Tyrese Haliburton can only be a spectator to Indiana Pacers games this season, watching from the sidelines in outfits that make him look like an increasingly cool substitute teacher. Regardless, I have found myself thinking about his role on the so-very-almost NBA Champions ...

Tim. Tim Tim Tim Tim Tim Tim. You absolute moron. You absolute buffoon.

How long have you, Tim Saunders, been on the radio calling Flyers games? You've been doing it since 1997, which is basically 30 years. At any point in those 30 years did someone tell you that when the light is on, you are on the air? Did no one ever advise you to behave as if every microphone you ever encounter is on at all times? Seems like no, or we wouldn't be in this little situation now, would we?

Jake Paul’s finally doing what boxing fans have spent years clamoring for: fighting somebody who should beat his ass.

Tonight Paul gets in the ring with Anthony Joshua in Miami. On paper, like all Paul matchups, this fight shouldn’t even happen. Their faceoffs to hype the event have only made the bout seem as nonsensical as any of Paul’s other fights. Only this time Paul’s playing the bug to be squashed.

The Elite Ice Hockey League, the top level of hockey in the U.K., doesn't get a lot of big names. NHLers who have washed out of North America tend to head to the Continent: Sweden, Finland, Russia et al., all offer more money, better facilities, and a bigger spotlight for a ...

Welcome to The Backlog, a series in which we will take a look back at 12 games from 2020 that, in one way or another, had a lasting impact on the video game industry.

When I first started ruminating on a video game series for Defector, I was playing Cyberpunk 2077. This wasn't a departure from my usual habits or some great coincidence, because I'd been returning to the game often since its 2020 release. (At the time of writing this, I am almost done with what will be my fourth lengthy playthrough of the game.) I have been fascinated with CD Projekt Red's follow-up to the world-conquering The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt since before it even existed. Given all of the hype, the delays, the embarrassing launch, and how much I'm still playing it deep into 2025, I think Cyberpunk 2077 has been the game I have thought about the most this decade.

Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide, where Israel Daramola and Ray Ratto will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about. Israel: Last year when we did this, the assumption was that the committee would finagle thing...

In a way, it is heartening that I've never been good at the annual podcast tradition of Williams-Sonoma Catalog Price Is Right. This year marks my seventh attempt at it, with the only exception being the part of 2019 and 2020 in which I had neither jobs nor a podcast. I only do it once a year, and I am not otherwise in the market for ultra high-end espresso machine gewgaws or premium heat-and-eat hors d'oeuvres, but also seven times is a decent number of times to do something and absolutely suck at it roughly as bad each time. But as we kept reminding The Simpsons showrunner Matt Selman, our guest for this year's edition, it's not a competition. It's more a formatted indictment of the current phase of capitalism we all inhabit with some guessing-game aspects.

The good news is that the Winnipeg Jets have their cornerstone goalie, Connor Hellebuyck, back in the lineup and apparently at full strength after missing a month due to knee surgery. The bad news is the Jets can't win any games no matter who's in net if they don't score goa...

Say at least this much for Matt Brown, writer of the college sports-focused Extra Points newsletter: He is a fair-minded guy. You can safely bestow unto him the Ceremonial Scepter of Good Duderdom. Tuesday, Brown learned that ESPN, the all-powerful behemoth astride sports me...

These are heady days for Arsenal fans. After three consecutive years as the Premier League's designated nearly men, the Gunners finally look poised to win the title, ending a dry spell that has lasted more than 20 years now. Though dominant domestic campaigns are often accom...

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.

Lemme tell you about this fucking dog. The shit I have been through with this dog, you wouldn’t believe. We got him as a Christmas gift for our kids nine years ago. Before that, our kids were like DOG DOG DOG DOG DOG! GIVE US A DOG! And I was like, “I got two jobs and three kids, and now you want me to add a dog to this pile of shit on my desk? No. No way. Let’s just get another fish and then watch it die.”

It's the most wonderful time of year, and we at Defector are proud to bring back our series discussing some of the most, uh, available holiday movies.

Sabrina Imbler: Thank you for joining me in watching the first and hopefully the last Christmas movie I’ve ever seen about a consulting firm. In our world, Santa relies on elves to determine whether children are good or bad. In the world of She’s Making a List, Santa has outsourced the naughty or nice lists to the Naughty or Nice Group, which relies on an algorithm to determine the inherent goodness and badness of children. Before we talk about the movie, I need to ask, what do you make of Santa's strategy?

Going to live theater is one of the main things I do in my life, so I have decided to highlight some of this year's productions that particularly excelled in categories that I just now made up.

Best Conceit

We need to keep all NFL players away from streamers. Or, at the very least, one streamer in particular: Adin Ross.

When we last checked in with Ross he was hanging out in what was surely a crazy-smelling room with then-Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner, who decided that a live broadcast was a good place to say, "I'm gonna be honest, like no funny weird shit, y'all run the world." He was talking to Ross, who is Jewish, and who did not take offense because his whole brand is built around moronic provocation. You may also remember him as the guy who bought Donald Trump a Cybertruck.

Expansion teams are usually bad because they’re contingent on being bad. For narrowing the other teams’ slices of the revenue pie, they can join the league only at a high cost and at some competitive disadvantage. If they do fashion something workable from everyone’s leftove...

Laura Wellington is estranged from one of her adult daughters. The Connecticut 59-year-old is somewhat famous for this, in fact, or anyway famous for her response to it. Across Tiktok and Instagram, under the name "Doormat Mom," Wellington's railing against the supposed inju...

Terence “Bud” Crawford, the most accomplished fighter of his generation, announced his retirement last night on social media, saying he had “nothing else left to prove.” 

It's hard to argue with the man. Crawford leaves the fight game with a 42-0 record, and recognized as the only fighter in the alphabet soup era of boxing to hold undisputed championships in three different weight classes. The first of his undisputeds came at light welterweight (140 lbs.) in 2017, when he KO’d Namibian Julius Indongo with a savage third-round left hook to the kidney in Lincoln, Neb., in a fight that only a few boxing hardcores cared about. 

In a surprising offseason move, men's No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz has split with his coach Juan Carlos Ferrero, after seven years and six major titles. Thus ends one of the most successful and intimate partnerships in tennis. It began when Alcaraz was a teenager, traveling an hour ...

There is a rarefied group of NHL players worth watching no matter the circumstances—time, place, stakes, teammates, opponents, whatever. Macklin Celebrini might already in that club. The 19-year-old center, drafted first overall in 2024, is leading a resurgent, playoff-minde...

I'm doing things a little differently this year. Instead of writing a list of matches, I'm going to look the last 12 months of pro wrestling in three different parts of the world, then give you some matches to watch at the end of each section. Ready? Ring the bell.

The U.S.

Family heirlooms are a trap, okay? But that doesn’t mean I know how to escape. Way back in the late 70s, my dad bought my mom a simple necklace composed of tiny lapis lazuli beads. My dad was never the type to buy jewelry, and my mom was never the type to wear it, which ought to take pressure off.  And yet I sense a storm is already brewing. 

I want the necklace, but have never said so out loud. This is partially because my family is still mulling over the concept of the singular they as a pronoun, and I don’t know if they can handle me wearing jewelry without going through a major gender regression. My sister-in-law wore the necklace when she married my brother a few years ago—it was her “something borrowed,” and how cute it’s also blue! I think that was checkmate and I might not ever get over it.

Dante Alighieri thought he could write himself out of exile. In 1300, while serving on a governing committee in his beloved Florence, the poet was involved in a factional dispute among city leaders. The following year, while in Rome on a diplomatic mission, he found his own ...

[Opens front door while holding a toy corgi in one arm]

Merry Christmas! Oh my God, you made it! I thought you might be stuck at the airport for weeks! Well, because it’s such madness out there. Piper here won’t eat his treats; he can feel the tension in the air. And our Charlotte just endured at nightmare at O’Hare on her way back to us from Colorado College. Her plane sat on the tarmac for eight hours. And she was seated next to this awful, big fat woman who brought a bag of Taco Bell food onto the plane with her. Can you imagine? I suppose they just let anyone fly these days.

California's Central Valley is a 400-mile long expanse, penned in by the Sierra Nevadas to the East and the Coast Ranges to the west. The flatland is composed of remarkably fertile soil, as both mountain ranges erode into and drain out through the valley via the San Francisc...

When Rob Reiner was killed earlier this week along with his wife and creative partner Michelle, the world of film lost one of its most beloved and respected figures, an artist who had done very good and extremely popular work in a variety of genres, first in front of the cam...

Nothing But Respect returning champion Tom Krell unveiled several compelling theories this week on the show. They include:

• Las Vegas is becoming increasingly irrelevant as a nexus of vice, since the internet now facilitates all that stuff.
• Cam Johnson runs like a middle manager.
• The Oklahoma City Thunder will lose "10-12 games at some point this season" (he's joking but his reasoning is compelling).
• Based on conversations he's had with someone who helps style Cade Cunningham, Jamal Murray has cost himself millions of dollars by refusing to optimize his Instagram presence, which we all found refreshing.
• Nikola Jokic is a negentropic hooper.

The WNBA and its labor force are in the midst of a contentious, high-stakes CBA negotiation, which could not be happening at a more interesting historical juncture. Women's sports have seen explosive growth in their popularity over the past few years, which is not without it...

In late November and early December 1999, the World Trade Organization convened in Seattle for a round of conferences and negotiations. Tens of thousands of protesters hit the streets to meet them, including labor activists alarmed by the post-NAFTA landscape of the US, as w...

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 Joe Burrow, karate kicking a door shut, LARRY, Christmas cookies, and more.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: This is my last Funbag of 2025. I’m headed out on Christmas break with my family, so we’ll have a guest host or two minding the store while I’m gone. Same deal with the Jamboroo. As always, you can still write into our guest bloggers using the usual Funbag email address, so get on that. And have yourself a merry little Christmas, won’t you?

How do you solve a problem like the Buffalo Sabres? If you just looked at a list of the guys who've played for them over the past decade—Jack Eichel, Ryan O'Reilly, Jeff Skinner, Sam Reinhart, Tage Thompson, Rasmus Dahlin, JJ Peterka—you'd probably think, "Well, surely this ...