Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

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...

Gizmodo Owner of MAGA-Friendly Yelp Knockoff Threatens to Call FBI After Researcher Exposes Security Holes | Kotaku After Cocaine Arrest, Sega Halts Sales of New PS4 Game [Update] | Jalopnik Watch Tesla’s Sentry Mode Catch Thieves Breaking In On Camera | Lifehacker I’m Jad Abumrad, Founder and Co-Host of Radiolab, and…Read more...

[greets you at the door while wearing a frayed holiday sweater; offers you curdled egg nog]

“Don’t quit on talent,” Giants GM Dave Gettleman famously said upon his hiring in New York in December 2017.Read more...

It took a year-long holdout, and alienating many of his Steelers teammates, and enduring the experience of having his role comfortably usurped by another dirt-cheap replacement, but Le’Veon Bell has finally successfully ducked franchise tag hell and engineered his way to a long-term contract. Sadly, for holding fast…Read more...

An hour or so before his Spurs went out and beat the Dallas Mavericks, Gregg Popovich described rookie sensation Luka Dončić as “a beautiful basketball player” and “a consummate basketball player” who “does everything.” In repayment for these lovely compliments, Dončić went out and played what he will dearly hope is…Read more...

Of course, this is an incredibly dumb thing for Artemi Panarin to do as his all-in team tries to claw its way into the playoffs. If someone on the Blue Jackets is going to fight Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy, it better be someone disposable, just in case it goes horribly wrong a la Matt Dumba.Read more...

A long period of cute winks and knowing nudges from sportswriters and people within the Browns organization has eventually culminated in a certified blockbuster of an NFL trade: The Cleveland Browns are getting wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. from the New York Giants, according to multiple NFL reporters.Read more...

It’s time once again to check in on James Dolan, the infamously oversensitive and multiply delusional owner of the godawful New York Knicks. Dolan went on The Michael Kay Show today to address an incident on Saturday in which he demanded a Knicks fan be thrown out of the arena after the fan told Dolan to “sell the…Read more...

The FBI documents on the massive college admissions bribery scandal suggest that we can improve our odds of being accepted into elite colleges and also the University of Southern California by submitting photo evidence of us playing sports. Some of the Deadspin staff would like to take advantage of this opportunity.…Read more...

By now you should be aware of the hilariously far-reaching college admissions bribery scandal unveiled after today’s FBI bust. If not, you’ve been missing out. College coaches and administrators were crucial to carrying out the scheme, falsely representing applicants as athletic recruits to boost their chances of…Read more...

A Utah Jazz fan named Shane Keisel became famous last night when he heckled Oklahoma City Thunder star Russell Westbrook, goading Westbrook into a profane and threatening response. The Utah Jazz announced today that Keisel has been permanently banned from the team’s home arena, due to the “excessive and derogatory…Read more...

Today on First Take, Stephen A. Smith remembered some Washington quarterbacks who played last season, like Alex Smith, Josh Johnson, Colt McCoy, Mark Sanchez, and, uh, some guy named Tress Way? Way, of course, was the team’s punter, and everyone laughed at the ESPN loudmouth after it became clear he was reading from a…Read more...

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

Longtime sportscaster Warner Wolf, who was arrested in February on criminal mischief charges for vandalizing the entrance sign outside of his gated community, said today that all charges were dropped and the case was dismissed. Wolf was initially arrested for removing letters that spelled the word “Plantation” from…Read more...

Surely by now you have read about the hilarious FBI bust on and subsequent dismantling of The Edge College & Career Network (aka The Key), and its nefarious efforts to get the underachieving sons and daughters of the rich into colleges they either didn’t deserve to attend on merits or couldn’t bribe their way into the…Read more...

Today, we’re talking about baths, grocery store timing, quotable movies, Bryce Harper, and more.

That free-agent deal that Vikings linebacker Anthony Barr reportedly agreed to last night with the Jets? On second thought ...Read more...

Pioneering punk film director Penelope Spheeris ran out of fucks to give a long time ago—around the time she started getting script notes from Harvey Weinstein, as she recalls. There’s visible disgust on her face recalling the disrespect the Weinsteins showed her on the set of her 1998 movie Senseless, which would end…Read more...

The FBI has busted open a multi-year and multi-million dollar cheating scandal that helped the kids of rich families get into “highly selective” universities by fudging their academic and athletic credentials, as reported by NBC News. The cheating scandal was centered around The Edge College & Career Network (known…Read more...

A J.Crew Factory sale, SSDs, Qi chargers and eero routers lead off Tuesday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

io9 Aladdin’s New Trailer Finally Gives Us Something to Sing About | Lifehacker Use the Mobile Passport App to Breeze Through Customs Without Global Entry | Kotaku Comparisons Of Captain Marvel To Dragon Ball Won’t Stop | Jalopnik The 2019 Mazda Miata Really Is That Much Better | The Takeout Ask The Salty Waitress:…Read more...

Update, 12:55 p.m.: The NHL has announced that Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly has been cleared of accusations that he directed a homophobic slur against an official in Monday night’s game. Here’s the statement from Colin Campbell:Read more...

If the past couple years have been the Premier League’s Golden Age, thanks to the league’s development of top-to-bottom quality and a powerful Big Six, making it the one domestic league all soccer fans practically must follow, then this season might just be this Golden Age’s Golden Year. All season we’ve watched with…Read more...

If you want to build a budget, projector-based home theater, the Prizm II is a good one to consider, and right now you can get it for just $189 thanks to Amazon’s Gold Box.Read more...

It’s safe to say that Russell Westbrook and fans of the Utah Jazz have a bit of a strained relationship. That tension was taken to new heights on Monday when video surfaced of the Thunder point guard getting into it with someone in the stands of Vivint Smart Home Arena. The vertical video shows Westbrook speaking to…Read more...

Red Sox manager Alex Cora called Mets first baseman Pete Alonso “probably the best hitter in Florida right now” after the two teams faced off on Saturday. Two days later, Alonso took an unconventional route to show that Cora’s words rang true.Read more...

The NBA’s fightiest fight in quite some time erupted during arguably one of the most innocuous games of the season.Read more...

Full-time MMA fighter and part-time racist Conor McGregor was arrested on Monday night for breaking a fan’s phone into a bunch of tiny pieces with what we can probably assume was an expensive pair of shoes.Read more...

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Onward.Read more...

A light pole barely missed crushing a high school soccer referee’s head when it fell onto the field during a soccer game Saturday in Clarksville, Arkansas. The referee sustained two broken bones in his leg, and a player who was also hit suffered cuts to his head and legs, according to KFSM.Read more...

Jalopnik Tesla Employees Call ‘Bullshit’ On Online Sales Claims Amid Retail Closure Chaos | Earther Scientists: Maybe If We Only Dim the Sun a Little It Won’t Backfire Horribly | Kotaku For A Brief Period, Anthem’s Loot System Was Much Better—Then BioWare Fixed A Bug | Lifehacker What’s Coming and Going From Netflix…Read more...

According to people whose lives may well have depended upon it, the late North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il had an excellent golf game. One story told of Kim’s golf prowess crossed the demilitarized zone and become something of a minor meme: that Kim, while playing the first round of golf of his life at the age of 52,…Read more...

Detroit Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera pulled off a neat bit of old-man trickery in today’s spring training game against the Twins. Minnesota’s Ehire Adrianza was on first and got lulled into a false sense of security from a lazy pickoff move, so Cabrera pretended to throw the ball back to the pitcher. But…Read more...

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

Here we have our favorite NFL Network goober Charley Casserly opining that Cowboys receiver Cole Beasley didn’t see enough of the ball last year because the team relied on fellow WR Dez Bryant too much. Dez Bryant did not play for the Cowboys last year.Read more...

French musher Nicolas Petit and his dogs coasted into the Iditarod’s Unalakleet checkpoint yesterday morning with a healthy lead of over five hours. As Petit left the checkpoint and turned onto the Bering Sea coast for the final 200 miles of the race, his 14-mile lead probably felt like a dominant gap, and the …Read more...

Just days after Real Madrid won their third straight Champions League title last May, Zinedine Zidane, the architect of each of those triumphs, shocked the world by resigning from the manager position. The former Juventus and Real Madrid legend had been installed as the head coach in 2016, after infamously fickle…Read more...

We must repel the barbarian horde, according to The Atlantic.

This weekend, Japanese ski jumper Ryoyu Kobayashi broke Europe’s decades-long domination of the ski jump World Cup by becoming the first non-European man to win the overall title.Read more...

Speed dead north on I-75 out of Detroit on dry roads and you will reach the Mackinac (pronounced Mack-i-naw) Bridge in a little over four hours. Once the largest suspension bridge in the world, it marks the end of Michigan’s lower peninsula. On the other side of the Mackinac Straights, at the narrow meeting place of…Read more...

LeBron James’s first campaign with the Los Angeles Lakers has been an unmitigated disaster. Now that the team has nothing left to do but pack it in and wait for next season to start, it’s time for those within the organization to start assigning some blame in an effort to save their own skin.

In the waning minutes of last Friday’s Illinois Class 3A sectional final between Farragut and North Lawndale, Farragut’s Donovan Jones went for a dunk when a North Lawndale player appeared to undercut him, causing him to topple awkwardly to the hardwood. Others rushed in, a handful of spectators joined, and the…Read more...

Two weeks ago, when Elena Bergeron stepped down from her position as editor-in-chief of SB Nation, Vox Media publisher Melissa Bell wrote a glowing memo to staff, explaining that Bergeron was leaving to “focus her skills on more creative work.” The real story of her departure, however, appears to be much more…Read more...

The New York Islanders have had one of the odder trajectories of any pro sports franchise. Winners of four straight Stanley Cups within 11 years of arriving on Long Island as the NHL’s protection against WHA incursion into the New York area, the Isles never approached those heights again, winning only eight playoff…Read more...

It’s not hard to get into the spirit of things on the set of FX’s What We Do In The Shadows, the identically titled spin-off of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s 2014 cult classic. On this mid-December day, Toronto is a vampire’s haven: gloomy, with a chill in the air and a Gothic castle whose depths come to life…Read more...

It seemed that PSG had taken its final L for the season in its embarrassing collapse against Manchester United, but someone at the French club decided to add one last self-own to the tally.