Nothing is potentially as pathetic as an old-guy tantrum, and yet nothing is so potentially entertaining as an old-guy tantrum when the old guy isn't worried about his gig. Enter Rick Bowness, the head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets and someone whose face would be on the...

On Tuesday, the Athletic reported that NJ Transit plans on hiking up the price of return tickets to New York Penn Station from World Cup games at the New York New Jersey stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., to more than $100, an approximately eight-fold increase from the ordina...

NFL reporter Dianna Russini resigned from The Athletic on Tuesday, a week after the New York Post published photos of her and New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel lounging and holding hands (with interlocked fingers!) at a lovely Sedona resort. Russini denied that there wa...

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 AI, Heather Cox Richardson, knives, and more.

Your letters:

Bryan:

When I survey energy markets—that is, when I gaze through binoculars at the gas station sign I can read from my home as long as there isn’t a big truck in the intersection—I see the disruptive effects of supply shocks. Pain at the pump follows from mismanaged supply chain risk. A parallel trend exists in…

With just under two months until the start of the 2026 World Cup, it seems that FIFA executives have finally looked up at the horizon, seen the looming shitstorm, and are now scrambling to head it off. The Athletic reported on Tuesday that top FIFA heads have sought to convi...

With the eighth pick of the WNBA Draft on Monday, the Golden State Valkyries took a big, fun swing by selecting LSU guard Flau'jae Johnson. Though she was inconsistent in her senior campaign at LSU, Johnson preceded that with three standout seasons for the Tigers, and she ha...

Time began tormenting me in March of last year. I had been traveling for weeks to promote my book about gossip, a kind of capstone to the fastest-paced era of my life. All of it—the podcast we made, the fervent response it received, the life of deadlines, and the pressure an...

"If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything," said no blogger ever. But we're not made entirely out of mud and coal. With the 16 NHL playoff teams officially set, if not yet the exact matchups, I'd like to offer in the meantime a kind of anti–playoff preview, where we cover every team whose season is over. I'll say one nice thing and one mean thing about each. We'll start at the middle of the standings and descend from there.

Washington Capitals

A Nice Thing: In what might be his final NHL season, 40-year-old Alex Ovechkin leads the team yet again with 32 goals. Even if he's just running up the score on Gretzky now, everyone who saw Ovi notch 900 and beyond in person this year is thankful for the memory.

Everyone gather 'round for a beef update. The beef update is this: Chappell Roan and Jorginho are no longer having one.

According to Jorginho, that is. The Flamengo midfielder, who started this whole beef cycle several weeks ago with an Instagram post, has now declared it finished with yet another Instagram post. After accusing one of Roan's security guards of being rude and mean to his 11-year-old daughter at a hotel in São Paulo, the soccer star is now ready to chalk the whole thing up as a misunderstanding.

"I made my initial statement in the heat of the moment, after hearing that my child and wife had been approached by an adult male security guard in an intimidating way," said Jorginho in his statement. "Since then, I have become aware of new information that has changed my understanding of parts of what happened."

Basketball has been a key part of my life since I was a little kid, both as entertainment and, very briefly, a possible career. I played school and club ball and participated in numerous expensive training camps knowing that my parents, both of whom played in high school, fe...

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, is a deranged old pervert whose brain, long since sodden and pitted from a lifetime of indulgence and Diet Coke, is foaming out of his ears. Over the weekend he wigged out and posted some floridly unhinged shit on his busted ...

Sea, trees, and hills make Monte Carlo the prettiest stop on the tennis tour, but for Sunday's championship, it did its best to dull itself. The singles final featured gray sky, chilly air, and gusts tossing the ball around unpredictably. It was sure to be a rough outing at ...

I like to think that I am both a professional at what I do and a sports fan still not too jaded to have lost my irrational passions. I'm lucky enough to work at Defector, where I am free to exercise both of those two sides of myself, which is why I can openly throw my bias i...

The Milwaukee Bucks fired Doc Rivers on Monday. What a terrible time they have all had. The Bucks failed to advance out of the first round of the playoffs in two previous tries under Rivers; this season, beset by injuries to Giannis Antetokounmpo and showing that characteris...

Despite threats—by an editor who shall go unnamed, but who does not have my best interests in mind—to ship me off to Aintree Racecourse to cover the event in person, I am once again conducting an ethnography of English horse race attendees from the safe remove of Getty Images. By year three, one begins to pick up patterns, such as the fact that the atmosphere at the Grand National is not only perpetually soused but also, as is true for much of England, perpetually damp. This year's edition emphasizes the latter point, focusing on attempts to use and/or manufacture an umbrella to stay warm and dry. You will be pleased to hear that dampness is not enough to deter attendees from sitting upon the pavement.

Before Sunday, Wout van Aert's professional cycling career looked most like a testament to the irresistible force of entropy. Before Sunday, the Belgian had never won either of the two biggest one-day races on the calendar, suffering untimely crashes and mechanicals, alway...

Finally, after 25 weeks, 1,230 games, 59-some-odd-thousand minutes and 280,000-ish points scored, the NBA's Preseason In Hell is over. Whatever awaits in the NBA Playoffs, the world can at least approach it with the comforting knowledge that it won't have to look at or think...

Feeling blue? Why not try our Monday crossword? This week's puzzle was constructed by Dylan Fugel, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Dylan is a German-Burmese sketch comedian, arts educator, and occasional puzzle constructor based in New York. Do not talk to him about Borussia Dortmund or the Knicks; there is a history of high blood pressure in his family.

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. 

I had not felt this nervous since buying BTS concert tickets. Like many other Southern California residents, I had dutifully signed up for the presale of tickets to the 2028 Olympic Games. These tickets, we were told, would be available exclusively for us. Well, for us and a...

For a little while there, it looked like Rory McIlroy was going to make it easy on himself for once. He held a six-stroke lead after the first two rounds of the 2026 Masters Tournament, granting himself the largest 36-hole lead in the tournament's history. That he built his ...

I went to New Orleans for a wedding last weekend. I used to go there pretty often, for work conventions and lots of Jazzfests, but hadn’t been back since Katrina. I was happy at how much the city, in this small three-day sampling, seemed like its old self. Among the many fam...

The premise of Last One Laughing UK is simple and diabolical: stick a bunch of professionally funny people in a room together for six hours and forbid them from laughing. Crack once and you get a warning, break a second time and you’re out.  The first season was an une...

Donald Trump and his confederacy of douches—a clique that included Marco Rubio, Dana White, and Dan Bongino—showed up ringside at Miami’s Kaseya Center for last night’s UFC card around the same time that America's murderers row of peace negotiators (JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, ...

Were it not for the virtual certainty that he will be cast in a Safdie-directed film at some point, Sid Rosenberg is not a person who should be known by anyone who does not live in or around New York City. He is a type of public figure that every city has, although the fact ...

As the back end of the NBA season mercifully burns to ash, there are still a few oblong aesthetic joys to be found. Thursday night's action featured son-to-father and father-to-son assists, the hilarious spectacle of Josh Hart and Baylor Scheierman going bomb for bomb in Mad...

The only interview that the filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli lists on his website is titled Filmmaker gets shot during interview, in which Borgli—you guessed it—gets shot during an interview. The short film opens with Borgli and his interviewer, standing against the idyllic horiz...

Remember the viral image that appears normal at first glance, but upon closer inspection, you cannot actually identify a single object in it? See how itchy your brain feels:

Relatedly, these were the starting lineups for Pacers-Nets on Thursday, April 9, 2026:

My son is a junior. Junior year is the Oh Shit year of high school, as in, Oh shit, I’m gonna have to take the SAT. Oh shit, I’m gonna have to take it again if I score anywhere below 1580. Oh shit, AP Calc is kicking my ass right now. There are plenty more oh shits where tha...

Spaceflight is a lot like airplane travel in that the vast, vast majority of incidents happen on takeoff or landing. More things are happening; more things can go wrong. On liftoff and reentry, specifically, the pressure and heat are a crucible in which the flightworthiness of a spacecraft is violently tested. It's important to remember that this is why these preliminary Artemis missions exist: they are flight tests. But tonight's Earth return for Artemis II will be especially squeaky bum time, given what happened to Artemis I's heat shield.

After the uncrewed Artemis I splashed down safely in December 2022, NASA was surprised to discover significant damage to its heat shield, with big chunks missing: