Defector
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What’s Going On With Brandon Aiyuk?
The drama between Brandon Aiyuk and the San Francisco 49ers has been brewing for nearly a year. Since suffering a torn ACL and MCL in his right knee during the 2024 season, Aiyuk and his current team have been in a dispute over his rehabilitation. Last year, Aiyuk declined to attend offseason rehab sessions at the team's facility, thus negating parts of his contract. The Niners placed Aiyuk on the reserve/left team list this past December, after he stopped showing up to the facility. Aiyuk,...
World Cup Recrimination Is The Best Recrimination
There are a million reasons why the World Cup is the greatest sporting event on Earth, and one of those reasons is that it's the rare setting in which soccer managers can be forced to eat some shit. American sports fans are spoiled by the traditional press conference. Yes, most press conferences are a waste of time and feature obsequious beat reporters lobbing easy questions at the coaches of the teams they cover, but there still exists in this country an impulse toward challenging a coach'...
A Brief History Of The World Cup Song
Dai dai. Ikou. Dale, allez, let's go. So says Shakira in the chorus of the 2026 official World Cup song "Dai Dai," in which she links up with Burna Boy to express the same sentiment in five different languages. Why find the universal in the specific when you can attempt to recreate the magic of your 2010 World Cup hit "Waka Waka" by finding the universal in the universal? “No one's getting tired, I know/‘Cause you got that fire, ayo,” indeed. One Italian sportswriter described the lyrics of "D...
Finding Friends, Legacy, And Leather Sluts At New Jersey’s Finest Holiday Inn
In 2011, a Princeton Borough police officer gave me a public urination ticket as I was on my way to go drinking. I went home with someone that night and forgot about the ticket in my crumpled pants pocket. Weeks later I paid it off in a panic, hours before my delinquency would have added me to a New Jersey sex offender registry. For no particular reason, I was reminded about that while watching a femme top squat over a girl lying across a storm drain in the courtyard of a Holiday Inn in centra...
One Of Dianna Russini’s Funny Little Stories Was A Big Fat Fib
A recent New York Times article about former NFL insider Dianna Russini resurfaced an anecdote that Russini had previously shared on a podcast earlier this year. The story went like this: Russini was pulled over for texting and driving, and attempted to talk her way out of the ticket by telling the cop that she had only been texting because she was trying to break the news that Sean McDermott had just been fired by the Buffalo Bills. When that didn't work, she asked the officer who his favorit...
Mr. Nagelsmann, Tear Down This Meat Wall!
For the first time in history, Germany has lost a penalty shootout at the World Cup. A highly anticipated potential round-of-16 matchup between Germany and France has been put on ice, and instead it is Paraguay that advanced on Monday, after a 1-1 draw turned into a 4-3 shootout victory for the South Americans. Paraguay followed the underdog script to perfection, scoring first and then frustrating, blocking, and clattering into the Germans around every corner, spoiling a dream matchup for the ...
Lions Cut Terrion Arnold After Judge Sets Bail In Criminal Case At $1 Million
Bail for NFL cornerback Terrion Arnold, who has been charged with four counts of kidnapping and four counts of armed robbery, was set Monday at $1 million. Just a few hours after the hearing ended, the Detroit Lions cut Arnold , a former first-round pick who was set to enter his third season in the league. At the court hearing, prosecutors in Hillsborough County, Fla., had asked a judge to hold Arnold in jail without bail, but chief judge Christopher C. Sabella denied their request. Sabella...
It’s Time To Daydream About LeBron On The Warriors
Don't panic: We're about to discuss Draymond Green, but not because of his taste for provocation or his general Draymond-hood. It's just a little item ahead of NBA free agency opening Tuesday afternoon, which means there may be less here than meets the eye, but just enough to meet the funny bone. Green will reportedly decline his $27 million player option for 2027, days after Golden State Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. said the team was optimistic that he would return. OK, tha...
There Is No Simple Trick To Making Friends As An Adult
Last week, my husband and I hosted a group of friends and acquaintances to celebrate our one-year anniversary of living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We marked the occasion by eating snacks and talking about our respective art practices. At one point, the group went around and said how they knew us, and I watched with amusement as most people told versions of the same story: me walking up to them at work, at the coffee shop, at the farmer's market, and introducing myself. I do not think of my...
The Tour de France Is For The Children
With the start of the 2026 Tour de France mere days away, most of the world's attention will focus on Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard as they race for the yellow jersey. The sixth consecutive installation of the mega-rivalry is obviously of heavy interest, but I don't think it's the most fascinating two-up contest on the cards. Experienced champions necessarily duke it out every year; by contrast, something like the fight brewing between 19-year-old Frenchman Paul Seixas and 22-year-old Mex...
The Sharks Just Got A Lot Better, And Larger
The NHL draft was this weekend, and even though we had several weeks to get used to the image of Gavin McKenna in a Toronto Maple Leafs hat, the action in the rest of the top 10 was a good mix of unpredictable and intriguing. The Canucks, at No. 3, committed what has the potential to be an all-time goof-up by drafting their brand-new coach's son, Caleb Malhotra. (Anyone want to tell them how long coaches usually last in the NHL?) The Seattle Kraken, drafting at seven, ended up with a possible ...
The Yankees Had A Wretched Weekend In Boston
The Dog Days of summer in the Northern Hemisphere don't officially begin until the rising of Sirius, the "dog star." This is usually mid-to-late July, and we can thank the Greeks for the canid construction. "On summer nights, star of stars, Orion's Dog they call it," Homer recited in the Iliad , "brightest of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat and fevers to suffering humanity." The Dog Days of the baseball season—those weeks of malaise and joylessness and what feels like the 12th Tigers-R...
The Crossword, June 29: Cooler Heads (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 August Miller , and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. August is a vegetable and dairy farmer who recently relocated from Massachusetts to New York. He is thrilled to have his first puzzle at Defector, and hopes we can all find ways to stay cool this week. Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX , run every Monday. If you’re inte...
DR Congo Welcomes You To Africa’s World Cup
While it would be asking too much to expect soccer to deliver anything like justice, you can usually count on the sport's sense of humor. That's why we probably shouldn't be surprised that the 2026 World Cup, marred from the outside by the racist caprices of the Trump administration, could best be described at this point as African soccer's coming-out party. Here at the close of the tournament's group stage, the Africans are triumphant. Nine of their 10 World Cup entrants have made it the r...
We’ve Got A Whole Jaylen Brown Situation On Our Hands
The NBA offseason presents a pit that must be filled with trade rumors, free-agency drama, and delirium-inducing podcast segments. It takes a lot of slop to fill that pit to the brim, which is how you end up with Jaylen Brown and an ESPN dope conspiring to dust off a tiresome conversation about the place of analytics in the NBA. Brown very much appears to be on the trading block, which is a weird place to be for a guy who has won a Finals MVP and is coming off the best individual season of ...
Dublin Pulls Off Comeback To Beat Galway In All-Ireland Quarterfinal
Dublin closed out a thrilling All-Ireland football quarterfinal weekend with a massive and penalty-aided comeback to beat Galway Sunday afternoon in Croke Park, 1-25 to 1-21. Galway was up by six points with just 15 minutes left on the clock. But the game turned Dublin’s way when Galway defender Liam Silke was assessed a black card for fouling on a goal-scoring opportunity. Veteran Dublin forward Con O’Callaghan banged home the penalty shot to knot the score, and his team never looked back....
Boots Ennis KOs Zayas In Brooklyn Thriller
BROOKLYN — Boots Ennis survived the toughest round of his career, then KOed game but overmatched champ Xander Zayas in a beautifully brutal Saturday night title fight at Barclays Center. When Ennis put Zayas on the canvas for the third time of the bout, Zayas's corner decided to save him from himself and throw in the towel with 1:12 left in the seventh round. With the win, Ennis took Zayas's WBO and WBA super welterweight belts and remained undefeated at 36-0. The Philly fighter also greatl...
Don’t Let Bored Football Fans Tell The Story Of Caitlin Clark’s Season
Covering WNBA games in person is a strange experience. Enriching, for sure: It's cool to hear directly from players and coaches, to be able to pepper them with whatever questions I'd like. Recently, I was able to cobble their insights into an Olivia Miles profile that received, I suspect, fewer comments than this post will. Sometimes you luck into great color: It was funny, at Wednesday night's Fire-Sky game, to hear Portland head coach Alex Sarama directing his players to hunt Rachel Banham...
Lawsuit: Death Of Doug Martin Caused By Negligence From Police, Paramedics
The parents of former NFL running back Doug Martin— who died eight months ago while in Oakland police custody —are suing the city of Oakland, five of its police officers, and an ambulance company in federal court. In the lawsuit filed earlier this week, Martin's parents say their son, who was 36 years old at the time, died from restraint asphyxia caused by police officers. This was compounded, the lawsuit says, by the paramedics failing to arrive until more than 15 minutes after the call for s...
How Jay-Z Changed Rap With ‘Reasonable Doubt’
If you went back in time to New York in the early '90s, not a soul would believe you if you told them Jay-Z would end up where he is today. Well, maybe one person would: Jay himself. Jay-Z's relatively delayed breakthrough made him something of a late bloomer, even in an era when stars weren't minted as quickly and early as they are now. It took him a while to figure out how to be himself on wax. It was his big homie Jaz-O who put him on, and the two of them had a Das EFX, Fu-Schnickens fas...
The People Have Spoken: Ernie Clement Is The Best Player In The American League Now
The Ernie Clement Voting Scandal shoved all the rest of the news this week into the street—the World Cup, the NBA draft, the NHL draft, the NBA trades, the NHL trades, the Mets firing their manager for the sin of managing the Mets, the latest sports media meltdown around but not quite about Caitlin Clark, all of it. Or maybe you didn't notice that Ernie Clement was the highest vote-getter among American League players for the upcoming All-Star Game in Philadelphia. It's quite possible that ...
What Does It Mean To “Stand Up For Buffalo”?
Now that New York state and Erie County have spent $850 million in taxpayer dollars, the largest public contribution for any NFL facility in history, it's time for the next important step in the process of opening the Buffalo Bills' new stadium: kissing owner Terry Pegula's ass. While Pegula, for once in his life, did not say something incredibly fucking stupid at this week's ribbon-cutting ceremony, every other person in attendance seemed to bend over backward to make sure that no one watchin...
Left In The Dungeon
This post originally appeared on June 24 in the Oakland Review of Books , which is worth a subscription even if you don’t live in Oakland or read books. Carl must slay the naga princess! If he doesn’t, his best friend—the talking cat-wizard Princess Donut—will die instead. But Carl and his team have a plan. They track the princess to the god Khepri’s sanctum in the Vanquisher Club and slay the club’s guards with a MacGyver-demonology contraption. Inside the sanctum, though, Carl is surpr...
Tom Dundon Cares Not One Bit About The Portland Trail Blazers
It takes a special kind of creep to stand out for sleaziness among NBA owners, objectively one of the worst demographics our species has ever established. Tom Dundon has been the official majority owner of the Portland Trail Blazers for less than three months, and already he is a standard-bearer . It's clear he doesn't mind being a villain. Having already downsized the organization with layoffs, pinched on travel accommodations, stiffed his team's two-way players, and cheaped out on playoff T-...
Marina Mabrey Got 53 The Fun Way
"I score in bunches, and then sometimes kinda just level out," Toronto Tempo guard Marina Mabrey said near the end of her press conference, after the Tempo's 125-97 win over the L.A. Sparks on Thursday. It was an accurate description of her own game, which is built on constant movement and a scalding but occasionally evanescent shooting touch. Last night, however, we finally got to see what would happen if Mabrey never reached the "kinda just level out" phase. What if a whole game was just one...
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