why Christina Ferguson requested the order, but police reports obtained by MMA JunkieRead more...

The Big Lead, a sports website founded and run by Jason McIntyre of Fox Sports, may not be a particularly good or smart or relevant website, but one thing that it did have going for it was that it didn’t run on exploited labor like FanSided or SB Nation (Vox Media is facing two federal collective action lawsuits …Read more...

On March 5, the Santa Anita race track in Arcadia, Calif., announced that it was shutting down the track and indefinitely canceling races after it was revealed that 21 horses had died at the track over a two-month period. Santa Anita officials weren’t sure why so many horses were dying so quickly at their track,…Read more...

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

The best and most important thing about the rule changes announced in Major League Baseball on Thursday is that they were agreed upon by both the league and the MLB Players Association. It is not necessarily encouraging when what should be an obvious tautology is also a highlight, and it is also worth noting that…Read more...

The latest reminder that the brains of sports fans function quite differently than those that belong to more well-adjusted individuals comes from Cleveland. Robert Stewart, a young Browns fan, got so excited his team traded for Odell Beckham Jr. that he started running up and down his neighborhood while screaming and…Read more...

Enjoy this inspiring sports action, from Wednesday’s second-round playoff game between two Pittsburgh high school basketball teams:

The Eastern Washington Eagles are headed to their first Big Sky championship game in over 30 years thanks to a clever play involving a butt. Trailing by a point with 4.6 seconds left in Wednesday’s semifinal against two-seed Northern Colorado, freshman point guard Jessica McDowell-White had to inbound the ball on the…Read more...

Valentino Dixon tells a story in front of a packed house for his first solo art show, and the crowd is enraptured. He went to prison in 1992, and after he was released in 2018, his daughter bought him his first smartphone.

On Monday, David Tamarkin, the site editor at Epicurious, a Condé Nast food publication, tweeted out a job posting for an editorial assistant. The position, Tamarkin wrote, was “full-time freelance,” meaning the person filling the job would work 40 hours a week and perform the duties of a full-time employee, without…Read more...

The Manitoba Moose beat the Texas Stars 4-3 in AHL play on Wednesday night, but the Moose’s continued dominance on home ice is not the story here. The big news came midway through the second period, when the apparent existence of magic in our material world was revealed to us through a shot by Stars defenseman Joel…Read more...

Zero-time UFC title defender Conor McGregor was arrested in Miami Beach and charged with felony strong-armed robbery and misdemeanor criminal mischief on Monday, after allegedly turning down a fan’s request for a photo and then destroying the fan’s expensive phone by stomping on it. The fan, 22-year-old Ahmed…Read more...

If I may, I would like to take you Inside The Game. There was a moment during the recording of this podcast—it came maybe two-thirds of the way through the experience of my boss absolutely fucking cleaning my clock at Guess The Price Of This Ridiculous Gilded Kitchen Doodad—when I looked over at Megan Greenwell…Read more...

Less than a week after New York Knicks owner James Dolan threw a fan out of a Knicks game, a new video posted on Twitter today shows Dolan trying to kick a fan out of music festival.Read more...

Yesterday, the Chicago White Sox sent Eloy Jiménez, probably their best player, to the minor leagues. While general manager Rick Hahn and manager Rick Renteria made unconvincing noises about how Jiménez needs to work on his defense and get his timing down, everyone knows that the team is sending him down because then…Read more...

Pretty much everything about how Russell Westbrook played basketball over the first 10 years of his pro career, and especially over the two seasons prior to this one, was insane and impossible. Each time he crossed over into a 75-degree change of direction while sprinting—sprinting—directly at a defender, and then,…Read more...

Faced with a most unenviable task—walking into Bayern Munich’s home stadium and needing to come away with a win or, at the very least, a scoring draw—Liverpool turned to their streaky African forward, who drove them to a commanding 3-1 victory and into the quarterfinals of the Champions League. No, the Reds’ savior…Read more...

Want $3 to spend on Amazon for free? Just visit this page, click the “Borrow Your First Book” button to jump to Amazon’s Prime Reading library, then pick any book or magazine to add to your library. They’re all free, and once you “borrow” one, you’ll receive an email confirming that a $3 Amazon credit has been added…Read more...

A pair of Klipsch speakers, packing cubes, Lego BB-8, and eye gel lead off Thursday’s Best Deals.Read more...

Just four days ago, the Detroit Pistons clobbered the Bulls 131-108 at home, extending what had been a surprisingly nice little run of games for such a terminally mediocre franchise. That win over the Bulls was Detroit’s 12th in 15 games, and they were starting to look like a team deserving of a playoff spot, rather…Read more...

The Oilers maybe could’ve tricked themselves into believing they were still in the playoff hunt if they had won Wednesday night, as two points would have kept them dead even with the newly optimistic Chicago Blackhawks in the wild card chase. Instead, they lost 6-3 at home to the New Jersey Devils—who had lost seven…Read more...

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The most remarkable aspect of 2019’s most remarkable college basketball player is his age: Markus Howard just turned 20 years old. The Marquette junior guard is one of the youngest players in his class, yet the 5-foot-11 Howard has spent this revelatory season torching all comers.

The Hawks handily smushed the visiting Memphis Grizzlies Wednesday evening, by the score of 132–111. Because the Hawks haven’t been officially eliminated from the playoff race, and because their young players are doing cool things and steadily developing into useful NBA players, every time they win it can seem like…Read more...

The Nebraska Cornhuskers got a truly monumental revenge win tonight in the Big Ten Tournament, erasing the bitter memory of their 76-69 loss to Rutgers back in January by beating the Scarlet Knights 68-61 in yet another installment of this classic Big Ten rivalry.Read more...

Every girl spends her youth dreaming of that perfect proposal from her dream guy. You know what I’m talking about. The one where you and Prince Charming are visiting fans at a March NBA game between two below-.500 teams. Harry The Hawk is there. A woman with a microphone is narrating to a semi-engaged crowd. And then…Read more...

Isaiah Thomas returned to the court on February 13, following 11 months away from basketball recovering from hip surgery. This was a moment of personal triumph for Thomas. For fans of his new team, the Denver Nuggets, on the other hand, this was a moment of dread; Thomas was horrendous last season for the Cavs, while…Read more...

Parents obsessing over their kids getting into good colleges is nothing new, but committing actual crimes to make it happen would seemingly require a particular mindset and financial position. When the Justice Department announced yesterday charges and indictments in an absolutely batshit college admission cheating…Read more...

A total of 50 people have now been charged with various crimes stemming from the FBI’s extensive investigation into college admissions fraud. The alleged mastermind of the scheme is William Rick Singer, the Edge College & Career Network founder who’s accused of facilitating millions in bribes on behalf of a few dozen…Read more...

The Le’Veon Bell contract saga, two years and three negotiating cycles in the making, finally concluded just after midnight today. Bell will play for the Jets, for a reported $52.5 million across a max of four years, with a max value of $61 million, and guarantees totaling $35 million. There are a lot of unknown…Read more...

Cristiano Ronaldo’s decision to leave Real Madrid last summer was a bet on himself. It was a bet that for as unstoppable a force of nature he’d become, as perfectly complementary a supporting cast he’d found, and as much fame and adulation and trophies and awards he’d won at the most famous and successful club in…Read more...

WWE works best when it sticks to the rules. This is more a question of storytelling than it is of sport, although that’s always true. This is why someone unfamiliar with the beats of professional wrestling but attuned to how narrative works can understand wrestling even if they don’t comprehend the layers of lore and…Read more...

The Cleveland Browns now have Odell Beckham Jr. after a trade with the New York Giants. The receiver should provide an instant jolt to Cleveland’s offense, and he’s a huge upgrade. But fans of the Browns, a team that went 7-8-1 last season, are already thinking bigger. They’re thinking Super Bowl.Read more...

Two NCAA Tournament candidates right on the fringe of the field of 68 faced each other on Tuesday afternoon in a second-round ACC Tournament match-up that possibly doubled as a play-in game, and it was NC State who came away victorious. Markell Johnson made a pair of free throws with 2.6 seconds remaining to give…Read more...

In the quest for homeostasis, pain is your friend. Pain tells you when you’re wrong. When you need to change your behavior. For an athlete, pain is your coach. Pushing your body to its limits causes Coach Pain to speak up. Are you hurting or are you hurt? Is this a no-pain/no-gain situation or are you doing permanent…Read more...

Denis Shapovalov is a favorite around these parts. The 19-year-old plays a stirring, free-wheeling style of tennis thanks to weapons like his backhand, seen on display in Tuesday’s second-round upset of No. 10 seed Marin Cilic at Indian Wells. But rap is not one of those weapons.Read more...

Sometimes, it’s best to be realistic. Browns receiver Breshad Perriman, who hasn’t done much in three healthy seasons but showed a little promise in Cleveland last year, decided Tuesday afternoon that he’d be fine sticking with a team that was trending up, even if he’d have to compete with Jarvis Landry, Antonio…Read more...

Tirreno-Adriatico, one of the better stage races of the early cycling season, kicked off today with its traditional seaside team time trial. Racing road bikes in the first half of March in Italy is not without its hazards, and while wet roads made for a rather slippery course, the most dangerous impediments in front…Read more...

This past December, the New York Times ran a perfectly anodyne post promoting a new episode of The Daily, its popular podcast, and found itself mildly embarrassed. The problem wasn’t the actual substance of what it had published, a straightforward accounting of how the national-security establishment’s fixation on…Read more...

A sold-out grandstand packed with more than 100,000 people erupts in a loud roar, drowning out the National Anthem. This is meant to be The Great American Race, bigger, brighter, louder than anything else. An incoming rumble and the ground shakes as six fighter jets streak into view. The cheers are drowned out by the…Read more...

Heading into yesterday’s second leg of their round of 16 matchup against Juventus, Atlético Madrid looked like solid favorites to progress to the quarterfinals, or at least as solid as any team could be going up against the Europe’s most complete team, featuring the best Champions League player ever. Not only did the…Read more...

After Aaron Hernandez died by suicide in 2017, his 2015 conviction for the murder of Odin Lloyd was overturned. The verdict was vacated because of a Massachusetts law that abates convictions in cases where the defendant dies before having the opportunity to see out the appeals process. Today, the state Supreme…Read more...

Adeel Alam is WWE’s Mustafa Ali. Here he discusses the journey to finding his current character and his determination to rise above playing just another bad guy in a head scarf.

An Eddie Bauer sale, Cuisinart pans, DeWalt Gold Box, PlayStation Classic, and Sony earbuds lead off Wednesday’s Best Deals.Read more...

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