Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

The Pacers beat the Warriors for the second time in as many weeks tonight, and this time, it wasn’t close. For last week’s loss, at least, Golden State could claim that they were shorthanded—with Kevin Durant, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry all sidelined. But all of those guys except Curry were back…Read more...

After crashing today’s UFC 223 press event in Brooklyn—throwing a barricade, injuring multiple fighters, and sparking a huge damn mess—Conor McGregor is reportedly in custody and is expected to be charged with assault.Read more...

The Bronco has become the Rumble Pony. Tim Tebow has moved up a level in his minor-league baseball career, and in his first pitch of his first at-bat with the New York Mets’ Double-A affiliate Binghamton Rumble Ponies, he took one deep for a three-run homer:Read more...

Cubs pitcher Jon Lester’s complete and utter inability to successfully deliver a pickoff throw has been well-documented and exploited over the years, so he began trying something new in spring training this year: one-hopping the ball to first base. (Or more-than-one hopping it, if necessary. “I don’t really care what…Read more...

Members of the Michigan House of Representatives released a letter today that summarized the findings of an inquiry into Michigan State’s handling of Larry Nassar, who sexually abused hundreds of patients while working as a doctor for both MSU and USA Gymnastics. Their findings lay out multiple areas where Michigan…Read more...

Yesterday, Tony Finau’s first time at Augusta looked like it might be over before it even got a chance to start; today, he’s sitting pretty in second place after one of the best Masters debuts in a decade.Read more...

The workers at Sinclair-owned local news stations want you to know something: They are at least as pissed off as you’d expect them to be about being forced to bow to their fear-mongering corporate overlords, who make them do things like repeat Trumpisms about the fake news media and trade on their hard-won …Read more...

Brandeis men’s basketball head coach Brian Meehan joined the program in September 2003; since then, he’s taken the program to the Division III Final Four and become the winningest coach in program history. The Judges’ on-court output has slipped over the past five years, due in part to the team’s inability to recruit…Read more...

This is almost as excruciating to watch as Tony Finau’s ankle popping out. Defending Masters champ Sergio Garcia handled the opening round’s par-5 15th hole by putting five consecutive balls into the damn water. He finished with a 13, which ties him with Tommy Nakajima and Tom Weiskopf for the highest score ever on a…Read more...

British Columbia native and Seattle Mariners pitcher James Paxton was standing politely at attention for the national anthem when an ostensibly trained bald eagle decided it would rather be on his shoulder than the ballpark grass. Paxton showed tremendous poise, however, by calmly accommodating the bird until it…Read more...

Arsenal blew the doors off a geriatric CSKA Moscow team in the Europa League today, winning by a score of 4-1. The best goal of the bunch was this beautiful little flick that came off the side of Aaron Ramsey’s foot:Read more...

When CrackerJess, the wife of my Overwatch buddy CrackerJack*, heard there were no women in the Overwatch League, she was livid. She’d never played a first-person shooter before, preferring Lindy Hop dancing to long computer sessions yelling over a microphone. She had no attachment to the scene, no serious gaming…Read more...

Welcome back to Where Are They Now?: Last Week’s Creeps This Week, a series that catches up with creeps of yore.Read more...

Does it qualify as a Milkshake Duck if they knew the duck was racist to begin with? What the hell has even happened here?Read more...

Hungrily, steadily, undeterred by failure, the Boban stalks its prey—then strikes, immobilizing it in an instant. This happened on Tuesday night and I still haven’t been able to get it out of my head.Read more...

Brad Augustine was described and profiled by Yahoo! Sports as “the most dangerous man in college basketball” just six months ago; now, that dangerous man is skating on any punishment for his alleged crimes.

Bad Boy Club sounds like an aggro brand, but it was actually founded out of 1980s San Diego surf culture. The Bad Boy Club logo featured a flat-topped muscle man flexing his bicep with a spike-studded bracelet. You’d see it on bumper stickers, so that people knew that vehicle’s driver was a certified Bad Boy.Read more...

President Donald Trump’s workday on Thursday included two actual things. That day officially began at 11 a.m., per his public schedule, when Trump received his daily intelligence briefing. There’s no telling how long this takes, as Trump famously likes his briefings short and colorful and chart-based; there is no…Read more...

David Simon, a 35-year-old Anyang KGC center, has been playing overseas for more than a decade now, but a new rule means he’ll have to find a team in another country. He’s now too tall for the Korean Basketball League.Read more...

A former coach of the U.S. taekwondo team was banned from the sport this week for sexual misconduct. The ban of Jean Lopez, which is not yet permanent, was based on a report done by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, an organization created by the U.S. Olympic Committee to investigate sexual abuse. Lopez had coached the…Read more...

Ryozo Tatami, the mayor of a small town in Kyoto prefecture, was delivering a speech Wednesday before an exhibition sumo match when he suffered a brain hemorrhage and collapsed, according to the New York Times. Even though women comprise a large part of the sumo fanbase, they’re forbidden from entering the ring…Read more...

Boat hobbyist Conor McGregor is apparently pissed that the UFC will strip him of his lightweight championship belt and give it to the winner of this weekend’s Max Holloway-Khabib Nurmagomedov fight. McGregor won the belt in Nov. 2016 and has functionally ruined the promotion’s most compelling division with his staunch…Read more...

In an NBA season defined by incredibly tight playoff seeding races and an apocalyptic tanking campaign featuring a solid third of the league, only three teams were caught in the middle. The Pistons made a futile push for the eight seed, but they quickly joined the Hornets and Lakers as the only teams neither seriously…Read more...

Originally published in the July 1996 issue of Playboy and reprinted here with permission.

Oh goddamnit.Read more...

Texans owner Bob McNair had a tense standoff with his players last season after he remarked, “We can’t have the inmates running the prison,” during an October owner-player meeting about the national anthem demonstrations. Star receiver DeAndre Hopkins skipped practice in protest; a number of Texans wanted to walk out; …Read more...

In the four months since a mysterious group of rich people took over the L.A. Weekly, news outlets across the country have continued to experience brutal cuts to newsroom staffs and other harsh austerity measures. More than 50 journalists from the East Bay Times and the San Jose Mercury News were laid off or took…Read more...

Every year we make a point of reading the Name of the Year bracket out loud, and every year the bracket succeeds in reducing me to a puddle of tears. But THIS bracket … my god man, this year’s bracket nearly killed me. I know I say every bracket is the strongest bracket ever, but holy shit. When you got Chardonnay…Read more...

Kim “Geguri” Se-yeon finally made her debut for the Shanghai Dragons last night, a huge deal—the first game ever for the first woman in America’s most prominent esports league yet. And like every other match they’ve played in the Overwatch League, the Dragons got trounced, this time by the Dallas Fuel. But there were…Read more...

Two years ago, Simon Pinela watched as the Villanova Wildcats win the national championship on a buzzer beater. He was a junior in high school, and it sparked an interest in Villanova as a college choice.Read more...

Phillies manager Gabe Kapler had a hell of a first week on the job. First he mismanaged the bullpen to the point that he needed to put a position player on the mound just a few games into the season, and then he tried to make a pitching change before anyone had been given a chance to warm up. The second week has…Read more...

The Dallas Mavericks, who have spent most of the season doing everything they can to lose games on purpose, fucked up big time on Tuesday night when they beat a very good, playoff-bound Blazers team. This gave them 24 victories on the season, and put them in danger of being passed in The Great Tank Race Of 2018 by the…Read more...

Sorel is one of your favorite winter boot brands, and the Tofino was the one to beat. But if you were looking for something a little different from Sorel, this sale is for you. Take up to 65% off a couple different boot styles, including waterproof boots that you can easily wear even when it’s not gross out (whenever…Read more...

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Tonight’s Mariners-Giants game was rough for quite a few people. There’s Felix Hernandez, who allowed eight runs in four innings on the way to a 10-1 loss; there’s all of the Seattle fans who had to watch that; and there’s this guy, who brought his glove to the game but completely whiffed on this foul ball, and the…Read more...

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. received failure claims over a tire that was installed on thousands of RVs and is linked to at least nine deaths, dozens of injuries, and hundreds of crashes as early as 1996, the first year it was manufactured and installed on motorhomes, according to court documents obtained exclusively by…Read more...

The Rockies have extended leadoff hitter Charlie Blackmon with a six-year deal, ensuring that at least one part of the team’s core will be around for the long haul. Blackmon, who was drafted by the club in 2008 and has been with them since, was otherwise set to become a free agent this winter. He won last year’s…Read more...

It’s been a little more than a week since Markelle Fultz was activated to begin play for the first time since October, after months of working on rehabbing his busted shot. Entering tonight’s game against the Pistons, he’d shot 17-of-39 from the field since his return, but not one of those shot attempts had been a…Read more...

Herm Edwards is already facing plenty of doubters, not to mention adversity, as he tries to coach at Arizona State in his first college season since 1989. Early moments from Herm on the job have been both bizarre and kind of adorably weird, and at a press conference yesterday where he talked about potentially cutting…Read more...

Three former Michigan State football players charged with sexual assault have reached a plea deal with Ingham County prosecutors, multiple local outlets reported today. All three men—Donnie Corley, Josh King, and Demetric Vance—pleaded guilty today to the lesser charge of seducing an unmarried woman. King also pleaded…Read more...

The Overwatch League’s leaked code of conduct gives Blizzard and the OWL an incredible amount of control over players, including anything that happens on their own streams, so part of the latest punishment for a heated gaming moment comes as no surprise. After the Philadelphia Fusion’s Josh “Eqo” Corona made a …Read more...

In a heartwarming tale of a college freshman doing something right, Central Michigan women’s soccer player Natalie Belsito saved a drowning critter on campus. She credited the successful rescue to an episode of The Office.Read more...

Tony Finau, ranked No. 34 in the world, showed out at the Masters Par-3 contest with a very slick hole-in-one, which he immediately followed up by suffering some sort of gross-looking ankle injury while celebrating.Read more...

Broncos linebacker Von Miller is reportedly under investigation by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission after his boating trip last week off the coast of Miami resulted in a photo of Miller holding a bloody hammerhead shark. Harvesting hammerheads in Florida waters is a misdemeanor, but Miller says…Read more...

Overwatch’s Mercy is a “support” hero, which in layman’s terms means she’s mopping up trails of blood left behind after Overwatch battles. Mercy’s job is to heal her weak teammates, assisting them as they lay waste to enemies. It’s an apparently subservient job often painted as easy, and therefore, undervalued—that…Read more...

Pad the floor of your home gym, workshop, or kids’ playroom with these foam tiles. They’re lightweight, water-resistant, and easy to clean up. A 6-pack of 2' x 2' gray tiles is just $20 today, which is about $4 less than the typical price.Read more...

Today’s Phillies-Mets game broadcast only on Facebook was fittingly delayed nearly two hours due to rain, so announcer Scott Braun asked color commentator Cliff Floyd what he did to pass the time during rain delays. Floyd said he’d text with friends, watch whatever other game was on, and try to stay calm. Then Braun…Read more...

Manchester City had a crazy bus ride into Anfield today ahead of their Champions League match against Liverpool, as the soon-to-be English champions were greeted by passionate home supporters who happened also to be armed with projectiles and flares. Alternately, if you don’t know the context, the images suggest a…Read more...

The card for Sunday night’s WrestleMania 34, which will air live on WWE Network from the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, is the best in recent memory. The event promises to be both long and dense, with 13 matches announced (14 are expected) across a seven-hour time slot, with two of those hours given over to a…Read more...

Hello. It’s me, a guy who made a “sound financial decision” and purchased a home. I may no longer be “throwing money away” on rent, but here’s the thing people always forget to tell you about owning a house: it presents you with an infinite supply of things to throw money away on. I’m here to help you, my fellow…Read more...