Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Justify clocked a 2:28 in the mile-and-a-half of the Belmont Stakes today, earning the first Triple Crown since, uh, three years ago, and driving a stake through the heart of mystery that surrounded the feat for millions.Read more...

By far the most captivating part of this fan’s frankly alarmingly committed pursuit of a foul ball at Saturday’s Orioles-Blue Jays game is that poor beer in his left hand. Will it survive? Won’t anyone think of the beer??Read more...

The Boston Celtics showed up, somewhat unexpectedly, on a list Stephen A. Smith made of teams “in the mix” to land LeBron James in free agency this summer (Smith is a dingus, but he was ahead of everyone on LeBron going to Miami in 2010, so his list can’t be summarily dismissed). The Celtics weren’t the biggest…Read more...

As if the French didn’t have enough to worry about—seeing their national team down after one half to the U.S. in its last tune-up before the World Cup—now superstar Olivier Giroud has left the match alongside Matt Miazga after the two clashed heads on a corner kick.Read more...

Alex Ovechkin brought the Stanley Cup to Nationals Park today, where he threw out the ceremonial first pitch of Saturday’s Giants-Nationals game. Well, okay, the first two pitches—Ovechkin made a funny mess of the first one:

It was otherwise a shitty, forgettable NBA Finals series, but at least it produced this fascinating outcome: Nick Young (!) joins fellow Cinnamon Challenge hero and former Wizards knucklehead JaVale McGee (!!) as an NBA champion. The sheer improbability of Nick Young finding a role on a championship team was not lost…Read more...

Dominic Thiem and Rafael Nadal will play each other in the French Open final on Sunday. Only one outcome has ever resulted from a French Open final involving Rafa. For a reality check, pinch yourself and say aloud, “Rafael Nadal has won 10 French Opens.” There is only the slimmest chance that Thiem will topple that…Read more...

You will be forgiven if you look at the seemingly random pairing of Stephen Colbert and Patrick Wilson lining up to perform the national anthem at a Mets game and think “whuh?” Because, like, whuh? A comedian talk show host and the Insidious guy? Turns out, these nerds can fuckin’ sing!Read more...

A year after she blew a one-set lead in the French Open final to allow unseeded Jeļena Ostapenko to claim victory on the clay, Simona Halep bounced back from losing the first set to defeat Sloane Stephens and seize the first Grand Slam title of her career, 3–6, 6–4, 6-1.Read more...

I am certainly not going to pretend to believe this might’ve significantly changed the trajectory of the series, but it’s also not nothing: LeBron James reportedly played the last three games of the Finals with a busted-up hand after he punched a black board following Cleveland’s world-historic boner of a loss in Game…Read more...

Man, Game 4 sucked. Just as a basketball exhibition, it sucked, in exactly the way that all blowouts suck, before we even get to the part where it was an elimination game in the NBA Finals. However valiantly the Cavs fought earlier in the series, Game 4 made clear just what a ghastly, hilariously lopsided Finals…Read more...

It was the third quarter, and the Warriors, already ahead on the scoreboard and up 3-0 in the series, were doing their third-quarter thing. That is to say, they’d decided to apply the 12 minutes of focused full-bore effort it takes to render them effectively invincible. A game they’d led steadily pretty much from the…Read more...

If you need a new window air conditioner for the summer, you should buy it now, not once it gets hot and prices go up. This 5,000 BTU model is perfectly sized for a bedroom, and is only $112 today after you clip the (very specific!) $27.61 coupon on the Amazon product page.

Despite facing a Cavaliers superteam of NBA legends like José Calderón, Cedi Osman, and George Hill, the Golden State Warriors fought their way past the odds to claim their third league title in the past four years and their sixth overall with a 108-85 win.Read more...

USC’s Rai Benjamin claimed the national championship in the 400 meter hurdles today in a mind-blowing 47.02, tying Edwin Moses’s former world record for the second-fastest time in human history in the event.Read more...

“I mean, history has shown even back then, our biggest scholars did think the Earth was flat.”Read more...

Houston’s Brian Barraza accumulated a massive lead on his opponents on the final lap of tonight’s NCAA national steeplechase final, only for disaster to strike in such a way that he ended up finishing outside the top eight.

The Ringer has obtained a restraining order against former audio producer Joe Fuentes, who was fired from the company on April 25. The restraining order, first reported by The Blast, was granted this morning. It legally bars Fuentes from coming within 100 yards of the Ringer offices, any Ringer employee, or “guest…Read more...

People really don’t realize how much of a miracle it would be if Argentina won the World Cup.Read more...

Probably the easiest sports story to write is one about a meteoric improvement. The Wow This Person Got A Lot Better At Sports story is one that works in every sport, honestly, but it tends to be most common in ones like running or swimming. (Stories about rapid improvements in those sports generally tend to elide the…Read more...

If you’re not remembering, are you forgetting? It’s a question that has vexed and divided the Guy Remembering community for centuries. Our work, in Remembering, is fundamentally about sustaining—about keeping alive the memory of Steve Jeltz’s very wet hair, or a terribly rude song that someone sang about Rob Deer like…Read more...

Nine of the 10 Minnesota football players who were temporarily or permanently suspended at the conclusion of a 2016 university sexual assault investigation are suing the school for $5 million apiece.

If you’re a jilted American fan in need of a World Cup team to root for but you’re put off by the prospect of frontrunning and cheering for a titan like Germany or Brazil, I humbly suggest jumping on the Croatia bandwagon.

If you’re a millionaire race horse owner who reads Deadspin, please consider yourself welcome to use any of these fake names for your next foal—with credit, of course.Read more...

Spain, it appears, are back. The team that won three international titles in a span of four years (the 2008 and 2012 Euros, and the 2010 World Cup), and then followed it up by crashing out of the 2014 World Cup in the group stage and losing to Italy in the round of 16 in the 2016 European Championship, looks poised to…Read more...

There is an inexhaustible stock of incredible moments of connection, understanding, and joy in the archives of Anthony Bourdain’s show—A Cook’s Tour, No Reservations, The Layover, and Parts Unknown are really just four iterations of the same show—that the world inevitably feels like a brighter, more colorful place for…Read more...

As I’d imagine many or, who knows, maybe even most of those who admired him did, I once had the strange experience of realizing that Anthony Bourdain seemed to know a place I lived better than I did. In 2009, his No Reservations program went to Chicago, and if he didn’t get the entire city, which of course no one…Read more...

On May 14, 2018, when the Supreme Court overturned the ban on sports betting, New Jersey legislators hurried to update the state’s 2014 sports betting law. Back in 2014, Jersey lawmakers had passed a law permitting sports betting at casinos and racetracks, but the law couldn’t go into effect until the Supreme Court…Read more...

Fuck!!!!!!!!!!!

Even though LeBron James and Steph Curry had already said that neither of their teams would visit the White House if they won the NBA Finals, today Donald Trump tried to pretend like he wouldn’t have invited them anyway. Surely the basketball players will regret the opportunity to watch a septuagenarian trot his…Read more...

Most friendships have a sort of intrinsic half-life. Each passing year tends to draw you further from the people you care about or at least reduce the number of people you stay in touch with, but this is usually a good thing. I’d say the best number of friends is somewhere around MySpace’s platonic ideal of a top…Read more...

No nation as small as Iceland (population: 337,479) has ever qualified for the World Cup before, but simply getting to Russia won’t be satisfying enough for this team. After a couple of miraculous wins in Euro 2016 that put Icelandic soccer on the map, this Scandinavian group will be forced to experience outsized…Read more...

Is this the stupidest thing we’ve ever put on the website? Uh, sound off in the comments I guess. I’m just really sorry about all this.Read more...

Somebody gave me a copy of Kitchen Confidential shortly after I graduated from college; I wish I remembered who. I mostly subsisted on Trader Joe’s frozen meals back then, and I’m almost certain I had never heard of Anthony Bourdain.

Last month Zak DeOssie thought his championship rings were purloined, but a police investigation concluded that the Giants long snapper had done what many people have with coffee mugs, briefcases, and other items they forget about while getting into their car.

In September 2015 an NYPD officer tackled and handcuffed James Blake outside a Manhattan hotel, mistaking the former American tennis player for a suspect in a credit card scam; a month later, an independent panel ruled that police used excessive force in the arrest. That panel, the Civilian Complaint Review Board,…Read more...

“This moment...” Alexander Ovechkin started, flanked at the podium by the Stanley Cup and the Conn Smythe Trophy. He never once that I saw looked at the latter, but he kept glancing toward the big one, the one he had kissed and lofted and screamed into and shared with every single one of his teammates and coworkers.…Read more...

In the middle of the night on November 11, 2011, Jenn Shapland, a 24-year-old graduate student in the English department at the University of Texas at Austin, received an email from her professor.Read more...

Tomorrow is a bigass waste of time. I am a grown adult, which means that the majority of my decisions are based around tomorrow. I save money. I go to bed at a reasonable hour. I don’t do crack. Tomorrow dictates a great deal of my actions, which is a shame because today is RIGHT HERE to be celebrated and enjoyed and…Read more...

If you still haven’t picked up a PlayStation VR kit, I don’t think we’ve ever seen a better deal than this one. Just $250 gets you the headset, two Move controllers, the camera, and a copy of Skyrim. That’s $100 less than the usual price on this bundle. Just remember, the arrow in your knee isn’t real, you can still…Read more...

Four months ago, Eduardo “HookGangGod” Hook had never entered a tournament in person. He had been shooting up the leaderboards in Persona 4 Arena and Guilty Gear for years while preferring to risk frame delays and shaky network connections. But Dragon Ball FighterZ got the self-described “online monster” to see if…Read more...

Orioles first baseman Chris Davis is in real danger of having the worst season in the history of baseball. That’s not a joke or hyperbole. He’s playing unbelievably, historically bad baseball:

Start off your Friday with a dress shoe sale, PS4 E3 discounts, a whole bunch of Father’s Day gift, and more.Read more...

Muhammad Ali’s career in the ring came to a standstill in 1967 upon the late boxer’s conviction for avoiding the Vietnam Draft by declaring himself a conscientious objector. Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that conviction by a unanimous vote; 47 years later, Donald Trump is suggesting he will pardon…Read more...

At the 2014 World Cup, Australia were one of those entertaining minnows who have no real shot at escaping the maws of the big fish hunting them down but still make the chase interesting. In a hellacious group along with Spain, the Netherlands, and Chile, Australia lost all three matches, as was expected. What’s lost…Read more...

Steamed Steam’s Irresponsible Hands-Off Policy Is Proof That Valve Still Hasn’t Learned Its Lesson | Gizmodo Least Transparent FCC Ever Goes Dark as Former IT Chief Walks Back DDoS Attack Claims | Jalopnik Does The Dealer Have To Honor The Price On A Car You Ordered? | Vitals What Knowing Your Astrological Sign Is…Read more...

If ever you need confirmation of the theory of general relativity, just watch your team in a Stanley Cup clincher. After Lars Eller scored the go-ahead (and soon to be Cup-winning) goal with 7:37 left, time started doing funny things, depending on who you were rooting for. While those final minutes and seconds ticked…Read more...

Last month, Michigan State settled with 332 victims of Larry Nassar’s sex abuse for half a billion dollars. While it’s still unclear how exactly MSU will pay out that substantial settlement, the prevailing wisdom is that some combination of insurance, public funds, loans, and university money will cover it. It was…Read more...

Baseball is Ye Olde American Pastime, old enough to have developed its own language and customs and conventions. For example, everyone who follows baseball knows that “7.1 innings” should be understood to mean “seven-and-a-third innings,” even though that’s not at all how decimals work. You could reject that shorthand…Read more...

I am always up for images of sports fans celebrating a championship—the euphoria is contagious, especially when it’s a fan base that hasn’t tasted the glory of a title in a good long while. For a nice appetizer, here’s the celebration on the ice:Read more...