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Before every game for most of his career, Tampa defenseman Victor Hedman plays the knife game, aka five-finger fillet, aka mumblety-peg, aka stabscotch, rapidly stabbing the blade of his stick between the spread fingers of Lightning assistant equipment manager Rob Kennedy. While he reportedly isn’t always perfect,…Read more...

Amazon’s running another Logitech Gold Box deal today, and while this one is smaller than Gold Boxes past, everything in it is worth a look.

Dwight Howard—the same 32-year-old that has spent the last several seasons brewing beef as he scoots from team to team, that Dwight Howard—made a little history tonight. With a 32-point, 30-rebound game in the Hornets’ win over the Nets, he put together the first 30-point, 30-rebound performance that the NBA has seen…Read more...

The national spending bill that’s expected to pass later Congress this week includes a provision exempting minor-league baseball players from labor standards—meaning that paying players paltry wages would go from being an incredibly stupid tradition to being codified in federal law.

The official best team in the Eastern Conference, the Toronto Raptors, went up tonight against the actual best team in the East, LeBron James. And despite an absolutely scorching start, Toronto came up short in Cleveland yet again.Read more...

The LeBron James of hockey did yet another gorgeous thing that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before tonight against Montreal, one that required perfect awareness, hand-eye coordination, and stick control. It ruled.Read more...

21-year-old center Ryan Donato was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise mediocre U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team last month, scoring five goals in his five games in Korea. And now that he’s earned an NHL call-up with Boston, he’s keeping the hot streak alive. In approximately 1.17 NHL games, Donato has four…Read more...

Cleveland Indians legend Jim Thome got a well-deserved first-ballot Hall of Fame nod this year, and after some apparent discussion, as well as a specific request by Thome, the slugger will go in on a plaque bearing the Cleveland “Block C” logo, rather than the “Chief Wahoo” Native American caricature that Thome wore…Read more...

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

Police in Tempe, Arizona, have released video of a fatal crash involving an Uber-owned self-driving car that fatally struck a woman on Sunday. The clip includes footage from two cameras attached to Uber’s Volvo, and shows the car’s safety driver looking away moments before the collision. The victim, contrary to…Read more...

io9 The Massive Toys ‘R’ Us Going-Out-of-Business Sales Begin Tomorrow | Jalopnik These Are The 2018 Cars Consumer Reports Says Will Make It Over 200,000 Miles | Lifehacker How to Give the Pixel 2's Squeeze Gesture to Any Water-Resistant Android Phone | Kotaku I Fed A Neural Network 1200 Video Game Names |Read more...

After a real rough stretch, the San Antonio Spurs have stabilized and look to be safely headed towards the playoffs after four straight wins, three of which came against fellow Western Conference contenders. That’s reassuring, although the team as presently constituted doesn’t seem like much of a threat to the…Read more...

Welcome to Movies I Loved That Are Actually Bad, a maybe one-time column about movies we loved at certain points in our lives that we—upon maturing—now realize are terrible. This time, and maybe the last time: The Boondock Saints.

The most delightfully stupid sports story of 2018 is still extremely stupid, but it just got a lot more complicated. Vince McMahon’s nascent MAGA-adjacent XFL revival was first reported back in December, formally announced in January, and seemingly set for a February 2020 launch. It now has to deal with more…Read more...

Meredith Corp. is indeed exploring a sale of Sports Illustrated, Time, Fortune, and Money magazines, according to what staffers were told in a conference call with CEO Tom Harty this afternoon.Read more...

I’ve got a treat today: a rare story in which a college program isn’t trying to totally dick over a player who wants to transfer.Read more...

March has not been kind to Sean Miller. The Arizona men’s college basketball coach—who may or may not have been caught on an FBI wiretap arranging to pay DeAndre Ayton $100K—has no recruits coming to Tucson next year, and his squad vacated their bowels against 13-seed Buffalo in the first round of the tournament. With…Read more...

Let’s do the first things first: barring catastrophic injury or equally catastrophic organizational cynicism, Ronald Acuña will be playing left field for the Atlanta Braves sometime fairly soon. This is because Ronald Acuña, who is the consensus top positional prospect in the minors, looks for all the world like a…Read more...

“La Matadora Revisa Su Maquillaje (The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup)” was first published in May 2004 issue of Outside and is featured in the new anthology The Stories We Tell and appears here with permission.

As college basketball takes center stage in the sports world during March Madness, we here at Deadspin got to reminiscing about one of college basketball’s most legendary, infamously psychopathic incidents which involved one of the game’s most legendary, infamously psychopathic figures. We are speaking, of course, of…Read more...

It’s darkly charming that, more than 100 years after the legalization of the forward pass in football, one of the most frustrating parts of the game is not knowing what the NFL considers a catch. The league knows this is a problem, and set priority No. 1 this offseason as simplifying the catch rule. Now we know, in…Read more...

The first few months of Overwatch League’s inaugural season have already resulted in unexpected upsets, emerging tactics, and drama between players that has resulted in pros getting fined, benched, or released from teams. That stuff isn’t just fun to follow and grist for the content mines: it’s moving betting lines.Read more...

As Nick Foles delivered the performance of his life in the most important game he’d ever played, Austin Meeks and John Robinson had an idea.

A lot of the time, video game names sound like they were generated by a machine. So, I decided to see if I could teach a neural network to name a game.

Icelandic squad Haukar downed Keflavik with a long-range buzzer-beating heave to take a 2-0 lead in their playoff series last night. The shot was spectacular, but the call was even better. Those who watched Thor’s personal soccer warriors shred their way to Euro 2016 glory and a 2018 Word Cup bid are surely familiar…Read more...

This part of the NCAA tournament is always the toughest—after four straight days of non-stop basketball, buzzer-beaters, and cutting-edge men’s fashion, you, the college basketball fan, is expected to quit cold turkey at sit at home in reflection for 72 hours. It’s downright cruel, but worry not: Graceland’s Justin…Read more...

Kevin Byard plays safety for the Tennessee Titans and was a first-team All-Pro after making 87 tackles and eight interceptions last season. Given his performance, Byard he wondered how Hall of Fame defensive back and current NFL Network analyst Deion Sanders could think that Tyrann Mathieu is the best safety in the…Read more...

We can quantify so many things in the automotive world. Quarter-mile times, points in a race, engine displacements. But how do you measure the greatness of a mechanic? How do you quantify that? Is it how quickly they can fix a vehicle? Is it how many vehicles return to their shop for do-overs or further repair, known…Read more...

Of course Anthony Vallejo knew about The Streak. He wasn’t overly concerned about it when he enrolled at St. Louis College of Pharmacy this past fall, but, during his recruitment, the 6-foot-5 guard did ask head coach Danny Brown why the team hadn’t won a game since November 2014.

Margo Kline, formerly a community development coordinator for the Atlanta Hawks, has filed a lawsuit against the team in which she claims she was discriminated against because of her race and gender.

After the surprising news that Daniel Bryan was cleared to return to wrestling, he showed up on WWE SmackDown Tuesday, talked about the brain injuries that caused him to retire, and got right back to wrestling. Even for WWE, it felt on the nose.Read more...

Iso-ball, for all its associations with acts of heroism in the clutch, is supposed to be a dicey proposition for the guy with the ball in his hands. Sure, it has created some cinematic shots throughout the years, but its defining trait is its inefficiency. Iso-ball is a tactic that’s more defined by contested, clanked…Read more...

Kotaku PUBG Mobile Players Are Pretty Sure The Game Is Full Of Bots | Lifehacker This Free Ad Blocker for Samsung Phones Also Kills Bloatware and Manages App Permissions | io9 Sam Worthington Evolves Into Something Interesting in the First Trailer for Netflix’s The Titan | Jalopnik Here’s What Interference Engines Are…Read more...

I’ve bought a couple of these PetFusion cat scratcher lounges for my cat over the years, and I can confirm that it’s probably the only thing on Earth that he actually likes. It also has a ridiculous 4.8 star review average from nearly 6,000 customers, and it basically never goes on sale. Today’s $40 price tag is a…Read more...

A group of former NFL players who have made medical claims through their class-action lawsuit on concussions say that the league has rigged the settlement program and is not paying up as promised, according to their latest court filing.Read more...

A pair of Russell Westbrook free throws put the Thunder up six over the Celtics tonight with 24.7 seconds to play. Boston quickly shrunk that deficit with one bucket from Jayson Tatum and another from Terry Rozier, plus some strategic fouling (and some bad free-throw shooting from Carmelo Anthony)—and finally, with…Read more...

Buffalo Bills wide receiver Isaiah “Zay” Jones has been arrested on a charge of felony vandalism after breaking glass doors and windows at an apartment building in Los Angeles, according to police. It appears to get a lot weirder from there.Read more...

In the month since DeMar DeRozan spoke publicly about his struggle with depression, fellow NBA players Kevin Love and Kelly Oubre have come forward with stories of their own mental health battles and the league has announced plans to name a director of mental health and wellness. The change is encouraging—and starkly…Read more...

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

Melissa Weishaupt, who worked in the marketing and game operations department for the Dallas Mavericks from 2010 to 2014, has revealed herself as one of the women who told Sports Illustrated about the Mavericks’ culture of harassment. In a piece published in SI today, Weishaupt revealed her identity and called for…Read more...

WWE announced today that Daniel Bryan, who retired more than two years ago and hasn’t wrestled since 2015 due to repeated concussions, has been cleared to return to pro wrestling.Read more...

That the Colts would trade out of the No. 3 spot in the NFL draft has a fairly straightforward explanation: Indianapolis is pretty confident Andrew Luck’s shoulder will be fine (at some point), and the return the Colts got from the Jets—the No. 6 pick and two second-round selections this year, plus another second…Read more...

Spring training is for trying your absolute hardest—up to but not inclusive of any effort that might land you on the DL for Opening Day. Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin very nearly tried too hard today.Read more...

Prepare yourself for badminton back and forth, forever.

Meet Jean Meneses, a midfielder for Chilean first division team, Universidad de Concepción. I’m sure he’s scored some great goals and hit some beautiful passes during his career, but it will be hard to top this truly exceptional dive of his from this weekend’s match against Colo-Colo as his career-defining highlight:Read more...

It’s been a few months since the Mikes stopped hosting Mike & Mike together every morning on ESPN radio. Since the dissolution of this Mike partnership, Mike Golic (Big Mike) has started a new radio show with a new Mike named Trey, and Mike Greenberg (Little Mike) has been hard at work preparing to launch a new ESPN…Read more...

I never pass up the opportunity to drink in a game. I’ve visited every bar in The Witcher 3. I’ve filled Adam Jensen’s pockets with booze in Deus Ex; I’ve chugged those drinks in the bars in Hengsha and Prague, alone in his apartment, or on street corners just because. I’ve gotten Commander Shepard blackout drunk in…Read more...

Time for your weekly edition of the Deadspin Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. Today, we’re talking about the NCAA tournament, jingles, butter, stadium amenities, and more.

Tennis players do press constantly; it’s part of their job. They field questions about all the unforced errors on their forehand, why their first serve was so effective, or what does it feel like to pull off an upset like this, and they generally give tame and compact answers. So the journalists can write off of a…Read more...