FeedCity: Defector

Defector
05 Mar 17:42 • Kathryn Xu

Aston Martin: Driving Our Car Will Maim You

Three days before the first race of the Formula 1 season, it is impossible to overstate just how badly the Aston Martin team, newly headed by racecar guru Adrian Newey, have managed to botch it. Any attempt to summarize from an outsider's perspective will mostly boil down to...

Defector
05 Mar 17:42 • Owen Lewis

How I Became A Target For Right-Wing Freaks At The Australian Open

Before I went to Melbourne in January to cover the Australian Open for Defector and a couple other publications, I spent some time in New Zealand with my family. We lived there for five years when I was a child, and ever since we moved back to the United States, where I was ...

Defector
05 Mar 17:42 • Ray Ratto

No, Seriously, Pay Attention To The Charlotte Hornets

Nobody in the NBA has done nondescript quite like the Charlotte Hornets, and nobody has done it for as long. By long in this context we mean "forever." They have been the quintessential (and quit-essential, if truth be told) member of the league's ultra-forgettable Southeast...

Defector
05 Mar 16:48 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

What’s Going On With The WNBA CBA Talks?

In collective bargaining, "things tend to get done at the 11th hour," Adam Silver said in February, answering questions about the status of the WNBA’s ongoing CBA negotiations. "We are awfully close to the 11th now." The NBA commissioner wasn’t then ready to set a "drop...

Defector
05 Mar 14:48 • Abe Beame

Lost Recipes

In 1991, Spin magazine took the Compton rap collective N.W.A out to eat for a profile at the Russian Tea Room in Manhattan. The white author presents gangsta rap as a cynical enterprise, no different than escapist, violent popcorn blockbusters. “They’re not stupid, even thou...

Defector
04 Mar 23:12 • Dave McKenna

Report: Tyson Vs. Mayweather, The Con In The Congo, Is Off For Now

The scheduled fight that no boxing fans asked for but all of us would have watched, Mike Tyson/Floyd Mayweather, ain’t gonna happen. For now, at least. Veteran boxing insider Dan Rafael reported last night that this latest melding of sports and circus "definitely" will not t...

Defector
04 Mar 18:51 • Patrick Redford

U.S. Half-Marathon Championships Thrown Into Chaos After Leaders Accidentally Led Off Course

Jess McClain was cruising to her first U.S. half-marathon championship this past weekend in Atlanta when the lead vehicle in charge of driving the course ahead of her made a wrong turn with less than two miles to go, sending her and the other would-be top-three runners off t...

Defector
04 Mar 17:45 • Patrick Redford

New York Or Nowhere, With Will Menaker

This week on the show, we were thrilled to be joined by Will Menaker. You probably know Will from his work on the Chapo Trap House podcast, but he is also a ball-knower extraordinaire and hardcore New York Knicks fan, and it was a treat to have him.

We talked about what makes the Knicks uniquely infuriating; the Luke Kornet Medium blog post about the Atlanta Hawks' Magic City Night; and why rooting for a bad team makes you a good person. We also spent the last half-hour or so talking about the state of NBA player activism and the ways that sports fandom is and is not a vector into learning about the world or developing a political consciousness. It was a fun one!

Defector
04 Mar 17:45 • Kathryn Xu

World Baseball Classic, Or Assic?

If the 2026 World Baseball Classic is suffering from anything, it is expectation. Three years ago, the WBC ended on a note near-impossible to surpass: two teammates and future Hall of Famers facing each other in a deciding at-bat, and victory cinched by the most exciting bas...

Defector
04 Mar 17:45 • Drew Magary

Kyler Murray Dishonorably Discharged

Kyler Murray will be released by the Arizona Cardinals next week. This isn’t surprising news. In fact, the only reason that Murray’s release is noteworthy is because the NFL offseason has been, to this point, so utterly inert. The 2026 draft class is underwhelming, and the U...

Defector
04 Mar 15:42 • Sabrina Imbler

Which Chimp Should Wield The Crystal?

More than a century ago, the Chinese paleontologist and archaeologist Pei Wenzhong found an unusual trove in the same cave near Beijing where he found the skulls of the early hominin Peking Man. Along with the remains of a 700,000-year-old Homo erectus, Wenzhong unearthed a ...

Defector
04 Mar 15:42 • Pete Segall

Don DeLillo’s Funniest Novel Is A 1980 Hockey Sex Romp He Won’t Acknowledge

The end of the 1970s seemed to be a moment of uncertainty for Don DeLillo, creatively speaking. The previous decade had seen him become a rather important American author, enough so that he had left his job producing advertising copy for Ogilvy & Mather. Writing was his ...

Defector
03 Mar 20:03 • Drew Magary

I Burp My House Now

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 about romantic sandwiches, Todds, bad luck, choosing your own death, and more.

Your letters:

Doug:

Defector
03 Mar 19:03 • Chris Thompson

Nikola Jokic Is A Mountain Of Angst

Nikola Jokic had a rough time Monday night. The Nuggets rolled out a new starting lineup, one featuring Jonas Valanciunas as Jokic's front-court partner. Denver's opponent, the Utah Jazz, responded by sticking their own pasty big guy, Kyle Filipowski, onto Valanciunas, and l...

Defector
03 Mar 17:51 • Patrick Redford

Yoko Tawada Is A Genius In Any Language

There's always a song to sing, but first a silence must be created for the song to be born in. — Yoko Tawada, Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel

The best argument I can make for why I like reading fiction in translation is because it facilitates the psychedelic experience of encountering someone else's subjectivity twice over. The translator must act as a prismatic filter, faithfully attempting the impossible task of replicating someone else's experiences and ideas. To read in translation is to read two stories in harmony with each other: The one the author wants to tell and the one the translator has brought into your linguistic world.

Defector
03 Mar 17:51 • Ray Ratto

Trae Young Got Ejected From A Wizards Game Before He Ever Played In One

Trae Young has spent his professional career working within the unenviable anonymity of Atlanta Hawks basketball, known mostly for a high usage rate that has not necessarily corresponded to team success. Young made the career mistake of helping his team make a conference fin...

Defector
03 Mar 17:06 • Barry Petchesky

Anyone Want To See Kash Patel Fall On His Ass While Playing Hockey?

It was a busy week for FBI Director and special little guy Kash Patel. On Sunday he was slamming Michelob Ultras in Team USA's locker room. Midweek he was firing a dozen veteran agents in retaliation for their role investigating Donald Trump's mishandling of classified docum...

Defector
03 Mar 16:18 • Luis Paez-Pumar

Why Is Soccer’s Most Famous Scoopster Doing PR Work For Saudi Arabia?

From the man who brought you questionable journalistic focus on a player accused of rape, comes an outright #ad for Saudi Arabia. https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/2028818183923147039 That's soccer scoopster Fabrizio Romano, taking a break from many (many) bettin...

Defector
03 Mar 14:18 • Abigail Segel

The NWSL Offseason Put Important New Faces In New Places

In less than two weeks, a new season of the NWSL kicks off. If that causes you to do a double-take—Didn’t Rose Lavelle just score the championship game-winner, like, last week?—you’re not alone. The championship match was followed immediately by a December full of the NWSL’s...

Defector
02 Mar 22:12 • Giri Nathan

Daniil Medvedev’s Tennis Plans Interrupted By Unrelated Global Crisis

Daniil Medvedev experienced a series of unusual events this weekend. He had never won the same title twice, a distinguishing oddity of his career, but he finally did so Saturday when he recaptured the ATP 500 title in Dubai, which he last won in 2023, for his 23rd title over...

Defector
02 Mar 20:00 • Patrick Redford

Cycling Prodigy Paul Seixas Accepts The Sport’s Defining Burden

When Paul Seixas rode away from Matteo Jorgenson 40 kilometers from the finish of this past weekend's Faun-Ardeche Classic, he was taking a casual drink. The 19-year-old Frenchman had just shattered a small group wending up the Col de Saint Romain de Lerps, forcing a pace on...

Defector
02 Mar 20:00 • Ray Ratto

Pat Riley To NBA Coaches: Would It Kill You To Put On A Nice Suit For Once?

One of the best things about becoming older (as opposed to simply aging, which universally sucks) is the moment when the knowledge that there is nothing new under the sun becomes something more like instinct. Most notably, this comes through the realization that everything t...

Defector
02 Mar 20:00 • Luis Paez-Pumar

Tottenham Is Not Too Big To Fail

Of all the members of the English Premier League's so-called "Big Six" clubs, Tottenham Hotspur's inclusion has always been the most generous. Liverpool, Arsenal, and Manchester United are clearly deserving of their spots as historical powerhouses that can weather runs of ba...

Defector
02 Mar 18:45 • Erin Somers

Talking To A. Natasha Joukovsky About Men, Myths, And March Madness

The odds of filling out a perfect NCAA bracket are one in nine quintillion, two hundred twenty-three quadrillion, three-hundred-seventy-two trillion, thirty-six billion, eight-hundred-fifty-four million, seven-hundred-seventy-five thousand, eight hundred and eight. This is a...

Defector
02 Mar 16:51 • Lauren Theisen

New Japan Makes, The World Takes

TRENTON, N.J. — The Trenton Transit Center isn't pretty, or even notable, and it won't win any architectural awards, but it gets the job done if you're coming down to see Tomohiro Ishii wrestling in the Garden State's capital. Ishii alone is worth any length of train journey...

Defector
02 Mar 16:12 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

The Crossword, March 2: College Athletes

We’re kind of the big puzzle on campus. This week's crossword was constructed by Bill Ouska, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Billy is a corporate attorney based in Dallas who’s thrilled to have the opportunity to combine his love of sports with his love of crosswords.

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
02 Mar 16:12 • Tom Ley

Donald Trump Can’t Even Pretend To Explain The Plan For Iran

The United States and Israel started a war with Iran over the weekend, dropping bombs in multiple cities across that country. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the bombing. So too, according to reports, were more than 100 children at a school in the...

Defector
02 Mar 14:00 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

How Can You Not Be Romantic About Women’s Basketball?

Most "women’s sports novels" are really novels about girls. In them, girlhood is something mourned before it's over. Like the games themselves, the books are set to ticking clocks. When the high school field hockey players of Quan Barry's We Ride Upon Sticks grill their...

Defector
01 Mar 20:18 • Samer Kalaf

Regime Change Is Blowing Up A School Full Of Children

Israel and the United States launched a joint attack on Iran Saturday morning, bombing several cities in the country. As a result, Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, his death confirmed by state media Sunday. Also included in the casualties were reportedl...

Defector
01 Mar 19:42 • Chris Thompson

Mets Prospect Might Be 80 Percent Egg At This Point

At Defector, we like weird sports eaters. The demands of elite performance encourage monomania, which is expressed by your various sports freaks as often inviolable, occasionally bizarre food restrictions. Even sports commentators and hot-takers get in on it: Skip Bayless fa...