Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Somehow, in wild defiance of everything that has ever given order to the universe, NFL teams will begin playing preseason games in the next week. Straight up full-dress, pads-on football games, one real NFL team against another, the whole thing. Or not quite the whole thing—the recognizable players will play a creaky…Read more...

Argentine boxer Hugo Alfredo “Dinamita” Santillan, 23, died on Thursday in Buenos Aires. According to the World Boxing Council, he died of injuries sustained during his fight against Eduardo Javier Abreu on Saturday.Read more...

Sagging through the dog days, the Dodgers needed a jolt. Luckily, they had an ideal jolter in their clubhouse. Reggie Smith wasn’t the same player he’d been even recently, his damaged shoulder leaving him unable to throw and limiting him to pinch-hitting duty in every one of his 20 appearances through mid-August.…Read more...

Safety Earl Thomas starred in one of the more iconic images from last year’s NFL campaign when he shot a middle finger toward his own sideline and head coach, Pete Carroll, while being carted off the field after breaking his leg. Now, months later, Thomas says he’s still glad he did it.Read more...

In a statement released Wednesday night, Boston Celtics big man Enes Kanter claims that his very public criticism of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his regime has cost him one of his summer basketball camps. In the statement first shared by New York Daily News reporter Stefan Bondy, Kanter says the Islamic…Read more...

JAMMU AND KASHMIR, INDIA — If you go about as far north as a vehicle can reasonably take you in India, and about as high as your lungs can handle, you may well end up in a city called Leh. One of the few ways to get to this city, which sits 11,500 feet above sea level, is to travel along the Leh-Manali Highway, a…Read more...

Do you see this? Do you see this? I do not care about the Rockies recalling Yency Almonte and I never will. I do not get my hopes up in the last week of July, the depth of the dog days of a long, long baseball season, over the possibility of call-ups and 40-man roster moves. I am here for the trades. The trades should…Read more...

Radius Zone Mosquito Repellent | $21 | AmazonRead more...

An idiot invaded the pitch in the 92nd minute of Wednesday night’s Leagues Cup Tournament match between Real Salt Lake and Liga MX side Tigres UANL, at a point when the game was very much still up for grabs. The absolute moron very nearly took the ball off the feet of Tigres player André-Pierre Gignac, narrowly…Read more...

The Pirates got pounded to hell by the dreaded Cardinals Wednesday night, eventually losing by the score of 14–8. The score manages to misrepresent just how lopsided the game was—the Cardinals scored nine runs in the second inning and chased two Pirates pitchers before the end of the fourth inning. Garbage time…Read more...

Bad news for people who believe the events of an NBA basketball game are best accompanied by the inane, runaway chit-chat of Dennis Scott and Kevin McHale: TNT has apparently decided to axe its Players Only broadcasts and presumably will reintroduce competent play-by-play commentators to all future NBA broadcasts. Our…Read more...

It’s no secret that most college football coaches hate, or at least distrust, the transfer portal—maybe not so much the portal itself as the idea of their players getting slightly more autonomy—and media day is the perfect time to get these petty grievances out in the open so everyone can learn what assholes these…Read more...

A brutal run of three straight Alpine climbing stages starts tomorrow at the Tour de France, but two of the best teams in the peloton will be without their strongest support riders after they got testy on today’s flat stage.

The Los Angeles Clippers held an introductory press conference today for new players Paul George and Kawhi Leonard. Also on stage was team owner Steve Ballmer, known for being shiny, red, and het up while courtside at his team’s games. In a sense, this is charming: Ballmer’s one of the team owners who seems deeply…Read more...

Though it looked like the contentious Antoine Griezmann transfer saga was over once he officially signed with Barcelona, Atlético Madrid have refused to let it die. The latest news is that the Colchoneros have filed a complaint with La Liga in an attempt to block Griezmann’s registration with the Catalan giants in a…Read more...

Soon after the NFL rolled out its controversial new helmet rule last year—which aims to penalize lowering the head to initiate contact on avoidable hits—the league realized it needed more time to figure out how to implement it, and for players, coaches, and officials to adjust to it.Read more...

A crucial AL East game between the Rays and the Red Sox ground to a screeching halt in the eighth inning on Wednesday afternoon after the Rays pulled some lineup shenanigans with their relief pitchers. Lefty Adam Kolarek got the first out in the inning, at which point the Rays brought in right-handed reliever Chaz…Read more...

Men’s and Women’s Summer Clearance | GreatsRead more...

Look, if you’re going to hunt bison to the brink of extinction, you can’t be surprised when one of them takes an opportunity for revenge. The creature would’ve garnered more sympathy if it had picked on one of the larger tourists, though.

Have you ever had the experience of having to watch someone deliver a long and weepy statement on a topic you truly do not care about? If not, Tennessee Titans left tackle Taylor Lewan is here to provide you with that experience:

Sure, you people laughed about the new NBA-wags-its-withering-fingers-at-tampering story. Of course you did. You’re still drunk, high, and sleeping on the front lawn about the latest offseason. It’s what you do, because drunken no-limits you is the best you you’ll ever be.

Some people are fans of the New York Jets. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the New York Jets. This 2019 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Marco Asensio’s 2019-20 season is over before it began, his torn ACL yet another pointless sacrifice to soccer’s financially motivated preseason schedule.Read more...

Former Penguins winger Phil Kessel was traded to the Coyotes earlier this summer, which means that he’s put his Pittsburgh-area house on the market. For a mere $2.1 million, you can enjoy any film you’d like in the cavernous solitude of this home theater. Now that’s luxury.Read more...

Highly decorated Chinese swimmer Sun Yang has continued his dominant run at the 2019 World Championships in South Korea, and he has also continued his run of pissing off his opponents. Over the weekend, Australian rival Mack Horton refused to share the podium with Sun after Sun won the 400-meter freestyle because of…Read more...

It’s time to start planning your end-of-summer and fall getaways, and you can look to Alaska Airlines’ latest flight sale for inspiration, with roundtrip tickets starting at $87 from dozens of cities.

Three Pounds of Chicken Wings For Life from Butcher Box, Refurbished Apple MacBook (2017) 12" Laptop and iPad Sale, and Nordstrom Rack’s Clear the Rack lead off Wednesday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

At basically any point during any baseball season from the last eight years, it’s been possible to glance at Mike Trout’s numbers and wonder if you are looking at the work of the greatest player in baseball history. The numbers, as a whole or segmented into whatever sample size you can imagine, always tell the same…Read more...

Jacksonville cornerback Jalen Ramsey was only half-joking when he tweeted in June, “Imma ask for so much money, they have to put me on lay-away.” Ramsey had just been informed that the Jaguars won’t give him a contract extension this year, and will play out the fourth year of his rookie contract for just $3.63…Read more...

Don’t call it a revenge game, because that would imply Aaron Hicks is resentful toward the Twins instead of relieved they gave up on him. Whatever it was, Hicks’s two-out magic at the plate and with the glove saved New York’s bacon in an absolutely bananas 14-12 Yankees win that saw 35 combined hits and five different…Read more...

Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller is having his day in the hot seat today before two House committees, where he will face questions about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and President Donald Trump’s efforts to influence his investigation.

$299 Custom Suits | Indochino | Promo code KINJA19

Three Pounds of Chicken Wings For Life | Butcher BoxRead more...

Last time we checked in on future Mets superstar Tim Tebow he was struggling mightily down at triple-A, slashing .156/.239/.227 in 128 at-bats and striking out against a position player. The bad news is, Tebow is now all sliced up and injured; the worse news is, he evidently still can’t figure out how to put his…Read more...

Dwight Gooden was arrested in June and charged with four counts related to cocaine possession and driving under the influence of cocaine. That was not even Gooden’s most recent arrest for substance abuse—he was arrested again Monday for driving under the influence after he reportedly drove the wrong way down a one-way…Read more...

Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel is on a remarkable run. Coming into Tuesday night he’d crushed 11 home runs in 17 games in July, including six over the course of five games* to open the month. That’s two more homers in three weeks than he’d hit in the other three whole months of the season. Tuesday night he punched…Read more...

Former LA Laker Rick Fox’s esports organization Team Echo Fox plans to sell its slot in the North American League of Legends Championship Series to Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke, according to a new report by ESPN.

Despite being by far the highest-paid running back in the history of the NFL, Washington’s Adrian Peterson appears to be deep in debt. That’s according to a report by The Athletic today that made public the details of an August 2018 lawsuit against Peterson, which, coupled with two other past cases that have gone…Read more...

The NBA will reportedly open an investigation into the 2019 free agency period, based on the observation that roughly a zillion players changed teams this summer despite only Kawhi Leonard taking any meetings or doing any deliberating before making a move. The feeling seems to be that teams, players, and agents are…Read more...

The Mets are a revolving door of controversy and incompetence, as the most recent New York team to win a pennant(!) has spent the past month (or two, or three...) plagued by internal anger, poor play, and a tendency to kill off ex-players before they actually die. It must be no fun to be a Mets fan right now, but a…Read more...

The Skins have burned so much goodwill that even when they do something relatively ordinary for a football team, it comes off as malicious. Alternatively, the Skins have burned so much goodwill because they’re able to turn ordinary behavior for a football team into something malicious.Read more...

Boris Johnson, a disheveled, dishonest, discombobulated clod, will be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He will do a bad job. He might be more capable as a sportsman, though that isn’t much consolation or compliment.

Add the Queens Baseball Club, later renamed the Flushing Meadows Baseball Club, to the pile of abandoned ideas that were meant to turn sports media into a lucrative business. As reported by the New York Post, Yahoo Sports’ plan to buy coverage from the New York Mets and then sell that coverage to readers in the form…Read more...

Today, we’re talking about pizza, paper, tolerating sporting events while sober, cream cheese, and more.

Video game characters love their bows and arrows, but I hate to be the bearer of bad news—almost all of them are terrible at archery. As an archer myself, I’ve had to spend a lot of time teaching and observing the sport, so I thought it might be appropriate to explain why, in real life, some of your favorite…Read more...

Some people are fans of the San Francisco 49ers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the San Francisco 49ers. This 2019 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

You won’t have Mark Sanchez to kick around anymore on NFL Sundays. Instead, please reschedule your buttfumble jokes for Saturdays.

The FIBA World Cup begins in China on the last day of August. After a training camp in early August, Team USA will set its 12-man roster by August 12. Who will still be standing at that point?

The limits of the law are tested not by the easy subjects, but by the difficult ones.

At this point, I’m ready to believe anything about Magic Johnson’s ability to screw over the Los Angeles Lakers, which according to a new report from The Athletic, was not lost with his departure from the team’s front office.Read more...