Attending a major sporting event can be exhausting, expensive, and demeaning. But there has always been at least one game-day opportunity that can provide a little bit of satisfaction: the ability to buy an ice-cold bottle of water from a guy with a cooler in the parking lot...

That photo up there is of Jalen Brunson, who hit some huge shots down the stretch of Game 1 of the NBA Finals, led all players on both sides in scoring, and was talked up by his head coach as the hero of a game the underdog Knicks won, 105–95. "He did what MVP candidates are...

The Indiana Fever have revoked media credentials from longtime Indiana basketball reporter Scott Agness, he said Tuesday in a post on his website Fieldhouse Files. The team's public relations staff told him the decision was due to "the spread of inaccurate and unsubstan...

Two months ago, Angel in the outfield Jo Adell robbed three home runs in a single game, in what I'm sure will stand up as the best defensive performance of the season. Last night, he made an error that forced me to question if those incredible catches were all just a dream. ...

The morning of her first round-match at Roland-Garros, Marta Kostyuk learned that a Russian missile attack had killed four people in her native Kyiv, Ukraine, dangerously near her parents' house. "Most of the morning I felt sick …if it was 100 metres closer, I probably would...

The most successful side of the last two World Cups is France. That's a title that winning the tournament and coming oh-so-close to repeating earns you. But which is the second most successful side? If you picked Argentina, the other winner, I wouldn't push back too hard, es...

Both No. 1 seeds in men's and women's singles have now exited Roland-Garros after running the scoreboard right up to the threshold of victory and then suffering bizarre, ignominious collapse. A week after Jannik Sinner seized up, it was Aryna Sabalenka's turn to cave in. Sa...

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, Dave answers a question about how to know when to let your kid quit an activity.

Ike:

It's almost time for the World Cup. Before the tournament, we'll be previewing each of the top 15 teams by FIFA rankings that made the tournament. Why the top 15? Because that's how many we needed to do in order for the USMNT to make the cut. You can read all of our previews here.

---

Soccer may be a fickle game, but on the whole it does a good job of putting things in their rightful place. In that sense, there's maybe no team in the world to whom soccer has been more consistently, maddeningly fair than Mexico.

Unremarkable dweeb Nick Bilton has been the executive producer of 60 Minutes for less than a week, and he has already written his name into the history books as one of the media industry's most pathetic bosses. Bilton's week started with him getting colossally owned during ...

I call them my dummies, the people who I watch on my big screen in the evenings as a way to calm my nervous system. It's not necessarily that my dummies are stupid, but anyone who agrees to go on a reality television show has to have enough optimism in their body to drown ou...

Are you ready to receive a powerful piece of information? OK, here it comes: Politicians can increase their chances of getting elected to office if they are seen as down-to-earth and relatable by their constituents. This novel observation, unearthed for the first time this ...

You can say a lot of complimentary things about these Carolina Hurricanes. And I will! They are relentless, squeezing the life out of their Eastern Conference opponents by outskating them to every puck and outworking them on every battle. They are rested, having gone 12-1 on...

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 gambling, World Cup loyalties, griddles, window seat etiquette, and more.

Your letters:

Capn Po:

By racing the Giro d'Italia, Jonas Vingegaard chose to court the most pressure possible. Not only would he face the unrelenting scrutiny of being the sole favorite for the race, whatever he did would be judged against his archrival Tadej Pogacar's authoritative 2024 Giro. If...

It's almost time for the World Cup. Before the tournament, we'll be previewing each of the top 15 teams by FIFA rankings that made the tournament. Why the top 15? Because that's how many we needed to do in order for the USMNT to make the cut. You can read all of our pre...

The great Hanif Abdurraqib joined us this week on Nothing But Respect. You are probably familiar with Abdurraqib's work as a poet, author, journalist, and subject of a Giri Nathan profile, which was timed to the release of Abdurraqib's 2024 book, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension.

We talked a bit about the book, a good amount about his beloved Minnesota Timberwolves, and a lot about the forthcoming NBA Finals between the Knicks and Spurs. I also asked Abdurraqib to give us his own scouting report, which he generously provided. This was a fun one!

https://art19.com/shows/nothing-but-respect/episodes/3f32c963-2f70-4be5-9a6d-fa95bcb693ce

Hoopheads across the nation begin their annual vigil Wednesday in anticipation of receiving the thing they most crave in all the world—a new team to admire, love, fear, and hate simultaneously. And you can't really blame them for their baffled antipathies. Their favorite spo...

I begin this internship having recently clawed my way back into society after escaping the grips of the common cold. The last week has been packed with a variety of riveting activities that range from staring up at my ceiling to staring straight ahead at my wall, broken up by the occasional times I dragged…

I wanted to spend the week before I started at Defector relaxing, reclined and pensive while reading books and watching movies that would inspire brilliant blogs I could pitch to Lauren and Brandy. I was in Southern California, where I grew up, visiting my parents before going to a wedding.   Relaxation is not what came…

No matter what brought you here—if you live with or without birds, if you have lain awake at night pondering the problem of your parrot's predilection for wanking it in the wee hours, or if you have no clue that or how a bird might whack off in the first place—I am here to t...

Three years after making the playoffs together and contesting a beautiful, ultimately futile first-round series against the defending champs, Mike Brown and De'Aaron Fox are going to the NBA Finals. All they had to do was flee Sacramento. As the San Antonio Spurs and New Yo...

The crowd at Arena Monterrey belted "Cielito Lindo," and the mariachi band played the hero to the ring. The match was mask vs. mask, each luchador putting their identity on the line, and the fans were unanimous in their loyalty. They gave him more love than you'll see for an...

The Rams just traded for Cleveland Browns superstar pass rusher Myles Garrett. But before you ooh and ahh at the prospect of the NFL’s reigning Defensive Player of the Year joining Sean McVay’s superteam-in-waiting, you should probably consider what Los Angeles gave up to ac...

It's almost time for the World Cup. Before the tournament, we'll be previewing each of the top 15 teams by FIFA rankings that made the tournament. Why the top 15? Because that's how many we needed to do in order for the USMNT to make the cut. You can read all of our previews here.

---

The World Cup is too big and important to require its participants to seek any extra sources of motivation. You don't step onto the field of the planet's biggest sporting event with desires as petty as "proving the haters wrong" filling your head, because no hater can exceed the meaning of a World Cup. But if there is one team coming into this year's tournament that might be able to find some extra motivation elsewhere, it's Senegal.

Three drop shots, three aces—that's a sequence that I'll never forget. Nineteen-year-old Joao Fonseca wrapped up his upset of Novak Djokovic in scandalous style. Friday's third-round match at Roland-Garros had the gravity of a classic final: the shot-making, the comeback fro...

Nick Bilton, the dumb, dull, and severely underqualified former tech journalist who is now running 60 Minutes at the behest of Bari Weiss had his first meeting with his new colleagues today. It ended with him more or less being chased out of the room. You can tell a lot abo...

Going into the third season of Euphoria, the much-delayed, much-discussed, maybe final season of the hit HBO series, a friend roped me into catching up on the show's first two seasons. I had avoided the show during its initial run and the peak of its hype machine, mainly bec...

In my early twenties, a huge part of my job was to convince older journalists in my newsroom to use social media. This is the kind of job that only a young person could have, not just because of my total facility with the social media apps I was proselytizing, but also becau...

It's almost time for the World Cup. Before the tournament, we'll be previewing each of the top 15 teams by FIFA rankings that made the tournament. Why the top 15? Because that's how many we needed to do in order for the USMNT to make the cut.

---

The story of the past decade of American soccer has been the eastward migration of the nation's best young players out of MLS purgatory and into the best teams and developmental academies in the world. That story is supposed to have a happy ending for the national team, or at least some positive plot developments. So far it has not, though the Jürgen Klinsmann prophecy has yet to be really tested. That's what's at stake in this 2026 World Cup: a resolution. One moment, one goal, one game goes your way, and everything is different. This is the competition that matters.