Before this week, Dayton James Webber's life was often described as inspirational. In 2010, a story on ESPN described him as a 12-year-old boy who, despite the quadruple amputation of his hands and legs to survive a bacterial infection at age 10 months, lived a spectacularly...

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 universal knife subsidies, noogies, desert island concerts, good doggies, and more.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: I’m out next week on Spring Break. That’s right, baby. Me and my boys are heading down to Cancun to crush some beers and mack on some fine ladies. And not necessarily in that order, muchacho!

I kid, of course. My family and I are off on a road trip all week, which was a good plan seeing as how air travel in this country is no longer possible. But fear not, we’ll have a guest host bagger ready for you folks, so email them your stupid questions and they’ll indulge you. Got all that? Sweet.

The New York Rangers have had a bad enough season as it is, what with being the worst team in the Eastern Conference and all, but charity like this is frankly unbecoming. They left Madison Square Garden Monday night tying a 71-year-old franchise record for fewest shots in a ...

Madison Square Garden is playing host to a copaganda campaign that has infiltrated its sporting events and will culminate in a special concert on March 28, exclusively for officers and civilian employees of the New York City Police Department. Surely you can figure out which...

I've never been to Connecticut except to pass through it, so I personally can't speak to how hospitable it is to visitors. But Syracuse coach Felisha Legette-Jack would be happy if she never saw another Nutmegger for the rest of her life.

"For us to continue to come to Connecticut year after year after year is, to me, it's a personal attack," Legette-Jack said after her Orange lost 98-45 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Monday. That was just one line of many in her press conference/vent session that all but begged the selection committee to stop grouping early-round teams by region and give Syracuse some other top program's home court to lose on.

"To have to come and be in this particular bracket every freaking year is unacceptable," she said. "It's wrong."

The importance of black literature in America has turned on its relation to the canon, and its proximity to political usefulness. The art and biographies of groundbreaking black figures are often turned into blunt tools with which anodyne lessons about equality and acceptanc...

This week on Nothing But Respect, we invited back returning champion Maitreyi Anantharaman to talk about the biggest basketball news of the week: the looming return of the Golden State Valkyries.

With the new CBA, the WNBA and its labor base avoided missing any games. They will have to fit an entire offseason's worth of business into a five-week window—business that includes not only a regular draft and training camps, but two expansion drafts and the free agency of almost every single veteran player in the league. There's a lot to get into! We also talked a lot about the media coverage of the negotiations, and a little bit about the Detroit Pistons, with whom Maitreyi is coping in incredible ways.

The new baseball season starts tomorrow, and yes, that tall gaunt figure in the black floor length robe with a sickle where its backpack is supposed to be is standing right next to Aaron Judge, its head tilted meaningfully toward the flagpole in right center. It's ...

In what could be filed under a statistically unlikely outcome, Carlos Alcaraz suffered his second loss in three matches. The world No. 1 was upset Sunday in the third round of the Miami Open by Sebastian Korda, who once looked to be one of the top prospects of the current Am...

When Connor McDavid speaks, Edmonton listens because, well, who else is there? The man wasn't nicknamed McJesus for his knowledge of canonical law.

Thus, when he was asked after the latest Oilers' sack-fouling, a 5-2 home loss to Tampa Bay on Saturday, the two-time Stanley Cup finalist and no-time Stanley Cup champion went for subtle condemnation of his division. Depending on whose interpretation you choose to embrace, he also may have quietly groined his own team and its coach. We hesitate to be more definitive because even the ultra-polite Canadian soul gets very snippy in public when the local hockey team is disappointing the customers.

But McDavid used the entire wretched Pacific Division as cover for his own team's current run of walking, and it is a very stylish way of saying, "We stink, too."

The beauty and tragedy of taking part in a great crowd pop is that you had to be there. The TV sound mixers will not do it justice, nor will that guy who filmed the whole thing on his busted iPhone. The YouTube video you’ll pull up years later, trying to remember the moment, will only underwhelm you in relation to the real thing. (You don't understand: I swear this Tim Hardaway Jr. three prompted the loudest reaction in the history of professional sports. I SWEAR!)

So here's the highest praise I can bestow on a highlight: The game-winning shot that sent fourth-seeded Minnesota to the Sweet 16 on Sunday caused such pandemonium that even the sound-mixed, through-a-screen YouTube version of it absolutely rules. Look at the cameras shake! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIC_2C0OnjE

The second government shutdown of the year, this one affecting only the Department of Homeland Security, went into effect on Feb. 14. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are still being funded by last year's One Big Beautif...

Ahead of Sunday's relegation melee between the visiting Nottingham Forest and hosting Tottenham Hotspur, a key match in the fight for Premier League survival, Tottenham fans went all-out for their side, rolling up to the streets of North London and making the whole thing feel like a trophy parade. There were flares, chants, and nervous excitement, as Spurs headed into a home match against the team directly below it in the relegation battle. It was quite a sight to behold:

And then, Tottenham had to play the game. How did that go?

It wasn’t much of one, truth be told. It had little range. It was erratic, as all my attempts at prime athletic achievements were. It was not as erratic as my long-iron play, and only a little more erratic than my four-parry with an epee. It was deadliest from stra...

You don't need to shoot a three here, but you do need to solve our Monday crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Matthew Sherman and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Matthew is a game show writer and researcher who lives in Culver City, Calif., with his two kids and one wife.

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. 

Life is beautiful due its unpredictability. For example, until this weekend I never would have been able to imagine a scenario in which global pop superstar Chappell Roan and 2021 third-place Ballon d'Or finisher Jorginho were engaged in a feud because a security guard may o...

St. John's was blowing it. After building a 56-42 lead against Kansas with eight minutes left to play, they suddenly started getting outworked and outplayed by a Jayhawks team that had spent the previous 32 minutes looking totally uninterested in advancing to the Sweet 16. K...

Of all possible beef pairings among NBA players, Luka Doncic vs. Goga Bitadze is one of the most likely of units to get into a scuffle. When Doncic is not racking up technical fouls for yelling at the referees, he is racking up technical fouls for talking impish trash to pla...

Take a look at Giants running back Cam Skattebo and one thing becomes immediately clear: If he wasn't a football player he would be spending a significant amount of time menacing Sacramento-area gas station cashiers for not carrying "the good Monsters." Another truth follows...

Do you remember when Barbra Banda scored a goal on her birthday to tie up Orlando’s match against Denver? How about when Emma Sears ran the length of the pitch with the ball at her feet to put Louisville up 2-0 on Washington? Or when the Spirit came back to tie it up with a Sofia Cantore scorcher and a Leicy Santos snipe? 

Of course you don’t. That’s because the Cascadia Rivalry happened. 

Friday’s edition of the NWSL’s most storied rivalry—and arguably its only true rivalry, as the manufactured “District vs. Empire” clash between Washington and Gotham has only just started to grow real teeth over the last couple seasons—had an air of the bizarre before the season even started. It was oddly set for just the second week of the season, and would be Portland’s home opener. 

Here is a loose rule that you can use to determine whether or not Tadej Pogacar is going to win a bike race: if you can see the flank of an asscheek protruding through his tattered skinsuit, nobody is beating him. One year after winning Strade Bianche with his butt flappin...

Arkansas point guard Darius Acuff Jr. will be selected near the very top of this summer's NBA draft. He will be a boon to any team in need of a crafty, athletic, classically trained point guard. If there's any knock on his pro prospects, it's his size: he's just short enough...

Taylor Frankie Paul was supposed to save The Bachelorette. The show’s viewership has been in a steady decline for almost a decade, dropping from about 10 million viewers in 2010 to just under 3 million in its most recent season.The Bachelor, too, has been in a ratings free-f...

At this point, Aston Martin's continued crisis seems like it cannot possibly worsen, which is why the team, just two races into the Formula 1 season, is restructuring upper management. There were reports on Thursday that Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey would step do...

As recently as last week I was telling you that the 19-year-old phenomenon Joao Fonseca might be the true threat to the Sinner-Alcaraz regime atop men's tennis. And he will get a chance to play Alcaraz this very evening. But what if Fonseca is actually old and washed with a ...

In close-up for much of The Testament of Ann Lee, her eyes brimming with light, Ann Lee seems to be in a persistent state of shuddering. The founder of the Shaker religious sect, played by Amanda Seyfried, shimmers, and rarely stays still, yet Seyfried’s performance manages ...

For the majority of the NBA season, there has been an odd, Los Angeles Lakers–shaped hole at the center of the conversation. Chalk it up to Victor Wembanyama blocking out the sun, the feel-good Detroit Pistons, the feel-bad Los Angeles Clippers, or the gambling scandal that...

Pixar has always been investing in protecting the Earth, at least in its movies. A Bug's Life illuminated the role of insects in an ecosystem, Finding Nemo called attention to marine pollution and coral reefs, and WALL-E, the most radical of them all, imagined a planet destr...

The NCAA women's tournament selection committee has never let an opportunity for rematch, rehash, or reunion pass them by. When the bracket was released on Sunday, it was no surprise to see a rather cinematic Elite Eight meeting set up in the Fort Worth 1 region, something i...

A 12 seed upsetting a 5 seed is not the most unexpected NCAA tournament result, and yet it can still offer a chance to partake in one of March's most pleasurable traditions: learning about a school and program that 95 percent of viewers had never heard of prior to tip-off. S...