NowLoop

According to a report from ESPN, the NBA hasn't found any evidence that Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer arranged to pay Kawhi Leonard in excess of salary-cap rules via the fraudulent green-banking company Aspiration. Just under a year ago, after a series of reports from podcaster Pablo Torre, the NBA hired the prestigious law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to investigate the alleged scheme. Per the ESPN report, lawyers representing Ballmer and the NBA have been negotiating a resolution over the past few days, and "the league has presented no evidence" to Ballmer that he cheated. Here is a brief summary of how we got here: In early September 2025, Torre reported that Leonard had signed a no-show marketing deal with the now-defunct bank Aspiration, and that this functioned as a way for the Clippers to pay Leonard more than his official salary. Ballmer went on ESPN and played dumb, claiming that while Aspiration was a team partner, he had nothing to do with any arrangements between player and fraudulent bank. Torre produced over a dozen subsequent reports showing a close relationship between Leonard, Aspiration, and various Clippers figures, most notably minority owner Dennis Wong, who reportedly "invested" $1.99 million into Aspiration after the bank was already crashing, and just days before Leonard reportedly received a payment from Aspiration for roughly the same amount. In addition to reams of more evidence about Aspiration, Torre has also reported on what appears to be a similar arrangement between Leonard and scoreboard company Daktronics. The crux of the scandal is the matter of whether Ballmer was intentionally paying Leonard under the table via the Aspiration arrangement. While something shady was clearly going on, providing ironclad legal proof of intent is tricky. The corpus of Torre's reporting is substantial enough that the relationship seems beyond doubt, but the standard for proving that in something approximating a court of law is significantly higher. The NBA's preliminary findings today don't mean that it's all over and Ballmer is for sure in the clear. According to ESPN's report, the NBA seems to have cleared Ballmer of the biggest potential violation of the collective bargaining agreement, but the league is still looking into whether he overstepped rules limiting what teams can do to facilitate endorsement deals for players.

It is difficult to wrap the human mind around the fact that, in the grand old year of 2026, the Milwaukee Brewers are really, truly good. Or maybe that is a personal problem, as someone generally disconnected from the ongoings of the NL Central. What happens over there? None of my business! The operating assumption is that the Brewers will scam the division with 90-or-so wins every year, reaping the benefits of the four other flailing, barely trying teams who share the ignominy of playing in that blighted division, and then will immediately turn around and lose in the NL Wild Card round or Divisional Series. Perhaps last year should have served as a legitimate indicator. The Brewers, after all, won 97 games, the most of either league. But the way the Brewers achieved those 97 wins was undeniably weird. There were (said to the tune of "Shots" by LMFAO) hits, hits, hits, hits, hits, hits and double-digit win streaks somehow chained to other win streaks and the swingiest of games, all of which gave the Brewers' record a faint tinge of eau de frauduleux. The Brewers squeaked out of the NLDS against their divisional rivals, the Chicago Cubs, before getting absolutely curb-stomped by none other than the Los Angeles Dodgers—at their closest pass to their purported juggernaut form—in the NLCS. But this year! This year, it feels more real. Maybe it's because Pete Crow-Armstrong is popping off for the Cubs, so it feels like there's some real competition within the division, or at least like anyone else is taking it seriously.

Social media is a terrible place to learn about anything, but there is perhaps no phrase more ill-suited for the Twitter or YouTube search bar than "Angel Reese." The reasons for this are obvious and not worth getting into here—there are a bunch of racist losers on there who have made Reese a target in their increasingly toxic culture war—but even under better circumstances, Reese's game would be a tough fit for 15-second, vertical video highlights. This is a player whose unique, maddening, and persistently effective style was built for a pre-internet age, in which her bewildering box scores could be spoken about in properly mythic tones. We don't live in that age, though. We live in one in which Reese's performances are regularly reduced to short, derisive clips showing her smoking wide-open layups and missed shots following her own offensive rebounds. Today is no different: Following the Fever's 95-91 win over the Dream on Sunday, the internet is awash in clips of Reese bricking a fast-break layup and missing a putback that would have won the game in regulation. Such lowlights are typical of someone who is shooting 41 percent from the field, but they in fact only serve to make her an even more fascinating figure within the league. For example, Reese shot 5-of-16 from the floor in Sunday's game, but finished with 15 points, 14 rebounds (five on the offensive glass) and six assists in 38 minutes and was a plus-1 for the game. Reese's misses are too loud and too common, but what intrigues me is how often she is able to shoot as poorly as she did on Sunday and still be a positive force for the Dream.

Several times a week, I sit myself down in front of a baseball game either in person or on television, I retrieve my book and my pen, and I keep score. I feel my brain relax, my mind soften, my attention fully focus on one thing in a world where that rarely happens. It is a grandma hobby like knitting or embroidery or sourdough, and I love it. Scoring a game is one of the great mundane joys of my life, and I will not shut up about it. A few seasons ago, I taught my dear friend Dana Murphy to score, and now we sit in our row at the baseball game, recording each out and hit in our slightly varying scripts, in the same scorebook. People—mostly, older men who used to keep score with their fathers or grandfathers—stop to tell us they love to see people scoring the game still, that it reminds them of their childhood, of a slower world. You can still score, we say. Everybody can score! Dana agreed to help me, so I decided that I would attempt to host a class to teach the people of Philadelphia how to score. I made a little poster for promotion, and advertised it on Instagram and Bluesky. Worst-case, I figured, no one would come, and my friends and I would just watch the game together at a bar. I felt my first twinges of hesitancy when I tried to explain the event to Julia Golda Harris, one of the owners of Val's Lesbian Bar in Philadelphia. Julia was open to my event, but ... she didn't understand what it was. On the phone, I explained that it's like a worksheet you fill out while watching a game. I wandered off in my pitch, talking about the history of scoring, and the first woman to be a professional scorer, and how the written record is all we have of those games from baseball's early days. Julia still did not really understand what I was talking about, which was fair, but she agreed to host anyway—as long as I thought I could get 15 people to come.

Pittsburgh had a hell of a winter storm in January, with more than a foot of snow, and freezing temperatures that created towering walls of ice and annoyed locals whose parking situations wouldn’t return to normal for a month. Some of the city's oldest buildings suffered the most damage, victims of a phenomenon known as ice damming. The warmth from a building rises to the snow banks on the roof, but it's only enough to defrost the bottommost layer, which then flows to the eaves and then re-freezes, creating a trapped reservoir of snowmelt that penetrates cracks and crevices, and flows into the walls to create conditions for mold. Ice damming alone caused millions of dollars' worth of damage in Pittsburgh, but perhaps nobody in the city felt as targeted by thermodynamics as Naomi Ruiz, a conservator currently working on some priceless and suddenly damp treasures at St. Nicholas Croatian Church. "I had, like, just gotten back home [to Europe] when they sent me a picture," Ruiz says, pointing up toward the corner of the Church's arched ceiling. Even from down here, I could see the intersection of the balcony and the wall was stripped of paint and had the unmistakable flaky look of water damage. She sighs as she remembers the sinking feeling. "That was the spot I'd spent a bunch of time fixing just before leaving."  Naomi specializes in the painstaking process of preserving art in aging churches. It's much more complicated than simply putting a fresh layer of paint over the water damage or scrubbing candle soot from the walls. At St. Nicholas, Naomi is tasked with conserving internationally renowned—and uniquely provocative—murals painted by the Croatian artist Maxo Vanka. 

There's no 'I' in crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Matthew Stock, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Matthew is a crossword constructor and stay-at-home dad from Dallas. His work can be found at happylittlepuzzles.com. 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."

Some people are fans of the Minnesota Vikings. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Minnesota Vikings. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. Your team: Minnesota Vikings, the winningest team to never win a Super Bowl. What an honor! King of the paupers! The widely respected Bills and Bengals have tried their best, but have failed in their quest to lose more Super Bowls than the mighty Vikings. The Lions and Jaguars WISH they had Minnesota's history of being moderately competitive! Bow down, O Titans and Browns! The Vikings are here to teach ye the ways of modest regular-season success and embarrassing playoff implosion. Your 2025 record: The most moribund, limp-dicked 9-8 in the short history of 17-game seasons. Big-time ass. Stinky.

[PHONE RINGING] "Mr. Walter's office. Can I help you?" "Yes you can. Is Mark in?"

The story gods have been good to me in my decades of typing for a living, but never better than with the Mayo football tale, which has consumed all of Ireland and me since the final 45 seconds or so of the historically downtrodden team's July 26 All-Ireland championship win over supposedly unbeatable Kerry. I knew even in the moment that getting to watch Mayo end its 75-year championship drought in person was a privilege. And it's left me ruined for other sporting events for now and maybe forever.  I wore my media bracelet, saying “Croke Park 26-7-26,” for a week before cutting it off because I could smell it. But I can’t let go of what took place. All I want to talk (and write) about is the match. I’m still weepy every time I watch the highlight reels or hear the Mayo fans in the stadium sing “To Win Just Once” or “The Green and Red of Mayo.” And I watch and listen a whole lot. You should too!  Here are some of the broadcast calls. Take ‘em in. You don’t need to know a dang thing about the rules or history of the game to get caught up in the euphoria and understand my “What do I do now?” state. Just click play.

Reacher is back, and in the first few episodes of Season 4, our enormous friend seems to be in fine form. He's smooshing guys in libraries, escaping a CIA black site, and making sure a tiny kitten finds a good home. While Reacher may be our current moment's most beloved answer to the question "What if a guy was really big?" he is by no means the only one. Plenty of authors have explored the possibilities inherent in hugeness. Fantasy writers in particular are enamored of this device. So, if you are interested in meeting a few more fictional hulking men, here are some of my favorites. Please note: I'm generally ignoring Romantasy protagonists (with one exception) as that list would be very long. There are so many big men ravishing small women. Honestly, it's better to just leave that whole dynamic alone.