Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

We realize the enormity of saying the most CONCACAF game ever," as this particular region of the soccer world is literally where people throw ducks at balloons and nothing is the way it seems. Just about anything can happen when the North and Central American Federation is in charge, and boy did it on Wednesday...Read more...

The 1995-96 season was the end of the golden era for big men in the NBA. Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson and Shaquille O'Neal were stuffing opponents into lockers with their unstoppable back-to-the-basket games. They were the superstars in the paint, but Alonzo Mourning, Rik Smits, and many others...Read more...

Each year following NBA All-Star weekend, we discuss the slam dunk contest for at least two to three weeks afterward. Whether it's good, bad or somewhere in the middle, the conversation surrounding it blazes on for some time. Now we get Zion Williamson fanning the flames dunk contest banter, with his fake...Read more...

What happens every time an NFL quarterback resets the QB market? A relatively crap quarterback gets overpaid. The reason Daniel Jones netted a four-year $160 million deal after one good season, instead of getting franchise tagged like he should've been, is Joe Burrow got enough money that, by comparison, Jones'...Read more...

If you've been following the story that Chelsea and Matalidas star Sam Kerr has been charged with the alleged racially aggravated harassment of a police officer in London, and scouring the internet to figure out what she may have said, we finally have an answer.Read more...

The NHL trade deadline has gotten into high gear a couple days before Friday afternoon's deadline, so let's roll through the highlights of what's already gone down.Read more...

Now that the Denver Broncos have made their decision about moving on from the Russel Wilson era, it's time for head coach Sean Payton to get serious. There's a lot at stake here and Payton can't whiff on this quarterback selection. Whether it be via free agency or the draft, Payton is only going to have a year or two...Read more...

On Tuesday, Dartmouth's men's basketball team became the latest college team to attempt to unionize - voting 13-2 to join Service Employees Union Local 560, which currently represents other Dartmouth employees. As labor unions rise in popularity - more than two-thirds of all Americans and 88 percent of those under 30...Read more...

For those of us who hoped Nick Saban retiring would be the end of Nick Saban, this idle/jilted version of him might be even more insufferable. In an ESPN story about how Alabama pivoted from Saban to Kalen Deboer in 49 hours, the seven-time title winner revealed that player attitudes" and the NIL era contributed to...Read more...

Spanish police were able to stop a potentially massive and dangerous brawl from breaking out during a Champions League match between Real Sociedad and Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday.Read more...

Update March 6: New footage captured by police body cameras shows Miami Heat forward Haywood Highsmith visibly shaken up after he crashed his car into a pedestrian, causing him to have his leg amputated above the knee.Read more...

The NBA Slam Dunk Contest is on life support. The G-League's Mac McClung has won the contest for a second year in a row. Despite Boston's Jaylen Brown attempting to bring stars back to the iconic event, his dunks were relatively unimpressive.Read more...

Nobody asked for this, but, yet, here we are. In the middle of a volatile election year where Charles Barkley has free rein to spew his illogical political takes on TV. True bipartisanship looks like viewers from both parties working together to make this end.Read more...

Emmitt Smith is probably not the first athlete people associate with Black people's American struggle. He wasn't at the press conference with the then-Lew Alcindor (now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Bill Russell, and Jim Brown in support of Muhammad Ali electing to not serve in the United States military after being...Read more...

Leave it to the A's and John Fisher to be three months late on the renderings for a ballpark that still feels like it has a better chance of being built in Narnia than it does in Vegas, and then to have it leak out a day after they meant it to:Read more...

It's Oscars Week, which feels like as good a time as any to draw up the NBA storylines and characters which could double as Oscar nominees.Read more...

The New York Giants are reportedly looking to move on from QB Daniel Jones - whom they signed to a four-year, $160 million deal - and decided against using the franchise tag on Saquon Barkley, arguably the second-best player in franchise history.Read more...

The Seattle Seahawks are entering a retooling phase. It's not quite a full-on rebuild but there's enough movement within the organization on and off the field that the team will look quite different next season. It was announced on Tuesday that the Seahawks would be releasing three-time Pro Bowl safety, Jamal Adams....Read more...

Updated March 5: The suspect in the YMCA attack - 20-year-old Malik Ali Smith of Farmington Hills, MI - has been charged with assault with intent to murder.

It was only slightly over a year ago that New Jersey Devils fans were apologizing en masse to Lindy Ruff. They had called for his head early last season, and then when the Devils caught fire they all were ready to admit they had egg on their face. New Jersey would go on to the second round of the playoffs with...Read more...

With free agency around the corner, the NFL is currently engaged in its age-old tradition of taking some of the best names off the market. The franchise tag period allows teams to hold onto premier players just a bit longer, extending the negotiation window for a long-term deal while still maintaining team control.Read more...

The Los Angeles Clippers have been a delightful surprise in the NBA since bouncing back from a rough start once James Harden joined the team at the end of October.Read more...

Remember when NBA Twitter, now NBA X, spent an entire season obsessing over where Ben Simmons would be traded? It ended up being Brooklyn, and that ended up being the last time he was relevant to professional basketball. The latest update is there is no update, just Simmons' agent, Bernie Lee, falling on his client's...Read more...

Vince McMahon made more than $400 million yesterday after selling over five million of his shares in TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of WWE, according to documents provided to the New York Post by the Securities and Exchange Commission.Read more...

It's official. According to NFL Network's Ian Rapoport, the New York Giants will not give running back Saquon Barkley the franchise tag. He will hit the open market for the first time since entering the league in 2018.Read more...

It's simple. Since America loves an underdog, America should be applauding Rajah Caruth.Read more...

Iowa's Caitlin Clark surpassed Pete Maravich as the NCAA's all-time leading scorer in college basketball - and continues to add to her legacy in her final collegiate season before entering the WNBA Draft.

Need any more evidence that Gilbert Arenas' bellyaching about Europeans and foreigners ruining basketball with their sweet outside strokes is all hot air? I'll give you one: Josh Giddey. Now that his legal woes appear to be in the rearview mirror, the whispers about his liabilities in the Oklahoma City Thunder's 5-out...Read more...

Updated March 5: Drew Eubanks revealed that he had suffered bloody gums and his teeth feel looser since getting punched by Isaiah Stewart on Feb. 14 before their game.Read more...

It is tempting to say that the Milwaukee Bucks turned a corner on Monday night. Without Giannis Antetokounmpo in the lineup, they were still able to defeat the Los Angeles Clippers, 113-106, and remain undefeated since the All-Star break. Damian Lillard did not play his best game of the season in Antetokounmpo's...Read more...

One can't help but wonder if Russell Wilson had just thrown that last pass in Super Bowl 49 into the third row how the rest of it might have played out. Seattle would likely have had consecutive Super Bowls, he'd be a god in the PNW, and perhaps everyone would have had more patience for the mountain of up-his-own-ass...Read more...

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have decided to keep wide receiver Mike Evans in the fold for a couple more years, announcing an agreement on an extension Monday. Now Baker Mayfield is sitting around waiting for that same call or text from his agent with the same news Evans received. It only makes sense after the duo's first...Read more...

Mike Evans is a Hall of Fame talent. His 1,255 receiving yards last season makes him the only player in NFL history to record 1,000 receiving yards in each of his first 10 NFL seasons. Regardless of whether the starting quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is Tom Brady, Jameis Winston, Baker Mayfield, Ryan...Read more...

Darby Allin crashed some 20 feet through a plate of glass onto the floor, spent a good five to 10 minutes having ringside medical staff picking shards out of his back, leaving Sting to perform his last-ever comeback and win, and it might have only been the third or fourth best match on the card for AEW's Revolution"...Read more...

Read more...

Skip Bayless' Undisputed" has hit a dry spell since the departure of NFL Hall of Famer and current ESPN First Take" analyst, Shannon Sharpe. Bayless' new crew, which includes former NFL stars, rappers and a highly respected media personality, hasn't been able to captivate the nation in the same manner Skip & Shannon...Read more...

While I really shouldn't let my frustration with how MLB has sullied their regular season into my soccer coverage, it was hard not to think about how Rob Manfred just discarded those moments during the regular season that portended to more down the line as I watched Darwin Nunez dig out a Liverpool winner in the 99th...Read more...

Back in 2021, Britt Reid, then the Chiefs' linebackers coach and son of celebrated Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, left team headquarters drunk, smashed his truck into two cars stopped on the side of the interstate at 84 mph, and put five-year-old Ariel Young into a coma. Young sustained a traumatic brain...Read more...

Curses run deep. They fester in bloodlines, foundations and scorched Earth and are lamented in prose, lyric and declaration. From Shakespeare to Dostoevsky, curses are a part of the canon of human creativity. After the Boston Red Sox broke theirs in 2004 and LeBron James brought a championship to Cleveland in 2016,...Read more...

After making it known that he wants players to have a voice" in a volatile Election Year, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell still had six months before preseason games started in which he didn't have to worry about any potential on-field demonstrations. But thanks to new San Francisco Giants skipper Bob Melvin, all of...Read more...

The buzz around Caitlin Clark eclipsing Pete Maravich's record on Sunday was enough to get celebs to Iowa City for the occasion. I'm not talking about Travis Scott. Jake from State Farm might be sports' Forrest Gump, but celebs walking into college arenas to dap up the TV insurance guy while neglecting to acknowledge...Read more...

In the salary-cap era of the NHL, no team gets to go out on their shield, really. The Datsyuk-and-Zetterberg era of the Wings fled to the Eastern Conference, took a couple first-round beatdowns, and then slipped into the playoff-less ooze that the organization only might just be emerging from. Ovechkin's Capitals have...Read more...

An 18-game NFL regular season has been looming over the league at least since it was clear that the 2011 lockout was an inevitability. What the league wants, the league - more specifically the team owners - usually gets. The revenue split used to be 50/50 with the players, but now a greater share has gone to the...Read more...

Most of the state of Colorado can't watch the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets. However, the rest of America is enjoying the show. NBA insider/analyst Ethan Strauss dove into some viewership data for a recent post on his substack.

Why anyone listens to former Memphis Grizzlies guard Gilbert Arenas is beyond me. He could be an entertaining listen if he had the self-awareness to realize where the limits of his sense of humor are. Or he could regale his listeners with stories of what it was like to share the floor with former Defensive Player of...Read more...

Atlanta Hawks guard Dejounte Murray found out the hard way Saturday night about getting on an official's bad side. During Atlanta's 114-102 loss to the Brooklyn Nets, Murray was given a technical foul during a timeout while sitting on the sideline. Apparently, NBA referees have resorted to handing out techs for not...Read more...

The next player to eclipse 40,000 points in the regular season will have a chance at the title of the NBA's GOAT simply because the numbers LeBron James will retire with are going to be near impossible to top. It'll either be someone with freakish longevity, or the most prolific scorer ever. At 40,017 points, 10,847...Read more...

The NFL Draft cannot get here soon enough. In its effort to monetize every second of every month, we have to wait and sit through months of speculation and evaluation with narratives conjured out of dead air. What are the Bears going to do with Justin Fields? Why are all the elite athletes opting out of the Combine?...Read more...

Former NFL offensive lineman Chad Wheeler, who, in November, was found guilty of domestic violence after attacking his girlfriend, was sentenced to 81 months in prison.

The NCAA pretty much had its last real vestige of power stripped after the ruling in the Tennessee case last week, and on Friday, announced that it's pausing all investigations into booster-backed collectives or other third parties making NIL deals. Despite the chaos and malfeasance that will continue to grow...Read more...