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16 Jan 15:51 • Ray Ratto

Nobody Loves An Ex-Loser Like Buffalo

On December 15, the Buffalo Sabres finally fired general manager Kevyn Adams, and no, there wasn't some kinky backstory. As Comrade Theisen explained, owner Terry Pegula just got kind of sick of him, or more properly, his results. When he was hired, the Sabres had already mi...

Defector
16 Jan 15:09 • Dave McKenna

Texas Tech Is Rich And Good At Everything

Texas Tech is good. Good enough to play into April again. On Wednesday night, the Red Raiders ran away from visiting Utah early and stayed there, winning by a final score of 88-74. JT Toppin played as a reigning and likely future Big 12 player of the year should, with 31 po...

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16 Jan 15:09 • Kathryn Xu

‘Hades II’ Is At War With Itself

This blog contains major spoilers for Transistor, Hades, and Hades II. Supergiant's 2014 game Transistor is a love story in the drapings of an apocalyptic sci-fi action-adventure game. The protagonist, Red, is a singer whose voice is stolen after an attempt on her life. Her...

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15 Jan 21:45 • Giri Nathan

LeBron’s Agent Openly Suggests A Trade For The Lakers On His Podcast

The podcast medium is, among other things, an effective technology for getting people to say extremely ill-advised stuff in public. Ultra-powerful sports agents are no exception. Rich Paul, CEO of Klutch Sports Group and longtime agent to LeBron James, said some wild shit on...

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15 Jan 21:24 • David Roth

What It’s Like When ICE Invades Your City, With Arif Hasan

It is one of the rules of podcasting: if you can avoid it, which you generally can, you should avoid the "A Truly Sad Week In America, Plus The 2005 NBA Redraftables" trap. This trap's extremely pithy name was inspired by a June 2020 episode of Bill Simmons' podcast entitled...

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15 Jan 18:48 • Luis Paez-Pumar

Morocco Outlasted Nigeria In A Battle Of Africa’s Finest

Wednesday's Africa Cup of Nations semifinals were covered head-to-toe in narrative appeal. Senegal-Egypt was the more straightforward of the two, in an increasingly star-dominated landscape: Former Liverpool teammates Sadio Mané and Mohamed Salah faced off internationally fo...

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15 Jan 18:33 • Drew Magary

Fuck The Fourth-Down Bluff

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. We’re on the cusp of the NF...

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15 Jan 16:18 • Lauren Theisen

The Three Words That Best Describe The New York Rangers Are As Follows: Stink, Stank, Stunk

They say that if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. The way they played on Wednesday night, the Rangers couldn't make it in a beer league rink in Binghamton. Facing the Ottawa Senators at home, the worst team in the Eastern Conference took its fifth strai...

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15 Jan 16:00 • Albert Burneko

CBS News Is The Trump Administration’s New Laundromat

Back in December, CBS News chief Bari Weiss intervened to spike a deeply reported and extensively documented 60 Minutes newsmagazine story about conditions faced by captives sent by the Trump administration to El Salvador's CECOT concentration camp. Her rationale, as proffered in memos to CBS staff, was that without on-record comment from a member of the administration—which had declined several requests for exactly that—the story lacked necessary balance; without participation from the administration, 60 Minutes was not prepared to give viewers "the full context they need to assess the story."

In case anyone on the face of the Earth was silly enough to buy that Weiss's decision had anything to do with some commitment to balanced and rigorous reporting, this ought to clarify things:

https://bsky.app/profile/cbsnews.com/post/3mcfi5rkdz42m

Defector
15 Jan 14:57 • David Roth

Fascists Are Pathetic

Two days before a shouting cluster of its agents surrounded the car of a Minneapolis mother and shot her to death last week, ICE was demanding answers from the Hilton hotel group on X.com. "Why did your team in Minneapolis cancel our federal law enforcement officer and agent...

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14 Jan 19:30 • Lauren Theisen

The Blue Jackets Are The Fun Kind Of Bad Team

The Columbus Blue Jackets play hockey like they're skating on some sort of ice treadmill: You see a lot of effort, but they don't actually go anywhere. This is a squad that always listens to those jamokes in the stands who yell shooooot, playing a fast and loose style that h...

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14 Jan 18:57 • Giri Nathan

Stephen A. Smith Attributes Outstanding NFL Performance To The Late Charlie Kirk

On Tuesday's edition of ESPN's First Take, Stephen A. Smith described a football game that could not have occurred in our earthly realm. "We saw Charlie Kirk catch eight receptions for 144 yards," he said. It's possible that Smith saw this in a vision, but "we" did not: The ...

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14 Jan 18:51 • Jae Towle Vieira

Mom Crimes And Other International Laws

Everyone knows there are 50 ways to leave your lover, but the 50 ways of introducing your boyfriend to your parents don’t get as much airtime. First impressions with a new partner are notoriously tricky and can be panic inducing, but how long could you reasonably delay the m...

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14 Jan 18:33 • Patrick Redford

Let Your Buyers Become Your Criers When You Pull The Rug Out From Beneath The Table Of Success

I have some unsurprising news: Former New York City Mayor Eric Adams launched a memecoin to combat antisemitism, and someone connected to the coin's launch appears to have executed a clean rug pull within an hour of its launch, making off with roughly $1 million, cratering t...

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14 Jan 18:09 • Tom Ley

CBS Anchor Tony Dokoupil Is Stuck In An Endless Loop Of Humiliation

The new era of CBS Evening News, under the editorial direction of Bari Weiss and featuring new anchor Tony Dokoupil, is off to a rough start. Weiss is meddling and pouting, Dokoupil is not ready for primetime, and the ratings are already slumping compared to last year's numb...

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14 Jan 18:09 • Patrick Redford

How Michigan’s Man On The Inside Got Caught

The 2023-24 Michigan Wolverines season was a campaign of maximalism. Not only because they went 15-0 and won the National Championship, but because they did so while packing a decade's worth of scandals into one year. If you wanted to learn everything about the sport, in all...

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14 Jan 17:00 • Chris Thompson

Giannis Antetokounmpo Is Curdling

Giannis Antetokounmpo is having a bad time. Tuesday night he opened the second half of a home game against the Minnesota Timberwolves with a baseline spin into a tough contested layup over Julius Randle, and finished the play on the ground. Antetokounmpo, seated beneath the basket, formed up the double-thumbs-down gesture, raised it up over his head, and booed loudly. He was not booing the referees, who'd whistled Randle for a foul on the play; he was booing the fans. After Giannis was helped to his feet, he continued to boo his team's fans. He felt it was only fair: Those same Milwaukee unfaithful, after all, had booed the Bucks only minutes earlier.

"Whenever I get booed, I boo back," Antetokounmpo explained after the game. "It won't change home or away."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNSlUzRndy8

Defector
14 Jan 16:27 • Barry Petchesky

‘The Disintegration Loops’ Are Music’s Loveliest Death

It is hard to say what mood I need to be in to have the urge to put on The Disintegration Loops, because it is hard to say what mood they express. The same five- or 10-second loop, so obviously mournful and defeated, can sound at another another time—10 minutes later, or 10 ...

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14 Jan 15:27 • Billy Haisley

Real Madrid Cuts Down Its Fall Guy

It's pretty remarkable to recall today, after the firing of Xabi Alonso and the uncertainty about the state of Real Madrid's star-studded project, that the club is only a year and a half removed from the absolute pinnacle. The 48-hour period between June 1 and June 3, 2024, ...

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13 Jan 23:21 • Israel Daramola

The Steel Curtain Finally Falls On Mike Tomlin

After limping into the playoffs, the Pittsburgh Steelers suffered another first-round loss. After months—years, really—of intense scrutiny of his job, head coach Mike Tomlin has decided to "step down" from the position he's held for 19 years. Like a cowboy at the end of a we...

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13 Jan 22:42 • Tom Ley

Eagles Now Free To Hire An Offensive Coordinator Who Doesn’t Suck

The precocious Eagles child got his wish, sort of. The Philadelphia Eagles announced Tuesday that offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo has been removed from his position, though he will not be banished to a career of burger-flipping, and may even remain on head coach Nick Sir...

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13 Jan 21:21 • Sabrina Imbler

This Worm Is A Millennial

Sometime in the late 1990s, an adult ribbon worm was scooped up from the murk in the waters off the San Juan Islands, in the Pacific Northwest. He was moved to a tank along with a smattering of other invertebrates, including two vermilion bat stars and approximately 30 beige...

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13 Jan 20:18 • Giri Nathan

JD Vance Is A Hog That’ll Eat Any Slop

The operating principle of JD Vance's life in politics seems to be as follows: How can I serve every powerful person while appealing to literally no normal person? There is no boot he won't lick, no special interest he won't kowtow to, no family member he won't throw under t...

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13 Jan 19:00 • Drew Magary

A Belated Review Of ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 (Which Sucked A Fat One)

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 football, e-shopping, lotion application methods, and more.

Your letters:

Raffi12:

Defector
13 Jan 17:57 • Lauren Theisen

The World’s Angriest Rangers Fans Might Be Right

The last-place New York Rangers hit a humiliating new low on Saturday, when the Boston Bruins demonized them with a 10-2 drubbing up in Beantown. Trudging back home in the Charlie Brown Christmas pose, the team that played the best regular season in all of the NHL just two s...

Defector
13 Jan 17:36 • Giri Nathan

Joe Mazzulla Reacts To Celtics Loss By Only Repeating Two Words: “Illegal Screen”

After his Boston Celtics lost 98-96 to the Indiana Pacers on Monday night, head coach Joe Mazzulla delivered a tour-de-force performance as the character "Joe Mazzulla." While speaking to press, he answered all six questions with the same two words, then left.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdk4OmBnRM

There's a lot to love about Mazzulla's line delivery. You think, just for a second, that he might provide an actual answer to the next query—nope. "Illegal screen."

Defector
13 Jan 16:51 • Barry Petchesky

Remember When Aaron Rodgers Was Good?

I think about shoulders a lot. (Bear with me.) What would you say made humans the dominant species on the planet Earth? (I said, bear with me.) Is it our big brains, allowing us the use of language to pass down technology and culture? Sure, but before that. Is it our bipedal...

Defector
13 Jan 16:18 • Ray Ratto

The Houston Texans Ushered Aaron Rodgers Into Oblivion

With the football world's sudden fixation on Mike Tomlin's future or lack of same in Pittsburgh raising the question of why coaching longevity is suddenly a bad thing, we have completely forgotten the more obvious reason for caring about the Steelers—the end of Aaron Rodgers...

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13 Jan 15:42 • Patrick Redford

Convening The TrueHoop Ideas Summit, With Henry Abbott

This week's Nothing But Respect with returning champion and human body expert Henry Abbott was a very fun one. Before we get too far into what was said, I have to tell you, I have been thinking nonstop about something Henry said over an hour into the recording: When he playe...

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13 Jan 15:15 • Chris Thompson

How Much Is Eight Dollars?

You heard me. Is eight dollars five dollars? Or is eight dollars 10 dollars? Why are you making that face right now? Stop making faces and answer the question: How much is eight bucks? Stephen Totilo, games journalist and author of the Game File newsletter, got into the ont...