Ja Morant Scores 30, Stuffs Kyrie Irving, Will Be A Lot Of Fun On The Grizzlies
Big fat dunks, pinpoint dimes, and the gumption to go at Kyrie Irving in a scoring duel and win? Ja Morant delivered on all those fronts Sunday as the Memphis Grizzlies took out the Brooklyn Nets, 134-133. Based on Morant’s 30-point, nine-assist romp, the No. 2 pick out of Murray State intends to re...
LeBron James Should Just Recap Your Crappy Team's Games From Memory
Thursday’s Lakers media scrum afforded LeBron James yet another opportunity to showcase his impeccable memory for the press. As he explained his habit of watching every NBA game during his off-days, James rattled off several plays from Wednesday night’s Timberwolves-Nets OT thriller....
Tacko Fall Is In Concussion Protocol Because He Bonked His Head On The Ceiling
Tacko Fall, the 7-foot-5 Celtics rookie and current tallest NBA player, is a delight. Unfortunately, Fall was not healthy for Wednesday’s season opener due to a low ceiling he encountered on Oct. 18....
Nikola Jokic Lulled Hassan Whiteside To Sleep
New Blazers addition Hassan Whiteside was very, very excited to see Nikola Jokic in early foul trouble on Tuesday night. After racking up three fouls in four minutes of play, the Nuggets big man hibernated for the rest of the first half. He then returned in the second half to cook the opposition. D...
Patrick Beverley Has Somehow Reached A Higher Plane Of Intensity On The New-Look Clippers
Becoming a title favorite over the summer and opening the season against the hometown rival would all be hugely motivational for the Clippers. But Patrick Beverley has never required that extra fuel. By tipoff of any given game he has already showered in kerosene and used a lit match as a Q-tip. ...
The Brain-Poisoned Knicks Fan's Case For Frank Ntilikina
Knicks fandom is an identity unto itself—big dummy who likes pain—but it is not one big undifferentiated blob of big dummy. These fans hold a diversity of strong opinions, on players that no healthy person should have to think about any longer than a commercial break. Heading into the new season, t...
A Brief Interview With A Novice Climber Who Comfortably Scaled A Replica Of Trump's Border Wall
Donald Trump is confident that the wall along the southern border—which was the central promise of his presidential campaign, and which is slowly, stupidly, expensively, illegally, taking shape—cannot be scaled. “We got climbers. We had 20 mountain climbers,” the president burbled last month. “That’...
Jimmy Butler Compares Himself To A Work Of Art, Specifically A Banksy
No forecast of Jimmy Butler’s surging cheese levels, no matter how thorough, could have anticipated the day he compared himself to a Banksy artwork. It’s too on the nose, but that’s exactly what the Heat forward told Haute Living in last week’s profile. (Also revealed: Butler has taken on a bit of a...
Enes Kanter Appears To Take Shot At LeBron James's China Comments, Says "Freedom Is Not Free"
On the most generous possible read, the NBA-China news cycle has revealed just how little players and coaches have ever considered the ethical stakes of doing business with an authoritarian state. The more cynical read is that they understand these stakes well enough but have decided there’s way to...
Now 15-Year-Old Coco Gauff Has Won Her First Title
Even as Coco Gauff made her runs at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open runs this summer, the prodigy did not actually beat any player ranked higher than No. 44 in the world. (Venus Williams just so happened to be No. 44 at the time.) What the 15-year-old Gauff accomplished by winning a title Sunday at the ...
Rockets Flack Tells Reporter To Stick To Sports After She Asks Players About Political Expression
Russell Westbrook and James Harden each dropped 22 points in the Rockets’ preseason victory over the Raptors in Saitama, Japan. In the postgame presser, CNN’s Christina Macfarlane asked a question of the two players:...
A Brief Interview With A Man Who Faithfully Recreates LeBron's Instagram As If He Were A Giraffe
An artist who goes by “Maso Rich” has produced hyper-faithful, parallel-universe versions of the Instagram accounts of LeBron James and Steph Curry. In these universes, LeBron is a giraffe and Steph, in an inspired bit of casting, is a bush baby. Deadspin spoke with Maso Rich on the phone to underst...
Andy Murray Is Back To Beefing
Andy Murray’s happy return to tennis wouldn’t have been complete without some trademark stink-faced kvetching—mostly at himself, but occasionally at his opponent when the situation warrants. Few opponents deserve a good kvetch in the face like Fabio Fognini, Murray’s matchup in the second round of t...
Naomi Osaka Ends Bianca Andreescu's Hot Streak, Opens Up What Should Be A Gnarly Rivalry
Bianca Andreescu, a 19-year-old apparently blessed with every tennis gift besides consistent health, has enjoyed one of the most surreal debuts in tennis history. Her season’s been so good that she can toss off a quote like “I kind of forgot how to lose” and no fair observer bats an eye. Consider a...
Andy Murray Is Alive Again
Andy Murray has been to hell and back this year. At the Australian Open, the Scot tearfully announced his retirement at age 31, due to hip pain so severe it interfered with his daily life. A rare hip resurfacing surgery left the rest of his career in question. At the time of that announcement, Murra...
Jimmy Butler Will Reach His Final Form In Miami
It took zero days of Miami Heat training camp for cheese to continue cascading out of Jimmy Butler’s pores. In truth, the cheese began to flow T-minus 6.5 hours before camp even started: Butler got up at 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday to squeeze in a morning workout, per the Miami Herald, and he made sure eve...
Joel Embiid Crushes Tennis Balls At The Public Courts In Philly
The NBA will start its season soon, and its behemoths are running rampant across the nation. Boban Marjanovic is busy flipping-a-chick at the State Fair of Texas, and Joel Embiid is back on the public playgrounds of Philadelphia....
The Josh Jackson Saga Has Gotten Bleaker
Josh Jackson, drafted by the Suns with the fourth overall pick in the 2017 NBA draft and hailed as a do-everything wing, has not demonstrated a clear ability to do much of anything. He’s struggled with shooting, decision-making, defense, and virtually every identifiable element of basketball. Afte...
Nick Kyrgios Will Face His Toughest Test Yet: Being A Good Lad For Six Months
Over a month ago, Nick Kyrgios vaporized two rackets during a “bathroom break,” berated an umpire for the better part of an hour, and allegedly spat at that umpire at match’s end in Cincinnati. The next day, the ATP announced $113,000 in fines for the Australian’s nine code violations. The rest of ...
If The NBA's Itching To Investigate Something, It Should Look At The Orlando Magic
The NBA has promised to crack down on tampering and salary cap circumvention, rolling out new rules and talking a big game about ramped-up enforcement. So far the league has done really noble work, punishing the Milwaukee Bucks for noting that their own player, Giannis Antetokounmpo, will be offered...