Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Hockey’s hallow-fication of The Stanley Cup has been cartoonish for a while. It’s perhaps the pointy end of its #PleaseLikeMySport inferiority complex. “We play for a Cup while others play for a championship,” as if it wasn’t really the same fucking thing.Read more...

If Adrian Wojnarowski’s report is true — which is so often the case — then new Indiana head basketball coach Mike Woodson needs to fire his agent. Because he just got played.

If any one person deserves the trite title of “comeback kid,” it’s Alex Smith. The veteran quarterback almost died after suffering a gruesome leg injury in 2018, and somehow returned to (and won games in) the league.Read more...

Trevor Lawrence doesn’t owe anyone anything for being honest about himself.

I’m not sure if the Los Angeles Rams’ draft is sponsored by Rocket Mortgage or cocaine sales, but it’s definitely one of those. After watching Arizona Cardinals’ head coach Kliff Kingsbury draft from his lair last year like a modern-day Batman villain, Sean McVay will be getting a similar setup this year.

I got a lot of texts and messages last night from my non-soccer initiated friends. It was surprising how big of a story the formation of “The Super League” became on every U.S. outlet. Obviously European soccer has become a big deal on these shores, but that it hit every major website near the top (meaning that any…Read more...

Pump the brakes on all the praise for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

That’s probably not fair, as Shane Bieber isn’t really doing anything he didn’t do last year. We just didn’t notice all that much because it was a 60-game season in the middle of a pandemic and most of it happened in Cleveland.

The Canucks returned to the ice last night, beating the Toronto Maple Leafs in overtime, 4-3. Which resulted in a predictable reaction from the hockey press:Read more...

Alright alright alright. Well what the fuck do we have here?

Zion Williamson is continuing to bully a league full of grown men.Read more...

It seems a little more serious this time around. Which means it’s a bigger threat this time around. But the news of the biggest European clubs forming their own sSuperleague” starting in 2022 is more likely to be used as blackmail to UEFA more than it is actual formation.The end goal is for the richest to become even…Read more...

I fell into the trap, too. The return to a 162-game season lent a feeling of the Yankees being inevitable in the AL East. After all, the Red Sox simply declined to compete again (though no one seems to have told their players yet), the Blue Jays fel about a year away, and the Orioles smell like a smelting plant…Read more...

Most sports fans have an opinion about Joe Buck. Usually, it’s not a good one.Read more...

After serving as the white supremacist president that eternally merged politics and sports, the ramifications of Donald Trump’s time in the Oval Office are still affecting American traditions.Read more...

The past four seasons have made it clear who the best two players in the 2017 NBA Draft are.

It seems a little more serious this time around. Which means it’s a bigger threat this time around. But the news of the biggest European clubs forming their own sSuperleague” starting in 2022 is more likely to be used as blackmail to UEFA more than it is actual formation.The end goal is for the richest to become even…Read more...

Carlos Rodón came oh-so-close to a perfect game on Wednesday night, settling instead for a no-hitter after he hit Cleveland catcher Roberto Perez with a pitch in the ninth inning, two outs away from what would have been the first perfecto in the majors since Félix Hernández’s in on August 15, 2012.

Stephen Curry has been on one lately, and that continued on Saturday night in Boston, where he scored 47 points, made 11 three-pointers, grabbed seven rebounds… and Golden State still fell back to .500 with a 119-114 loss to the Celtics, who got 44 points from Jayson Tatum.

When a player is on a real hot streak, it’s not uncommon to hear an announcer say “he’s like a cheat code right now.”Read more...

I don’t know; maybe all the wrestling fans who hated peak John Cena wearing ‘Never Give Up’ t-shirts could acknowledge that he had a point?Read more...

On an actual boxing card with actual legitimate boxers, Jake Paul is once again boxing a non-boxer.Read more...

The fifth season of women’s Australian rules football, AFLW, wrapped up on Saturday with the Grand Final at the Adelaide Oval, and after falling short in their first two cracks at becoming champions, the Brisbane Lions claimed their first premiership title with a 6.2 (38)-3.2 (20) victory over the defending…Read more...

Conventional thinking in the form of many NBA media members suggested that the New York Knicks would, to some degree, fall off by now, and rightfully so. They’ve had one of the league’s most challenging schedules since March’s All-Star break and that will remain as such through the end of the season.Read more...

For everyone who’s ever said the Yankees are the worst, today is your day.Read more...

New naming rights mean stoners are gonna show up to Texas ballpark… and be severely bummed outRead more...

The latest details of the toxic atmosphere in the Mets organization, as reported on Friday by The Athletic, are plenty gross, and certainly sound an alarm that the current front office, led by Sandy Alderson, is ill-equipped for the moment, to put it generously.Read more...

Fernando Tatis Jr. returned to the Padres’ lineup on Friday night, 10 days after all of baseball got its stomach tied up in knots seeing the 22-year-old star suffer a partially dislocated left shoulder.

The first time I saw Nerlens Noel was in his college debut, a 72-69 Kentucky win over Maryland in Brooklyn on November 9, 2012. Noel had only four points in that game, but nine rebounds, three blocks, and two steals. And before he accumulated most of those stats, he made an impression on me.Read more...

The NHL came to its senses a tiny bit by pushing back the Vancouver Canucks’ return to the ice, but a team that already has a minuscule chance of making the playoffs still will be asked to play a grueling gauntlet of a schedule to close out the season.Read more...

Dwyane Wade, three-time NBA Champion, Miami Heat legend, TNT Analyst, and all-around solid dude, is now a minority owner of the Utah Jazz.Read more...

People apparently enjoy painful memories, as the twitterverse is currently talking about a lot of “what could have beens.” Waking up this morning, not quite fully caffeinated, I saw that Grady Sizemore was trending, and immediately questioned the entirety of the space-time continuum. A tweet was posted yesterday…Read more...

At this time last year, Taiwanese baseball was just about the only live sports happening on the planet, and as enjoyable as it was to see something that felt close to normal during the chaos of the early stages of the pandemic, the Chinese Professional Baseball League has receded to lesser global prominence now that…Read more...

When LaMarcus Aldridge abruptly retired yesterday due to a cardiac issue, he leaves the NBA as one of the most under-appreciated stars of his era.

MLS returns this weekend, and unlike most of the big soccer leagues in the world, it can do so in front of some fans. We won’t hear the sheer wall of noise we would usually get in Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, and Orlando, or in more and more places these days, just yet. But it will be a relief to hear actual crowd…Read more...

Yesterday was April 15th, Jackie Robinson Day, baseball’s annual event of empty tributes to cover up the fact that 90 percent of teams refuse to hire Black or Hispanic executives or managers despite Jackie’s dying wishes.Read more...

One month later than usual, MLB: The Show is finally releasing their 2021 installment. Although the game itself doesn’t fully come out until Tuesday, April 20, today begins the early access release period, meaning if you pre-ordered the game, you’re probably playing it right now.

I could spend hours dissecting the ways in which WWE failed the very talented people that it released yesterday. But that’s usually the story whenever the company announces a raft of releases. There’s always one or two that most fans will be in disbelief at — both for their release and the lack of use that led to it.…Read more...

Ten years ago, legal online poker in the United States died.

The NFL Draft is a moral disaster that should not exist. After playing three or four years of college football for no money, players finally get to enter the professional ranks, and upon getting there, find that their team and salary are dictated by the cartel that is the National Football League.Read more...

Much like Isaiah Thomas signing a 10-day contract on April 3 with the Pelicans, Jeremy Lin is just looking for one more chance in the NBA. Based on his G League production this past season, he’s earned it. As I said last week, the league has a problem with its veterans being cast aside in favor of younger players with…Read more...

The best player in baseball resides in Atlanta. This was always something of the forecast for Ronald Acuña Jr. when he came up through the Braves system. It just wasn’t believed his rise to the top would be quite so ruthlessly achieved.Read more...

Rarely does an incredible athletic feat happen in sports that we don’t have a name for, but here we are. In the world of baseball and softball, we have the “perfect game,” where a pitcher doesn’t allow a single base runner. Allow me to introduce to you a phrase that I believe should catch on — the immaculate game.Read more...

Recently added Brooklyn Nets big man LaMarcus Aldridge announced his retirement from NBA basketball this morning, putting his health first.Read more...

I’ve never understood the desire to get nachos with liquid cheese at a baseball game, or anywhere else for that matter.Read more...

If ESPN were smart, it would demand a refund.

Luka Dončić won a game looking like I do at 2 a.m. trying to get back into bed (or sometimes at 4 p.m. trying to get a burrito):

Last week, I laid out all the obstacles the Vancouver Canucks would face returning to action after nearly three weeks out thanks to a swath of positive COVID tests, with some players seriously ill with the virus, as well as some of their families being at risk. I argued that their season should just be chalked off,…Read more...

Carlos Rodón of the White Sox twirled the second no-hitter of the MLB season, and narrowly missed out on a perfect game. Two outs short of the perfecto, he hit Roberto Perez on a misplaced slider. It would have been the White Sox’s fourth perfect game — setting and new record for a franchise — and first since Philip…Read more...

Shockingly, the Cleveland Browns aren’t Brownsing things up right now. Signing veteran edge rusher (and I use that term loosely) Jadeveon Clowney to a one-year deal worth up to $10 million is the latest in a trend of impressive and savvy moves by the Browns front office. That is, um. Different.