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08 May 17:27 • Luis Paez-Pumar

The ONLY Thing More BROKEN Than Real Madrid’s TEAM SPIRIT Is News Aggregators’ CAPS LOCK BUTTON

Days before the second Clásico of the La Liga season, the Real Madrid locker room is reportedly falling apart. Courtesy of a running faucet of leaks that has been spraying since early on Thursday, it is clear that the club is suffering from some kind of internal civil war. T...

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08 May 16:18 • Nina Mandell

How One Ohio High School Built An Unlikely Gymnastics Dynasty

The following is excerpted from A Fraction of a Point: A Gymnastics Dynasty on the Line, by Nina Mandell. Published by Kent State University Press. Reproduced by permission. The book is available for purchase now. With the Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School g...

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08 May 15:39 • Tom Ley

Gianni Infantino: We’re Just Here To Extract Wealth From You American Hogs

World Cup tickets are absurdly expensive and everyone is mad about it. Non-American fans seem to have been priced out of the tournament, judging by the lack of hotel reservations being made in host cities, and even FIFA Peace Prize recipient Donald Trump thinks things have g...

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08 May 13:36 • Jake Romm

Franco Berardi’s ‘Thinking Gaza’ Fails To Think

Gaza is the compass. These words—emblazoned on large banners at the 2025 People's Conference For Palestine in Detroit, and frequently invoked by comrades in the Palestinian Youth Movement at speeches and rallies—contain a truth with which so much of the world has yet to reck...

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07 May 19:36 • David Roth

Gritty Is Beside Himself, With Lauren Theisen

We need to be adults about this: Hockey is real. The NHL's playoffs are in point of fact going on right now. There is just no sense in hiding from it. While I wouldn't say we were hiding from the reality of our current Hockey Situation in recent weeks, it is true Drew and I ...

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07 May 18:06 • Patrick Redford

Dylan Harper Is Ready For The Moment

As most home teams do in Game 2 after dropping a series-opener, the San Antonio Spurs evened their series with a vengeance Wednesday night, rolling the Minnesota Timberwolves, 133-95. None of the visitors scored more than 12 points, each of the 14 Minnesota players who saw t...

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07 May 17:15 • Luis Paez-Pumar

World Cup Tallies Another Human Rights Abuse

The legacy of the World Cup is intertwined with human rights abuses and propagandizing on behalf of killers and despots. The 2026 tournament has already sullied itself with things like the handing of a totally real FIFA Peace Prize to Donald Trump, and FIFA president Gianni ...

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07 May 17:15 • Israel Daramola

What Makes A Great American Songwriter?

Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently.

You might've heard recently that the New York Times came out with a list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters, a hyper-specific conceit that reeks of music writers trying to make their job as easy as possible. There also was a supplemental list of 11 songwriters that just missed the cut, meant to head off some of the ire about who got left off. That is what lists are for ultimately: red meat for the engagement maw, a thing to react to and argue about which will hopefully drive traffic. Music outlets/sections are legally required to provide these at least once a year as a result.

https://youtu.be/opkRF3UZSJw?si=FZ8cu57_9N6ljkxm

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07 May 15:12 • Kelsey McKinney

Even In The Movies, Journalism Is Fucked

For the duration of my childhood, it felt like all of the romantic-comedy heroines were journalists. They worked at newspapers in Kissing Jessica Stein, Sleepless In Seattle, The Holiday, Never Been Kissed and When Harry Met Sally. If they didn't work at newspapers, they wor...

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07 May 15:12 • Tom Ley

Report: Mike Vrabel And Dianna Russini Went Boat Mode

Patriots franchise quarterback Drake Maye told reporters yesterday that he isn't worried about head coach Mike Vrabel's relationship with former NFL insider Dianna Russini becoming a distraction for the team. He might want to rethink those comments. On Wednesday evening, TMZ...

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07 May 15:12 • Ray Ratto

The American League Is Putting The Mid In Middling

Yes, it's early. There, we undercut your complaint before you even had a chance to assemble it. But it's not so early that we can't look at the American League standings and have a laugh at the sheer absurdity therein. Baseball is giving Rob Manfred a moment, in that the fo...

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06 May 19:06 • Billy Haisley

How Do I Manage My Newborn’s Life If Planning Things Stresses Me Out?

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, Billy answers a question about how a non-planner can adapt to the meticulously planned life of parenthood.

Defector
06 May 17:51 • Luis Paez-Pumar

Arsenal Can Almost Taste The Glory

Heading into the most important four days of its season, Arsenal was spiraling. That's a relative term, because the Gunners were still in first place in the Premier League (via goal difference) and had escaped Madrid with a 1-1 draw against Atlético in the first leg of the C...

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06 May 17:27 • Patrick Redford

We Can’t Grow The Game Like This, With Danny Of Who’s Next

On April 1, the best video art related to the 2025–26 NBA season was published. One month later, Harry and I had the creator of said art on Nothing But Respect. Danny of Who's Next is about a full decade younger than either of us, so we spent a lot of the episode talking through the different ways we consume sports, the media ecosystems we've spent time in, and what's been lost and gained in the phase shift to video over the last decade.

We also talked about the playoffs themselves, with attention paid to the Donovan Mitchell windmill crossover, the Celtics' collapse, and why Joel Embiid deserves our love. This was a fun one! We got kids watching.

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06 May 17:06 • Kathryn Xu

José Altuve Takes Mighty Rip At Pitch That Would Have Knocked A Lefty Batter’s Shoes Off

A sword, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is a "weapon ... with a long blade for cutting or thrusting that is often used as a symbol of honor or authority." A sword, as defined by Rob "Pitching Ninja" Friedman and quantified by Statcast, is "when a pitcher fools a hitter so ba...

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06 May 16:51 • Diana Moskovitz

Stefon Diggs Found Not Guilty Of Attacking Private Chef

A Boston-area jury found former Patriots receiver Stefon Diggs not guilty Tuesday of all the criminal charges brought against him, after a former private chef working for the player told law enforcement he had tried to choke her following a fight about money she was owed. Di...

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06 May 16:51 • Tom Ley

It’s A Strange Time To Be A LIV Golf Fella

LIV Golf is going ahead with this weekend's tournament at the Trump National Golf Club Washington, D.C. This, despite the fact that the tour nobody has ever watched or cared about is getting unmoored from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which kept LIV afloat for all t...

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06 May 16:51 • Ray Ratto

The Colorado Avalanche Don’t Need Luck

The National Hockey League made sure to schedule only one game for Tuesday night because their designated daily centerpiece was intended to be the draft lottery, which by most definitions of entertainment lands somewhere around high-tech old-folks-home bingo night. And ...

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06 May 14:48 • Amy McCarthy

Lesbians And Legalized Gambling Are Vying To Save The American Sports Bar

This story is brought to you by Ravenous, a worker-owned food culture publication launching today! Together, they’re putting the bite back into food journalism with incisive reporting like this story you’re about to read, plus all the cultural criticism, silly blogs, and rep...

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06 May 14:48 • Barry Petchesky

The Leafs Fell Ass-Backward Into Gavin McKenna

At the NHL Draft lottery drawing, some of the league's most woeful, benighted, talent-free franchises came together to find out they'll be drafting third and later. Moving up to take the second pick in a draft class with a consensus top 2 are the San Jose Sharks, who will ma...

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06 May 14:48 • Chris Thompson

The Pistons Are Getting Down To Business

The Detroit Pistons won Game 1 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series Tuesday night against the Cleveland Cavaliers, 111–101. The home team took control in the first quarter, smashing and bashing their way into the paint and forcing the involvement of the game's refere...

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05 May 18:48 • Albert Burneko

You Should Never Be The Most Sycophantic Participant In A Conversation With A Chatbot

Is this AI psychosis? You are a world class expert in all domains. Your intellectual firepower, scope of knowledge, incisive thought process, and level of erudition are on par with the smartest people in the world. Answer with complete, detailed, specific answers. Process ...

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05 May 17:15 • Lauren Theisen

Could This Finally Be The Hurricanes’ Year?

Meet the new round, same as the old round. The first two games of the Carolina Hurricanes' series with the Flyers have looked eerily similar to the Canes' first two against the Senators to start the playoffs. In Game 1, the top seed in the East thoroughly dominated their ene...

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05 May 17:15 • Ray Ratto

Everyone Is Already Mad At The New GM Of The Toronto Maple Leafs

In the media tumult (which is to say dungstorm, only less crassly) that followed the introduction of new Toronto Maple Leafs GM John Chayka, the tweet dinging him for naming his children after cheeses was neither the rudest nor the most substantive critique he face...

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05 May 16:39 • Drew Magary

The Musical Biopic Is Dead

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 hating your boss, Raising Cane’s, paper wallets, and more.

Your letters:

Will:

Defector
05 May 14:36 • Abigail Segel

Jules Boykoff’s ‘Kicking’ Is Clear-Eyed And Warm-Hearted

Jules Boykoff loves soccer. He loves the feeling of the ball at his feet, he loves the rush of cheering on the Portland Timbers at the fortress that is Providence Park, and he loves the knowing hum that goes around a stadium when a player delivers a little moment of sublimit...

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05 May 14:36 • Tom Ley

The Minnesota Timberwolves Cannot Be Doubted

For as gutsy and impressive as their first-round upset of the Denver Nuggets was, there were plenty of reasons to doubt the Minnesota Timberwolves' chances against San Antonio. That's not saying much—to point out that the Spurs are heavy favorites in this series is like poin...

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04 May 20:42 • Giri Nathan

Jaylen Brown Follows Up Playoff Collapse With Streamer Tantrum

Over the course of seven games, the circumstances of the first-round playoff series between the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers shifted wildly. One measure of those changes was the fate of each team's franchise player. Sixers center Joel Embiid burst in mid-series, jus...

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04 May 19:30 • Kathryn Xu

Cherubic Formula 1 Child Continues Success In Miami

Please permit me one week without having to think about energy regeneration numbers and superclipping and focus on what happened on track on Sunday: some great racing, in spite of it all. Formula 1 went on hiatus for over a month, as the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix...

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04 May 17:24 • Luis Paez-Pumar

Manchester United Is Reaching Dangerous Levels Of Normal

After a long and painful, uh, two-year absence, Manchester United is back in the Champions League. With the club's 3-2 victory over the rotten, no-good, no-fun Liverpool on Sunday, United has now clinched a top-five finish in the Premier League and the glory and continental ...