Defector
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The Game’s About The Ballers
If there's one clean, satisfying lesson to be taken from the World Cup action we've seen so far, it's this one: Big games tend to be decided by the big dogs. Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland, Lionel Messi, Michael Olise, Harry Kane—all of these guys have been playing out of their minds since the first group-stage games, and each has taken a deserved turn as the tournament's brightest star. Right now, minutes after England's 2-1 victory over DR Congo in the round of 32, it's Kane who reigns as ...
Liv Takes Miles, With Maitreyi Anantharaman
This week's episode of Nothing But Respect was recorded hours before Jalen Duren's representatives committed to using the Sacramento Kings as an unwitting partner in scrabbling a bit of leverage from the Detroit Pistons, which would have been great to talk about, but does not really change too much of the first bit of the show. Maitreyi Anantharaman came back on to talk Duren, Jaylen Brown, and Analyticsgate, but mostly to catch us up on the WNBA season. We talked a ton about her incredible Ol...
Trinket Box Purveyors Are Melting Down
Who among us has not attempted to start a whimsical community-oriented project, only for it to devolve into a site of small-scale authoritarianism? It happens all the time! It even happened in my own town! For a couple of months earlier this year, there was a white box screwed into the outdoor wall of a restaurant on my street. Every time I passed it, people were crowded around it, picking out little toys, stickers, and knickknacks that were stashed inside. One time, I stopped by and trade...
ESPN Retracts Article About NFL Player And Dead Woman In Dominican Republic
On June 18, ESPN published a report that connected NFL free agent Mike Pennel Jr. to the death of a woman in the Dominican Republic. This week, the network retracted the article and issued a brief statement. The article, bylined by T.J. Quinn and Juan Recio, claimed that Pennel had "an ongoing relationship" with Carli Franchesca Guzmán Roche, who disappeared in 2021 and whose body was discovered in January 2026 on Pennel's property in Puerto Plata. The original report, which has since been ...
There’s No Team Scarier Than Mexico At The Azteca
Heading into the 2026 World Cup, the Mexican national team had one mission: Finish first in Group A. Beyond the obvious motivation to not lose a game, finishing top of the group guaranteed that El Tri would not leave the terrifying confines of the Estadio Azteca until the quarterfinal round. It's impossible to overstate how powerful the home-field advantage is for Mexico at the Azteca: In 89 official competitive games there (not including friendlies), Mexico has lost exactly two games. Two! (I...
Cade Cavalli Insists There Was Nothing Racist About Calling Willson Contreras “Boy”
Cade Cavalli, pitcher for the Washington Nationals, used "boy" Tuesday night in a taunt directed at Willson Contreras of the Boston Red Sox. Cavalli had caught Contreras looking at a third strike, and shouted, "Sit down, boy," loud enough for it to be caught on the television broadcast. Contreras, a Venezuelan man seven years Cavalli's senior and with more than 40 times as many MLB games under his belt, took it exactly as intended. In the ensuing brouhaha, Contreras whipped off his batting hel...
Gracie The Giraffe Is Back Home. Now Rich Guys Can Buy Her.
You may have heard that a giraffe named Gracie skipped town—"town" being the Cedar Hollow Ranch in Leakey, Texas. Gracie, who is estimated to be around 3 or 4 years old, had been living there since May. Gracie is a reticulated giraffe, a species known for their clean and geometric pattern of brown spots. The owner of the ranch, Vick Jones, told The New York Times that Gracie had wandered to a fenced corner of the ranch, which is nestled in a canyon, climbed a slab of rock to nibble on some tre...
“We Hold These Truds”: A Search For The Weirdest Piece Of America 250 Merchandise
On the morning of Game 1 of the NBA Finals, I received an email from the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission (better known as “America250”) promoting the release of new commemorative apparel to mark the occasion. The shirt designs have little connection to the NBA Finals—“NBA” is nowhere to be found, and the only logo on it is America250’s—but somehow even less connection to the country’s birthday. One has a basketball going into a net , flanked by the phrase “Game seven grit and American sp...
U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Bans On Trans Athletes In School Sports
The U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion released Tuesday, voted 6-3 in support of two state laws that ban trans girls and women from playing women's sports at public schools and universities. The ruling applies directly to bans in two states—Idaho and West Virginia—while bolstering similar bans in more than two dozen others. Writing for the three votes against—all of which came from the court's liberal wing—Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that to the court's majority, "the facts do not matter, e...
Why The Tour de France Route Is Different Every Single Year
As I spend the early part of the summer talking about the Tour de France with normal people (read: non-cycling fans), there's one thing that catches almost everyone off guard. I will outline the route and they'll say something like "What do you mean it starts in Barcelona?" as they adopt an expression that I imagine conveys skepticism about whether I know Barcelona is not in France, or that Louis XIV evacuated Catalonia following 1697's Peace of Ryswick. To those who haven't paid the closest a...
You’re Going To Have To Care About The AL’s Snooziest Teams
Why would you watch Germany face World Cup elimination in a penalty shootout when you could watch two teams slow-motion walking toward the top of their divisions in the American League? Of course, I’m talking about the Cleveland Guardians vs. Texas Rangers thumb-wrestling match. Now that's appointment television! In Monday's marquee game, Cleveland's Parker Messick faced off against the Rangers' bullpen, with the bulk of the innings thrown by Chris Paddack, debuting with his third team this...
A Clueless Soccer Guy’s Favorite World Cup Things
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 worst sports cities, Germany, deceptive cooking shows, and more. I'm back from vacation! I'm still technically at the beach, but there's no reason I can't knock out some work in the morning while everyone else in the family sleeps in. I'm always up at 7:00 a.m., whether I have the day off or...
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...
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