FeedCity: Defector

Defector
28 Oct 17:33 • Patrick Redford

Everything Is Gambling Now, With Liz Franczak

The first week of the NBA season has been overstuffed with huge news stories that call into question the legitimacy of what we are being shown on the floor—namely, Jaylen Brown's spray-on hair situation. Also, the second night of NBA hoops was followed by the arrest of a cur...

Defector
28 Oct 16:33 • Nicholas Russell

Erin Somers On The State Of Literary Fiction, Hudson Valley Life, And Reviving The Infidelity Novel

In recent years, the literary marriage novel has taken a backseat to the literary divorce novel, the novel of interpersonal discontent and cynicism, with forms like autofiction sometimes used as a means of gaining distance from or interrogating the project of heterosexual co...

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28 Oct 16:00 • Owen Lewis

Felix Auger-Aliassime Is Once Again Threatening To Turn The Corner

Before Wimbledon in 2019, I remember skimming over the list of men’s favorites at a number of sites. Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal … Felix Auger-Aliassime? He was 18 years old at the time and ranked 21st in the world, but no worse than the sixth-favorite anywhe...

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28 Oct 15:06 • Lauren Theisen

The Blue Jays Won’t Let Shohei Ohtani Do That Again

Shohei Ohtani's pennant-clinching game against the Brewers was the greatest baseball performance of all time, and during Game 3 of the World Series, it wasn't hard to talk yourself into the idea that you could be witnessing No. 2. Ohtani smashed the record for most times on ...

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28 Oct 09:18 • Ray Ratto

If You Went To Sleep, Sorry But You Are Not Forgiven

I think we can all agree we got cheated last night, and to be technical about it, it was still last night—at least on the West Coast where the nice people live—when Freddie Freeman hit the 609th pitch of Game 3 of the 2025 World Series into the darkness beyond...

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27 Oct 19:57 • David Roth

Terry Bradshaw: A Man I Believed To Be Andy Reid Recently Tried To Sell Me Pigs

There has always been a strong note of pranking to Terry Bradshaw's work as a NFL studio analyst at Fox. Bradshaw's role is mostly that of a Vibes Guy, the most off-kilter and least self-serious participant in a show that is mostly some guys in suits going "haw haw haw" and ...

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27 Oct 19:57 • Israel Daramola

Be Careful, Indiana, You’re The Hottest Team In Football

Curt Cignetti has not just turned around the fortunes of the Indiana University football program, he's made them into a juggernaut. A team that is not only winning games, is not only expected to win games, but is expected to dominate games. After crushing a UCLA team that wa...

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27 Oct 19:41 • Patrick Redford

The NBA Media Is Not Built To Cover A Gambling Scandal

Hours after the FBI arrested Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups, and published a pair of indictments detailing the former's alleged involvement in a cooked prop-bet unders scheme and the latter's alleged involvement in a rigged mafia poker game, the sports-watching public tur...

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27 Oct 19:18 • Giri Nathan

Jaylen Brown’s Really Leaving His Mark On Opponents

Carlos Boozer's twin sons are top prospects for the 2026 NBA draft, but he may have yet another legacy in the league: artificial hair. It would appear that Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown is carrying on the tradition. Over the weekend, Brown had two incidents in which some kind of dark residue on his head, possibly applied to simulate a hairline, appeared to smear onto the clothing of opposing players.

The first of these incidents occurred in the third quarter of Friday's game against the New York Knicks. (His hairline was looking rather painterly in this pregame photo posted that day.) With Knicks wing OG Anunoby guarding him, Brown hit a ball fake and nuzzled his forehead against his defender's torso. You can see the smudge occur in real time.

Defector
27 Oct 18:48 • Luis Paez-Pumar

Alright, What The Damn Hell Is Going On With Liverpool?

Even though Liverpool opened this Premier League season with five straight wins, the cracks in the defending champion's armor were clear for all to see. Sure, as a fan, it was fun to watch the Pool Boys pull off miracle after miracle, and in my most biased moments, I thought...

Defector
27 Oct 18:27 • Kathryn Xu

The Championship Lead Seizes Lando Norris

It is only fitting that Lando Norris would reclaim the championship lead for the first time since April in a controversial, penalty-forward mess of a race in which he was barely involved. This is Formula 1, after all. It's always litigation season. From the very start of th...

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27 Oct 18:12 • Vikram Murthi

Jafar Panahi Returns With The Masterful Revenge Drama ‘It Was Just An Accident’

The sole child in Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident knows right from wrong. In the film’s first scene, a young girl is introduced bopping up and down in the backseat of a car, to the beat of a repetitive dance number all but designed to annoy tired moms and dads everywh...

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27 Oct 16:06 • Ray Ratto

The Coaching Hot Seat Is Now An Ejector Seat

The latest crisis in college football—there's one every week, because crises are oddly good for business—is one of scarcity. With more money in the hands of boosters whose identity revolves around spending it and fewer rules binding those glad hands, every weekend is no...

Defector
27 Oct 16:00 • Tom Ley

Those Steelers Uniforms Looked Like Shit

The Pittsburgh Steelers lost to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday night, and they looked like crap the whole time.

Calvin Austin — Joe Sargent/Getty Images

Defector
27 Oct 15:16 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

The Crossword, Oct. 27: I’ve Seen This One (Themeless)

It's time to wrap up the month with a challenging themeless. Keep an eye out for tricky clues and fun wordplay. This puzzle was constructed by Will Eisenberg and Brian Callahan, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Will is a French horn player, music teacher, and puzzlemaker in the T...

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27 Oct 13:36 • Lauren Theisen

Green Bay Packers Show Immunity To Aaron Rodgers

It would have made for a more dramatic scene if it happened at Lambeau Field, but nevertheless, plenty of folks in Packer jerseys showed up to the stadium on the North Shore in Pittsburgh to watch Aaron Rodgers—suiting up for the team he beat in Super Bowl XLV—take on the Gr...

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26 Oct 20:34 • Albert Burneko

Get A Job, Asshole

The East Wing of the White House is gone; Donald Trump had it bulldozed last week to make room for an inevitably gaudy, oversized, uglier-than-hell ballroom in his signature "what a 12-year-old thinks New Classical architecture looks like" style. I will be honest with you: I...

Defector
26 Oct 20:34 • Chris Thompson

Nico Harrison, Mavericks Fans, And Rooting Against Your Guys

At Defector, in our staff Slack, we have a slogan: Root For Your Guys (RFYG). It's an ethic, and also very often an exhortation. As an upstanding sports fan, your only true calling is to root for those guys down there, wearing your team's colors. However much grumping you mi...

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26 Oct 18:06 • Chris Thompson

They Can’t All Be Yoshinobu Yamamoto

The Toronto Blue Jays laid down a pretty good template right from the start of their victory Friday night in Game 1 of the World Series. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. worked a first-inning seven-pitch walk, then Alejandro Kirk worked a nine-pitch walk, and even though Dodgers starte...

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24 Oct 18:51 • Dan McQuade

The Journey Of All 1,091 U.S. Roller Coasters Ends With A Toot Around The Track

Rick Mathews has spent most recent weekends driving thousands of miles. Sometimes he flies somewhere and then drives. Sometimes he has several flights in a weekend between all that driving. This was what was required during the home stretch of his years-long quest to ride ev...

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24 Oct 18:27 • Patrick Redford

Donald Trump’s Crypto Corruption Machine Is Whirring Along At A Stunning Pace

On Thursday, Donald Trump announced a presidential pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. Zhao, better known as CZ, pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in November 2023, then spent most of the summer of 2024 in a U.S. prison before his September 2024 release. Binan...

Defector
24 Oct 17:30 • Giri Nathan

Shams Charania Tries Out Legal Commentary, With Perplexing Results

Thursday's federal arrests of Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier came with a large and surprising information dump. It took me several hours, some press conference footage, and the help of a few colleagues to convey the relevant f...

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24 Oct 16:18 • Lucy Bloom

How Not To Run A Bullpen

“It just uhh … didn’t go our way.” That was how Mariners manager Dan Wilson responded to a reporter asking if he regretted not bringing in Andrés Muñoz during the seventh inning of Game 7 of the ALCS. That’s certainly an unsatisfying explanation for a decision that will live...

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24 Oct 15:24 • Israel Daramola

It Is Once Again All About ‘Bama

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. Ray: Does Alabama (9) still hate Kalen DeBoer? Has enough time passed since the opening weeke...

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24 Oct 14:33 • Barry Petchesky

The NHL Has A Uniform Problem

To get this out of the way: I find it still a little cruel when the Carolina Hurricanes and Colorado Avalanche celebrate their respective descents from the Hartford Whalers and Quebec Nordiques. Yes, it's been 30 years, but as long as fans of relocated teams are still alive,...

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24 Oct 14:03 • Ray Ratto

Adam Silver’s Job Is About To Get So Much Harder

It's one thing to open your season with a 40-point, 15-rebound masterwork, but it is quite another to discover in short order that such deeds are in fact "the least you can do." This is the situation in which Victor Wembanyama now finds himself three days into his third seas...

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24 Oct 14:03 • Albert Burneko

What Can’t The President Do?

Donald Trump bulldozed the East Wing of the White House this week, so that he can build a ballroom with a footprint nearly twice the size of the existing White House, financed by blatant graft. The White House is not Trump's property, and his proposed ballroom will undoubted...

Defector
23 Oct 20:51 • David Roth

No That’s Too Good, With Justin Halpern

There is no real sense in getting upset about the Los Angeles Dodgers, for more or less the same reasons that there is no real sense in getting upset about the weather. Both are awe-inspiring and annoying in about equal measure, but there is only so much that can really be done about either. In this case, I guess, "reasonable expectations about how much fun the World Series might be" are the equivalent of carrying an umbrella. In both cases, there is nothing to do but talk about it, and this week, returning champion guest Justin Halpern took a break from making award-winning television programs to do just that.

Defector
23 Oct 20:51 • Giri Nathan

Chauncey Billups And Terry Rozier Arrested In Connection With Federal Gambling Investigations

Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were arrested Thursday morning as part of an ongoing federal investigation into two separate gambling schemes. In a press conference afterward, officials from multiple enforcement agencies d...

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23 Oct 19:57 • David Roth

Congratulations Kurt Suzuki, You Get To Manage The Opossum House

In a sense, every manager is year-to-year. Baseball is extremely hard and extraordinarily rich in ways for things to go wrong, and firing a manager when things go wrong is the simplest way for an organization to signal to fans that it is addressing those things. It doesn't w...