The Carolina Hurricanes spent Game 1 displaying exactly why they're among the East's favorites. After the Ottawa Senators dropped Game 2 in double overtime, they're left ruing all the opportunities they didn't take advantage of in a much more evenly played game. Against thes...

I took the D-shirt challenge, knowing it would be an emotional rollercoaster through weepy terrain. There was some sun overhead though, and some smiles to cut through the cold reality that I had to do it alone. Dan McQuade was my son, and as anyone who is familiar with his ...

Patriots' Day in Massachusetts is known for two things: the Boston Marathon and Here Comes The Pizza. No longer. The third Monday in April will forevermore be remembered as the day Cribl, Axonius, and Netskope were at Fenway Park. No need to clean out your ears, you heard me correctly: Cribl, Axonius, and Netskope.

I'm not sure you understand what a big deal this is. Cribl, Axonius, and Netskope! Three of the entities of all time! Will wonders never cease? Cribl and Netskope taking in a Red Sox game together, sure. That wouldn't make headlines. Cribl and Axonius? I could see it happening. But Cribl, Axonius, and Netskope? All in one place? At the same time? And in historic Fenway Park? Pull the other one!

The Edmonton Oilers are perceived to have been cruising on Connor McDavid's nickname more than a decade now, and will be for maybe another decade. And while it became a matter of cross-border amusement that McJesus could not win a Stanley Cup from a guy nicknamed Bob, it was...

At the end of March, the NBA approved the sale of the Portland Trail Blazers to a group of investors led by Dallas billionaire Tom Dundon, at a valuation of about $4.25 billion. On paper, Dundon, who already owns the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes, certainly looks the part of an ...

In the world of Netflix’s Bridgerton, the wildly popular Regency romance adapted from an equally popular book series, some things are constant: The women wear organza and brocade gowns; everyone takes long walks in manicured parks, and longer reclines in ornate sitting rooms...

Near the end of the New York Knicks' Game 1 victory over the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday, the rowdy home fans started chanting, "Fuck Trae Young!" This despite the fact that it has been several years since Young earned the city's ire by knocking the Knicks out of the playoffs....

Don't stop me if you've heard this one before: The New York Mets are a real disappointment. This was true last year, when they missed the playoffs, and this was true last week, when the team followed a sweep at the hands of the Athletics with one by the Dodgers. It's somehow...

Forget what the scouting report said about Munetaka Murakami before he came over to MLB from the NPB. As we all know, foreign scouting is not real. Big bombs are real, and Murakami has, in his three most recent games games with the Chicago White Sox, delivered three big bombs. One of them even had the additional oomph of being his first career grand slam.

Last week, I wrote that Manchester City had to intervene and stop the Arsenal title march, mainly for my own personal enjoyment. While some of you rightfully didn't appreciate that, you can't argue with the results. Arsenal came out on Sunday at City's stadium ready to play and still lost, 2-1, ceding control of the title race with just five matches left in its season.

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

The stats won't back the argument that Arsenal did anything particularly exciting yesterday, at least at face value. City dominated possession, 59-41, and had 15 shots to Arsenal's nine (five to three on target differential). Arsenal's only goal came from a Gianluigi Donnarumma mistake:

Our Monday crossword is pretty dope. This week's puzzle was constructed by Zachary Edward-Brown and Mishkin Filstrup, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Zach and Mishkin are high school friends from Chicago. Zach enjoys soccer and basketball and rooting for the Bears. Mishkin enjoys playing golf with his family and running track with his friends.

Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX, run every Monday. If you’re interested in submitting a puzzle to us, you can read our guidelines HERE. Please note that submissions will be closed from April 1 to May 1. 

Monty McCutchen remembers the play unfolding in front of him.

With just under two minutes left in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals, the game tied at 89, Golden State's Andre Iguodala grabbed a rebound and dribbled up the floor. He was coming right at McCutchen, who was backpedaling and would end up as the "lead" official positioned underneath the basket Iguodala was sprinting toward. Iguodala and teammate Steph Curry bore down on J.R. Smith, the only Cleveland Cavalier back on defense; Iguodala passed it off to Curry, who skipped it straight back. As the closest referee, McCutchen prepared for a contested attempt at the rim.

"I was refereeing J.R. Smith," says McCutchen, one of three officials on the game and now the NBA's senior VP of referee development and training. "I remember thinking, 'You got J.R. Get J.R. Get J.R.'"

Talk about regression candidates. Just over a month ago, football journalist Arif Hasan broke the news that analytics giant Pro Football Focus was purchased by Teamworks, an even larger analytics giant, for somewhere north of $130 million. According to Hasan, many employees ...

In the 10 days since Artemis II splashed down safely, NASA has continued to release new imagery from the mission. A personal favorite is the one atop this post, taken from a camera mounted on one of the Orion capsule's solar array wings. It captures Orion, the Moon, and the ...

The problem with mythmaking is that the myth needs constant feeding, and each dish must be spicier and more exotic than the last. Fortunately for the Buffalo Sabres, they seem to get how it’s supposed to be done. It is no longer enough to cite the 15 years in which they hav...

From the moment his team defeated the previous undefeatable Oklahoma City Thunder in December, you could start to hear the whispers: Yes, Victor Wembanyama is the future but is he, could he be, I know it's so soon but maybe is he already, you know, the best player in, well, ...

It's been a long road back to the top for Arthur Fils.

In the second round of last year's French Open, hometown hero Arthur Fils sent the gathered Parisians into hysterics when he downed Jaume Munar in a thrilling fifth set. At this moment, anyone observing a screaming, shirtless Fils—just 20 years old and ranked 14th in the world—would have seen a player who seemed likely to continue rising up the ranks of men's tennis, and right on time. The Changeover thesis was about to be proved almost stultifyingly correct. What more coherent way could there be to balance men's tennis out than to have a volcanic, expressive Frenchman join the laconic Italian and the puppydog-exuberant Spaniard currently dominating the sport?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci_6gKogYlI

The Virginia Tech spring game was supposed to be the beginning of a new chapter for a struggling football program, a scrimmage that could offer a reset after a 3-9 season that saw coach Brent Pry ousted after the school started 0-3 last fall. Now under the stewardship of new...

When Austin Reaves and Luka Doncic were smote out of the first round of the NBA Playoffs (barring pathbreaking Spanish advances in hamstring science) with muscle injuries, it felt like a death sentence for the Los Angeles Lakers. The injuries occurred right as the team was...

Defector is proud of its sweeties and enemies binary. In athletic competition, there are sweeties, who cause a feeling of butterflies in tummies, and there are enemies, who are shitheels. Nobody denies this.

This year's NHL playoff bracket looks a little weird. Some teams seem like they've innocently stumbled into a place they don't belong. Other franchises are truly despicable embarrassments to ice. To make sense of the first round, I have divided every series into a sweetie and an enemy. Here they are, without further comment.

NHL Playoff Sweeties

I have always found the starter-into-closer pipeline to be demoralizing. Per baseball truisms, even the best reliever would be a starter if they were only, by certain definitions, better. Moving a starter to the pipeline is so often the last-ditch move of teams that do not k...

Whoaaaa, get a load of this! The NBA playoffs are starting tomorrow. Yes yes, there are more play-in tournament games tonight, but we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about the real playoffs, and get you caught up to speed so that you may witness these contests with all the basketball knowledge one could possibly need filling your skull.

Before we get to the previews, however, we wanted to talk about some other important issues facing the NBA. Below you will find a roundtable discussion between Defector's biggest basketball nerds about tanking, uncompetitive regular season games, and the NBA's popularity crisis. There's a lot to discuss on those topics, so be sure to check that out.

Just kidding! God, that would be awful. OK, here are the previews.

On Wednesday night, the NBA fined LaMelo Ball for his "unnecessary and reckless contact" with Bam Adebayo during Charlotte's victory over Miami in their play-in game Tuesday. It made for a deflating end to what had become a whole media saga over Ball's intentions, or lack th...

Something about blondies really gets my motor humming. I love brownies, and I really love chocolate chip cookies. But put a thick-cut blondie in front me and suddenly I go as wild as an ape. A blondie is like a chocolate chip cookie but like, more of it. That’s my kind of 50...

If there is a stronger verity in hockey than "Trust nothing in the playoffs," it is surely, "And whatever else you do, trust nothing you saw before the playoffs." The fetish of the team with the best record rarely proving it when everyone is watching is as secure a bet as pa...

In The Christophers, Michaela Coel plays Lori Butler, a painter hired by a pair of bumbling siblings for an odd sort of job. They want her to go work for their father, a renowned artist named Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen), who has largely shunned the art world, spending his wa...

By any objective reckoning, Bayern Munich should've been considered enormous favorites to beat Real Madrid in their Champions League quarterfinal matchup. Bayern has been one of the two best teams in Europe all season long, while Real has been consistently bad. Bayern's star...

It's the story that has captivated America: a large screaming man roughly the color of a Fruit Roll-Up, who goes on AM radio every day to get upset about minorities, announced last week that he could no longer in good faith be a New York Mets fan. Dial down the volume and am...

In February of  2025, New York State correctional staff began an illegal work stoppage to challenge recent changes to the state’s carceral system. Their primary objective was to force the repeal of the Humane Alternatives to Longterm Solitary Confinement Act (also known...

It was not so long ago that the return of baseball had me in my feelings in a positive way. Kelsey McKinney and I talked about it on the podcast just two weeks ago, but while the bump in my emotional wellbeing that accompanied the mere presence of baseball games on my televi...