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Yesterday, the committee organizing the 2020 Toyko Summer Olympics announced the finalists for the official mascots of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. As you can expect in a mascot-mad country like Japan, the process was complicated. Seriously, there were eight meetings of the Mascot Selection Process Panel, then…Read more...

Earlier this week the International Olympic Committee announced Russia was banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Despite that news, Russia is going to remain in the winter sports sim Steep Road to the Olympics, at least for now.

Nick Young’s shooting form is just a bit outside the realm of what most would dub conventional, to say nothing of the times and places that he chooses to take his shots. He has a high release point, though he attains that altitude by jerking his body over to the left and casting the ball out relatively slowly. It…Read more...

Ten years ago, Byeong-mun “Qudans” Son was one of the strongest Tekken Tag Tournament and Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection players on the planet. But professional esports was different then, and in 2007, Qudans largely stepped away from competition as he pursued an education and satisfied South Korea’s requirement of…Read more...

Tennessee has ended the most tortured football coaching search imaginable and hired Alabama defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt, according to reports.Read more...

Calgary Flames forward Matthew Tkachuk (on the bench, wearing No. 19) delivered his second dirty play within a month in Wednesday’s loss against the Leafs. While this one was subtle enough that it went unnoticed at the time, it’s still going to get him into trouble. The NHL will have a disciplinary hearing with…Read more...

Spartak Moscow’s Aleksandr Selikhov isn’t the only keeper who, in the midst of a match against Liverpool, after seeing the ball fly past him for the first or third or fifth time of the day, has found himself sitting there on his haunches in dejection, praying that it had all been some terrible dream. Selikhov may have…Read more...

Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been multiply and credibly accused of sexually preying on teenage girls, recently sent a mailer to voters in order to convince them that his opponent, Doug Jones, is the wrong man for the job. Please take note of the first bullet point here:

As Vince Staples once wisely put it, the national anthem doesn’t even slap. However, it can sound pretty rad when in the hands of a guitarist who can just really freakin’ shred, man.

It was announced yesterday that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had agreed to a five-year contract extension with the owners. None of the contract details were shared, but ESPN’s Adam Schefter is reporting what everyone probably already assumed: Roger Goodell will make so much goddamn money.

If your board game collection is gathering dust, it’s time to freshen up your options with Amazon’s one-day Gold Box deal.

The final few seconds of tonight’s Hofstra-Monmouth game were pretty damn fun, with Hofstra perfectly executing the ol’ make-and-intentional-miss with their last free throws to set up a game-winning three.Read more...

Here is a staggering stat that only makes sense when you know it’s about LeBron James: Heading into tonight, King James had fallen one rebound or one assist shy of a triple-double 34 times. (He has 57 legit triple-doubles throughout his career as well.) He was just short of that mark again tonight against the Kings,…Read more...

Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said tonight that it’s an “open question” whether U.S. athletes will attend the upcoming Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.Read more...

The Toronto Argonauts handed the Calgary Stampeders their second successive Grey Cup loss last week in heartbreaking fashion, returning a Calgary fumble 109 yards for a game-tying touchdown with five minutes remaining, then clinching with a late winning field goal. It was the kind of win that will fuel cruel taunts…Read more...

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. I never DUAN. Have a good night.Read more...

Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon used to grab his assistant’s crotch without her consent, mandated that she sleep in his bed during business trips, and drugged her drink during a business trip in Mexico “because he thought she was not ‘having fun,’” according to a lawsuit filed this week by the former assistant…Read more...

Cleveland and Minnesota became the latest teams to say that they’ll extend the protective netting at their ballparks before next season, joining a slew of other clubs that made similar announcements after a young girl suffered bleeding on the brain from being struck by a ball at Yankee Stadium in September.Read more...

The Oakland A’s have been trying to leave their sewage-logged digs for a new ballpark for what feels like decades now. In September, they expressed their desire to build a new, privately financed stadium near Laney College, right in the middle of Oakland next to Lake Merritt. They’ll have to pick a new site now.

Steelers safety Mike Mitchell watched how the NFL has responded to three different plays in this past week of football, and he’s not happy about the different punishments that the league has handed down in response or the arcane reasoning behind those punishments.Read more...

io9 20 Great Scifi Movies You May Have Missed in 2017 (But Shouldn’t Have) | Jalopnik Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About The JD Power Awards | Kotaku High-Level Destiny 2 Activities Are Now Locked Behind DLC | The Takeout You’re a cow’s ass if you’re outraged over this ice cream shop’s artwork | Lifehacker How…Read more...

The Black Death, the wave of bubonic plague that devastated Europe after 1348, marked the final end of a long period of economic growth. The several prior centuries had been a time of explosive expansion of both the population and economy of Europe, a development the historian Robert Lopez termed the commercial…Read more...

In a “nearly unanimous” decision that almost certainly does not include one flamboyantly rich guy in Texas, commissioner Roger Goodell and NFL owners have signed a new contract extension, according to ProFootballTalk.

Real Madrid superstar Cristiano Ronaldo ranks second in La Liga in shots taken per 90 minutes. Ahead of him is some dude named Andrew Hjulsager, who has made two substitute appearances for Celta Vigo. In that time Hjulsager has amassed 12 minutes and fired off a single shot, giving him a 7.5 shots-per-90 rate.…Read more...

It’s rude of me to do this, but I’m going to ask that you both watch and listen to this clip of Donald Trump giving a speech today, in which our wet, slurring load of a president seems to be struggling to keep his own teeth in his mouth:Read more...

Today The Ringer’s Shea Serrano debated himself to determine which was cooler: LeBron’s dunks or LeBron’s blocks.

Syracuse beat UConn in the second game of the Jimmy V Classic last night. ‘Cuse dominated for pretty much the entire game, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t good highlights.Read more...

The outrage that followed now-fired Giants coach Ben McAdoo’s benching of Eli Manning was mountainous and seemingly never-ending. Everyone had something to say about how badly the Giants fucked up, with an outpouring of support perhaps unprecedented for a player of Manning’s decidedly average talent. Mike Francesa …Read more...

Shortly after Ryan Shazier’s injury during Monday’s Steelers-Bengals game, I got a message from Tim Marchman. The NFL has that manipulative injury music, he posited, referring to the sad piano song that they play going into commercial breaks as a player is carted off the field. Doesn’t WWE have their own version for…Read more...

Tomorrow, former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State physician Larry Nassar will be sentenced in federal court in Grand Rapids, Mich. pursuant to his guilty plea on child pornography charges. And 2012 Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney will be in the courtroom, watching as her former team doctor, a man she says…Read more...

Herm Edwards hasn’t been a professional football coach since 2008, and he hasn’t worked for a college team since the 1980s. Fashions and customs have certainly changed since then, apparently to Edwards’s surprise.

The Kansas City Chiefs, once 5-0 and Super Bowl favorites, are in a freefall. They’re 6-6 and dropped out of first place in the AFC West. On Sunday, they went up 14-0 on the Jets five minutes into the game—and lost, 38-31.Read more...

Fresh off the release of his two gorgeous original songs for Call Me By Your Name, weepy music man Sufjan Stevens has released a brand new track for the film I, Tonya, and—hmm, wait...I’m receiving word that this song, entitled “Tonya Harding,” is not actually related to the film I, Tonya at all. Their shared release…Read more...

Earlier this week, freshman guard LiAngelo Ball was pulled from UCLA without ever playing a game, since he was suspended indefinitely after shoplifting on a team trip to China. At the Learfield Intercollegiate Athletics Forum in Manhattan today, NCAA President Mark Emmert was asked about Ball, to which he gave a…Read more...

Three months after giving birth to her daughter, and one year after winning the 2017 Australian Open for her 23rd major title while nine weeks pregnant, Serena Williams appears on track to defend her title and, should she win, tie hateful crone Margaret Court as the winningest tennis player in history.

I don’t know exactly what Bradley Beal had been trying to do in the five consecutive games the Wizards played without John Wall prior to last night’s visit to the Blazers in Portland. The Washington Post’s Candace Buckner has it that he was trying to create shots for others in the absence of one of the game’s best…Read more...

Retired Barcelona legend Carles Puyol expected to fiddle around with an assortment of (plastic) balls when he participated in last week’s World Cup group draw in host country Russia. But what he could not have expected was being accosted by a lady telling him “I want to fuck you, I have so big dick,” before whipping…Read more...

Here at Deadspin we’re not entirely opposed to making fervent valuations based exclusively on personal bias; but after releasing a highly contested ranking of pizza chains, we wanted to check our work. Five hungry and very stupid staffers, who failed to fully appreciate the gravity of what they committed themselves…Read more...

Here’s a fairly mundane play from last night’s game between the Raptors and Suns, which was made spectacular by the quick thinking of the camera operator under the basket.

Today’s deals start off with Super Mario Odyssey, RTIC coolers and tumblers, Blunt umbrellas, and many more.Read more...

io9 Rian Johnson Teases a Mysterious New Weapon in Star Wars: The Last Jedi | Jalopnik Local Dodge Viper Leaving Cars And Coffee Briefly Considers Accelerating Before Crash | Kotaku Portal Gets Its Own Bridge Building Game | The A.V. Club Stephen Dillane really hated his performance as Stannis on Game Of Thrones | …Read more...

The Houston Astros confirmed earlier this week that Dallas Keuchel has a minor foot injury. The pitcher, an all-star this season who started two games in the World Series, got hurt in a curious way: He fell during the championship parade and sprained his ankle.Read more...

There’s a weird tic of hockey writers where every great save has to be framed as a “save of the year candidate.” I do this too. Was tempted to do it here. Why? Why can’t we just set up a great save with “here’s a great save”? Do we not trust readers to watch a highlight unless we position it as a potential…Read more...

The Canadiens had looked like they’d gotten things figured out, winning five straight since the return of Carey Price from injury. (Funny how that works. You get the best goaltender in the world back in net, and he gives up six total goals in five games, and you win them all, and suddenly you’re third in the…Read more...

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Beyoncé showed up at tonight’s Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year Ceremony to present Colin Kaepernick with the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, given annually to an athlete who uses sports as a platform to change the world.Read more...

The last few minutes of the Raptors’ victory over the Suns brought a scary moment for Phoenix fans, as Devin Booker was carried off the court by teammates with what looked to be a groin injury.Read more...

Ball State’s Taylor Persons nailed a spectacular three with 1.7 seconds remaining in a tie game to upset number-nine ranked Notre Dame in South Bend tonight, giving his Cardinals their first-ever win in 10 tries against the Fighting Irish. The final score was 80-77, in a game Notre Dame was favored to win by 17.Read more...

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It only took Florida State a few days to find a replacement head coach after Jimbo Fisher took a king’s ransom to move to Texas A&M. The Seminoles, who became bowl eligible with a win in a rescheduled game against Louisiana-Monroe this past weekend, announced today that they’ve hired Willie Taggart, who coached…Read more...