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...
As my variously diseased sports-watching habits go, my fondness for college basketball feels like the most disreputable. The Mets are a family thing. West Coast MLB and NBA games, between teams I don't care about, are mostly about proving that I am allowed to stay up as late...
What's the difference between betting on sports and "trading on a prediction market?" For the gambler herself, very little. If you go on Kalshi, the suddenly ubiquitous "prediction market" platform that has enjoyed the backing of the Trump administration, one can click on th...
Nothing But Respect is a little late this week due to a small error that I explain here at the opening of the episode. We had Tyler Parker of the Ringer on this week, because he's an Oklahoma City Thunder fan and after several of our most recent guests have teed off on OKC, we thought it would be a good idea to get a Thunder partisan on the podcast to talk about what it's like to be the villain. Harry also conducted extensive research into the guys who were responsible for defending Wilt Chamberlain in his 100-point game.
This week we are launching The Span, Defector’s first and only culture newsletter. Every other week, we will collect the best non-sports writing from Defector so that you won’t miss anything, and also let you in on what we’ve been reading elsewhere. Like the Culture section itself, this newsletter will be driven entirely by our…
A lot of folks don't like the NHL's current playoff format, which tries its best to sequester teams within their own divisions for the first two rounds before matching up the winners in the conference final. The goal is to deliver more rivalries and repeat match-ups in the e...
It's been a bit of a tough go for newspaper readers in the San Francisco Bay Area this past week, not that it necessarily matters to the outside world. Two longtime staples of the sporting palaver industry, Dave Newhouse, most notably of the Oakland Tribune, and Carl St...
The men’s NCAA tournament begins today, and I hope that you’ve got everything you need on hand to enjoy the games when they tip off later this afternoon. Beer? Check. Pre-scheduled takeout order for wings? Check. A slipshod plan to flee the office an hour after lunch? Oh yeah, that’s a check.
Almond butter?
What’s that, you have no almond butter on hand? You had all winter to get ready for this weekend, and you forgot to get your hands on some of that nutty, oily goodness? Buddy, what the FUCK is wrong with you? Everyone is about almond butter these days, even this Arizona player who I know nothing about.
The colonial travelogue was already a bloated genre by the time Jonathan Swift decided to poke fun at it in the 1720s. London publisher Richard Hakluyt began compiling folios of “true relations” penned by returning sailors as early as the 16th century. They had an episodic q...
Whose puck is it? Jack Hughes's overtime goal to win Olympic gold is hockey history, maybe the single most important physical object in American hockey history. You could make the case for some Miracle equipment which surely smells awful by now, but that wasn't even the gold...
You can tell a lot about a college basketball fan by what they miss. Cut me open and the concentric rings of idle sentiment that have accrued over a lifetime spent caring about this stuff will date me to my precise moment of conversion, on a well-timed sick day back in middl...
I’m a sucker for contrarian tournament picks. Sure, I could spend some time telling you why a one-seed is going to win the title, but who really finds joy in touting the favorite? You’d have to be a heartless sociopath to do that, whereas I am a normal man who spends a lot o...
March came in like a lion last night. An off-balance three-pointer from UMBC at the buzzer caromed off the backboard, allowing Howard University to survive a crazy and clutch comeback and advance to the main pool of the NCAA tournament.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAA5nqPsH-w
Howard’s win, which was in a “first four” play-in game but is being accepted as the first March Madness win in school history, made me really happy. Like all of D.C., I need bread and circuses out the wazoo these days. But there’s more to it here. Howard University’s sports have been a punchline or worse my whole life, and since before I was even around, and that's a mighty long time.
The WNBA and the league’s players’ union have reached a verbal agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement, they announced early Wednesday morning. According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the new CBA will include maximum salaries over $1 million, minimum salaries over $30...
As Bryce Harper rounded the bases on his game-tying two-run homer in the eighth inning of Tuesday night's World Baseball Classic final, he exchanged a salute with his commanding officer, third base coach Dino Ebel, then moved to point at the American flag patch on his unifor...
