2026-09-29 02:31:25
It was many WNBA news cycles ago—but not that many human years ago!—that the league’s central power struggle was shaping up to be one between A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart. Since Wilson was drafted in 2018, the two stars have lived atop MVP ballots and together won six of eight WNBA championships. On this very website, in 2022, I anointed them as much:
Stewart and Wilson, anchors of the Olympic team and the new faces of their sport, should run this league for a while. "Should" is an important qualifier. It wasn't too long ago that WNBA fans imagined epic future playoff battles between Stewart and Elena Delle Donne, battles that have had to stay in the imagination thanks to an Achilles injury, a back injury, and a pandemic. But everyone's health permitting, this is The Rivalry We Care About Now, and it's so extremely awesome to watch.”
On Sunday, the two would-be rivals were miles away from each other and their games tipped off a few hours apart. Stewart’s 34 points and 12 rebounds carried the Liberty to an upset 91-75 win over the top seeded Lynx in Minnesota. Just as in the regular season and in playoffs past, the Lynx had troublingly few answers for opposing size; the Liberty might be the most aggravating team to watch in the WNBA, but maybe more importantly, they’re also the tallest. Stewart, so hard-nosed and rangy and lanky, almost personally magnifies Minnesota’s flaws. She attacks mismatches and swats shots—on Saturday, she even supplied some throwback threes for extra style points. Solid games from Leonie Fiebich and Han Xu were sufficient help; Stewart doesn’t need much of it. (No matter at all that her team’s lead guard continues to shoot springtime tour dates.)
2026-09-29 01:33:23
Inside the hundred-meter mark, after 273.3 kilometers of racing, Brandon McNulty looked back one last time to see the pack behind him sprinting it out for silver. He banged on his handlebars, put his hands to his head, and pumped his fist, seeming not quite sure how he should celebrate his country's first World Championship road race victory in 33 years and the biggest win of his career. McNulty's scattered exuberance tells part of the story, as does his teammate Quinn Simmons coasting in for fourth and Matteo Jorgenson celebrating as he crossed the line in eighth. The Americans raced a perfect race, delivering a shocker in the world's biggest one-day race thanks to one of the best tactical performances you'll ever see.
An unfortunate byproduct of Tadej Pogacar's typically thrilling dominance is that he obviates or at least neutralizes team tactics. It really doesn't matter how carefully you distribute satellite riders, gouge away at his teammates, or force him to do extra work, because he's so much better than everyone in the world that he can almost always go win the races he wants on pure strength. What are you supposed to do when Pogacar is simply riding alone off the front for 70 kilometers, faster than any one team's worth of riders could sanely chase? But Pogacar's recent crash at the Vuelta opened the door not only for Enric Mas to win a bike race instead of nobly and anonymously finish fifth, but for a new world champion for the first time since the Second Pogacar Inquisition began three years ago. There probably won't be many more good chances like this, so who would step into the vacuum?
2026-09-29 01:06:11
Call ‘em the Badwill Games. Ireland scored three early goals and cruised to a 3-0 win over Israel in the first of two matches between the teams that have already made everybody go ewwwwww.
The game, played in Debrecen, Hungary, was the first of two very controversial matches between the national teams as part of the UEFA Nations League competition. Ireland had requested that UEFA ban Israel from the tournament, but that was denied, as was a subsequent appeal to be moved out of the same bracket.
A national campaign then formed in Ireland to prevent the matches from happening. A group of 160 Irish athletes signed a petition released late last week calling for the matches to be cancelled. RTE, the Irish national broadcasting network, announced that it would only have limited coverage of the matches. Heimir Hallgrímsson, the Iceland-born manager of the Irish team, defended fielding a squad by saying, "We're not playing with genocide. We're playing against genocide."
2026-09-29 00:40:00
You ever need something so badly it scares you to say it aloud, just because the universe might smell that stench of desperation about you and smite your ass back into the existential garbage time you deserve? The way I’ve been feeling about living in New York City qualifies. When I said goodbye to Lauren Theisen last summer, it was crushing. I had seen that sublime summit and would now regress back to the place I regrettably called home. There is, as it turns out, a reason why writers love New York, and my apartment in Tacoma would have given Julian of Norwich seasonal depression. I knew I had to get back no matter what, but as I’ve documented, my constitution is ill suited for the ‘or bust’ suffixes of life.
Luckily, life decided to rub my nose in just how shitty stagnancy smelled. My apartment’s toilet exploded sewage everywhere, wafting the Tacoma aroma upon all of my belongings. In case I hadn’t yet gotten the message, my lazy scummy dirtbag fuckface of a property manager decided this was the right time to raise the rent, supplying me the ample spite that would spur the big move. No time like the present. I needed to get rid of everything I could stomach one day buying again, find every latent dime I was owed or could borrow, and claw my way back to the only city really worth getting bled dry to live in. Most importantly, I needed to sell the Lexus.
In 2004, my uncle made one of the smartest calls that anyone ever got to make on the car market: He bought a brand new Lexus GX 470. It was eye-wateringly expensive, about 80 grand in today’s money, but his construction business was going well, and anyway in his judgment it was sturdier and more comfortable than anything else he test drove. He fucking nailed that one. This was Toyota engineering at the absolute peak of their powers. That GX was no steal, but at few points in history has a family of cars been so utterly far ahead of the competing options in terms of quality as the Toyota SUVs of this era.
2026-09-28 23:21:59
Progress in the NFL is not linear, past success doesn't guarantee future success, regression to the mean is normal and expected—all of the cliches in the world can't possibly rationalize whatever the hell is happening to Drake Maye and the New England Patriots so far this season. Currently sitting at 1-2 after Jacksonville laid down a 35-6 "old-fashioned ass whooping," as Pats safety Kevin Byard III put it, New England is finding life after a division title and a shock Super Bowl run to be, somehow, even harder and more dispiriting that it seemed on paper. Some fall-off was to be expected after a season in which the Pats had the easiest schedule of the century, but what's become of Drake Maye, who looked like a perennial MVP candidate last season, is downright shocking.
Maye has been absolute ass so far this season. The stats are bad enough—585 yards, one touchdown, a league-leading six interceptions, two fumbles, a QBR of 45.9—to set off the alarms, but Maye is failing the eye test even harder than that. After looking poised both in the pocket and moving the ball with his feet last season, Maye looks jittery and unsure of his throws so far in 2026, leading to mistakes so jarringly poor that it's becoming easier to write off last year as a fluke than it is to give him grace for a tough schedule and some key injuries.
A.J. Brown going down for multiple weeks with an ankle injury in the season opener hasn't helped, and Maye didn't force the front office to give Romeo Doubs $17 million a year to fail to get open on almost every play. Meanwhile, the run game, already not a particular strength last season, has been atrocious this time around, with Rhamondre Stevenson and TreVeyon "Just Asking Questions" Henderson combining for 72 yards a game on 3.9 yards per carry.
2026-09-28 23:11:22
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 Zachary Edward-Brown, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Zach is a Chicagoan who enjoys playing soccer and basketball and rooting for the Bears. He's always open to collabs.
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 sample the goods with a two-month free trial: "With an AVCX subscription, you get access to weekly themed and themeless crosswords, minis, cryptics, and trivia, by email or in your favorite app. We have no corporate overlord, and we publish top-flight stuff only. We also pay our people fairly, always. Check us out."
