FeedCity: Defector

Defector
23 Jun 20:27 • Tom Ley

NFL Tells Brendan Sorsby He’s Not Their Problem Right Now

For a little while there, it looked like Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby was going to wriggle out of this jam. After committing the historically career-ending sin of gambling on his own team, he won a preliminary injunction against the NCAA, overturning their ruling th...

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23 Jun 19:21 • Ray Ratto

Pat Riley Is Going For It, For Better Or For Worse

Miami has been of two minds on the anti-aging serum that is Pat Riley for about a decade now, roughly since LeBron James pissed off back to Cleveland. This is mostly because 1) Riley was getting old, except of course facially, where he's been 45 since he was 20, and 2) becau...

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23 Jun 17:42 • Patrick Redford

Trae Young’s Bizarre New Deal Is The Wrong Kind Of Hedge

As if they were trying to win the 2019 NBA Championship seven years too late, the horrible Washington Wizards made two of the most interesting moves at the deadline last year, relieving the Dallas Mavericks of Anthony Davis in exchange for basically one good first-round pick...

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23 Jun 17:12 • Patrick Redford

A Sicko’s Guide To The NBA Draft, With David Lee

The first round of the NBA Draft is tonight! Who will go first overall? Will any of the top four teams deviate from consensus? In what order will the huge swarm of point guards go after the fourth pick? On this week's Nothing But Respect, we answer some of these questions, but we also get into larger-order matters of draft philosophy, scouting, and why draft people use such crazy language. Our guest this week was David Lee, the writer and analyst, not the former NBA All-Star.

We also discussed Harry's new podcast/magazine project, TRANCHE 001. He put together five one-off podcast episodes with smart, interesting people from around the internet on such topics as the Palantir chore coat, Chaotic Good and the question of the Geese psy-op that drove people crazy, and the history of the word "based." It's only $5, which is a steal.

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23 Jun 16:33 • Luis Paez-Pumar

The Golden Boot Race Has Already Gotten Ridiculous

Thanks to the luck of the draw and the blessing of the soccer gods, Monday was the second matchday of this World Cup in which all three of Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, and Erling Haaland took the field in back-to-back-to-back matches. Thanks to sheer superhuman talent on dis...

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23 Jun 16:15 • Sabrina Imbler

Mona Khalil, Who Devoted Her Life To Protecting Turtles, Killed By Israeli Airstrike

For half a century, a house on the coast in southern Lebanon has kept vigil over Al-Mansouri beach and the blue Mediterranean waters beyond. Mona Khalil's grandfather built the house in the 1970s, around seven miles from the border with Israel. A decade later, the Khalil fam...

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23 Jun 15:18 • Lauren Theisen

Tiny, Innocent Dirt Cam Menaced By Confused Goliaths

If there is a funnier MLB broadcast duo than Jason Benetti and Andy Dirks, I am not familiar with their work. Regardless of how the Tigers are playing, you can guarantee that Benetti will arrive at the booth ready to pepper his play-by-play with clever one-liners, deep-cut r...

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23 Jun 15:18 • Bekah Waalkes

Five Self-Obsessed Danes Make For A Surprisingly Fun And Sexy Summer Read

Waist Deep, the debut novel and international bestseller by Danish writer Linea Maja Ernst, reads like it's inspired equally by television sitcoms and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The premise of Waist Deep fits both genres, with an ensemble cast in a cinematic location: Five o...

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23 Jun 15:18 • Chris Thompson

Giannis Antetokounmpo Is A Heat

It's over! The Milwaukee Bucks finally did it: Late Monday night, they picked the better of two competing offers and finally agreed to ship out differently gruntled superstar and franchise icon Giannis Antetokounmpo. That deal sent him to the Miami Heat in exchange for a blo...

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23 Jun 13:18 • Hallie Lieberman

Life As An Undocumented Trans Sex Worker In The Age Of ICE

In March, Vivian, an undocumented transgender sex worker from the state of Chiapas, Mexico, was driving from San Diego to her house in Santa Ana when her biggest fear came true: She was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a traffic checkpoint. "Thank God they l...

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22 Jun 21:21 • Giri Nathan

Serena Williams Is Coming Back As A Wild Card At Wimbledon

After a few months of cheeky silence and misdirection, plus an experiment on the doubles court, Serena Williams is completing her comeback to professional tennis. The 44-year-old has accepted a wild card into the singles main draw at Wimbledon, which begins next week, causin...

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22 Jun 20:57 • Sarah Borus

The San Francisco Giants Are Just Doing Whatever

The San Francisco Giants are a stinking cesspool of bad vibes and bad baseball. That is not the newsy part of this post. Sure, the Giants' place in the standings (currently 15 games below .500) and the collection of petulant homophobes on the roster have given the publ...

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22 Jun 20:27 • Billy Haisley

Lionel Messi Falls To Earth, Ascends Right Back Into The Sky

Fresh off reasserting his extraterrestrial talent by opening his sixth World Cup with a hat trick, Lionel Messi proved on Monday that he is in fact still human. Seven minutes into the match between Argentina and Austria, Lautaro Martínez sprinted through on goal only to be t...

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22 Jun 19:09 • Dave McKenna

Alan Greenspan, Influential Economic Policymaker Whom I Once Terrified At A Party, Is Dead

Alan Greenspan died Monday. The longtime Fed chairman was once hailed as the most powerful man in the world. Greenspan was 100 years old. Back to me: A couple of cool, smart, and nice D.C. friends of mine wrote a book that came out in the summer of 2009, and other cool, sma...

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22 Jun 18:27 • Luis Paez-Pumar

This World Cup Is Beating A Dead Dark Horse

Every international tournament, the widely used and abused "dark horse" designation is bandied about as pundits, fans, and cretins (gamblers) try to be the first to predict a deep run for an unexpected team. The term dark horse itself is vague enough to apply to about half t...

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22 Jun 18:27 • Dave McKenna

You Can Now Be Arrested For Sticking Your Hand In Donald Trump’s Disgusting Reflecting Pool

Things big and small are going bad for Donald Trump. He’s losing bad enough on land and at sea in Iran, but worse at a pool back in D.C. One might say the growing algae debacle on the National Mall left him up shit's creek without a paddle, and so he had an Olympic can...

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22 Jun 17:21 • Lauren Theisen

Justin Verlander Is Looking For His Wheels

The Father's Day crowd in downtown Detroit was likely unanimous in its disappointment that Keider Montero was on the hill for the Tigers. It's nothing personal against Keider, but until a few days prior, this game against the White Sox was looking far more momentous. Justin ...

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22 Jun 15:36 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

The Crossword, June 22: Position Changes

Special solvers solve special crosswords. This week's puzzle was constructed by Erik Agard and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Erik is a crossword editor and would like to dedicate this puzzle to his dad John and brother Vince, the football fans of the family (le...

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22 Jun 15:36 • Sohini Desai

The U.S. Is Still Killing People In Illegal Boat Strikes

Last week, the U.S. military killed eight people and stranded six others in three illegal boat strikes, bringing the total number of people killed by “Operation Southern Spear” to at least 215. The ongoing campaign—allegedly targeting drug smuggling—has long ceased to be maj...

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22 Jun 15:36 • Barry Petchesky

Everyone’s Mad About Brady Tkachuk Going To Florida

Brady Tkachuk will join his co-podcaster Matthew on the Mar-a-Lago Panthers. Let's address the hockey stuff first. A scary forward group gets even scarier, and more irritating to play against; there are no real soft spots or ceded shifts in the three top lines. After a lost ...

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22 Jun 13:33 • Tom Ley

Cape Verde Deserved Better Than Whatever The Hell JP Dellacamera Was Doing

On Sunday, Cape Verde scored one of the best and most meaningful goals of the 2026 World Cup. In the 21st minute of their group-stage game against historic powerhouse Uruguay, just the second World Cup game in the tiny archipelagic nation's history, midfielder Kevin Pina sto...

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21 Jun 22:30 • Billy Haisley

The Real Spain Has Now Arrived

There's really no such thing as a "team." If you've ever come across a guy in an Argentina jersey playing with a soccer ball at the park, and watched as he managed about three clumsy kick-ups before accidentally toe-poking it down a hill (by the way, next time you see me out...

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21 Jun 18:39 • Ray Ratto

Tunisia Blows Up Its Manager, Still Gets Blown Out

If there has been a worse performance in World Cup history than Tunisia's, be content. They still have one more chance to cement their place. The Eagles of Carthage are already eliminated from the competition after failing to keep an audience against Japan last night somewh...

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21 Jun 16:27 • Ray Ratto

Baseball’s Bad-Team Shitshow Could Use More Shit

Among the things COVID does not get credited for—and think of the last time you read that sentence—is the way it has helped bad baseball teams perfect the art of bottoming out. Since the pandemic made us more comfortable with the idea of catastrophes, we have seen the worst ...

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21 Jun 14:27 • Ray Ratto

Eloy Room Saved A Place For Himself And Curacao In World Cup History

We can cancel the last 66 games of the World Cup right now and fast forward to the final, because we've seen all we have a right to see. Put Curacao and Cape Verde in the final, make it The Revenge Of The Postage Stamp Nations and call it a win. The final may take three days...

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20 Jun 17:18 • Billy Haisley

I Have Died And Gone To USMNT Heaven

As the pure elation began to ebb, the feeling that overcame me toward the end of the USMNT's demolition of Paraguay in its World Cup opener last week was disbelief. I found it genuinely confusing. The United States men's soccer team simply does not play with as much overpowe...

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19 Jun 15:45 • Drew Magary

I Can No Longer Accept Being Condescended To By The Little Game On My Phone

I got got by Connections this week. This is a rare occurrence, because I have a big strong brain that can make distinctions that other brains often cannot. So when I lose Connections, I feel great shame. I have disgraced not only my own legacy, but that of my family's as well. I did not live up to my standard playing Connections, and that will haunt me for a good long time, maybe even into lunch today.

So what the fuck are you, The New York Times games app, to tell me this shit?

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19 Jun 15:45 • Megan C. Reynolds

Looking For A Job Has Become An Alienating Humiliation Ritual

The most haunting entry in Search Work: A Collective Inquiry into the Job Hunt, a recently published anthology edited by Rachel Meade Smith, is also the most vulnerable: a collection of emails between games journalist and author David Wolinsky and anyone who can possibly hel...

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19 Jun 15:45 • Defector Staff

Here’s A World Cup Weekend Open Thread

Hopefully you, like us, have the day off today. And hopefully you, like us, have plans to watch lots of World Cup soccer this weekend. While you do that, feel free to chat away in this open thread.

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19 Jun 13:45 • Nicholas Russell

John Early’s Secret Is Total Commitment

John Early has one of the most expressive faces of any actor working today. You've almost certainly seen it. The 38-year-old comedian, born and raised in Nashville, has had many small breaks into the zeitgeist over the past decade or so. His voice might also be familiar to y...