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Defector is proud of its sweeties and enemies binary. In athletic competition, there are sweeties, who cause a feeling of butterflies in tummies, and there are enemies, who are shitheels. Nobody denies this. This year's NHL playoff bracket looks a little weird. Some teams seem like they've innocently stumbled into a place they don't belong. Other franchises are truly despicable embarrassments to ice. To make sense of the first round, I have divided every series into a sweetie and an enemy. Here they are, without further comment. NHL Playoff Sweeties

I have always found the starter-into-closer pipeline to be demoralizing. Per baseball truisms, even the best reliever would be a starter if they were only, by certain definitions, better. Moving a starter to the pipeline is so often the last-ditch move of teams that do not know how to develop their pitchers. I hope Roki Sasaki finds his groove; I hope that closer-into-starter conversion or reconversion projects go well. That said: Mason Miller, who was traded from the Athletics to the San Diego Padres last year for a whopping four prospects, was practically engineered in a lab to be the exception. The closer is a position in baseball where the best players are, value and contracts and whatever bullshit aside, composed of pure, distilled coolness. It is a different skillset from that of the starter. A closer—who does not have to worry about pitch count, or keeping the arm going through five-plus innings, or the third time through the batting order—is more concerned with quality, delivering more concentrated nastiness on the pitch-to-pitch level than starters can. For Miller, this is best exemplified by his average four-seamer speed going up a full three miles per hour after he moved to the bullpen. Also, now he gets a cool walk-out ritual (depending on one's definition of cool). It is fine, even appealing, that Miller's arsenal is composed of only an absurd fastball, an absurd slider, and an occasional changeup to lefties, thrown so infrequently that the pitch's heat map so far this season resembles six little bullseye targets. A closer with Miller's stuff does not need more pitches than that. His fastball sits at 101.4 mph and touches 103, which does legitimately make his 95.8-mph change-up a change-up. So far this season, 24 pitches have been thrown above 102 mph. One was thrown by Baltimore Orioles reliever Ryan Helsley; six have been thrown by Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Edgardo Henriquez (rocking, despite the stuff, a 5.40 ERA). Miller threw the other 17.

Whoaaaa, get a load of this! The NBA playoffs are starting tomorrow. Yes yes, there are more play-in tournament games tonight, but we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about the real playoffs, and get you caught up to speed so that you may witness these contests with all the basketball knowledge one could possibly need filling your skull. Before we get to the previews, however, we wanted to talk about some other important issues facing the NBA. Below you will find a roundtable discussion between Defector's biggest basketball nerds about tanking, uncompetitive regular-season games, and the NBA's popularity crisis. There's a lot to discuss on those topics, so be sure to check that out. Just kidding! God, that would be awful. OK, here are the previews.

On Wednesday night, the NBA fined LaMelo Ball for his "unnecessary and reckless contact" with Bam Adebayo during Charlotte's victory over Miami in their play-in game Tuesday. It made for a deflating end to what had become a whole media saga over Ball's intentions, or lack thereof, and whether or not the league should suspend him for the next game to make up for the ejection he avoided because the referees missed the incident. Ultimately, the NBA decided not to suspend Ball, hitting him instead with a $35,000 fine for the trip, an additional $25,000 for cursing during his postgame interview, and a retroactive flagrant 2 foul. He is therefore available to play in Friday's game against the Orlando Magic for the No. 8 seed and the right to get stomped by Detroit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C29Pudky5AA Was this the right decision? As always, "... eh." Ball's swipe of Adebayo's leg looked a lot worse in slow motion than in real time, where it just seemed like a typically goofy player prone to losing control of his body, which, if you've ever watched LaMelo Ball play basketball, you know that's exactly what he is. Should the refs have stopped the game to take a further look at the trip? Probably, but 1) the game was moving a hundred miles a minute, so the refs missed their window for it, and 2) the refs tend to lean toward not affecting the outcome of games the later we get into a season, which is the right instinct.

Something about blondies really gets my motor humming. I love brownies, and I really love chocolate chip cookies. But put a thick-cut blondie in front me and suddenly I go as wild as an ape. A blondie is like a chocolate chip cookie but, like, more of it. That’s my kind of 500-calorie snack. With that in mind, it only makes sense that I would try to bake my own blondies, so that I might gorge on them whenever I see fit. I started off on my blondie journey by just using regular chocolate chip cookie dough, spreading it evenly inside a Pyrex dish. Then I moved onto Smitten Kitchen’s blondie recipe. Smitten Kitchen recipes are almost always money in the bank, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with the results of this one. They were a little too dense to scratch my blondie itch. But Smitten Kitchen author Deb Perelman said to tinker with her recipe, so I did. A lot. Because we lack a JUMP TO RECIPE button here at Defector, I’ll blow past the rest of my thinking process so that you don’t get all pissy. Let’s get right to the good shit. This makes 24 bars. INGREDIENTS:

If there is a stronger verity in hockey than "Trust nothing in the playoffs," it is surely, "And whatever else you do, trust nothing you saw before the playoffs." The fetish of the team with the best record rarely proving it when everyone is watching is as secure a bet as past-posting, to the point where the Presidents’ Trophy, which is what the team with the best regular-season record receives, is now aligned with the American president in plain undesirability. But every year, someone wins it anyway, the morons. Either a star goes dim, or a reliable goalie goes bad, or the exertions of the past six months pile up, or a lesser team goes on a heater, or as is often the case, something stupid simply happens. Thus, the most interesting questions about the Western Conference this year were (a) just how bad is the Pacific? and (b) when are the Colorado Avalanche going to figure out that it's time to start tanking for the good of their Cup run? The answers are (a) abominable, and (b) they tried a bit in March but didn't have the stomach to finish the job.

In The Christophers, Michaela Coel plays Lori Butler, a painter hired by a pair of bumbling siblings for an odd sort of job. They want her to go work for their father, a renowned artist named Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen), who has largely shunned the art world, spending his waning days being the Simon Cowell on an obscene reality show called Art Fight and recording Cameo messages to fans for lunch money. What Julian’s kids really want, though, is for Lori to put her skills to work secretly forging a set of paintings to complete their father’s great masterwork, a long-running series of portraits called “the Christophers.” Directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Ed Solomon, what starts as a con movie quickly morphs into something far more delicate and layered. Staged as a kind of a two-hander, and largely confined to the narrow spaces of Julian’s multi-level London home, the flamboyant, witty painter quickly susses out that the young forger has more to her than mere interest in a job, though her plan eludes him. Testing and prodding her, the two begin a contentious dialogue about pouring themselves into art and having their relationship to it transformed by the public’s—sometimes harsh—reaction. Solomon’s funny, lively, florid, and moving script wrestles directly with what it means to lose touch with the reasons people make art in the first place. The film examines how the artist persona can distract from a real sense of purpose, embittering artists in the process. It’s a film about the painful realities that often stop artists in their tracks. It’s also a film about legacies, both positive and negative, and the complicated give-and-take of artistic inspiration. All of it anchored by unfussy, clear-eyed direction from Soderbergh, and a pair of incredible performances from Coel and McKellen, whose interplay feels like watching an acting masterclass.

By any objective reckoning, Bayern Munich should've been considered enormous favorites to beat Real Madrid in their Champions League quarterfinal matchup. Bayern has been one of the two best teams in Europe all season long, while Real has been consistently bad. Bayern's star-studded attack has been firing on all cylinders, cranking out flatly outrageous stats in both domestic and continental play, while Real still hasn't figured out how to build an engine out of its assortment of top-of-the-line parts that unfortunately seem to each belong to completely different car makes. In the first leg of this tie, Bayern took home a hard-fought and well-earned 2-1 win, and had the benefit of playing the second leg at home, inside the cauldron that is the Allianz Arena. Coming into Wednesday's decisive game, there was really no logical reason to think we'd see any other result than Bayern going through. And yet, if there is one team and one competition where objectivity and logic hold no sway, it's Real Madrid in the Champions League. History, especially of the recent sort, is littered with examples of Real having no rational basis for winning a tie that they inevitably win. Call it black magic, the Twilight Zone, the Spirit of Juanito, or whatever you want—there is real evidence to support the longstanding, widespread belief that some kind of mysterious force allows this particular club to pull off preposterous upsets and comebacks in this particular tournament. Real or not, the belief in this power can itself become a self-fulfilling prophecy, emboldening Blancos to keep pushing despite long odds, and heaping anxiety on opponents who might see in a single unlucky bounce an omen of impending, predestined doom. Indeed, Wednesday's match in Munich opened with one such unlucky bounce that seemed to indicate that the old black magic was once again in the air. But, fortunately for fans of the German club, the Bayern players are not so superstitious. https://twitter.com/CBSSportsGolazo/status/2044493658200719363

It's the story that has captivated America: a large screaming man roughly the color of a Fruit Roll-Up, who goes on AM radio every day to get upset about minorities, announced last week that he could no longer in good faith be a New York Mets fan. Dial down the volume and ambient bigotry and referring to himself in the third person, and long-tenured New York radio dingus Sid Rosenberg's decision to drop the Mets could seem reasonable. The team has lost eight straight, miserably, while playing a brand of baseball that suggests dangerously high levels of codeine in their Powerade. To consciously uncouple, temporarily or even permanently, with a team like this would be something like self-care. Not really sure why I'm going on about this part at such length. Ha ha. Anyway, Rosenberg did not do this in a considered way. He did it, as he mentioned in a series of posts and filmed video statements, because he thought the "Mamdani Mets" were woke. He was upset that Mr. and Mrs. Met had been "hugging and kissing" the city's Democratic Socialist mayor earlier this season, and by way of contrast and as an illustration of the organization's values, Rosenberg shared an image of himself "being IGNORED" by the team's mascots at a game last year.

In February of 2025, New York State correctional staff began an illegal work stoppage to challenge recent changes to the state’s carceral system. Their primary objective was to force the repeal of the Humane Alternatives to Longterm Solitary Confinement Act (also known as the HALT Act), a bill that is part of a larger initiative prioritizing the health of the imprisoned and our successful reentry into society. This bill mandates prisoners receive seven hours of congregate time outside our cells each day and otherwise limits “excessive” use of solitary confinement. In response to the strike, Governor Kathy Hochul suspended the HALT Act for 90 days and pursued a mediation, which ultimately ended with many officers returning to work and those who refused being fired—some 2,000 officers. The HALT Act’s policies should have been reinstated by May 21, 2025. However, it has been over 13 months since the work stoppage ended, and prisoners like myself are still living without access to recreation, programs, and the visits we are entitled to.  I currently reside at Elmira Correctional Facility, which in my experience did not adhere to most of the rules that benefited the imprisoned population even prior to the work stoppage. The administration has gone months at a time without operating most programs, including ones that must be completed before our release, even though we are entitled to consistent program access. Local visiting practices prevented spouses from sitting near their incarcerated partners, despite directives explicitly stating that our visitors should be permitted to rest their heads on our shoulders. Our mail, packages, and electronic mail content were almost never processed in a timely manner, and the systems in place to remedy these institutional failures have always been inherently flawed.  Since the work stoppage, things have gotten even worse. Recreation has been reduced to less than an hour per day. Most prisoners have not been afforded the opportunity to participate in any programs in over a year. Prisoners aren’t even permitted to walk to the cafeteria for lunch. Instead, our lunch—usually a bag with sandwiches—is brought to our cells every afternoon, denying us both the brief respite from the isolation of our cells and whatever warm food we would have been given for lunch that day. With less than an hour of recreation, no opportunity to program, and only two opportunities to go to the cafeteria, prisoners are forced to stay in our cells more than 22 hours each day.