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OK, now shit is about to get even realer. The FIFA World Cup sponsored by FIFA and presented by FIFA is now down to eight teams. If your favorite team isn’t among the last countries standing, that’s tough shit. You must pick a NEW favorite country, and you must do it right this instant or else suffer the consequences. [I draw my sword] But how can anyone pick just one team from France, Morocco, Belgium, Spain, Norway, England, Argentina, and Switzerland? Fear not amigo, because this week’s episode of The Distraction is here to help you do just that.

The Chicago Bears are one of the most storied franchises in the NFL. One of just two charter members of the league still playing today (the other being the Cardinals, a somewhat less-storied franchise), the Bears have had a lengthy and stalwart kinship with the City of Big Shoulders. That could change. Bears ownership announced on June 5 that they are focusing their attention on building a new stadium that not only isn’t in Chicago, but it isn’t in Illinois at all. “[T]he Chicago Bears Board of Directors met and voted to advance our stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana, with the exact site to be selected,” Chicago Bears Chairman George H. McCaskey and President and CEO Kevin Warren said in a statement. “We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana to the South Side of Chicago through the Loop and across neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city. It will bring Chicagoland together and deliver new opportunities to its residents and businesses."

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, Billy dives into the tricky question of screen time.

Spite is a powerful emotion too often cast in an ugly light. To feel slighted or doubted is a natural urge, as is our desire to press our doubters' eyes up against a window to watch as we prove them wrong. We are taught to repress and do away with such unbecoming resentments. But how else can we stunt on the haters? If there's an underdog story you love, there's a good chance that it required a healthy grudge. By conservative estimates, I would say that half of my greatest accomplishments have come to fruition because I was motivated out of spite. It got me into a prestigious university, it dragged me toward my diploma, and it's part of why I have this internship. I say without an ounce of shame that I am spiteful to my core. And I can spot one of my own from a mile away.  In the days after he was left off the All-Star Game roster, Zack Wheeler stayed quiet. He let himself be cast as the doubted underdog and had his agent do the talking. Talk B.B. Abbott did, announcing to The Athletic that he was breaking his silence on All-Star snubs to call the decision to leave his client off the roster "tone deaf." I don't know what sheet music Abbott is reading, but I would hardly call it anything more than a bit pitchy. (The Justin Verlander legacy nomination, however, is the Fergie national anthem.) Regardless, Abbott talked at length about Wheeler's determination and focus in coming back from thoracic outlet decompression surgery. Abbott painted a perfect portrait of a hardworking yet constantly overlooked ace. But I saw the glimmer of spite in the pitcher's eyes. When Wheeler took the mound on Tuesday against the Cincinnati Reds, I knew I was about to witness a masterclass. 

Skylar Diggins, to her credit, isn't one to trade in the classic cryptic fare of her fellow disgruntled athletes. What she writes on social media requires no close reading or careful analysis. There's no Crazy how people switch up on you or TIME WILL TELL with an enigmatic emoji. The Instagram story she posted on Monday was perfectly straightforward: "Now I'm coming off the bench?????? 👍🏽 Cool." https://bsky.app/profile/maggiehendricks.bsky.social/post/3mpyrcswc6c2f Two questions sprang to mind when Diggins signed a two-year, $1.8 million deal with the Chicago Sky this past offseason. How would she coexist with veteran point guard Courtney Vandersloot, who was recovering from an ACL injury but was expected to rejoin the team midseason? (Later, when point guard Natasha Cloud signed with the Sky in free agency, that question expanded.) Also, why was Skylar Diggins, who always speaks up when she feels she's not being treated right, choosing a team famous for not treating players right?

As an online basketball fan, you are encouraged by the discourse to consider the Jaylen Brown trade as a matter of asset valuation. One day the Celtics seemed to consider Brown, the asset, as approximately valuable enough to swap for Giannis Antetokounmpo, plus or minus some draft capital. When they didn't complete the trade, it was possible to believe, just for a few minutes, that Celtics president Brad Stevens maybe even considered Brown too valuable for Milwaukee's proposed terms. Then a couple days later the Celtics traded Brown anyway, to the Sixers, for a player a hell of a lot less impressive than Antetokounmpo, and now it seemed like the Celtics viewed Brown, the asset, as worse than expendable: distressed, somehow, and possibly toxic. Naturally there would come an insider tell-all, full of juicy recriminations, to describe how over the course of just a few days Boston went from loving Brown to determined to simply be rid of him, OBO-style. The whiplash of the trade has hopefully healed enough now to refocus on what the Celtics are doing, not on the market but as a basketball operation. When they won their title in 2024 and seemed poised for a long reign atop the East, it was with Brown and Jayson Tatum as the high-usage core, with a grimly optimized offense, and with a deep bench of complementary role players. They fell short in successive postseasons and were passed in the conference hierarchy by a Knicks team vastly better than expected, to say nothing of a couple of irritatingly young and physically superior Western Conference potential dynasties. Staying the course would've seemed reasonable, but so did a push for Antetokounmpo, a game-breaking specimen still in his athletic prime, whose interior domination could diversify Joe Mazzulla's system, which otherwise is more vulnerable than most to swings in shooting performance. Now the Celtics have Tatum and Paul George, a 36-year-old swingman whose best days are well behind him, who never scores inside the paint, who has been healthy and available for 60 games just once in his last seven seasons, and who at this stage of his career is suited to not much more than a role player's usage within a balanced offense. It's difficult to work out how the Celtics view this as a meaningful improvement of their title odds, which raises the question: Do the Celtics still view themselves as a title contender?

Vanity pickup trucks: I fucking hate these things, and so you do. The second I see a Ram SuperUltraMegaSoldierDuty on the highway, I already know that it'll have a Blue Lives Matter decal splashed across its rear windshield, a pristine flatbed untouched by manual labor equipment, and a driver who has no fucking idea how to park. These are vehicles made by assholes, for assholes. Knowing all of that, it was destiny that Ram, a brand owned by Dutch auto conglomerate Stellantis, would hire one of America's leading assholes to sell its most asshole-ish market offering to America's sizable asshole population. The asshole in question is UFC boss Dana White, all four feet, six inches of him. The product in question is the Ram pickup truck, which retails for as much as $100,000 and resells for probably a third of that. The TV spot they produced together is, without question, one of the worst things I've ever seen. If you've been watching any of this year's World Cup on Fox, you've already seen this ad far too many times. Here’s the director's cut, if you feel like going on a killing spree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sevVJJSif7w

Some things are just timeless. Gossip, for instance, has likely been around as long as humans have been able to communicate with one another, and then share someone else’s business. Ötzi, the 5,000-year-old ice man? Probably a gossiper and definitely a messy guy. Something else just as timeless? Pranks! Normal Gossip is back for its 10th season! Who could have guessed that so many friends had silly, outrageous and harrowing stories they wanted to share with the world. We’re grateful to every listener and everyone who keeps sending us their gossip. To celebrate Season 10, we’re bringing back some of your favorite guests and sharing some of the most chaotic gossip ever to grace our inbox! And as you may have heard, Defector is swiveling to video! (We will not use the word “pivot” here.)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nwoXWiaSz0

The crud-ass New York Mets were able to manage a series split on the road against division-leading Atlanta during the long weekend, overcoming severe bullpen issues for 10-9 and 7-6 victories on Sunday and Monday. But before any fan could even begin to think about letting their guard down or their hopes up, New York returned home to kick off a series with the Royals and deliver another entry in this year's contest for "Most Frustrating Loss." Again, the Mets offense did their part, but Kansas City beat the brakes off some minor-league relievers to win Tuesday's game 16-12. The Royals play 500 miles from the nearest Defector blogger, and they don't possess the largest payroll in baseball, so we haven't given them a fraction of the attention we've devoted to the Mets. But they've sucked just as bad, albeit in a less spectacularly disappointing way. They spotted the Mets a 9-4 lead through four innings; Carson Benge opened the scoring on a three-run, three-error slapstick display that, defensively, is basically what you do when you want your 6-year-old nephew to feel like he hit a home run. https://youtu.be/XtdNefccOKU?si=1EF7_VoBGGvDyEJm&t=40

Heading into this year's Wimbledon, neither Coco Gauff nor Naomi Osaka had made a deep run at the tournament, despite winning a total of six Slams elsewhere. Gauff had peaked at the fourth round, and Osaka at the third round, three times apiece for both players. An observer trying to make sense of this history could argue that their styles of play weren't flattered by the demands of grass-court tennis. Osaka's power game relies on rhythm, which she gets from the ball's consistent and reliable bounces off a hard court; Gauff's raw foot speed and rally tolerance aren't great competitive advantages on a surface where it's so slippery and difficult to defend. They weren't alone in their struggles. For the majority of pro tennis players on both tours, grass appears to be a surface they learn to tolerate rather than one to relish, despite Wimbledon being the most prestigious tournament in the sport. Grass gets a short stint on the calendar, typically just one or two tournaments for most players, and it demands a bit of adaptation. The dominant mode of tennis these players have learned and played all their lives—high-topspin baselining, enabled by polyester strings, fast swings, and explosive lateral movement—are not as viable when the ball's bounces are so low and unpredictable. We should celebrate the vanishingly small number of true grass-court specialists out there, those who lean into the surface's eccentricities and are indeed empowered by them. For example, take the slice-master Tatjana Maria on the women's side, whose big results on grass—the 2022 Wimbledon semifinals, a Queen's Club title in 2025—stand stark against her journeywoman career. On the men's side this year, there was Shintaro Mochizuki, a net-rushing demon who ran from qualifiers all the way to a fourth-round loss to Jannik Sinner, unable to hit any given ball all that hard but able to place every single one on a designated blade of grass. That's real tennis, and these are real ballers. In an ideal world, grass season would be dominated by players with great hands and that numinous quality called "court sense," which might be a mix of ball control, anticipation, and pattern recognition. I would accept any amount of tinkering with the parameters of the sport—string bans, ball quality, court speed—to make this style of play viable again. This phase of the tennis season would be a delight.