will Page 72 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Serena Williams Returns With A Humane Butchering At The Australian Open
Serena Williams played her first tour match since a messy U.S. Open championship loss to Naomi Osaka last September, and had very different results. Today in the first round at the Australian Open, she slaughtered world No. 73 Tatjana Maria 6-0, 6-2....

Q&A: Author Rowan Ricardo Phillips On The Future Of Men's Tennis And Why Race Is Still The Game's Third Rail
In the bleak winter days of mid-January 2017, Rowan Ricardo Phillips rose before dawn. The Australian Open was underway, and he was hellbent on watching every televised ATP men’s match over the course of the year. Phillips’s obsession with the game turned into total spectator immersion, starting Dow...

What's Wrong With North Carolina's Nassir Little?
Twelfth-ranked North Carolina pulled off an impressive and highly entertaining 90-82 road win against 15th-ranked rivals NC State on Tuesday night. The breakneck UNC squad is off to a 2-0 start in the ACC, and looks like a team that could be both fun and dangerous in March. With the exception of the...

Gregg Williams Is Now Free To Talk To All Of Those NFL Teams Who Wanted Him As A Head Coach<em></em>
The Browns decided today that offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens will be the team’s next head coach. He will be tasked with leading the Browns into what appears to be a promising future, and he will not be joined on that journey by defensive coordinator Gregg Williams....

Beefy Baseball Hero Willians Astudillo Unabashedly Admires The Hell Out Of His Handiwork
When last we checked on large lad Willians Astudillo, he was hoofing it from first to home with the crazed eyes and petrified rictus of a man being chased by wolves. It’s cold now, and dark, and the things of summer are but painful memories, but it turns out baseball is being played somewhere, and w...

Zion Williamson Compensates For Brutal Airball With Gorgeous 360 Dunk<em></em><em></em>
Duke is cruising at home against Clemson tonight, and Zion Williamson is taking advantage of the blowout to test the more extreme possibilities that playing basketball holds. First, he attempted a three—he’s gone 4-for-21 from behind the arc over 13 games—and barely grazed the bottom of the net....

Alabama Football Player Stops Himself From Saying Something Interesting About Kyler Murray
When asked a question about Heisman Trophy winner and Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray, Alabama defensive lineman Quinnen Williams almost gave an honest answer in advance of Saturday night’s Orange Bowl....

Zion Williamson's Duke Is At Least Slightly Less Sanctimonious
Nick Richards had the right idea. After setting a screen on the right side of the arc, the Kentucky forward rolled toward the lane and found himself open as two defenders converged on ball-handler Keldon Johnson. Richards received the pass and turned toward the hoop, where he had a good look at a la...

Zion Williamson Laughs And Hides His Face After Being Asked About Maybe Someday Joining The Knicks
The insanely overpowered Duke Blue Devils gave Texas Tech their first loss of the season Thursday night, at Madison Square Garden, in a refreshingly competitive 69–58 game. Among other things, this was humanoid megafauna Zion Williamson’s first career game at the home of the Knicks, and so of course...

Zion Williamson Bonked His Forehead On The Damn Backboard
We are used to Zion Williamson’s rare combination of dump truck size and comic book athleticism putting the opposition in grave danger, but this is maybe the first sign that young Zion can truly fuck himself up if he isn’t real careful out there:...

Maniac Football Coach Teams With Maniac Basketball Player To Deliver Watered-Down Gordon Gekko Speech To Impressionable Young Browns
This is just an unbelievably cursed combination of proper nouns: Browns head coach Gregg Williams used help from retired coin-operated fortune-teller Phil Jackson to arrange for dead-eyed thinkfluencer Kobe Bryant to deliver a motivational talk to his young team ahead of their week 15 game this past...

The Browns Are Respectable, And That's Already A Major Achievement
The Cleveland Browns have not had a winning season since 2007. The closest they’ve been to .500 was a 7-9 campaign in 2014, and that becomes even sadder with the reminder that those Browns, under then-head coach Mike Pettine, had squandered a 7-4 start to get there. (He was fired after his second se...

The Chargers Clinched A Playoff Berth In Extremely Ballsy Fashion
The Chiefs went up two touchdowns with just over eight minutes left in the fourth quarter Thursday night, on a Damien Williams one-yard plunge to cap a 13-play drive. They’d put together three 10-play drives in the game to that point, and the drive they’d just wrapped covered 73 yards and almost ei...

Celtics' Robert Williams Is Fine Being Called "Time Lord," But Danny Ainge Wants Better For Him
It’s always a delight to see the irony-poisoned runoff of the internet seep into real life. Consider the case of “Time Lord,” or Robert Williams, the endearing Celtics rookie who before the season had some problems getting to team functions in a punctual manner (if at all)....

WTA Clarifies Rules, Clears The Way For Serena Williams's Catsuit And Leggings Of All Kinds
After being, uh, unsettled by Serena Williams’s “catsuit” at the 2018 French Open, French Tennis Federation President Bernard Giudicelli promised stricter apparel rules the following year, though not as austere as Wimbledon’s all-white mandate. But whatever he’s looking to do to eliminate his catsui...

A Note On Drew
Irredeemable Vikings fan and beloved voice of Deadspin Drew Magary has been moved to the injured reserve list after an accident last week. He is receiving the best possible care, is surrounded by his family and friends, and is doing well under the circumstances. We miss his randomly capitalized exub...

Will Grier To Skip Meaningless Exhibition Game And Focus On 2019 NFL Draft Instead
Will Grier became the latest college football player to declare his choice to focus on his future, and the upcoming NFL draft, over participating in a meaningless exhibition game. West Virginia football’s Twitter account released Grier’s statement on Saturday that announced he would be missing the M...

Zion Williamson Is Human
Zion Williamson had 18 and 12 and Duke won 84-54 on Wednesday night—which would have been impressive if they hadn’t been playing the Hartford Hawks (apparently a real college basketball team and not, like, a D-League franchise). As per usual, there were powerful, highlight-reel dunks from the Blue D...

William Nylander Ends Holdout, Agrees To Six-Year Deal With Maple Leafs
The William Nylander saga officially came to a close on Saturday after the 22-year-old winger signed a contract extension with the Toronto Maple Leafs, as first reported by TSN’s Darren Dreger....
![William Nylander And The Leafs Have 26 Hours To Figure This Out [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/xdyccglydedtrdg350fi.jpg)
William Nylander And The Leafs Have 26 Hours To Figure This Out [Update]
The Toronto Maple Leafs, with the newly acquired John Tavares leading the way, are enjoying a strong start to the 2018–19 season. With 36 points from 26 games and the best goal differential in hockey (+26), a team that lost a hard-fought seven-game first-round playoff series to the Bruins last sprin...