Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Today, I’m trashing the NBA for trying to get Zion Williamson and the Pelicans into the NBA playoffs.

It was always going to be a trudge for the Pittsburgh Pirates. They are the only team in the NL Central not at least making an effort to win. They’ve been stripped of almost any recognizable players. Their fans have to watch Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow anchor the competitive Rays while Chris Archer, the return in…Read more...

Tennis legend Rafael Nadal has decided to skip the U.S. Open. Nadal broke the news via Twitter, where he outlined his concerns about the spread of COVID-19.Read more...

Foresight can be invaluable, especially for a league that’s always its own worst enemy.

Baseball announcers love to tell you the great thing about the game is that every day you have a chance, maybe even likely, to see something you’ve never seen before. That doesn’t always hold true, but it’s a lovely thought. All sports promise something memorable and awe-inspiring at a moment’s notice. That’s why…Read more...

After the Sixers blew the ’76-’77 finals to the Portland Trailblazers, the franchise adopted the regrettable slogan, “We owe you one!” Well, contemporary Sixers fans owe the franchise that finally paid in full in 1983.Read more...

Major League Baseball’s plan for this fall, an expanded postseason in which 16 of 30 teams have a chance to win the World Series, is patently ludicrous.Read more...

Since the #WeAreUnited letter released via the Players’ Tribune, Pac-12 players have come out to publicly support the letter written by a collection of conference athletes.

The baseball season made up of duct tape and used chewing gum continued to roll on. The Cardinals and Tigers series this week was postponed, while the infected Cardinals were rented cars to drive themselves from Milwaukee back to St. Louis. No word on whether the doors on said cars were controlled remotely to keep the…Read more...

The NHL is an infuriating league to follow but every once in a while the game of hockey provides us moments in which we remember why we watch it.Read more...

Update (August 4, 12:00 p.m.): The Florida Bar confirmed that it has opened a second investigation into Michael Grieco, centered around the lawmaker’s alleged witness tampering in the ongoing Quinton Dunbar/DeAndre Baker armed robbery case.

Update: Ryan Reaves reversed course and kneeled for the anthem before Vegas’s game against Dallas, along with Robin Lehner, Tyler Seguin, and Jason Dickinson.Read more...

With all the leagues that had to restructure their schedules or create a completely new tournament now back in action, we’ve seen various ways of trying to incorporate fans into the TV presentation. All leagues want you to know just how much they miss you (or your money), and how welcome you (or your money) will be…Read more...

One step forward, two steps back. That’s usually how the fight for progress goes in America.Read more...

MLB’s messiah has arrived.Read more...

While the Mets were pulling their weekly Mets’ing with Yoenis Cespedes and his decision to opt-out/Irish goodbye the season, the rest of the league continues to try and treat the Coronavirus much like an annoying co-worker with the hopes that if you wait until lunch to walk by their desk, everything will be ok. The…Read more...

John Woods Jr. has been in his son’s shoes.Read more...

Yoenis Cespedes went missing in action this afternoon, sparking a brief panic and outpouring of concern for the Mets slugger’s safety — but now, it appears he chose to opt out of the season without first letting team management know.

It’s not like people aren’t aware of how awful Kelly Loeffler is. In addition to probably engaging in insider trading and trying to make a buck off Americans dying of COVID-19 (which both the GOP-controlled Senate and Bill Barr’s Justice Department declined to look into - quelle coincidence!), Loeffler has shown open…Read more...

UPDATE: According to Spokesman Review’s Theo Lawson, multiple Washington State players who shared the #WeAreUnited hashtag in response to today’s Players’ Tribune article have been released for the season.Read more...

Whatever Arsenal actually accomplished, and whatever they actually promise after yesterday’s FA Cup triumph over Chelsea, there’s hope. Hope that new manager Mikel Arteta is ready to take the club beyond where Unai Emery did, beyond where legend Arsene Wenger left them before that, and hope that he can either convince…Read more...

Sometimes we say or do things that we just can’t shake. They haunt us forever.Read more...

The average NCAA men’s basketball player should walk out of commencement with a diploma … and more than $1 million. Football players should have earned nearly the same.Read more...

No other sports league has been more vocal against inequality and systemic oppression than the WNBA.Read more...

Twenty-two miles lie between the Minneapolis corner store where George Floyd was murdered and the Tournament Player’s Club in Blaine, site of the PGA Tour’s 3M Open this past weekend. It was the first major sporting event to be played in Minnesota since May 25 — the day that Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. The…Read more...

Virginia Tech starting cornerback Caleb Farley, a projected first-round pick, decided he could end his monetarily abusive relationship with the NCAA a little earlier than scheduled. Farley became the first college football player to opt out of the 2020 season due to concerns surrounding COVID-19.

I’ve been in a very similar mindset as our own Jesse Spector about this whole baseball thing in 2020 …

We roll on with hockey’s return, this time to Edmonton where the Western Conference is playing house. And they’ve picked the small window of time every year where the air doesn’t punch you in the face and insult your children in Northern Alberta. Onwards...

It seems like Michael Jordan is no longer the same guy who infamously made tone-deaf comments like, “Republicans buy sneakers, too,” during avowed racist Sen. Jesse Helms’ re-election campaign.

The basketball gods must love irony.

It’s a good time to be a professional basketball propagandist.Read more...

The baseball season is teetering on the brink.

The winter sports and their summer bubbles return to us this weekend, because we’re descending into the Upside-Down. The NHL has decamped to Toronto and Edmonton, with a modified playoff system kicking straight off on Saturday. It’s a bit run-before-you-can-walk, with each team only getting one preseason game before…Read more...

It’s a staple of some true heel work to do all the talking and then run behind their allies when confronted. Apparently MLB won’t stand for that.

After four months of waiting, the official NBA restart is finally upon us.

In a time when many in the sports world are using their platforms to be on the right — and wrong — sides of history, Kyrie Irving has been doing the work, despite not having played a game since February.

It’s obviously awkward for the NHL and its players to find a way to join in on the Black Lives Matter movement and protests before and during their games. It’s an almost entirely white league, with a majority of players not even from this country — and even the ones who are come from a generally affluent background…Read more...

The official NBA restart is inching closer and closer.

You don’t think about the Arizona Coyotes. You might have even thought they were still the Phoenix Coyotes. No one really thinks about them, not even in the hockey world. When anyone does think about the Coyotes, it’s to either laugh at them, notice their favorite team is playing them late at night and decide to go to…Read more...

Patrick Mahomes, the starting quarterback for the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, has become the youngest owner in MLB history, joining a new ownership group of the Kansas City Royals.

Listen, this whole idea is ludicrous, BUUUUUT just hear me out …Read more...

Today, I’m trashing the New York Jets.Read more...

This story has been updated.

Liars lie.

If baseball is a symbol or microcosm of our nation at large, as baseball writers like to constantly tell us while finishing their Weetabix, then it scans that both of those entities are lacking leadership at this moment. Rob Manfred has no clue what to do, because his only directive — making sure the owners squeeze…Read more...

If you can believe it, World Cup Qualifying in CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) was supposed to have started already. However, with FIFA canceling the spring, summer, and September international windows due to COVID-19, the North American region has had to devise a…Read more...

The main problem of MLB’s “strategy,” such as it was, for playing this season was that it depended on baseball people. It depended on sports people. And in the world of sports people, the binary has always been, “Playing = good, not playing = bad.” Which is how MLB got into this mess.

It’s a day we all suspected, if not outright knew, would come.

The lure is real.