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This is why you do not commit to defending for 70 percent of a match. Late in an exciting 0-0 deadlock, New Zealand was managing to hold off the vaunted Netherlands attack through a combination of parking the bus, some nifty goalkeeping from Erin Nayler, and solid individual showcases from center backs Rebekah Stott…Read more...

The reactions to a catastrophic NBA injury usually unfold in very simple terms. Stomachs drop, deep sympathies are expressed for the player involved, and everyone moves on while shaking their heads and grumbling about how sometimes life just isn’t fair. Rarely do such injuries lead to the general manager of the…Read more...

I was born in 1995. These hockey guys that Dan had for me to remember—specifically a very fancy and well-made pack of Topps Stadium Club—came from 1991. Surely, you can see the problem here.

Like pretty much every South American women’s team not named Brazil, Chile have forever struggled for attention and support from their country. While men’s soccer dominates the minds of fans, Chile’s women hadn’t qualified for a single Olympics or World Cup before this year. How could they hope to when they were…Read more...

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Coming close hurts all the more when you can quantify just how close you came. One shot, or one missed shot, or one call the other way, or ... one timeout? The Raptors came oh so close to winning a championship Monday night, and it’s not the one-point final margin that’ll stick in craws and steal sleep if this series…Read more...

Warriors president of basketball operations Bob Myers spoke at the postgame podium Monday night following his team’s 106–105 victory over the Toronto Raptors in Game 5. That’s an unusual step for a personnel honcho, but these are unusual circumstances—it fell to Myers to announce that Durant’s injury is, in fact, to…Read more...

Game 5 was anything but pretty. The first half was defined by Kevin Durant’s triumphant return, and then Kevin Durant’s disastrous re-injury. The second half was defined by one transcendent three-minute stretch from Kawhi Leonard, and then three minutes of ridiculous, frantic, slapstick mutual failure that somehow…Read more...

Kevin Durant ripped off 11 points in an impressive first quarter of Monday night’s Game 5 in Toronto, burying three three-pointers and switching capably on defense and looking maybe a little bit stiff but otherwise really goddamn impressive. Then, in the second quarter, with the Warriors up five points, Durant tried…Read more...

Phillies pitcher Jerad Eickhoff got the rudest of welcomes in his start Monday night in Philadelphia, against the Arizona Diamondbacks. A first-pitch leadoff home run is deflating; allowing back-to-back leadoff dingers is downright demoralizing; serving up back-to-back-to-back taters to open up a start is like…Read more...

The Pittsburgh Pirates and the Atlanta Braves had a little benches-clearing brouhaha in the first inning of their Monday night game, after Pirates pitcher Joe Musgrove grazed the shirt of Braves batter Josh Donaldson and was assessed a hit-by-pitch. Donaldson seemed to smirk at Musgrove on his way out of the box;…Read more...

Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse told a story ahead of Monday night’s potential series-clincher Game 5, one that demonstrates the confidence and competitive spirit of basketball robot and Finals MVP frontrunner Kawhi Leonard. Shockingly, it has to do with Kawhi Leonard saying something aloud. Even more…Read more...

Former Pro Bowl tight end Kellen Winslow II was convicted of rape, indecent exposure, and lewd conduct in a California courtroom Monday. The jury has reportedly been sent back to continue deliberating on eight additional charges, including six felonies stemming from an arrest in June 2018.Read more...

There’s a tier below the highest level of Women’s World Cup contenders, and that second tier is the most interesting in the tournament. The top teams are known quantities. It’s pretty easy to figure out how and how well the United States, France, Germany, maybe even England will play. Once you get below that, there’s…Read more...

A year ago, Steph Curry told SLAM how grateful he was that Oakland had embraced him “as one of their own.” He’s done his part, there: tons of local charity work, putting Oakland on a shoe and then giving 30 of them away. All of which is to say that he could likely tell you more about the town other than “they’ve got…Read more...

New Zealand are the cockroaches of women’s international soccer—they’re always around. By virtue of playing in limp-ass Oceania and therefore having the luxury to qualify for the biggest tournaments simply by beating up on the even tinier nations around them, New Zealand essentially get free admission to the World Cup…Read more...

Days before the United States women’s national team begins their World Cup defense, Hope Solo has stirred up some drama. The former USWNT goalkeeper joined the BBC’s Football Daily podcast over the weekend to discuss her former team’s chances, and when asked about coach Jill Ellis’s lineups, she said, “I don’t agree a…Read more...

Look. Obviously this (emphasis added), from our own Samer Kalaf, is the correct take:Read more...

Last year, in the first major final of his life, Dominic Thiem just seemed happy to be there. Flattened by a Rafael Nadal charging toward his 11th French Open title? That builds character. A dusty tennis great heartlessly roasting you at the trophy ceremony? Whatever, no shame in being outmatched.Read more...

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A side effect of women’s soccer being so discouraged and underfunded in most every part of the world is that only rarely do we see many true upsets or surprises. The traditional powers usually have such enormous structural advantages, and have had them for so long, that they almost always win, and when they don’t win…Read more...

The Golden State Warriors are facing elimination, but Kevin Durant, who hurt his leg a month ago, isn’t a sure thing for tonight’s game against the Raptors. At today’s practice, head coach Steve Kerr wouldn’t say anything beyond calling his player a “game-time decision” for Game 5 of the NBA Finals.

Florida State University’s Board of Trustees voted Friday to establish a new organization that’ll run the school’s athletic department: The Florida State University Athletics Association. According to the Orlando Sentinel, FSU boasted that the new organization would “streamline the relationship” between the athletics…Read more...

A three-year-old filly named Truffalino died Sunday after collapsing suddenly on the turf at Santa Anita. Truffalino, who didn’t suffer any visible limb injuries, is not to be confused with Formal Dude, who sustained a fractured pelvis near the finish line of another race at Santa Anita on Saturday and was euthanized…Read more...

Christine Sinclair is still doing it. By the time Canada play their second game at the 2019 World Cup, their captain will be 36 years old, and she will still be the team’s most important player. Sitting just three career goals away from tying Abby Wambach’s international record of 184, the legendary striker playing in…Read more...

Mario Vilella Martínez played Tomislav Brkić today in the first round of the ATP Challenger in Shymkent, Kazakhstan. Vilella Martínez broke in the third set to go up 5-3. With a chance to serve out the match at 5-4, he lost the game at love. Then he lost the next return game and began to crack.Read more...

This is an excerpt from Matthew Callan’s book Yells For Ourselves: A Story Of New York City And The New York Mets At The Dawn Of The New Millennium.Read more...

One quirk of soccer is that the rules of the game change when the ball is in the box. Not massively, but in one small and crucial way: Because a foul in the box is punished with a penalty, things that would be fouls anywhere else on the field are occasionally just not called in the box.Read more...

It’s no secret that WWE programming feels stale at the moment. Very little is landing, live crowds for TV tapings have been noticeably more sedate, and new talent has reliably been squandered. When WWE’s new TV contracts start in October, the promotion will be competing with a new and well-funded rival in All Elite…Read more...

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Subscribers to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s saw this in Sunday’s e-edition, hours before the Blues played (and lost) Game 6. Science says there is now approximately a zero percent chance the Blues win the Cup.Read more...

As promised, Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone and Tony Ferguson delivered unrelenting action in the people’s main event at last weekend’s UFC 238. The bout earned fight of the night honors, though it ended in a controversial way that left nobody involved very happy.

Ignore the 5-1 final score. Far from a blowout, Game 6 had the feel of a rain-swollen reservoir. With the Blues one game away from their first Cup in franchise history, and 18,000 fans screaming so loudly that NBC didn’t even have to juice the crowd mic, and another 30,000 watching on screens outside, St. Louis was so…Read more...

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It certainly feels fitting that the first two of the Bruins’ goals in Game 6 came via some very visible influence from the referees. Not in any controversial way, for the record, but every Boston fan who believes in karma must surely feel that their 5-1 victory on Sunday night was preordained, after they got so…Read more...

According to multiple reports, retired Red Sox slugger and former World Series MVP David Ortiz was hospitalized with a gunshot wound in the Dominican Republic Sunday evening. Enrique Rojas of ESPN reportedly heard directly from Ortiz’s father that Ortiz was shot “in an amusement center” in Santo Domingo. Ortiz’s…Read more...

Madison Bumgarner is a good pitcher and a marvelous baseball player, but what he also is is a great big diaper baby. Few pitchers in all of baseball are as likely as Bumgarner to express their sensitivity to the humiliation of allowing a home run by shouting unwritten code commands at triumphant batters. Bumgarner…Read more...

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Kevin Durant’s month-long absence from the Golden State Warriors while he tries to recover from a calf injury has thrown the NBA Finals totally out of whack. Now, with the Warriors down 3-1 to the Raptors and facing a potential dynasty-ending Game 5 on Monday, Durant’s return seems like the only thing that could…Read more...

In the top of the second inning of today’s game between the White Sox and Royals, White Sox outfielder Eloy Jiménez latched onto a hanging curveball at the top of the zone. It didn’t even look like he put that hard of a swing on the ball, but then it just... kept... going... and going:

The Fort Myers News-Press is reporting that Tony Joiner, former standout football player at the University of Florida, has been arrested and charged with murdering his wife.

The latest string of updates about the quad injury that’s hounding Mets second baseman Robinson Cano are so familiar that it’s hard to absorb them without feeling intense déjà vu. Let me assure you that this is not news you have read before, or a memory from some past life bubbling to the surface of your conscience.…Read more...

Most countries making their debut in a tournament like the World Cup are just happy to be there. Implied in a country making it to its first major tournament is that the country in the very recent past was not very good, and its soccer infrastructure is at an incredibly early stage of its development. For most…Read more...

Valentina Shevchenko defended her UFC flyweight title against Jessica Eye last night, and she wrapped up the fight in the second round with one of the most devastating head-kick knockouts the world has ever seen:

Vanderbilt found themselves down 1-0 in the best-of-three Nashville Super Regional against Duke, and so they sent stud pitcher Kumar Rocker to the mound to start Game 2 yesterday and asked him to save the season. Rocker responded with 19 strikeouts and a no-hitter, leading Vandy to a 3-0 win.

The first Women’s World Cup match of the day, between Italy and Australia, was a spicy one. Australia took a 1-0 lead early in the first half thanks to a Sam Kerr penalty kick, but their aggressive, attacking style left them open to counter attacks from Italy all match. Italy could have had multiple goals from…Read more...

Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner has had a pretty rough season so far, so you can’t blame him for being mad about the fact that he had what looked like a sure extra-base hit taken away from him by Indians right fielder Jordan Luplow. What you can blame him for is busting his own lip open like a damn dingus!

Argentina are not very good. It’s important to get that out of the way early. Due to a host of factors not entirely in the team’s control—particularly the fact that they have only been playing together for about a year due to federation turmoil—the Albicelestes head into France with more questions than answers. And…Read more...

The USA’s top nemesis in the Women’s World Cup comes into 2019 with plenty of questions to answer, despite winning it all in 2011 and placing second in 2015. A disastrous failure to qualify for the 2016 Olympics ended the eight-year tenure of Japanese manager Norio Sasaki, and as Japan enter their first major…Read more...

This poor Greek kid discovered the dangers of being a ball boy today when Italian midfielder Nicolò Barella accidentally punted the ball straight into the kid’s face in Italy’s match against Greece:Read more...