Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

FIFA’s ethics committee has found Keramuudin Karim, former President of the Afghanistan Football Federation, guilty of sexually and physically abusing multiple members of the women’s national team. Karim is now banned for life from all international and national soccer activities, and was fined the equivalent of…Read more...

From the outside, it sure looked like Brian Gaine was doing a good job. When he was hired as Texans GM in January of 2018, the Texans’ roster was so expensive and such a mess that they were giving away draft picks just to get rid of some of their worst contracts. Despite that, he signed Tyrann Mathieu on the cheap and…Read more...

Recency bias is a hateful but dominant force in the best-of-seven world, so the clear assumption to be made from Game 4 of the NBA Finals is that Game 6 seems unlikely. The Toronto Raptors are the new Golden State Warriors, and the Golden State Warriors are finally all about the trailing step, the anxious shot, and…Read more...

The Warriors as currently constituted are “merely” a great NBA team. In just about any other context, it’s peak roster construction. A couple of all-world shooters, a couple of bangers down low with shots of their own, a scattering of role players each with their own specific skills, and an overall commitment to…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.Read more...

On Thursday, Nieman Lab published a friendly discussion with The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg and the magazine’s recently promoted executive editor Adrienne LaFrance, in which they addressed the great progress The Atlantic has made in adding women to its staff. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending…Read more...

In the months following the Italian men’s national team’s failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Italy’s women helped redeemed the country by winning seven straight matches in their qualification run to the women’s version of the tournament. That blistering streak of form was enough for Le Azzurre to win…Read more...

Here are the regions of the United States.Read more...

There is no shortage of arguments to be made against the proliferation of replay review in soccer, and I won’t bog down this blog post with points we’ve already made on the site many times over. Besides, the argument against the VAR decision from today’s Women’s World Cup opening match between France and Korea is a…Read more...

I recently became deaf in my right ear thanks to a sudden brain hemorrhage, which is a freakish life-threatening injury that I highly recommend avoiding. The good news out of this, apart from me not being dead, is that it turns out my surviving left ear is my phone ear. I didn’t even realize it was my phone ear until…Read more...

The Eagles showed they were committed to Carson Wentz in February, when they let Nick Foles take his dick somewhere else. And by signing Wentz to a four-year extension two years before they had to, as the Eagles did Thursday night, they showed too that they’re all-in on him.Read more...

The Trenton Thunder outfielder who busted up a combined no-hitter on Tuesday night with a slick push bunt up the first baseline triggered a benches-clearing fracas as a result. It turns out he’s also triggered a bunch of weird assholes, as he has gone on to receive death threats from dickhead fans, according to an…Read more...

Last Saturday, news broke that a Brazilian woman had filed a police report in which she said soccer superstar Neymar raped her in a Paris hotel last month. Today, Neymar testified in court about a different but related criminal charge he faces because of the intimate photos of the alleged victim he posted on social…Read more...

The New York Mets: honestly who ever even knows with these guys.Read more...

“If you want to do or achieve something on the clay, inevitably, at some stage, you will go through Rafa,” Roger Federer said after his French Open quarterfinal, “because he’s that strong, and he will be there.”Read more...

Twins outfielder Max Kepler was fantastic in Thursday’s 5-4 win over Cleveland as he went 4-for-4 with three home runs and a walk. There are two ways to look at this performance, and they’re not mutually exclusive. You could say that Kepler had a hell of a night, and you could say that opposing pitcher Trevor Bauer…Read more...

Subject: Seems a bit harshRead more...

It is about two hours into my afternoon with David Oks and Henry Williams, the teenagers who persuaded former Senator Mike Gravel to run for president at the age of 88, when Oks, who is 18, mentions that he has a personal assistant who is helping him handle his emails on a volunteer basis. “He’s a high school…Read more...

I wish they had thrown that flag in the NFC title game. I wish this because the Rams’ Nickell Robey-Coleman committed obvious pass interference. But I also wish it because flagging the Rams on that play would have allowed Saints coach Sean Payton to blow the game on his own merits—something he was already well on the…Read more...

A Journelle sale, cast iron cookware, PlayStation Plus membership, and camping pads lead off a gaming deal-packed Friday.Read more...

It’s summer now, and you know what that means: time to pack up some beach clothes, a bathing suit, a cooler, a couple good books, a bag of plastic beach toys, the kids’ floaties, the kids’ bathing suits, several large towels, a beach umbrella, one of those plastic sand screws you use to plant a beach umbrella, the…Read more...

The Ryan O’Reilly trade had a real “deck chairs on the Titanic” vibe when it went down last offseason. O’Reilly, who was depressed after losing so many games up in Buffalo, went over to St. Louis in exchange for three replacement-level players and some draft picks, and as the Blues struggled to win in the first half…Read more...

Jalopnik At $29,900, Could This 2013 Model S 85 Mean It’s Finally Time to Buy a Tesla? | Lifehacker Where to Get Free Donuts on National Donut Day 2019 | Kotaku Adult Video Star Talks About The Casting Couch In The Anime Industry | io9 Updates From Birds of Prey, Stranger Things, and More | The Takeout Inside the…Read more...

One fun subplot of these NBA playoffs has been the resurgence of Raptors backup point guard Fred VanVleet. Through the first 15 games of the postseason, VanVleet was just one of the many Raptors role players struggling to find his shot while Kawhi Leonard dragged the team forward. He finally emerged from stasis in…Read more...

I’m tired. Of officials blowing big, important calls in the playoffs, mostly, but also of having to write blogs about them that try to say something more intelligent than well, it’s bad to get these calls wrong in such big moments, but also being an NHL official is a difficult job and even the best are going to screw…Read more...

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The St. Louis Blues won Thursday night in Boston, 2–1, to take a 3–2 lead in the Stanley Cup Final. If Game 5 was the last hockey game of the season in Boston, the lasting image of the home finale will be trash raining down on the ice as furious Bruins fans expressed their displeasure with the way the series’ rough…Read more...

Lots of tension in the arena tonight for Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final. Lots of wound-up hockey fans. Perhaps this sort of thing was inevitable, although you’d expect it to at least be between opposing fans. Not so! Here we have two young Boston bros talking shit and hurling beer into the face of an advancing fellow…Read more...

This was a very valiant effort from Orioles outfielder Dwight Smith Jr. The ball was driven pretty good to left by Rougned Odor; Asdrúbal Cabrera, on first base with two outs, is running on contact. By tracking this ball down, Smith might’ve kept a run off the board. But he also plowed into the wall at something like…Read more...

Former Astros ace Dallas Keuchel was the last man standing from the grueling free agency winter of hell that followed the 2018 season. Craig Kimbrel, the other glaringly overqualified but evidently unemployable pitcher, landed with the Cubs Wednesday night; Thursday night, at last, Keuchel scored a gig with the…Read more...

On May 26, Bills rookie linebacker Tyrel Dodson was arraigned in Arizona after being arrested on misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct, assault/domestic violence and damage to property of less than $2,000. The arrest came after Dodson’s girlfriend called 9-1-1 and told the operator that Dodson had hit her across…Read more...

Football coaches at Garden City Community College, a prominent junior college program in Kansas that has played in two of the last three NJCAA championship games, reportedly delayed for 25 minutes before contacting paramedics after finding 19-year-old Braeden Bradforth collapsed outside his dorm last August following…Read more...

The sun is about to set on Brazil this summer. The land of joga bonito has fielded one of, if not the, best generations of women’s soccer players over the last two decades, but age and an inability to adapt to the rapidly evolving game could see the Seleção’s campaign in France end in yet another disappointment.…Read more...

In a blog earlier this morning, I made the brave and extremely correct observation that the New York Yankees are a wicked, awful baseball team that deserves to play its home games on fields of fire and brimstone in the very pit of Hell itself.Read more...

A lot has happened since Raptors guard Kyle Lowry was shoved by a Warriors fan after falling into the seats during Game 3: Lowry was understandably angry; the fan got ejected; after the game Lowry said the fan had made “vulgar” comments to him; this morning, the fan was identified as Mark Stevens, a minority owner of…Read more...

Thanks in large part to the support of Bob Marley’s daughter, Cedella Marley, Jamaica’s Reggae Girlz are about to compete at the World Cup for the first time ever. While it’d be far too optimistic to expect them to pull off any kind of shocker in Group C, if you consider Jamaica’s status (or lack thereof) on the world…Read more...

Australia are front-runners for the title of most entertaining team at the Women’s World Cup. The chaotically good Matildas head to France this summer with the stated goal of winning the trophy but the more important (at least for non-Aussies) unstated goal of becoming everyone’s second favorite team. After three…Read more...

Soon-to-be free agent Kyrie Irving was on Manhattan’s Upper East Side yesterday, if you accept the word (and image) of a local real estate developer.

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The Golden State Warriors are down 2-1 to the Toronto Raptors in the NBA Finals, in large part because their roster is all crabbed up. Today, head coach Steve Kerr provided an update on the overall health of the roster. The Warriors are getting one piece back, but not the biggest piece.

They say that when God closes a door, he opens a window, and that wisdom is knowing to stop worrying about the closed door and start taking advantage of the open window. The metaphor applies to the Spain women’s soccer team’s experience at their first World Cup four years ago. The closed door was their embarrassing…Read more...

In an ordinary Finals, the team in Golden State’s position, down 2-1 after dropping Game 3 at home, would be in real trouble, needing to win three out of four and at least once on the road to avoid elimination. Hell, the Warriors might even be in real trouble! Or maybe they aren’t the Warriors, but will be at some…Read more...

When he lived in Venezuela, Freddy de Freitas played baseball every day of the week, except for the occasional Monday. He played and baked under the Caracas sun on weekends, and on weekdays after work he’d rush over to his local stadium to play under the lights. That was before the stadium lights stopped turning on.

Amanda Anisimova has a good backhand, so good as to foreclose any technical critique from the peanut gallery. She’s 17 years old and it has already been described by tennis commentators, perhaps accurately, as the best backhand on tour, and, hyperbolically, as the best of all time. I’ll leave those judgments to the…Read more...

It was a fine question to ask. When did the Bruins make the decision that defenseman Zdeno Chara, who broke his jaw in Monday’s Game 4 against the Blues, could actually be able to play tonight? The problem is that the question started from a false premise. As head coach Bruce Cassidy noted today, Chara “was never…Read more...

Carrying an 8-pound being inside your body during the entirety of waking hours is a super-human feat, probably as physically draining as running 5,000 marathons over a terrain of hot coals and quick sand. Now research more or less backs this up: A new study published in Science Advances found, per Quartz, that the…Read more...

YouTube is rightfully under fire this week, but that’s not stopping Google from finally giving us all the details about its next big streaming service. Stadia, Google’s big play to define the next epoch of gaming, was officially announced back in March, but the March event was frustratingly devoid of details. Now we…Read more...

The man who pushed Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry during Game 3 of the NBA Finals last night was none other than Warriors minority owner Mark Stevens, the team has confirmed. The news was first reported by Axios.Read more...

While holding up the remains of a wooden chair that had just been smashed to pieces, a woman yelled, “I got a splinter in my butt!” A referee wearing black and white stripes hustled over with a new chair and placed it on the grass, reconstituting the circle of chairs that was just broken. An impatient young man…Read more...