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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 romantic sandwiches, Todds, bad luck, choosing your own death, and more. Your letters: Doug:

Nikola Jokic had a rough time Monday night. The Nuggets rolled out a new starting lineup, one featuring Jonas Valanciunas as Jokic's front-court partner. Denver's opponent, the Utah Jazz, responded by sticking their own pasty big guy, Kyle Filipowski, onto Valanciunas, and leaving Jokic to be guarded by second-year man Elijah Harkless, who is on a two-way contract for a team trying very hard to lose basketball games. Harkless, generously listed at 6-foot-3, should be a light meal for Jokic; instead, Jokic spent most of his 36 minutes of floor-time having what appeared to be a nervous breakdown. We cannot simply fly past the Valanciunas thing. Nuggets head coach David Adelman is drowning. Injuries have warped his rotation to hell—all four of his top forwards were unavailable Monday—and his bench is a disaster. They got nuked again Sunday by the reserves of the Minnesota Timberwolves, leaving Adelman determined to shuffle the putrid hand he's been dealt. "I have to find a unit that will actually do it, compete at a higher level," he said after Sunday's loss, in which Denver's bench lineup turned a nine-point lead into a seven-point deficit in one calamitous second-quarter run. "To me, that was the game. We let struggles offensively, missed shots, turn into horrendous defense. I told them after the game that’s just inexcusable." Valanciunas was a large part of what went wrong Sunday, posting a 152 defensive rating and finishing minus-15 in less than 10 minutes of action. It's very funny to me that Adelman's solution, 30 hours later, was to remove Valanciunas from the bench unit not by by packing him into a large box and shipping him to Kamchatka, but by ramming him into the starting lineup. It speaks to Utah's proficiency in the tanking arts that the Nuggets, who are one of four 38-win teams in the West and are only three games above the dreaded play-in, would try such a thing in a by-God regular-season contest.

There's always a song to sing, but first a silence must be created for the song to be born in. — Yoko Tawada, Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel The best argument I can make for why I like reading fiction in translation is because it facilitates the psychedelic experience of encountering someone else's subjectivity twice over. The translator must act as a prismatic filter, faithfully attempting the impossible task of replicating someone else's experiences and ideas. To read in translation is to read two stories in harmony with each other: The one the author wants to tell and the one the translator has brought into your linguistic world.

Trae Young has spent his professional career working within the unenviable anonymity of Atlanta Hawks basketball, known mostly for a high usage rate that has not necessarily corresponded to team success. Young made the career mistake of helping his team make a conference final in Year Three and then doing nothing of note since, which along with the arrival of younger and more cost- and basketball-efficient teammates made a trade piece in Year Seven. Worse, he got traded to a team with a much worse past, present, and future than the Hawks—the Washington Wizards. Typically, this is just eight-figure exile, a way to earn your $48 million without the stress of competitive expectations before entering the free-agent market in hopes of a well-paying gig in the actual NBA. Young, though, has revealed himself to be an inspired strategic thinker during his Wizards stint despite that stint not having officially begun. He has not played a minute for the team since the trade because of a balky knee, but is expected to make his debut Thursday night at home against Utah, or as we know them, the Mountain Time Zone Washington Wizards. So how could Young make a splash in advance and churn a bit of local buzz for this most customer-resistible of the Tankin' Ten? Easy. Simply get thrown out of a game while still in his civilian clothes. Viral marketing has never been so whimsical.

It was a busy week for FBI Director and special little guy Kash Patel. On Sunday, he was slamming Michelob Ultras in Team USA's locker room. Midweek he was firing a dozen veteran agents in retaliation for their role investigating Donald Trump's mishandling of classified documents, agents who belong to a counter-espionage unit that focuses on Iran. Surely their expertise wouldn't be relevant any time soon. This weekend, Patel was back where he seems happiest: on the ice. Patel laced 'em up for the annual FBI vs. Secret Service hockey game, held at the Capitals' training facility in Arlington, Va., on Saturday. Patel played as a kid and still plays club hockey, but he was a little out of his league in this one, which featured real athletes and a handful of former college players. But like a Make-a-Wish kid, they found a way to include him: We're told they stuck him back on defense where his skating would be less of an issue. Sure, at 5-foot-4 or so, he's undersized as hell for a defenseman, but if there's a place in the sport for "Shrimp" Worters, there's room for everyone. A reader was at the game, and tells us that Patel ate it totally untouched while trying to change direction on a puck sent around the net. Cursing themselves for not capturing it on camera, the reader pulled out their phone and prayed Patel might eat it again. They didn't have to wait long:

From the man who brought you questionable journalistic focus on a player accused of rape, comes an outright #ad for Saudi Arabia. https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/2028818183923147039 That's soccer scoopster Fabrizio Romano, taking a break from many (many) betting app ads and a Super Mario commercial to read a two-minute ad for the King Salman Humanitarian Aid & Relief Centre, a Saudi Arabian government agency focused on, well, humanitarian relief worldwide. The ad is uncomfortable to watch, even without any context: Romano simply dives into the script with no preamble and just begins listing numbers and projects. It's uncanny to watch a soccer journalist kick off his exultation of a government agency by talking about land mines in Yemen and, later, about conjoined twins that the relief organization has helped separate. This whole thing is a disaster, though hearing Romano say "five hundred forty thousand mines" in the same tone that he might talk about a transfer fee has some form of perverse appeal. The only thing missing was his trademark "Here we go!" catchphrase.

In less than two weeks, a new season of the NWSL kicks off. If that causes you to do a double take—Didn’t Rose Lavelle just score the championship game-winner, like, last week?—you’re not alone. The championship match was followed immediately by a December full of the NWSL’s favorite pastime: controversy. In this case, it was a very public battle over the fate of Washington Spirit superstar Trinity Rodman. The free agent’s choice to remain with the Spirit, announced on Jan. 22, was no doubt the most followed storyline of the offseason and has enormous consequences for the league’s future roster-building and labor relations, but a player staying with her team doesn’t exactly shake up the league. Good thing general managers across the country were hard at work, wheeling and dealing to improve their clubs’ chances in the new season.  Below, I’ve chosen one newcomer to highlight for each team in the league. These are all players who I think can make a real difference for their new clubs. For expansion sides Boston Legacy and Denver Summit, I limited myself to choosing from players who will be playing in the NWSL for the first time. Allez! Angel City FC: Ary Borges

Daniil Medvedev experienced a series of unusual events this weekend. He had never won the same title twice, a distinguishing oddity of his career, but he finally did so Saturday when he recaptured the ATP 500 title in Dubai, which he last won in 2023, for his 23rd title overall. However, he won the final without playing a single point: His opponent Tallon Griekspoor withdrew before the match with a left hamstring injury suffered late in his semifinal. Even if the final had been played as planned, it probably wouldn't have enjoyed much of a live audience. There were projectiles overhead: Iran launched drone and missile strikes on the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states, in retaliation for attacks on Tehran by the United States and Israel earlier that day. The conflict shut down Dubai International Airport, one of the world's busiest, meaning that players and staff in town for the tournament are still stuck there, and airspace was fully closed until Monday morning. The ATP said in a statement that it is "in direct communication with those affected" and "will continue to provide appropriate support to ensure players and their teams can depart safely when conditions allow." The official hotel of the tournament has accommodated stranded players, tour staff, and journalists. According to the Spanish outlet Marca, the ATP offered two travel options to players looking to leave Dubai and access air travel: a six-hour drive to Oman or a 10-hour drive to Saudi Arabia. (Neither option was selected by any players, and I can't blame them.) Marca also reported that the ATP's chief of security recommended staying in the tournament hotel, which has had beds installed on the basement level in case attacks were to escalate. Some other luxury hotels in Dubai have been struck by debris from intercepted projectiles.

When Paul Seixas rode away from Matteo Jorgenson 40 kilometers from the finish of this past weekend's Faun-Ardeche Classic, he was taking a casual drink. The 19-year-old Frenchman had just shattered a small group wending up the Col de Saint Romain de Lerps, forcing a pace only Jorgenson could match, and he was regrouping when he took a drink and noticed the American flagging. So he put his head down and went, not to be seen again until the finish line. If Seixas's riding didn't draw obvious enough comparisons to frequent Jorgenson-dispatcher Tadej Pogacar, the terrain made them unavoidable: Seixas zoomed up the climb in 16:18, tying Pogacar's climb-record time from the 2025 European Championships. Not a bad way to take your second professional win. Seixas's talent is undeniable. He spent his brief junior career dominating those in his age group, setting the stage for a spectacular neo-pro season in which he was the youngest rider at the WorldTour level. Seixas raised eyebrows at his first pro race when he put down a huge performance at last February's GP Grand Prix La Marseillaise, and he was all set for a big spring until he crashed out of the UAE Tour. He recovered in time to have a great Tour of the Alps in April, finishing 1-2 with teammate Nicolas Prodhomme and defying team orders to take the win for himself, before truly hitting the world stage at the Criterium du Dauphine. In the traditional Tour de France tuneup's most competitive edition in years, Seixas finished eighth. This was not the most important result in the race—that'd be Pogacar wobbling in the time trial, then recovering to disembowel Jonas Vingegaard—but it was the most discussed. Neither teenagers nor French guys do stuff like that, yet here was Seixas, testing himself against the best riders in the sport and passing with flying colors. It could only have been a more exciting ride if Seixas had won a stage, though his talent was so obvious that he didn't really need to. For cycling fans grown accustomed to Pogacar winning so often and from so far out that he has come to personify the concept of anticlimax, the approach of any potential new challenger was always going to be welcome news. Pogacar still gets in plenty of good, exciting races, though rarely on his terrain, which was where Seixas showed such promise.

One of the best things about becoming older (as opposed to simply aging, which universally sucks) is the moment when the knowledge that there is nothing new under the sun becomes something more like instinct. Most notably, this comes through the realization that everything that is hailed as the next frontier of human development is actually just old ideas with newer and better special effects behind it, generally applied by people too young or disinterested to know better. In the case of our brand-new war, those effects come courtesy of people too old and lazy to think of other ways to distract the public. But only a fool would mistake any of this for anything new. As an example, Floyd Mayweather Jr. is now 49 and is promoting a rematch of the 2015 welterweight title fight between him and Manny Pacquiao, who is now 47. Both need the attention and, it needn't be added, the money; most fights are made for those reasons, at least to some extent. But even the surface novelty is thin; young folks imagine that this is just them trying to get seats on the Jake Paul stunt-fight gravy train, when in fact what this is is just a gussied-up version of MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch, only with real people throwing slow punches instead of claymation figures. Clay, for you slack-jawed college-aged mutants out there, was the CGI of yesteryear. Which brings us, in a much scaled-down version, to the issue of NBA coaches' dress codes. Yes, this is a massive comedown from a war nobody asked for or bothered to justify, and even from the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight nobody asked for or should want to watch. But it's good enough for The Athletic, and its recurring series Peak, about the mental side of sports. Rustin Dodd elbowed through 1,100 words about Hall of Fame coach, menswear icon, and Miami Heat uber-executive Pat Riley urging a return to coaches wearing suits and ties on the sidelines—yes, even when New Orleans is playing Sacramento Thursday night. Maybe especially then. For Riley, it's a matter of principle.