Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Of the eight players currently averaging more than 30 points per game, there’s one who’s not like the others. Out of Luka Dončić , Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Jayson Tatum, Donovan Mitchell, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, I think it’s easy to pick out who I’m referring to.Read more...

I hate to give Texas credit for anything because the state already takes credit for everything. However, of all the supposed football-obsessed hubs, the Lone Star State tops them all. Mostly because of how unhealthy the population’s dedication to the sport is — I’m sure there are Texans who got where Coach Kilmer from …Read more...

The Astros are World Series champions once again! [Editor’s note: Don’t remind me.] After doing a lot of damage control since the legitimacy of their 2017 title was put in question following the 2019 season, the Astros built almost an entirely new squad over the last three years. The 2022 Astros’ roster featured only…Read more...

Before we can truly look forward, we must go back in time, to a marvelous place where the United States men’s national team missing the World Cup was such an afterthought, it would be equal to falling into the abyss. Yeah, a few CONCACAF rivals like Panama and Costa Rica were rapidly improving and belonged in the…Read more...

Louisville, a once proud basketball school, is off to a historically and uniquely bad start. They’re 0-3 to start the season with all three losses coming by exactly one point.Read more...

This World Cup is setting up as either a treatise or a coronation for Lionel Messi. He recently collected his first major trophy with Argentina — 2021’s Copa America — but still needs the World Cup to stand on the same pedestal as Diego Maradona in most’s eyes. He’s coming to Qatar with unquestionably the best team…Read more...

We’re less than a week away from the opening ceremonies for the World Cup (which, by the way, still don’t have an announced performer, after being turned down by Rod Stewart, Dua Lipa, and now Shakira), and things in Doha are progressing just about as well as expected when you hold a World Cup in a country where…Read more...

The Sacramento Kings have been one of the biggest jokes of the NBA for well over a decade. On Tuesday night, Sacramento passed the torch of league laughing stock over to the Brooklyn Nets by stomping them out 153-121. This Nets squad is an embarrassment even with a superstar in Kevin Durant “leading” the way.Read more...

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Life comes at you fast. Regression comes at you faster.Read more...

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When Robert Sarver announced he was selling the Phoenix Suns, the NBA team he had owned since 2006, after a lengthy investigation by the NBA for workplace malfeasance and offenses, I barely shrugged. How awful could it have been, I thought to myself. My concept of the workplace was poisoned by an eight-year stretch at…Read more...

Three days after an on-campus shooting took the lives of three Virginia football players, the university canceled the Cavaliers’ final home game of the season, which would’ve been Saturday against nationally-ranked Coastal Carolina. Lavel Davis Jr., D’Sean Perry, and Devin Chandler were the three killed in the mass…Read more...

By signing an NFL contract, players assume a significant risk. Injury is commonplace in all athletics, but football is a collision sport. Combine the contact of combat sports with stopping, accelerating, and the changing of direction required in basketball, and a significant number of injuries are expected on the…Read more...

While every World Cup is unique in its own way, and this one especially, there are certain happenings you can count on. They come about every tournament. The pressure, the coverage, the overall oeuvre of the whole thing just drives people into the same patterns. Over the next month, you can look for just about any and…Read more...

Victor Wembanyama is out of sight, but never out of mind. He’s still crushing it across the Atlantic, but one month into the NBA season, it’s time to take stock of which “Brick for Vic” NBA candidates are closest to completing their Wembanyama-sized mansion. For the franchise that wins the lottery, this season’s gloom…Read more...

“BELGIUM’S LAST CHANCE!” You’ve heard or seen this already. They are Europe’s big waste of the last decade. There has been no bigger collection of talent than what Belgium has sported for the last four major tournaments, and a 3rd place in Russia is all they’ve had to show for it. Either this is where the last spin…Read more...

America may have largely voted against authoritarianism last week, but the New York Knicks continue to lean into it.Read more...

The NBA can’t move on until Kyrie Irving repentsRead more...

The NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year Award is one of the most head-scratching awards in all of professional sports. Nobody really knows what it entails. Just look at the most recent award winners. All of them had wildly different paths to the honor.Read more...

Qatar’s effort to sportswash its abysmal human rights record has received a couple of assists from notable soccer players, with David Beckham taking some cash to be an ambassador for the country during the World Cup, and French goalkeeper Hugo Lloris essentially saying he will shut up and dribble.

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Yes, the officiating was questionable. Both teams have cause to complain, and also, the Philadelphia Eagles caught the shorter end of the stick. That being said, they still had every opportunity to extend their record to 9-0 against a below .500 division rival that they demolished on the road seven weeks ago.

On Monday night, the Golden State Warriors learned a valuable lesson about who to not put in front of a live microphone. During the Warriors’ live telecast of their game against the San Antonio Spurs, the team brought back Bay Area legends Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond, and Chris Mullin. They called it the “Run TMC” …Read more...

We’ve come to the last of our offseason previews, where all eyes are basically on one team and everyone might react off of that. It’s time for the NL East, or as it may be known from now on, Days of Our Steven Cohen.

One of the pastimes of my college football fan experience was sneaking booze into the stadium. A lot of venues nixed alcohol sales after crowds devolved into angry mobs in the ’90s. A few rolled back those policies recently, and whether it’s due to the unending greed of universities, or a sense of helplessness because…Read more...

The University of Virginia’s athletic department shouldn’t be dominating headlines for something like this.Read more...

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In professional sports, team executives and coaches can over-complicate a situation by attempting to outthink the room. This frequently happens in the NBA when general managers are building teams. Or they just become so blinded by certain players that they fail to see their inadequacies clearly.

Justin Fields may be evolving into the franchise quarterback Chicago Bears fans have been waiting for since Al Capone was alive. Jim McMahon was a capable Super Bowl-winning game manager, but Fields is demonstrating his potential to introduce Chicagoans to a higher caliber of individual quarterback play. The…Read more...

It happens every season, and maybe if no one mentioned it or paid attention maybe it would cease to be a tradition of an NFL season. The last undefeated team loses its first game, and the 1972 Dolphins are all over your timeline and whichever ones are left alive and haven’t filled their diapers with their own shit (or…Read more...

It’s time to check in on the teams that can’t get out of their own way. We’re halfway through the 2022 NFL season, and much of it has been unpredictable, but there are always a few teams we expect to disappoint their fanbases. Now let’s get into the powerless ranking for Week 10.

The Washington Commanders’ strongest unit is their defensive line. Even without Chase Young, the group is big, athletic, and dependable. On Monday Night Football tonight they will be going up against a team with one of the strongest offenses in the NFL — the undefeated Philadelphia Eagles.

Let’s be brave. For most, it’s a foregone conclusion that Germany and Spain are going to come out of this group. Except neither’s recent World Cup history is all that glossy. Yeah, Germany won the tournament just two editions ago. They were also rightly kicked into the trash in the group stage last time out, and went…Read more...

The Crypto craze has infiltrated the sports realm for years, however, no crypto firm has been more ubiquitous of late than FTX. Franchises, athletes, and venture capitalists who advise these figures all rose for the bullish crypto market. FTX sniveled its way into mainstream culture through brand sponsorships with…Read more...

The Jimmy Garoppolo experience, a ride with far fewer thrills than the Michael Vick one from the Nike commercial. Riding with Jimmy Garoppolo has gotten the San Francisco 49ers to the doorstep of the franchise’s sixth Super Bowl Championship, but he hasn’t been able to get them inside the building.

Josh McDonald’s, er, McDaniels should be fired.

November has rolled around, and like clockwork, the Dallas Cowboys proved once again why they can’t be trusted once expectations are placed on their shoulder pads. Nobody outside Wisconsin gave the Packers a chance to beat the Cowboys Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, Dallas must’ve missed the email that they were…Read more...

The GM Meetings are in the books, the Winter Meetings aren’t in the distant future, and the rumors are beginning to fly. You can be sure your favorite team is talking to agents for players! Does that mean anything? Nope, sure doesn’t! But you’ll take anything at this point, and they know that. So we’d better get…Read more...

It wasn’t a coincidence. It was evidence.Read more...

For the fair-weather soccer fan, and let’s be real, that’s 99 percent or more of American sports fans, the World Cup is the one event taking place over multiple weeks where general interest is at a high. The United States men’s national team didn’t make the world’s best 32 in 2018, and a huge chunk of American fans…Read more...

Three members of the University of Virginia football team were gunned down on the Charlottesville campus late Sunday night and two more were injured, according to police and university officials.

For all of the press that Romeo Doubs received during the summer, the wide receiver from the Green Bay Packers 2022 draft class who they had their hopes set on the most was Christian Watson. This FCS star put an exclamation point on his evaluation at the draft combine.Read more...

Yesterday was most certainly not the most entertaining Sunday of NFL games ever played.Read more...

The Buffalo Bills continue to find more excruciating ways to break their fans’ hearts by losing. This time they did it in the closing seconds and overtime of their Week 10 matchup against the Minnesota Vikings.Read more...

There had to be some law of nature or human capability that was broken by Justin Jefferson’s catch.

You’d be severely challenged to come up with a duo more up their own ass than Cristiano Ronaldo and Piers Morgan, so it was kind of perfect and perfectly puke-worthy that Ronaldo carefully chose Morgan for his tactical masterplan to get booted out of Manchester as soon as possible. It was right as the Premier League…Read more...

Russell Westbrook’s first season in L.A. was an unmitigated failure. He was plugged into a lineup of non-shooters including LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and a confusing mix of ill-fitting pieces. Of Rob Pelinka’s misfit toys, though, nobody took last season’s debacle harder on the chin than Westbrook.

At the start of the fifth round UFC 281’s main event, the rapper with the Instagram handle @champagnepapi might have been ready to go get a ridiculously overpriced bottle. His $2 million bet on Israel Adesanya looked certain to be a winner.Read more...

It you ascribe to the theory that this will be a truly goofy World Cup — that the short run-up, the injuries everywhere (not clear the amount of injured is all that abnormal but let’s go with it), the odd setting — and that some team from out of nowhere could make a run, you’re probably sizing up your…Read more...