2025-09-19 05:00:55
The team didn’t win, but everyone stayed. It wasn’t even their building. And still, most of the Golden State Valkyries fans who’d schlepped to an alternate arena in San Jose for the team’s first-ever home playoff game stuck around to cheer when the season was over. The WNBA’s expansion success story ended on Wednesday, with Golden State’s 75-74 Game 2 loss to the champion favorite Minnesota Lynx.
All season long, the Valkyries earned that fan devotion with their distinct, jittery brand of basketball. Their defense could constrict and expand in sync, aggressively helping to deny drives before darting out to recover. Against the Lynx last night, it worked well. At halftime, the Lynx had scored just 28 points on 12-of-35 shooting, and while the Golden State's scheme generally concedes lots of three-point attempts, Minnesota wasn’t cashing in there either. A hot shooting start from the Valkyries, including a 27-point first quarter, gave them a 41-28 lead at the half, and they pushed it up to 17 early in the third, before the queasy and inevitable fourth quarter began.
2025-09-19 03:56:15
It is strange how normal it has been to work with Dan McQuade during the illness that he wrote about at Defector a few weeks ago. There are some times when he's not available or just not feeling his best, and occasionally he will mention in passing that he is "radioactive," but also he is still around and doing good blogs and getting upset about the Eagles and describing specific episodes of Baywatch Nights and Pacific Blue as the spirit moves him. If he hadn't written about his experience with neuroendocrine cancer over the last year and change, I doubt any reader would have known about it. So it fits that while we talked about his illness and recovery on the podcast this week, we mostly just talked about the stuff we talk about when Dan McQuade is on the podcast.
2025-09-19 03:36:09
"Um ... there we go ... uh-oh," said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on stage as he attempted to answer a video call, through a combination of movements between a wristband and a pair of glasses. "Well, I ... let's see what happened there ... that's too bad," he continued, shortly before cutting short the live demo. The video call went unanswered.
2025-09-19 02:41:30
When I read that Robert Redford died on Tuesday, I did a double take. I didn't realize he was 89, but even if he was, he had that air of immortality that attaches to all true movie stars. The double take seemed appropriate—Robert Redford, over his many decades on screen, had, among so many other things, managed to turn it into an art form. He was a kind of skittish actor, whose flashing, darting eyes often appeared almost frantic, whose movements skewed jerky, like there was a scrappy little boy constantly knocking against that old Hollywood exterior. He did a lot of squinting and his nodding became a meme, but it was his signature double take—that casual glance, then brief look away, then snap back with those big blue eyes that said "Wait, what?"—that ended up having so many meanings. It was a look that answered its own question, and when he died, the quintessential double take went with him.
It's ironic that Redford became super famous for playing the sharp-shooting Sundance Kid to Paul Newman's sharp-talking Butch Cassidy in George Roy Hill's 1969 film, about a couple of 19th-century outlaws running out of luck. Sundance holds the gaze, he doesn't double back on it. He watches, he waits, as his partner talks and talks and talks. But even as far back as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Redford was doing a double take. It wasn’t in the script. William Goldman didn’t even have him written on screen when it happens. But in the moment in question, it's dark, so dark it's almost pitch, and he and Butch are watching a posse closing in on them. They’re sitting in wait as the lights glow beneath them, when it suddenly becomes clear that those lights really are heading in their direction. That's when Redford does a blink-and-you'll-miss-it double take punctuated by "Dammit!" It's a perfect coming-out party for what would become his trademark—Redford is often with his buddies when it happens, and it's often exclamatory. As he says later in the film, when asked to shoot something on the spot: "I'm better when I move."
2025-09-19 01:52:02
Through five matches of the 2025-26 season—four in the Premier League, plus Wednesday's Champions League opener against Atlético Madrid—Liverpool has gotten out to and subsequently blown three 2-0 leads (lovers of the "most dangerous lead in soccer!" cliche are in heaven right now). The Reds have also struggled to score against Arsenal and Burnley, two well-drilled sides in defense. And yet, thanks to a fifth-straight late winner, Liverpool has had a perfect start to the season: five matches, five wins, five go-ahead goals scored in the 80th minute or later. What the hell are we supposed to take from this?
2025-09-19 01:07:49
Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it.
Before we get to the other kind of football, we begin with soccer. I have a 16-year-old son. He has played soccer longer than he’s had a functioning memory. We still have photos of the boy from when he was 3 and going to daytime soccer camp to help us burn the clock. This was soccer only in the loosest sense. The kids had jerseys (T-shirts), they had a ball, they had miniature Pugg goals to fire shots at. But since preschoolers are too young to grasp concepts such as “rules,” the boys and girls spent most of those sessions playing soccer-themed games like Stuck In The Mud. It was very cute, as was the coach. A few team moms would show up to practice just a little more cleaned up than they might have otherwise.
