Defector
Total reads
61
This week
0
Rank
#298 of 460
Published
673 posts
Last 12 weeks
Most read posts
Featured on Sportsblogs
Run this blog? Add the badge to your site to show readers you're featured — it links back to this page.
Latest Entries
The Tour de France Femmes Was A Contentious, Hypercompetitive Classic
When Demi Vollering crossed the line in Nice on Sunday, she didn't just win her second Tour de France Femmes title. She provided a worthy finale for the best edition of the race yet. The fifth running of the Tour was spectacular from start to finish. There were interesting winners throughout the race, an amazing general classification battle that came down to the final climb, and fresh, dramatic storylines almost every day. The Tour achieved a higher density of both intriguing stories and g...
Two Scrabble Superstars Explain Their Unbelievable Championship Match
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — In the quarter-century that I’ve been playing and writing about Scrabble—a game in which greatness requires that rare matrix of biological gift, yeoman preparation, preternatural vision, marathon endurance, and blind luck—I’ve never witnessed anything as shocking and painful as the end of the 2026 North American championship here in July. The moment was right up there with any agony-of-defeat ending in any sport: After 3,700 games, thousands of moves, and millions of point...
Kayla McBride Keeps It Ethical
The first text that Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve received after the team drafted Olivia Miles this spring was from a prescient Kayla McBride: “I’m going to be wide open.” The stats are bearing that out to an extent; the veteran sharpshooter is putting up some of the most efficient numbers of her career this year, and the Lynx offense is humming. After Minnesota’s 103–90 win over the Dallas Wings on Sunday, McBride told reporters that sharing a backcourt with Miles has made her feel like “a...
What Does It Take To Make Big City Dreams Work?
When I asked Morgan Jerkins what she might want to talk about on an episode of Try Hard , she came to me with an idea that was less major life-changing-thunderclap moment and more the culmination of a million smaller decisions that stemmed from one big one: moving to New York City as a young grad and choosing to build a life. The twenty-something who moves to the big city to pursue a career in the arts is a well-worn archetype at this point, and one emulated by many of the very bloggers at ...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Atlanta Falcons
Some people are fans of the Atlanta Falcons. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Atlanta Falcons. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Atlanta Falcons. Your 2025 record: 8-9, which is less of a win-loss record than it is a manifestation of the spirit of mediocrity that inhabits this franchise. It's been almost 10 years since 28-3 happened, and the Falcons have gone a combined 65-84 with one play...
The “Ground Zero Mosque” Strategy Makes An Even More Pathetic Return
As we approach the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it has created an opportunity to reflect on what's happened in the quarter-century since that fateful day, but more importantly, it has created an opportunity to get angry at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for being Muslim. In late July, Giovanni Galante, whose wife Grace was killed in the attacks, posted an online petition requesting that the mayor not be allowed to participate in this year's remembrance ceremony. The reasons tha...
The Crossword, Aug. 10: Midpoint
No one's on the fence about solving our Monday crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Faren Roth , and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu . Faren Roth is a PhD student who lives in Lafayette, Ind. as of yesterday with her cat, Mr. Toast. She enjoys playing soccer and softball, was on the [redacted] team in high school, and has recently tricked herself into enjoying running. Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX , run every Monday. If you’re interested in su...
Don Nelson Followed His Bliss And Changed Basketball
The notice from Don Nelson's family announcing his death on Sunday at the age of 86 said he "peacefully went to be with the Lord, surrounded by his loving family.” This immediately convinces us that the deity in question here likes uptempo basketball, beer, blunts, and cards, and who wouldn't want a final judge who leans into those pastimes? Every Nelson obit, including this one, will note that he was the second-winningest coach in NBA history—1,335 wins, not including 75 playoff victories....
What Big Bug “Attacked” An ESPN Reporter At Rams Camp?
ESPN reporter Lindsey Thiry found herself accosted by an alarmingly big bug at Los Angeles Rams camp Thursday. She was preparing for a live report when the flying creature suddenly dive-bombed in. The bug hovered around Thiry for several seconds until the NFL reporter gave it a good and audible thwack with her mic. ESPN broadcaster Molly McGrath later interviewed Thiry about the identity of the bug. "What is that, a wasp? What was that, Lindsey?" McGrath asked. "It was the biggest bug I'...
We Wouldn’t Be Here Without Poop
Julien Kimmig's career began with a surprising abundance of feces. As a PhD student working at a Cambrian site in northern Canada, Kimmig realized that roughly half the fossils in that outcrop were coprolites, or fossilized poops. Kimmig, now the head of the paleontology and evolution division at the Natural History Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany, wondered what explained the deluge of dung. In 2020, Russell Bicknell, an evolutionary biologist and paleobiologist at Flinders University in Adela...
Sophie Cunningham Has Quite A Journey To Get Back To Basketball
After inflaming a culture war and causing her teammates and colleagues to be bombarded with hypothetical questions for weeks due to her transphobic comments published in a national media outlet, Sophie Cunningham wants to stick to sports. "I'm going to let people just do the speaking for themselves, but for me, I want to get back to basketball," she said last Wednesday. If this past week has been her trying to get back to basketball, she might not ever catch up to it. Saturday's Fever-Sky g...
Alligator Alcatraz Isn’t Just An American Fantasy
Alligator Alcatraz was a blueprint. Creating an ICE detention center out of tents, trailers, and cages amid the sawgrass wetlands of the Florida Everglades, and all of the dangerous reptiles that live there, is equally sadistic and laughable—ludicrously cruel, medieval in form and concept, legible more as a taunt than a security measure. Before it closed in June, the conditions of that concentration camp were dismal and inhumane . Disease ran rampant, adequate medical treatment was rarely give...
Staff Chat Starts Now? Staff Chat Starts Now
Hello there. It's a slow summer Friday, so let's try to run out the clock with a staff chat. We'll be down below ready to answer any questions you might have. Update (3:11 p.m. ET): OK, we're wrapping up here! Enjoy the weekend.
The Defector Interns Say Fogo de “Ciao”
Sarah: All summer long, we’ve been saying “Thank god there are two of us,” whether we’re hyping each other up to send jokes in Slack or encouraging each other to ask members of the staff to chat. But this may have been the toughest challenge we faced together. Sohini: You never know where you might…
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Dallas Cowboys
Some people are fans of the Dallas Cowboys. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Dallas Cowboys. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Hit ‘em with the griddy, you little fucker. When else am I gonna get to use this clip to puff my chest? I gotta take my fun where I can get it. Your 2025 record: 7-9-1. You and I can normally count on the Dallas Cowboys to sabotage their own chances during the cou...
Let’s Unpack LaMelo Ball’s Sugary Abode
As LaMelo Ball gets settled in with the Minnesota Timberwolves , a clip of what appears to be his Charlotte residence has been circulating, due to the interior design choices therein. When I asked the user who circulated the video where he got it from, he said he found it on TikTok, where it was posted by a mover on the job, who appears to have deleted his original post. To the best of our knowledge, this is indeed LaMelo Ball's Charlotte home, or anyway the home of someone in possession of La...
Mike Krukow, One Of Baseball’s Greatest Hangs, Is Ready To Go
The San Francisco Giants don't get to announce anything fun these days, but it would be too cheap even by the prevailing clearance-sale standards to lump the latest bit of ill news relating to the team in with all the others , so we won't. Mike Krukow, the former Giants pitcher , longtime radio analyst, and general Pez dispenser of joy at the ballpark, is retiring at the end of the year . While that unquestionably sucks, it sucks in the best kind of way, because Krukow did the best job he c...
CarJitsu Is Precisely As Dumb As It Sounds
I discovered CarJitsu this past April at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where a bout was broadcast on a wall-mounted television above a display of Doritos. There is, truthfully, not much to explain about this newfangled sport. CarJitsu is an athletic contest, really a wrestling match, between two people who grapple inside a small car until one of them submits to some sort of chokehold or pin. There are two three-minute rounds but possibly a third if the match is tied after the...
Chelsea Gray Punished Caitlin Clark’s Mistakes
It is a funny twist of fate that the Indiana Fever have become such an engine for maddening WNBA storylines that have little or nothing to do with their actual on-court performances, because those performances are crazy-making enough on their own. Are the Fever a great team capable of melting any opponent in front of them, or a bunch of chumps who can't defend the paint to save their lives? Is Caitlin Clark one of the most dynamic guards in the league, or a bozo who can't stop turning it over ...
Would You Eat This Cretaceous Turducken?
Various journalists have tried and failed to investigate the origins of turducken, that matryoshka-inspired dish of a chicken nested inside a duck nested inside a turkey. One chef in Louisiana claims to have invented the dish but refused to tell the New York Times when or where he created it, or even his age. But turducken is best understood as a modern combination in an ancient lineage of engastration , a cooking technique in which one animal is stuffed inside another. Other famous entrant...
The Washington Mystics Don’t Act Their Age
The bulletin board material the Dallas Wings supplied to Cotie McMahon looked more like posterboard material . On Wednesday night, after the Washington Mystics’ 96-92 comeback win over Dallas, the rookie Mystics guard posted a photo of a scouting report the Wings had evidently left behind in their locker room. Like many scouting reports—who can forget Joe Mazzulla’s Quizlet account ?—this one featured some good bits of found poetry. Angela Dugalić? “In to space floor/Attack her if she guards...
Mugged By Seagulls, With Rohan Nadkarni
Both Drew and I can sense when we are overdue for having Rohan Nadkarni on the podcast. In the way that an old prospector's knee might start barking before the storm clouds have even appeared on the horizon, we both feel a twinge when it has been too long between detailed descriptions of various sandwiches and gentle reminders that we are old as hell. It doesn't really matter who sends the text first. In a deeper sense, the universe sends it, and all of us receive it at the same time. Friends,...
It’s Jefry Yan Time
Years before he figured it out enough to make his Major League debut on Wednesday night at the age of 29, which in turn was long after his career ended for the first time, you could find coverage of Jefry Yan celebrating otherwise unremarkable strikeouts in wild and demonstrative fashion, in decidedly unremarkable settings. MLB.com posted a supercut of Yan absolutely going the hell off in Dominican Winter League games back in 2024, and similar spring training highlights abounded on team-affili...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Miami Dolphins
Some people are fans of the Miami Dolphins. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Miami Dolphins. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: "To win games, you have to win the game, not lose the game, honestly. And that, that is how you lose the game." Your 2025 record: 7-10, featuring a 2-7 start that got Dolphins GM Chris Grier fired after 900 years on the job. Everyone assumed that head coach Mike Mc...
Oh No: Dodgers In Unrecoverable Tailspin After Sixth Straight Loss
Less than a week after acquiring Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers for the hefty sum of three prospects, the Los Angeles Dodgers are in a tailspin. What seemed at first a pitching upgrade aimed at converting the team's momentum into a cinched playoff spot has, given the perspective of four more games, turned into a desperate, last-ditch move that has totally mortgaged the team's future. Did the Dodgers ruin baseball by trading for Tarik Skubal? Here is the conclusive answer: No. Clearly Tar...
Displaying items 326-350 of 673 in total