We can officially stick a fork in the fallout stage of former Athletic reporter Dianna Russini's long and handholdy relationship with Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel. Russini resigned in disgrace and remains unemployed, while Vrabel suffered absolutely no professional conseq...

Earlier this year, Curry Barker and Kane Parsons became young Hollywood phenoms in quick succession. An actor and sketch comedian, the 26-year-old Barker wrote, edited, and directed Obsession, which is the story of a meek romantic who uses a magical novelty toy to make his c...

A nightmare has happened. Maybe you were minding your own business in the office when an earthquake hit, or maybe you were spelunking in some wretched cave never meant for humans to enter. Yet regardless of how you got here, you are now trapped and in need of urgent medical ...

The 35-page report released on Wednesday by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, which contains a great deal of evidence that Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers circumvented the NBA's salary-cap rules, makes for some surprisingly fun reading. It includes ...

Tom Dundon and the Portland City Council remain in a standoff. In early August, the city approved a $120 million expenditure of public money for renovations of the Blazers' longtime home arena, located in the city's Rose Quarter entertainment district. The city's proposed te...

The NBA has concluded its investigation of the Los Angeles Clippers and Kawhi Leonard, and the punishments are major. The league announced Wednesday that the independent probe, conducted by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, uncovered "a pattern of misconduct a...

Some people are fans of the Denver Broncos. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Denver Broncos. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. Your team: Denver Bron—***THE DEFECTOR OFFICE GETS H...

Two hours after Tuesday night lapsed into Wednesday morning in the Eastern time zone, Alexander Zverev served out his grueling U.S. Open first-round matchup against Lorenzo Sonego. The final match of the night was a real thriller, with the top seed and the feisty Italian cha...

Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas, where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at minordilemmas@defector.com.

This week, Ray answers a question about making sure you don't turn into your own father.

Xxx:

FLUSHING, N.Y. — One set into the first-round match, I wondered when the Gael Monfils show would begin. Tuesday was his 40th birthday, and this could be his last-ever match at a Slam—didn't he want to party? We did. Seven years after his last deep run at the U.S. Open, the e...

On Aug. 23, Texas Christian University Athletics announced they were pulling the credentials for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The announcement came after the paper reported on a locker room fight that led to the hospitalization of wide receiver Dozie Ezukanma and the expuls...

NEW YORK — As we waited for Alexandra Eala to walk into Louis Armstrong Stadium for the most anticipated first-round match of the tournament, the crowd whooping as a victorious 40-year-old Gael Monfils shed his shirt, I had a quick chat with Dyan Castillejo, the first Filipi...

This week on Nothing But Respect, we mostly talked about dumb stuff with a smart guy. The guy in question was Jake Bittle, staff writer for Grist and the author of The Great Displacement: Climate Change And The Next American Migration, while the dumb stuff was Jake's amazing spree of Twitter fights back when that was something worth doing, and also Drake. Jake is a Raptors fan, and Harry knows a ridiculous amount of ball on all things rap, so it was a long time coming. We also talked about the new politics of climate vis-a-vis Silicon Valley's right-wing turn. Primo offseason stuff, and not all dumb!

You can find Nothing But Respect in Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast app you use. Follow the show on Instagram, and contact the Broke Jumper Tip Line at (347) 380-6426. Thanks for listening!

This Ketel Marte thing keeps getting stranger, at least linguistically. Marte made his return to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday, during their game against the Philadelphia Phillies. Before the game, Marte, who speaks through an interpreter, answered questions about his a...

This turned out to be quite an eventful summer for Monaco and USMNT striker Folarin Balogun. After the red card-that-wasn't at the World Cup, Balogun has now become the main character in a perfect transfer saga for this deeply unserious transfer window. The 25-year-old's mov...

Once again, Normal Gossip returns to the crucible that is college housing, and for good reason. Not only do stints in the dorms and subsequent apartments provide ample opportunities for self-discovery, but you’re also pretty much guaranteed to come out of the experience with an enemy (or six).

Today’s friend-of-a-friend moves in with five boys and one mysterious woman on short notice. If you’re thinking that sounds like a recipe for chaos, you’d be right. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dln0qLqPjtw&t=1s

LIV Golf recently sent out a mass email to mark the conclusion of its 2026 season. I imagine this was a somewhat slapdash operation given that the outfit, recently dumped by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, had to lop off the final event on its schedule, the team championsh...

To sum up the quarter-century of Los Angeles Angels baseball under owner Arte Moreno requires someone who knows him and them better than we do, so let's go to Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken, who responded to Moreno's abrupt decision to sell the team on Tuesday thusly:

“I feel like it’s my birthday.”

And there's your Angels postgame show for today. Our final score again: Yankees 7, Angels 3. We'll see you tomorrow, and please drive home safely.

On August 30, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully launched from Florida and will spend the next three months heading to its new home: a Sun-Earth Lagrange point, a million miles from Earth, where the gravity of the two larger bodies are in equilibrium. It's a ...

Some pathetic, frontrunning dorks are fans of the Rams. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Rams. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: Los Angeles Rams.

Your 2025 record: 12-5. Heh. Haha. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about iPhone complaints, America’s infrastructure tragedy, changing clothes at the airport, and more.

Your letters:

Monte:

The Chicago Cubs have maintained an awfully low profile for a team that 1) wins often, and by a lot of runs, 2) homers more than anyone, and 3) has an increasingly sure-thing MVP patrolling center now that Shohei Ohtani is slumping through his ouchy season. The Cubs hit nine...

It did not take a lot of special insight to suspect that recently installed CBS News boss, Bari Weiss, played some role in the production of a story the outlet ran on Monday, headlined "Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed's deleted tweets on Sept. 11 attacks invite scrutiny of ...

It's been an eventful year for Ringer founder and podcast host Bill Simmons. He ended 2025 and began 2026 at a peak in popularity, thanks to his performance on a podcast titled "Bill’s 50 Most Rewatchable Movies of the 21st Century," which earned him the kind of crossover ap...

As Lauren Theisen pointed out last month, the ongoing, abstracted debate about trans inclusion in sports uses almost no proper nouns and lots of hypotheticals. Back in the late 1970s, there was a very real, very human example of a trans athlete playing at the highest level of a mainstream sport. Renée Richards competed in professional tennis, and her fascinating life is explored meticulously in Julie Kliegman's new biography, Finding Renée Richards. The book is an invaluable intervention in the tortured public discourse, which in recent weeks has been polluting the WNBA. Read this book and forget that Enes Kanter Freedom or Royce White exist.

I led a Q&A with Julie for the book's launch last week, and have condensed and edited parts of our conversation below.

---

PHILADELPHIA — The Benjamin Franklin Parkway was designed in 1917 by French architect Jacques Gréber in the European style of boulevard, specifically inspired by the Champs-Élysées, which means it is a thematically apt and suitably picturesque locale for the end of a cycling...

They don't give style points in baseball, but if you were scoring Orioles-Rockies, you'd want to break out a second, third, maybe even a fourth color of pen to decorate the box with Colton Cowser's ninth-inning catch to save the game for Baltimore. Maybe some tempera as well...

If you haven’t yet encountered the cover story for the August issue of The Atlantic, I have some bad news to share: "The End of Reading Is Here." It’s an intentionally provocative headline for a slightly less provocative story; while it may portend doom, Rose Horowitch’s pie...

Three NFL players were placed on the commissioner's exempt list this past weekend: Seattle Seahawks cornerback Terrion Arnold, Denver Broncos outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper, and Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs. All three will be unable to play while they are o...

There are tired fighters, and then there’s Moses Itauma in the ninth round of Saturday night’s heavyweight title bout against Filip Hrgovic. 

With about 30 seconds left in what would be the last round of this odd but completely fascinating fight in London, the gifted but inexperienced Itauma was suddenly so gassed that he seemed utterly incapable of raising his hands above his waist, let alone defending himself from the durable Croatian veteran who was suddenly swarming him with blows from hell. Referee Howard Foster rightly called the fight and shocked the boxing world. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLGEoGQGXPg