2025-10-01 02:57:02
Smack! Pop! Crack! Woosh! Thump! Ping! Thud! Zing! Thwack! Whomp! Bam! BOOM!
These are the normal, old-hat sounds of baseball. But a new baseball sound just dropped, which is important and also good: puh-THUNK-CHIN-bing!
2025-10-01 02:37:06
Well, they found a way to make Electronic Arts an even shittier company. In an move notable for its size, though certainly not its content, a group of investors—including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's firm Affinity Partners—have purchased EA for $55 billion. It's the second-biggest acquisition in video game history, after Microsoft's $68.7 billion absorption of Activision Blizzard, but unlike that monstrosity, which was subject to antitrust regulations, this feels like a done deal, a straight purchase of one of gaming's biggest and worst studios.
2025-10-01 01:56:33
Of the five players made available to reporters at the Clippers' media day Monday, Kawhi Leonard was the last one up. He slipped into a sweatsuit, sat down at the dais, and said, "I'm ready," as Law Murray of the The Athletic detailed. This was the first time that Leonard faced questions from the press since the revelation of an apparent scheme to funnel him millions of dollars outside his NBA salary, in violation of the league's collective bargaining agreement.
It had been nearly a month since Pablo Torre first reported on the financial relationship between Leonard, the Clippers, and the fraudulent carbon-credit company Aspiration, which signed Leonard to a $28 million endorsement deal and seemingly asked nothing of him in return. The no-show job looked like cap circumvention at the time, and details reported in the weeks since—like a suspiciously timed $2 million investment from a Clippers minority owner in Aspiration, soon followed by the completion of a delayed $1.75 million payment from Aspiration to Leonard—have only made it look sketchier. The NBA has since opened an investigation into the Clippers.
2025-10-01 01:29:11
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 nuns, rope, human settlements on Venus, and more.
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2025-10-01 00:53:12
The Indiana Fever are one game away from the WNBA Finals. They were not supposed to get nearly this far, not with Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, and several other key players watching from the sidelines and posting ill-advised AI art on Instagram. But the Fever won their first-round series on the road, and have pushed four-time MVP A'ja Wilson and the Aces to a Game 5 tonight. The obvious question is how, and while part of that answer can be credited to Kelsey Mitchell becoming James Harden, the Fever's successful run has as much to do with their physical brand of hoops. In other words, it has to do with Aliyah Boston.
The Fever's center has been remarkably consistent since she was drafted first overall in 2023. That's mostly a compliment, as her career averages of 14.5 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 1.1 blocks per game have earned her an All-Star spot in each of her three seasons. But the pessimist might watch Boston play for a few games and see a big who is great at everything but not necessarily the best at anything. She doesn't have the range of Jonquel Jones or A'ja Wilson, the handles of someone like Napheesa Collier, nor the dominant rim protection of Ezi Magbegor or Brittney Griner. Every top-tier WNBA team of the past few years has relied on a multifunctional big. As great as Boston is at the meat-and-potatoes aspects, like grabbing rebounds and finishing at the rack, it would have been fair to be mildly skeptical of her as a championship-level anchor.
2025-10-01 00:34:11
There's never been a better ad for St. Paul than Kirill Kaprizov's new contract. I think by this point in negotiations, most hockey observers assumed that the superstar winger would at least take a sip of all that the NHL had to offer and hit free agency at the end of the season. But there's no need for him to tour New York, fly to Vancouver, or sample the myriad delicacies of Columbus, Ohio. Kaprizov has decided that he wants to stay put with the organization that drafted him as a teenager. In a deal announced by the Wild on Tuesday morning, he'll earn $136 million over eight years of work in which he'll attempt to lead Minnesota out of icy purgatory and into ... well, at least the second round of the postseason.
Kaprizov's deal is a record-setting one, and it reorients expectations around what a superstar is worth at a time when the salary cap is rising some $25 million over the next three seasons. He surely won't be the highest-paid player in hockey for longer than it takes Connor McDavid to sign his next contract, but given what he means to his team, Kaprizov is worthy of that label right now. After winning rookie of the year in that awkward 2021 season, the Siberian shooter put up a trifecta of 40-goal campaigns even as the rest of the roster gradually declined. Last year, though he missed half the regular season, he still finished just two off the team lead in goals, then scored five in six games as the Wild fell in the first round to Vegas.
