Defector
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We’re Still Looking For Someone Who Can Guard Olivia Miles
Olivia Miles made her first bucket of Wednesday night's game against the Golden State Valkyries early in the first quarter. It was a pull-up jumper from the left elbow, and the broadcast camera zoomed in on her face as she backpedaled down the court. After a moment of thought, she said something to herself: "They can't fucking guard me." Perhaps it was a needed reminder. The Valkyries, after all, boast the WNBA's most ferocious defense, and just two nights previous had reminded everyone how...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Green Bay Packers
Some people are fans of the Green Bay Packers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Green Bay Packers. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team:
Should You Ever Really Trust A Party Promoter?
Time to drop a little summer recipe. Take some lesbian 20-somethings—like at least 60 of them—and drop them in a group chat. At the center of it all you’ll need a leader, someone who commands attention or fear, and could be the object of everyone's affection under the right circumstances. Next, you’ll need a heat wave and a stacked events calendar: think line dancing, body shots, and bottle service. Now is not the time to be afraid to go out three times over the course of a weekend. This al...
Mariners Surely Reach Pinnacle Of Regular-Season Suffering
How many runs did the Seattle Mariners lose by in Tuesday night's game against Brewers in Milwaukee? And how many runs did the Mariners themselves score? Don't concern yourself with these matters, this silly fixation on who won the game, and by how much . The true connoisseur understands that witnessing something new every single day is a blessing, and boy did the Mariners—and Brewers, but mostly, if we are being honest, the Mariners—show everyone something unique and special. Because the M...
LIV Golf Pros Meet Their New Investor Overlord At Season’s Sudden Conclusion
The 2026 LIV Golf season will end this weekend at LIV Golf Indianapolis. The 4 Aces GC fellows have a narrow lead over Ripper GC in the team championship, which I guess they will uhh look to maintain or whatever. Don't worry about it. That team title was supposed to be decided the final weekend of August in Plymouth, Mich., but that event has now been officially cancelled, as was long anticipated . The stupid, broke league simply lacks the money to run it. The payouts for the finale will be...
“No Dada!” How Do You Deal With A Toddler Who Clearly Prefers The Other Parent?
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, Chris answers a question about being summarily rejected by one's own flesh-and-blood.
The King Of The Robbers Returns
The bases are loaded in the bottom of the second. Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor, with his beautiful hair and crisp terrifying swing, is at the plate. The pitch from the Padres' Robbie Ray is a 92-mph sinker that he leaves up on the outer edge of the zone. Lindor stings it to the opposite field, and the ball towers up and out toward the right-field corner, where he is waiting. He is always waiting. Fernando Tatis Jr., the king of the Robbin' Padres , with his flowing hair and big face, doe...
Chamique Holdsclaw Made Headlines, Made Mistakes, And Made History
On the cover of Slam magazine's October 1998 issue, Chamique Holdsclaw wore a New York Knicks jersey, NBA basketball in hand. Right next to the forward from Queens was a sneaky inversion of the more common question: "Is The NBA Ready For Chamique Holdsclaw?" She was the first female athlete to appear on the magazine's cover, and as former Slam editor-in-chief Tony Gervino would recall in a 2024 essay , the editors were intentionally being a little provocative. Reader reception was not as negat...
The New Women’s Pro Baseball League Offers Hope—And Frustrations
For most women who play baseball in the United States, playing America's pastime in a professional league has been little more than a dream. Yet for a select group of women, that dream is becoming a reality. The Women's Pro Baseball League began its inaugural season on Aug. 1, with the four-team league playing all of its games in Springfield, Ill., where dozens of the 120 women who were selected in the league's draft play pro ball. It is the most anticipated women's pro baseball league sin...
The Buss Children Are Squabbling Over Their Remaining Lakers Stake
When Lakers majority owner Jerry Buss died in 2013, he left his 66 percent stake to six of his children, with daughter Jeanie Buss acting as the team's governor. Jerry hoped his family would hold on to the franchise, and toward the end of his life, he took financial and contractual measures that made it easier for them to do so. Naturally, after his death these six Buss children got caught up in over a decade of infighting that saw them split into three rough camps. Eldest siblings Johnny and ...
This Ketel Marte Thing Is Getting Strange
The Arizona Diamondbacks either have an injured cleanup hitter, a truancy problem, a communications dysfunction, some mysterious and possibly sinister fourth thing, or all of the above. Well, there's a sixth possibility: They don't mind taking a beat writer for a ride now and then to preserve clubhouse tranquility. But let's take that as a given, because that's what a beat writer is for: to toss under the bus when you want the driver to stop. Anyway, one of their best players, second bas...
Freaky Little Plant Propagated By Freaky Little Freaks
In Okinawa's coastal forests, brown puffballs protrude from roots of trees like unwanted warts. Although they might appear to be mushrooms, the balls are plants. To be more specific, they are fruits. To be even more specific, they are clusters of up to a million fruits that each encase a tiny seed, fruits made larger and more dazzling by their proximity to each other, fruits designed like pavé diamonds. But Balanophora fungosa , also known as fungus root, is not strange because it looks lik...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Carolina Panthers
Some people are fans of the Carolina Panthers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Carolina Panthers. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your Team: Carolina Panthers. Your 2025 record: 8-9, but not just any old 8-9. This is the best 8-9 in the whole NFC South, making the Panthers division champs despite having a losing record—the bad smell that comes with its own deodorizer. Only five teams have ever achi...
They Put A Data Center In Rack City, With Ock Sportello
This week's episode of Nothing But Respect was a really fun one. We set out to make a Broke Jumper Tip Line–focused episode, but only got to the BJTL about 50 minutes in because we had too much other good stuff to talk about with frequent guest Ock Sportello. As to that other stuff: We chatted about the Brooklyn Nets fan's experience of the Knicks title run, spent a lot of time talking about the scourge of AI rap music (read Ock's excellent review of the new Tyga album and Iz's story on Fen...
What Is The Greatest TV House Of All Time?
Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag . You can also read Drew over at SFGATE , and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it . Today, we're talking about reunions, the extinction of the hard T, dinosaurs, and more. Your letters: Dusty:
Atlanta Dream And WNBA Embrace Anti-Trans Losers
Some transphobic dickheads were again wearing XX-XY shirts at Sunday's game between the Indiana Fever and Atlanta Dream. Everyone knows what the XX-XY shirt—a truly ugly piece of merchandise made by a brand that raises money for organizations that seek to strip trans people of their rights—means when worn in public. It tells everyone that the person wearing it sees trans people not as human beings, but as targets whose very existence must be protested. It is one of the oldest and most basic fo...
The Crazy Thing About “Woke 1” Was How It Was Exploited
In November 2018, 29-year-old Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined a group of 200 youth activists associated with the Sunrise Movement as they staged a protest at the office of then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. They were there to urge Democratic leadership to act more quickly on issues of climate change. The period between the election and swearing-in is normally when a newly elected legislator would be getting to know their future colleagues and angling for a good commi...
ESPN Reports Steve Ballmer Cleared By NBA’s Kawhi Leonard Investigation, NBA Says Otherwise
According to a report from ESPN , the NBA hasn't found any evidence that Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer arranged to pay Kawhi Leonard in excess of salary-cap rules via the fraudulent green-banking company Aspiration. Just under a year ago, after a series of reports from podcaster Pablo Torre, the NBA hired the prestigious law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to investigate the alleged scheme. Per the ESPN report, lawyers representing Ballmer and the NBA have been negotiating a res...
Eventually You May Have To Believe In The Dang Milwaukee Brewers
It is difficult to wrap the human mind around the fact that, in the grand old year of 2026, the Milwaukee Brewers are really, truly good. Or maybe that is a personal problem, as someone generally disconnected from the ongoings of the NL Central. What happens over there? None of my business! The operating assumption is that the Brewers will scam the division with 90-or-so wins every year, reaping the benefits of the four other flailing, barely trying teams who share the ignominy of playing in t...
Angel Reese’s Game Is Too Weird Not To Appreciate
Social media is a terrible place to learn about anything, but there is perhaps no phrase more ill-suited for the Twitter or YouTube search bar than "Angel Reese." The reasons for this are obvious and not worth getting into here—there are a bunch of racist losers on there who have made Reese a target in their increasingly toxic culture war—but even under better circumstances, Reese's game would be a tough fit for 15-second, vertical video highlights. This is a player whose unique, maddening, an...
I Taught A Scorekeeping Class And Everybody Came
Several times a week, I sit myself down in front of a baseball game either in person or on television, I retrieve my book and my pen, and I keep score. I feel my brain relax, my mind soften, my attention fully focus on one thing in a world where that rarely happens. It is a grandma hobby like knitting or embroidery or sourdough, and I love it. Scoring a game is one of the great mundane joys of my life, and I will not shut up about it. A few seasons ago, I taught my dear friend Dana Murphy t...
The Fight To Save The Remarkable, Upsetting Murals Of Maxo Vanka
Pittsburgh had a hell of a winter storm in January, with more than a foot of snow, and freezing temperatures that created towering walls of ice and annoyed locals whose parking situations wouldn’t return to normal for a month. Some of the city's oldest buildings suffered the most damage, victims of a phenomenon known as ice damming. The warmth from a building rises to the snow banks on the roof, but it's only enough to defrost the bottommost layer, which then flows to the eaves and then re-fre...
The Crossword, Aug. 17: Roster Talks
There's no 'I' in crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Matthew Stock , and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Matthew is a crossword constructor and stay-at-home dad from Dallas. His work can be found at happylittlepuzzles.com . Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX , run every Monday. If you’re interested in submitting a puzzle to us, you can read our guidelines HERE . The AVCX, an independent puzzles and games outlet, invites you to subscribe, or samp...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Minnesota Vikings
Some people are fans of the Minnesota Vikings. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Minnesota Vikings. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Minnesota Vikings, the winningest team to never win a Super Bowl. What an honor! King of the paupers! The widely respected Bills and Bengals have tried their best, but have failed in their quest to lose more Super Bowls than the mighty Vikings. The Lions and Jagua...
Mr. Manfred Calling For Mr. Walter
[PHONE RINGING] "Mr. Walter's office. Can I help you?" "Yes you can. Is Mark in?"
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