as Page 948 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
![<i>Sports Illustrated</i> Publishes Anonymous Scout's Tantrum Over Odubel Herrera [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/ewrihg1pb18pxsik82wc.jpg)
<i>Sports Illustrated</i> Publishes Anonymous Scout's Tantrum Over Odubel Herrera [Update]
Sports Illustrated published its season previews for every MLB team today, and the entry for the Philadelphia Phillies features a trip back to a time when an anonymous scout dog-whistling a non-white player was a regular genre in sportswriting....

Lonzo Ball Should Get These Tattoos Next
As Big Baller Brand apparently unravels amid an embezzlement scandal, Lonzo Ball looks ready to shift loyalties. The Lakers guard has already covered up his BBB logo tattoo with a pair of impossibly shaped dice. Once you see those bones, they’re unforgettable, and unmistakably familiar, too. Their d...

The 2019 NFL Coaches' Class Photo Features Matching Grudens And A Smiling Bill Belichick
Twenty-six head coaches showed up for the class photo at this week’s NFL meetings in Phoenix. Look at all those bright, squinting faces! (Here’s the hi-res version.) This year’s absences: Bruce Arians, Pete Carroll, Sean Payton, Mike Tomlin, Adam Gase, and Sean McVay, who said he didn’t mean to miss...

How Much Longer Will Baseball Stadiums Be For Baseball Fans?
MLB’s attendance, you might have heard, was down last year, around four percent by season’s end. The league’s front office, represented by anthropomorphized wet blanket Rob Manfred, has operated under the assumption that pace of play is the issue, arguing that “putting the best entertainment product...

Here Come The Padres
After an exceedingly depressing offseason, in which months passed without anything happening and top free agents remain unsigned and two-thirds of the league evinced no interest in winning, it is time to feel good. Feel good about the weather warming, feel good that it’s just one day until real, act...

Whatever Michael Avenatti Has On Nike, No One Really Gives A Shit
Michael Avenatti wanted money, it appears. Maybe he thought he needed it. That much is clear from the two sets of federal charging documents filed against him Monday, one in New York and another in California. In the California case, a 197-page document outlines how authorities believe Avenatti misr...

Lance Stephenson Turned Jeff Green Into A Tumbling Tumbleweed
NBA floors must be getting extremely slippery as the regular season winds down. First Chris Paul chased D.J. Wilson off the court with a step-back move in Houston’s loss to Milwaukee earlier tonight, and here we have Lance Stephenson sending Jeff Green flailing to hell with a fierce dribble sequenc...

NFL Owners Vote To Make Pass Interference Calls And Non-Calls Reviewable
That replay review would be expanded to include pass interference ahead of the 2019-2020 NFL season seemed inevitable. The question, then, was whether it would be expanded in such a way that it could hope to address the kind of situation that befouled the NFC Championship game in January, when the S...

Steven Souza Jr. Tore Up His Left Knee By Slipping On Home Plate
Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Steven Souza Jr. suffered some catastrophic tears in his left knee Monday night in one of his team’s final exhibition games before the start of the season, after he slipped on home plate while scoring a run. He’ll be forced to miss the 2019 season....

Robert Kraft Is The Silent Center Of The NFL Meetings
PHOENIX — The NFL’s owners are gathered at a fancypants resort here for their annual league meetings. On the agenda are numerous proposals for rules changes, and this morning was the breakfast at which the head coaches got hit with rapid-fire questions for an hour before reporters tore into the buff...

Report: Conor McGregor Is Under Investigation For Sexual Assault, Was Arrested In January
UFC fighter Conor McGregor is under investigation by Irish police for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman in a Dublin hotel in December, according to the New York Times’s Tariq Panja. McGregor hasn’t been charged with a crime, though he was arrested and questioned by Irish authorities on Jan. 17. ...

Complete Farce Of A Basketball Team Ends Blowout Loss In Completely Farcical Way
There’s no reason to watch the Phoenix Suns lose on purpose this season except to see how number-one pick DeAndre Ayton is doing (fine, mostly) or watch Devin Booker go all-out for another impressive yet futile solo scoring display. Booker went off again Monday night in Utah, although his own teamma...

My Kids Won’t Stop Gaslighting Me<em></em>
If you’ve been around these internet parts for the past few years, you know all about gaslighting, wherein people stand behind a lie so fervently that they compel others to believe it as well, leaving marks unsure as to what is true and what really is the name of Apple CEO Tim Apple....

Holy Shit, The Mets Actually Paid Jacob deGrom
For an offseason defined by a glacial market, collusion-adjacent bad vibes, and the inexplicable unemployment of a number of useful big league free agents with opening day now in sight, the last week or so has been very busy. Instead of entering what is clearly a badly malfunctioning free agent mark...

Turkey Vulture Flies Through Stephen A. Smith's Office Window In Attempted Bird-On-Bird Violence
The turkey vulture, which lacks the bird voice organ known as a syrinx, is a generally mute bird, with vocalizations limited to grunts and hisses. So maybe it was just professional jealousy that sent one Connecticut turkey vulture hurtling into the ESPN office of Stephen A. Smith, a bird known not j...

MLB Suspends Giants CEO Larry Baer Without Pay For Physical Altercation With His Wife
The MLB front office announced today that commissioner Robert Manfred has suspended San Francisco Giants CEO and minority owner Larry Baer until July 1 of this year—essentially half the baseball season—without pay for the altercation with his wife that was caught on video and published by TMZ earlie...

The President Couldn't Help Being Weird At The Capitals' White House Visit
On Monday—a curiously long time after winning the Stanley Cup, given that the team in question didn’t need to wait for a road trip to Washington—the Capitals visited the White House. More notable was who didn’t make the trip....

Blazers' Jusuf Nurkic Carried Off On Stretcher After Gruesome, Catastrophic Leg Injury
Late in the second overtime of Portland’s win over the Brooklyn Nets, Trail Blazers center Jusuf Nurkic landed awkwardly on his left foot after jumping for an offensive rebound, and his lower leg folded horrifyingly under him. This was one of those injuries where players on both teams sprinted away ...

Uh Oh, Suddenly The Thunder Are A Huge Pile Of Ass
The Oklahoma City Thunder went into the All-Star break having won 11 of 13 games, including victories over the 76ers, the Bucks, the Rockets, and twice over the Blazers. They went a season-best 18 games over .500 with an overtime win over Utah on February 22; since then, they’ve lost 11 of 16, and h...

Mets' Flight To Dreaded Syracuse Grounded On Tarmac For Three Hours, Of Course
The New York Mets took some heat from star pitcher Noah Syndergaard for scheduling an inexplicable workout in Syracuse between the end of spring training in St. Lucie, Florida, and their regular season opener in Washington, D.C. The trip necessitated a three-hour bus ride to Sarasota, and then a la...