Defector
12 May 19:15 • Drew Magary

Fuck Touchscreens

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 bunk beds, working from home, good moms, undershirts, and more.

Your letters:

Michael:

Defector
12 May 18:12 • Israel Daramola

Lane Kiffin’s Decision To Abandon Ole Miss Was Actually Smart And Good, According To Lane Kiffin

After burning down an entire state's worth of bridges with his incredibly messy exit from Ole Miss, Lane Kiffin is now the head coach at LSU. The controversy surrounding his departure from Oxford did the impossible, making Kiffin's name even more infamous than it already was...

Defector
12 May 17:36 • Patrick Redford

Heaven Help Us, The Thunder Have Yet Another Dude

With the score tied halfway through the fourth quarter of Monday night's Game 4 between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Lakers, OKC's Ajay Mitchell sized up Marcus Smart in the left corner. The shot clock was rapidly draining and his teammates were all watched over...

Defector
12 May 17:36 • Sabrina Imbler

What Are You Doing In There, Fish?

Remoras evolved to be clingy. The suction cup on their foreheads allows them to attach to larger animals like fridge magnets. Remoras hitch free rides on creatures of their choosing: sharks, rays, whales, dugongs, turtles, even parrotfish. But it has been traditionally assum...

Defector
12 May 17:06 • Kate Dries

The Devil Wears Prada, Too

It’s almost quaint to read now, but author Lauren Weisberger spent the majority of her 2003 press tour for the release of The Devil Wears Prada trying to distance it from its obvious source material. “So much of the book is composed of stories from my friends,” she told Publ...

Defector
12 May 15:42 • Leander Schaerlaeckens

When Team USA Needed To Get World Cup Ready, It Needed Boraball

The following is excerpted from The Long Game by Leander Schaerlaeckens, to be published on May 12, 2026 by Viking. It is available for purchase now. Velibor Milutinović, or Bora to both friend and foe, was born in Yugoslavia and orphaned by World War II. After a childhoo...

Defector
12 May 15:18 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

Cameron Brink Is All Tangled Up

Cameron Brink came back to a very different team than the one she left in June of 2024, when she tore the ACL in her left knee in a game against the Connecticut Sun. That year's Los Angeles Sparks were firmly rebuilding—or, as veteran guard Lexie Brown described th...

Defector
12 May 15:18 • Patrick Redford

The Father Who Stepped Back, With Tom Krell

NBR hall of famer Tom Krell, who claimed to have reached basketball nirvana when he joined the show for the playoff mega-preview with Tom Ley one month ago, is back for another appearance on the show this week. He briefly had that state tested when his Denver Nuggets went out like chumps, but he recovered enough to put in another all-time performance.

Topics include: Christian Braun's facial hair, Anthony Edwards's heroism, fatherhood and the pursuit of romantic love vis-á-vis the two previous topics, the Mormonization of American culture, Adorno vs. Kierkegaard (in a basketball context), Darryn Peterson's apparent over-fondness for creatine, and so much more. Tom also shared a demo of a song he's working on under his stage name How To Dress Well that involves flipping a sample of Bones Hyland singing in his car on Instagram. This one's a banger.

Defector
12 May 13:18 • Ben Dowsett

Can The Jumper Be Hacked? Inside Basketball’s Next Arms Race

In the summer of 2024, during the WNBA’s Olympic break, several Atlanta Dream players who weren’t competing in Paris had gathered for a midseason training camp of sorts. Anyone watching would have seen what looked like a typical 3-on-3 scrimmage. In reality, it was anything ...

Defector
11 May 19:15 • Kathryn Xu

“Big Dumper” Now Apt For More Depressing Reason

The sophomore slump is real, in the sense that rookies who have great seasons are rarely able to live up to such lofty expectations the following year, and fake, in the sense that it is hardly a phenomenon limited to rookies and sophomores. Rather, the sophomore slump is a m...

Defector
11 May 17:57 • Chris Thompson

Bum-Ass Franchise Wins Last-Ditch Pot Of Gold After Years Of Self-Exile

The Washington Wizards won the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery and were awarded the first overall selection in the upcoming player draft, scheduled for June 23. They will have their choice of the handful of top amateur prospects in the sport, from what is considered a particularly st...

Defector
11 May 17:33 • Lauren Theisen

The Montreal Crowd Claimed A Victory

The Buffalo Sabres were a great road team this year. Only the Avalanche won more games away from home, and in the first round of the playoffs the Sabres took all three games they played in Boston by a combined score of 13-3. But Montreal, as the city proved in Game 3 of its ...

Defector
11 May 16:54 • Mason Westfall

The Claude Delusion

If you asked philosophers what the most mysterious thing about the mind is, most of them would say: consciousness. It's just a really weird thing. An exhaustive physical description of a brain state doesn't obviously tell us anything about why that state would be associated ...

Defector
11 May 16:54 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

The Crossword, May 11: She’s A Rainbow

Set the tone for your week and solve our Monday crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Kelsey Dixon, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Kelsey is a southerner by birth, a Mariah Carey fan by choice, and a Chicagoan by the grace of god. When she's not busy working as the crossword editor for the Atlantic, she can be found investigating the Edmonton Oilers polycule or breaking single-use kitchen gadgets.

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.

Defector
11 May 14:54 • Giri Nathan

Longtime NBA Photographer Nathaniel S. Butler Explains How He Sees Basketball

The Defector basketball chat was captivated by a sequence of artfully stage-lit photos in Game 1 of the Knicks-Sixers playoff series at Madison Square Garden. They were the work of Nathaniel S. Butler, senior official photographer for the NBA. Butler has shot the league from...

Defector
11 May 14:54 • Ray Ratto

Philadelphia Continues To Innovate In The Field Of Losing

The (in)famous Defector Philly Bureau has been oddly silent on this bit of newsy detritus, which is not normally like it. Maybe it was just the giddiness of watching the Phillies beat the Colorado Rockies and extend their run of watchable baseball to two full weeks, or maybe...

Defector
11 May 14:54 • Ray Ratto

Steve Kerr Hasn’t Had Enough Just Yet

It should not have taken a month and change for the Golden State Warriors to figure out what they wanted to do with head coach Steve Kerr, nor should it have taken that long for Kerr to figure out what to do with them. If management wanted to punish their Hall of Fame-bound ...

Defector
11 May 14:54 • Tom Ley

The Timberwolves Were Elbowed And Kicked Back Into The Series

What makes for a memorable NBA postseason? High-level basketball is necessary, as are a few Game 7s, plenty of drama, and maybe an upset or two. But a truly entertaining playoff run also requires a dose of the bizarre. The Timberwolves and Spurs fulfilled the brief during Minnesota's 114–109 victory Sunday in Game 4.

You want bizarre? How about Victor Wembanyama, never one to display much more emotion on the court than a serene intensity, briefly channeling his inner Artest and attempting to decapitate Naz Reid with a high-velocity elbow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-t2I6z16xI

Defector
10 May 19:21 • Kelsey McKinney

Jeff Probst Is Ruining ‘Survivor 50’

There is nothing that sucks the life out of a good time like someone self-consciously asking whether you are having fun. Maybe a moment ago, you were having fun, but now, faced with their anxiety (or worse, their reassurance that certainly you are having a good time, maybe e...

Defector
10 May 19:21 • Brandy Jensen

Finally, An Austen-ish Adaptation Worth Watching

Mary Bennet, middle of five, has few virtues to recommend her. Unlike her eldest sister, Jane, she is not beautiful. Nor is she witty, like second-eldest Elizabeth. Her younger sister, Kitty, may be frivolous but at least she is good-humored and has a fun nickname. Youngest ...

Defector
10 May 17:21 • Kelsey McKinney

Pastor Clarifies That Giant, Shiny Trump Statue Worshippers Love Is NOT An Idol

Pastor Mark Burns, the president's informal "spiritual advisor," wants to make one thing very clear about the extremely tall gold statue of Donald Trump that was officially dedicated last week in Doral, Miami. "Let me be clear: this is not a golden calf. We worship the Lord ...

Defector
10 May 17:21 • Owen Lewis

Fabio Wardley Was Too Brave For His Own Good

When the bell rang to signal the 10th round of the Fabio Wardley-Daniel Dubois heavyweight fight for the WBO world title, a bloodied Wardley rose from his stool and walked off-balance to center ring, as if taking his first steps. The night began well for him: He fired an ove...

Defector
08 May 19:15 • David Roth

You Are Hereby Invited To Join The Universal Baseball Association, Prop. J. Henry Waugh

There was a time, during a personal zenith of certitude and obnoxiousness that fits perfectly over my last years of college, when I was sure I knew what a real novel was, and what it was for. As I understood it from the books that I read and read reviews of, novels were abou...

Defector
08 May 18:00 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

Role Players, Ring Chasers, And A Shadow GM: Your Guide To The 2026 WNBA Season

The WNBA season begins tonight. Rather than preview each team, I've decided to look at some storylines I’ll be following through some of the league's best characters. This has nothing to do with the fact that I only came back from book leave on Thursday and didn't have a lot of time to write a preview. In fact, working on a book has merely pushed me to consider alternative narrative dimensions and explore new modes of storytelling, such as this.

Napheesa Collier Looms Large

Defector
08 May 17:27 • Patrick Redford

James Harden Is Powering Down

To watch the Detroit Pistons is to marvel at the highest level of team defense being played anywhere in the NBA. The mental strain they induce in opponents is remarkable, as offenses will cycle trough primary, secondary, and tertiary options with increasing mania, unable to ...

Defector
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...

Defector
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...

Defector
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...

Defector
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...

Defector
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 ...