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In Game 1, The Dream And The Valkyries Tried To See How Gross They Could Get
SAN FRANCISCO — Technically, every basketball game is zero-sum. An offensive rebound is a missed defensive rebound; a basket scored is a basket conceded. But you never feel that fact more acutely than in a game between the Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries, two teams built to chase the same advantages. The Valkyries' 68-64 win in the first game of the WNBA Finals on Saturday afternoon set up the central tension of this series: It isn’t really possible for Atlanta and Golden State t...
What’s The Point Of All These Reviews?
Nobody got laid at BYU last night, but it looked like a fun party all the same. The eighth-ranked Cougars hosted the No. 2 Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the big primetime slot on Saturday, and they stayed undefeated by squeaking out a 28-24 win. There was some fourth-quarter distress when BYU threw an interception just after surrendering their lead. But quarterback Bear Bachmeier—who wears No. 47 because he says he embodies a "fullback mentality" —took advantage of an Irish three-and-out to pil...
La Liga President Says Real Madrid Is Moving Like Joseph Goebbels
It was clear that the relationship between Real Madrid and La Liga president Javier Tebas was heading toward disaster when the two parties started bickering in the press less than a month ago , but we've now reached the stage where one is earnestly comparing the behavior of the other to an infamous Nazi. After Jose Mourinho printed out images of perceived missed calls from the Madrid derby, Tebas blasted Real Madrid for what he felt was a bit of image manipulation, calling the club out for ...
The CFP Is Expanding For The Same Reason The PCSA Is Gaining Momentum
ESPN is reporting that ESPN and the College Football Playoff are close to a deal to expand the playoff field to 24 teams in 2027. This news arrives merely two years after the field already expanded from four teams to 12. Not only was this expansion inevitable, but it is unlikely to be the last we see. For now, we are on the cusp of a 24-team playoff, which comes as ESPN and the CFP have been negotiating a big new deal for the network to continue broadcasting the games. According to ESPN's r...
Do Not Rage At Your Most Online Fans
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: It's been a tough year for Texas A&M and head coach Mike Elko, who celebrated the Aggies' 27-6 loss to Missouri last Saturday by calling the team's leading social media outlet a "cesspool" and, two days later, apologized for calling the team's leading social media outlet a "cesspool." Elko also said that h...
Smart Can Win
And so ends the Los Angeles Dodgers' reign as baseball's most overwhelming boogeyman. The poster kids for the omnipotence of money, the belief that having the best player means being the best team, the power of the big market over all it surveys—all of that feels less important at this moment than the ability to do the things the Milwaukee Brewers do better than anyone else. The same old song has been replaced, for the moment, by this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xzmeye6MaY Yes, m...
The Not-So-Great Defector Bake Off Exults, Eventually, In The Freedom Of Audience Choice Week
Welcome back to The Not-So-Great Defector Bake Off , where Kelsey and Chris attempt to complete the technical challenges from the newest season of The Great British Bake Off in their own home kitchens, with the same time parameters as the professional-grade bakers competing on the show. It's nice having Nigella Lawson in the tent. She is cheerful and radiates serenity, and she takes those big glorious bites. She makes you want to bake and to eat. She even makes you want to share the thin...
What Is The Mob Movie Donald Trump Saw With A Gangster Named “Alan Jones” In It?
The model of Donald Trump currently on display is fussy and sour, poached to glossy and unappetizing gumminess in his own luxurious bathwater; he is also, to all appearances, miserable. It is hard to say whether the adoration of his admirers or the revulsion of a large and growing portion of the American populace has been worse for him in that regard, but neither seems to have done him much good. The Trump currently maundering and free-associating through 110-minute performances at various ...
The Secret History Of Dodger Stadium’s Mysterious Concrete Murals
L.A. Material is an independent news organization aimed at filling some holes in the Los Angeles news landscape and making that fascinating, fragmented city more legible. You can learn more, and subscribe, at lamaterial.com . This story originally ran at the site on Sept. 30 . I had been going to Dodger Stadium with my dad for about 30 years before he pointed them out to me. “See that?” he asked, gesturing toward two rectangular panels of concrete on a far wall of the main seating structure...
It’s Jake Bauerses All The Way Down
After a flyout and a strikeout in his first two attempts, Jake Bauers's third time facing Blake Snell in Wednesday's Game 3 of the National League Championship Series went like this: Bauers took a slider down the middle of the plate for strike one. He took two non-competitive pitches down low to make the count 2-1. He foul-tipped a changeup, and then, sitting on two strikes, four pitches into his at-bat, he decided that he simply would not strike out again. So Bauers fouled off a slider in ...
The World’s Only WNBA Finals Preview, With Maitreyi Anantharaman And Maya Goldberg-Safir
This week on Nothing But Respect , Harry and I had on our two favorite WNBA writers to talk about the Golden State Valkyries' forthcoming championship. Both Maitreyi Anantharaman, whom you all know from her work here , and Maya Goldberg-Safir, whom you also know from her work here and should know from her work at Rough Notes , know ball and will be covering the series between the Valks and the Atlanta Dream. We spent a solid hour talking about the series and the path the two teams took to get ...
Making A Great Fantasy Map Is An Art, And Ross Douthat Sucks At It
Ross Douthat has a fantasy novel for young adult readers: The Falcon's Children , the first in what reportedly will be a trilogy from the respectability-conservatism peddler, who left his sinecure as a columnist at the New York Times earlier this year so that he could lower television's aggregate charisma level by 944 percent as a correspondent for Bari Weiss's 60 Minutes . That is virtually all I will ever know about The Falcon's Children , and I beseech you, tender reader, to follow my examp...
Would You Rather Have Sex Or Live Forever?
Hydras, the tiny freshwater invertebrates that resemble tentacular palm trees, are often considered immortal. They fasten themselves to rocks with their sticky foot, stretch out their tube-shaped body, and unfurl the stinging tentacles that halo their mouth to catch prey that passes by, an activity they can do ad infinitum if given the right conditions. Although they can be felled by predators or disease in the wild, in the lab, the little animals seem resilient to anything. If you cut off the...
Michael Porter Jr. Again Stands Athwart History, Saying “Damn, That’s Crazy”
It is late August, the waning days of a long summer. Though the oppressive heat still imposes itself on you, the days are shortening noticeably, the faint whisper of a chill in the air perceptible in the stiller moments of deep night. Soon there will be red leaves, sweaters onto shoulders, and NBA basketball. You both anticipate and fear the turnover of the seasons, though it feels abstract—that is, until your phone lights up. Someone has sent you an Instagram link to a clip from Michael Po...
What Makes A Good Critic?
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 . “Everyone’s a critic” has been a lament my entire life, but the advent of the internet rendered it literally true. Anyone can review anything online, from new albums to tubes of toothpaste. But just because you can review something doesn’t mean you’...
Only One Michigan Senate Candidate Knows Puck
There are two men running for Senate in Michigan, and one of them sucks. See if you can guess which one based on their official statements about the condition of the Detroit Red Wings, solicited by the blog Octopus Thrower . For context, the Red Wings hold the longest active playoff drought in the NHL by three seasons; don't currently employ an official, non-interim GM ; haven't yet agreed to a new deal with young defensive standout Simon Edvinsson ; can't seem to solve the problem of ex-capta...
Francis Fukuyama Is The Last Grandpa
If you’re not following Francis Fukuyama on Instagram , you’re missing out. His posts exemplify a Boomer picaresque aesthetic: the occasional typo in his captions, pictures of electronic parts that he’s fiddling with, a linear algebra textbook, a landscape shot of the Danube, mysterious but alluring architectural highlights of various European cities, and unsmiling selfies while wearing a ballcap. It’s all charming, yet interspersed within the grid are more eyebrow-raising indications: a debat...
Sally Rooney Stands By Her Principles
Sally Rooney, one of the most popular novelists alive, says she will no longer sell her books in the U.K. In 2025, the British government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, and in August of that year, Rooney published an op-ed in The Irish Times titled, "I support Palestine Action. If this makes me a ‘supporter of terror’ under UK law, so be it." Now, because the laws have not changed, Rooney and her publisher Faber & Faber announced this week that they will no longer be ...
Spain Reminds The USWNT Where They Stand
CHESTER, Penn. — For decades, the U.S. Women's National Team stood at the top of the mountain, where the air is thinnest. They defended their position with ferocity. They didn't win every major tournament, but they won most of them, and were contenders in all. Their identity on the pitch, more than anything, was being the best. That changed with the 2023 World Cup, when the two-time defending champions flamed out in the round of 16 after barely surviving the group stage. Spain went on to w...
Warhammer 40K Is Cool
In the grim darkness of the far future, 40,000 years from now, an immortal corpse-Emperor sits atop his Golden Throne on Earth, watching over the trillions upon trillions of human beings scattered across the galaxy. For ten thousand years, the Emperor hasn’t spoken or moved from that Golden Throne, and those masses of humans are ruled by the Imperium of Man in the Emperor’s name. Their often short existences are spent within the Imperium’s authoritarian systems that value ignorance over knowle...
How Do I Talk To My Kid About Religion?
Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas , where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at [email protected] . This week, Albert answers a question about a child who has become Bible curious.
Manchester United Is Eating Itself Alive
In terms of things you simply do not want to see happening at the club you support within the first two months of the season, one of your star players blasting the entire organizational hierarchy has to be pretty high up there. That's exactly what's happening at Manchester United, following a brutal start (one win, three draws, two losses, and 13th place) to what was supposed to be an exemplary Premier League season and a listless and frustrating 2-0 defeat Tuesday to Atlético Madrid in the se...
Punch Bowl Now More Turd Than Punch
How quickly can the owner of a reigning championship team spend down a sudden windfall of goodwill? James Dolan has spent the NBA offseason exploring that hypothetical, and he appears to be a gifted speedrunner. The owner of the New York Knicks began his work before the job was even done this past June, inviting Donald Trump to Game 3 of the NBA Finals . That wound up being the team's only loss in an otherwise torrid 15-game playoff stretch. Then, at the team's victory parade, mere days aft...
Good Baseball Isn’t Necessarily Beautiful
The American League Championship Series is every bit an American League production, which is to say that it is not for the dilettante, or anything close to an easy watch. It is for people who choose to view sports in their leisure time as penance for past misdeeds rather than as a reward for past service. You don't sit back and enjoy it passively; you may not enjoy it at all. Instead you lean in with clenched fists and teeth in full-lock grind, because this is the business that you and they ha...
The Verdict Is In: Bo Nix Stinks
If you watched the Broncos-Chargers game on Sunday, first of all, my apologies. You shouldn’t have had to see that. Second of all, you might have come away from that game saying, “Good Lord, Justin Herbert has gone from being overhyped to being actively shitty!” I can’t blame you for that gut reaction. Herbert’s play has deteriorated to the point where no one would blame that team’s brass for staging a full reset at quarterback. But the bigger story from that game had nothing to do with Herber...
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