LAVAL, QUEBEC — The crowd at Place Bell for Game 1 was wound tight, like a guitar string on the brink of snapping. Our Montreal Victoire, who had never won more than one game in a playoff series, let alone a series itself, were set to face the Minnesota Frost, the only team who has ever won the Walter Cup, in the PWHL semifinals. It felt like everybody in the arena was holding their breath, bracing for history to unfold before us, unchanged.
It didn’t help that Minnesota scored twice before the first intermission. I could feel the crowd’s belief, or at least my own, ebbing. We needed the team to believe for us, to break open the glorious possibility of change.
Less than three minutes into the second period, Shiann Darkangelo delivered, making the most of chaos in front of Minnesota’s crease. It wasn’t an equalizer, but it was proof that mountains can be climbed, so long as you go one step at a time. The crowd’s reaction felt as much like a sigh of relief as a celebration.
Jason Collins, the first openly gay player in the NBA, has died of brain cancer, his family announced on Tuesday. He was 47. Last year, Collins was diagnosed with a brain tumor and later revealed that it was Stage 4 glioblastoma, a particularly deadly form.
As Collins told ESPN's Ramona Shelburne in an article published this past December, he went to Singapore for experimental treatment to try and extend his life. "The goal is to keep fighting the progress of the tumors long enough for a personalized immunotherapy to be made for me, and to keep me healthy enough to receive that immunotherapy once it's ready," he said. The treatment allowed him to return to the United States and make some public appearances, but the cancer returned and worsened. He died at his home in Los Angeles.
Collins played for 13 seasons in the NBA, a successful career by any standards, but became better known for what he did toward the end of his professional basketball run. In 2013, after the end of the regular season, he came out in an article published by Sports Illustrated, and became the first openly gay active athlete in one of the four major American men's pro sports leagues. He was unsigned during the 2013–14 season until the Brooklyn Nets offered him a 10-day contract, and he entered his first game since his announcement on Feb. 23, 2014. He finished out the season with the Nets, then retired in November of that year.
After a long, grueling regular season, the EFL Championship shrinks down to a four-team playoff to determine which team will earn promotion into the Premier League. In the first match-up of the current playoffs, Hull City won 2-0 on aggregate over Millwall to clinch a spot in the final. Pretty normal stuff, which sets it apart from the other match-up, between Southampton and Middlesbrough.
On paper, that one was as straightforward as the Hull-Millwall tie, with Southampton shaking off a scoreless first-leg draw with a 2-1 second-leg victory to advance to the final. However, that result is now in limbo thanks to a controversy involving a Southampton analyst who was caught spying on Boro's practice session on Thursday morning, two days before Saturday's first leg.
Now, spying in soccer is closer to a misdemeanor offense than a felony, mostly because the potential value of it is so low. There just aren't any strategic decisions that happen in a match that can compare with, say, surreptitiously learning an NFL team's playbook. That's not to say there's nothing to gain from spying in soccer, though. Knowing in advance a team's set-piece routines, possible starting lineups, and general formation set-ups could conceivably provide modest but real benefits. And the importance of small, and maybe even purely perceptual advantages could prove crucial in a knockout tie like the playoffs, where the margins are small and the rewards are enormous. They don't call the Championship playoff final the richest game in soccer for no reason!
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 minordilemmas@defector.com.
This week, Drew answers a question about strategies for dealing with a picky eater.
Benjamin:
Tiger Woods, the most dominant golfer of his era, will have to submit his prescription drug records to law enforcement as part of the investigation into his March 27 traffic crash, a judge ruled Tuesday. But those records will not be made public under the state's legendarily broad public-records law after Martin County Judge Darren Steele ordered that the documents be made available to just select people connected to the court case.
Records generated during the process of gathering evidence for a trial, known in court as discovery, generally become public record in Florida once they are turned over to a defendant.
Woods was arrested in March in Jupiter Island, Fla., where he has a home, and was charged with driving under the influence and refusing to submit to a drug test after his black Land Rover clipped the back of a pickup truck and rolled over on its side.
The Pittsburgh Steelers, eager to cast off whatever traces of cultural relevance they once had, announced on Wednesday that they were willing to wait for quarterback Aaron Rodgers to help ease them into a quiet, lonely death.
“I’m optimistic we can get a deal wrapped sometime within the next three to 100 days,” said GM Omar Khan. Khan told reporters that he recognizes that the team’s fans have been waiting a long time to become just as disaffected with the Steelers as they have been with the Pittsburgh Pirates. “But trust me, we’re working on it,” he said, offering the cameras a sly wink. “Just give us a little longer.”
Team owner and president Art Rooney II seconded Khan’s assurances. “It has long been the dream of both myself and the Rooney family to watch our beloved Steelers flop around like a fish for months on end, until they run out of oxygen and at last fall, deathly silent, into the afterlife, unnoticed and unloved.” Rooney told the press he was “disappointed” by the team’s 2025 campaign, which included a number of “overly ambitious throws downfield” and “a division title that none of us actually wanted to win.”
Outfielders have a lot of time on their hands to be alone with their thoughts. The San Francisco Giants don't win a lot of baseball games. Put those two things together and you get magic. Erotic magic.
The history of the outfield post-win celebration is short but storied. When a team closes out a win, that fielding triad will convene to revel in their victory. Often they high five; sometimes that involves jumping. Or they slam asses. Maybe they play rock-paper-scissors. They are limited only by their creativity, and the boundaries of good taste, and sometimes not even that. On Monday night, the Giants, winners of two straight and fresh off a big cross-California win over the Dodgers, felt like celebrating. Outfielders Drew Gilbert, Harrison Bader, and Jung Hoo Lee vigorously slammed into each other groin-first. I mean, they really got after it.
Brandon Clarke has died. Paramedics reportedly responded to an emergency call from a home in the San Fernando Valley around dinner time Monday, and declared Clarke dead at the scene. He was 29 years old, and a seven-year NBA veteran who'd played his entire professional career with the Memphis Grizzlies.
The call that brought paramedics to the scene of Clarke's death was, in official jargon, for a medical emergency. Subsequent reporting from NBC4 Los Angeles indicates that Clarke's death is being investigated as a possible drug overdose, and that drug paraphernalia was reportedly found "in the home." ABC News reported from sources later Monday that investigators found narcotics. This is inevitably drawing renewed attention to an incident from April, when Clarke was arrested in Arkansas and charged with possession of a controlled substance. That substance, per reports, was kratom, a traditional medicine derived from the leaves of a tropical evergreen tree, sold commercially as a powder and used as a stimulant. Clarke was found in possession of 200 grams of kratom, which sounds like a lot but is not: The fine powder, which looks and smells like attic dust, with a soupçon of oolong, is sold in comparable quantities at vape shops, dispensaries, and trendy cafés. A company called Earth Kratom, for example, distributes a whole range of kratom products in slickly packaged resealable bags, each containing 250 grams of kratom powder. Arkansas, where Clarke was charged, is one of just a handful of states where possession of kratom is criminalized.
Clarke was a very cool basketball player. He was undersized as a power forward, but he had a special, Blake Griffin-esque relationship with gravity, and could hold his own as a rebounder and rim protector. He was a fearsome lob threat, which gave him a kind of floor-warping gravity of his own when operating as the screener in a well-executed pick-and-roll. I liked to watch him with the ball in his hands: Clarke didn't have a ton of moves, but he liked to drive at the cup, and by his freshman year in college he'd developed a go-to move, leading with his left hand and then spinning back to his right. He was so quick and light-footed that the spin continued to work against plodding opponents deep into Clarke's professional career: In an earlier era, the makers of NBA Showdown would've coded it in there as his signature move.
On Tuesday night, two days after getting ejected for elbow crimes, Victor Wembanyama played in his first true must-win playoff game. Facing that pressure for the first time in his charmed career, how would he respond?
Glance at the box score of Game 5 between his San Antonio Spurs and the Minnesota Timberwolves, and you'll see Wembanyama with 27 points and 17 rebounds. You'll see that he was plus-24, with three blocks and a single foul. Poke around a little further, and you'll see the Wolves shot an alarmingly terrible 47 percent in the paint. You will see that every single Timberwolf was negative, and that Rudy Gobert (four points, one made field goal, minus-15) and Julius Randle (6-for-17 shooting, minus-22) did not produce how the Wolves need them to produce.
San Antonio rolled Minnesota in Game 5, 126-97, and while you can see the faint outline of Wemby's impact circumscribed within the stats, that will only get you so far. I found his Game 5 performance spectacular. To even say he was the best player on the court undersells it. He seemed to be the only player on the court. It felt so different from Game 4's bombastic frenzy. This game felt contained, never in competitive or aesthetic jeopardy. This is the Wemby effect. When I watch the Spurs, I find myself straying from the visual tenets of how to watch the game and focusing solely on Wembanyama. I don't end up missing anything, because everyone on the court is doing the same. Maybe that's the way in to describing what makes him singular.
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 bunk beds, working from home, good moms, undershirts, and more.
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