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The WNBA doesn’t have an award for “clutch-ness” the way the NBA does, so it figures that they also do not have an award for “unclutch-ness.” Allow us to fill the vacuum: Defector’s inaugural Unclutchy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Choking and Tanking goes to the Seattle Storm. The voting wasn’t close, which is good; if it were, the Storm probably wouldn’t have won.  WNBA Stats defines “clutch time” as the final five minutes of a game within a five-point margin. It happens to be the time when the 7-28 Storm do their best work. They’ve played 16 clutch games and lost a remarkable 14 of them. Consider it a simple tradeoff. If you want to build around a pair of awesome, athletic teens, you must also accept that teens are fickle and mercurial and sometimes straight up forget how to play basketball. It’s all part of the fun. The 6-foot-4 Awa Fam, 19 years old on draft night, had a reasonable claim to be the first-overall pick in the draft this past spring, but she ended up going to Seattle at No. 3, after Azzi Fudd and Olivia Miles. The term “stretch big” gets thrown around a little casually these days, so it might be more meaningful to say that Fam is a great shooter who only happens to be a big. The percentages won’t wow anyone—she’s making 35 percent of her three-point attempts this season—but the volume (four attempts per game) should. These are contested threes and quick catch-and-shoot looks she’s hitting, not the “somebody left her open” threes most centers take. 

Cal Raleigh got off to a slow start to the year, which was to be expected. It is impossible to follow up a 60-homer season with another of the same caliber, and between instigating teammate beef on the global stage and dealing with an early-season oblique strain that eventually landed him on the injured list, the slugging Seattle Mariners catcher has had much to fight through, even if partially self-inflicted. Alas, since he returned from the IL in mid-June, things have not gone much better for either Raleigh or the Mariners. Across the second half of the season so far, Raleigh has had a .509 OPS and a 56 wRC+; on the year, he has an OPS of .564 and a wRC+ of 68, meaning he is 32 percent worse than the average MLB hitter. Weighted Runs Created Plus is the most comprehensive catch-all statistic out there but hard to distill in just a few words. Put another way: While Raleigh is not presently qualified for end-of-year statistics because of his stint on the IL, if he were, he would tie for third-worst offensive player in the league with Nasim Nuñez of the Washington Nationals, ahead of only Ezequiel Tovar (of the Colorado Rockies) and Jarren Duran (still, somehow, of the Boston Red Sox). "We're not playing well, that starts with me," Raleigh said after the Mariners lost 4-1 to the New York Yankees on Aug. 11. "I'm awful." (Since then, the Mariners first extended their losing streak to six games, joining the rarefied ranks of teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers, and then promptly snapped their streak with a 1-0 victory in the final game of the series against the Yankees.) Even knowing that Raleigh was not likely to have the same sort of season he had last year, it is difficult to grasp the scope of his drop-off, which is, unfortunately, historic. Per Mike Petriello, Raleigh is currently experiencing the second-largest decline in OPS in baseball history.

Welcome back to Make It Nice, Defector’s best interior design advice column. Today we have fancy track shelving, a moody bedroom makeover, and, my favorite, does a non-ugly dog crate exist? Our first “question” comes from recent conversations I had with a few friends who had been admiring photos of Vitsoe “606” shelves online. Both of them were ready to give up their Big Shelf dreams because the Vitsoe would cost them thousands of dollars—one friend was obsessing over a setup that would cost $10,000 minimum. Vitsoe has been making the 606 Shelving System for over 60 years and has captured the hearts of design freaks everywhere. The shelves are iconic, modular, and very, very expensive.  I’m maybe going to upset architects and creative directors everywhere, but Vitsoe is just really nice track shelving, and you can get track shelving anywhere. Vitsoe shelves look so good mostly because of how they’re styled. And that’s something you can learn.

It is hard to keep track of the number of free-agent signings and trades made by the Dodgers that have allegedly broken baseball. When Tarik Skubal lands in the dugout at the trade deadline and starts the freakout all over again, it's easy to move on from the last set of acquisitions that was raising qualms and inviting guffaws. But let the record show, before it's too late, that Edwin Diaz was at one point one of those baseball-breaking signings. The Dodgers signed Diaz this past offseason to a three-year, $69 million deal. Diaz was the best reliever on the market, coming off a season with the Mets in which he saved 28 games and posted a 1.63 ERA. The signing was a source of anguish for parity-obsessed baseball fans not necessarily because of the size of the contract, but because of how indulgent it felt from the Dodgers' perspective. The Dodgers front office would have certainly argued that their bullpen needed reinforcement, but throwing $69 million at Diaz felt a little like watching a kid whose bike tire went flat solve the problem by buying 12 more bikes. As it turns out, any fretting about how Diaz's arrival in Los Angeles would put the Dodgers even further out of reach was a big waste of time. Diaz experienced some struggles through his first seven appearances of the season, and then had surgery to remove loose bodies from his throwing elbow. That procedure kept him out for three months, and ever since returning at the end of July he has been pure, unmitigated ass.

Some people are fans of the Detroit Lions. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Detroit Lions. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. Your team: Detroit Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Quick, what number did Jayden Daniels wear when he was at LSU? If you had to think about that for even a second, you might want to lock your doors. Because it's very possible that someone from Daniels's inner circle is on the way to your house to kick your ass. I issue this warning because over the last few days we have discovered that the No. 5 jersey is extremely important to Daniels, or at least it is to someone who spends time handling his affairs. On Wednesday, ESPN reported that an attorney representing Daniels sent a letter to LSU, where Daniels played from 2022–23, informing the school that it can no longer use Daniels's name, image, or likeness in promotional materials. The letter was sent because Daniels is upset that LSU is allowing sophomore cornerback DJ Pickett to wear the No. 5 jersey this upcoming season. A spokesperson representing Daniels also released a statement, expressing the disappointment felt by the "Daniels family" at LSU's decision to let a guy wear a number. From ESPN: "The Daniels family is deeply disappointed and feels profoundly disrespected by LSU's decision to give Jayden's number to another player," the statement from Daniels' spokesperson said. "Jayden and his family had every reason to believe that his number would remain a meaningful part of his LSU legacy and would be honored and protected in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to the university."

In my personal mental masthead for Defector, there are bureaus representing the places where my coworkers live. Philadelphia, you know about. New York, for better and worse, is implied. Minneapolis, where no Defector staffers currently live, is more complicated. But we have Drew, whose Minnesota sports fandom has put him under this heading even though he hasn't lived there in decades, and we also have Justin Ellis, who was shaped by his experience growing up there even though he, too, is a long time gone. Given that recent years have shoved Minneapolis into the center of American politics, and given that Justin wrote a fine new book about the state's long and complicated history on race, called The Cruelty of Nice Folks, it made sense to get the Minnesota Bureau together on the podcast this week. Even before we turned to Minnesota, we were in the Midwest, as Drew led off the episode with what he called a rant about recent mainstream media coverage of "the left" and the perverse fetish for electability as demonstrated through recent primary elections in Minnesota and Wisconsin. When Justin joined, we turned our attention more closely to Minnesota, covering the role of Tony Dungy Particles in the state's Republican party, his unusually long and grueling process of writing this book and the usual longish and grueling-ish process of promoting it, and the contested and uneasy space between the perception of Minneapolis and the reality of living there in a moment when it has never been more in the news. We also spoke about the grating conflict between ostensibly progressive politicians and a deeply regressive status quo, considered Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as a test case for a style of feckless establishment progressivism and the strategic use of anti-Trump spiciness, and how Minnesota politics highlights the broader crisis within Democratic Party politics. Everyone was sort of getting their rants on at this point, with Justin's disquisition on the technocratic impulse as a substitute for actual action and the fallacy of racism without racists being a special standout.

It’s hard to imagine now—like imagining an era when man did not know the sun was huge, hot, and bright—but there was a time when we did not yet understand Russell Westbrook as a basketball player. Slow to hit his growth spurt, Westbrook didn’t dunk until his senior year of high school. Coming out of UCLA after his sophomore year, he was hailed as a defensive stud, with unexplored skill offensively; he still mostly played off the ball. Envision, if you can, an adult Russell Westbrook who had already given over his life to basketball, but did not yet dunk and did not yet dominate the ball. It makes me feel a little insane, like it’s never too late to carve out the defining traits of your life. Go out and remake yourself tomorrow, then decide that that’s you from here on out, and then don’t quit for 18 years. That’s what Westbrook did, before announcing his retirement on Wednesday, throughout 18 years of uncompromising, rock-headed, glorious self-actualization. Westbrook entered the NBA in 2008, at the same time as the Oklahoma City Thunder franchise. He helped form a molten triple-future-MVP core that arrived at the 2012 NBA Finals, before coming apart piece by piece. James Harden left that offseason, where he pursued his own, slightly more sluggish, ball-dominant destiny in Houston. That ushered in the “your turn, my turn” era with Westbrook and Kevin Durant, only for KD to defect to the Californian enemy in 2016. First there were three, then there were two, and then there was only Russell Westbrook. Again, it’s hard to imagine him any other way. Left to his own devices, he began important investigations into the very structure of basketball. How much can one man do? How much of an ostensible “team” sport can we instead funnel through the willpower and fast-twitch muscles of one tireless and pissed-off man? He answered these questions with his performances: the coast-to-coast dunks, the 20-20-20 game, the triple-double average MVP season, the carry job to end all carry jobs. He was a perpetual motion machine. What it looked like, when it was good: hurling himself headlong at the rim, over and over, with bone-rattling fury and apparent disregard for his own welfare. What it looked like, when it was bad: hurling himself headlong at the rim, over and over, with bone-rattling fury and apparent disregard for his own welfare. There was only ever one true way to be Westbrook, and his mere presence on the hardwood colonized every aspect of game play. A little like Vonnegut’s ice-nine, once he touches the ball, the whole floor becomes instantly Westbrookized. Everyone else slots into their tidy supporting roles. Big man: set screens hard enough to hospitalize, then roll to the basket, and box out so Russ can grab every rebound and go, go, go. Teammates on the wing: stay the hell out of the way and be ready to shoot once that kickout pass scorches your fingertips. The opposing team: build a wall in the paint and steel yourself as he prepares to ram into it. It’s not like he’s going to do something else. In the Westbrook minutes, everyone knew their part.

When the Seattle SuperSonics drafted Russell Westbrook fourth overall in 2008, around six weeks before they officially became the Oklahoma City Thunder, the league had no idea what to do with such an athletic and violent point guard. Westbrook, who announced his retirement this week, leaves behind a very different NBA than the one he joined 18 years ago, but, despite the considerable passage of time, the extent to which the game changed, and the extensive accolades he racked up, he never became a player who made sense. No sane coach would ever have instructed any of their charges to play more like Russell Westbrook, less because of the riskiness inherent to such a tactic, and more because of its plain impossibility. Westbrook was singular. Consider the NBA that Westbrook joined. It was ass. By 2008, the group of bigs—Shaquille O'Neal, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Dirk Nowitzki, and others—who dominated the decade to that point had begun their decline. Despite obviously being the best player in the league, LeBron James was ruled unworthy of being named MVP by a newspaper-dominated national media class that relished preserving the legacy of Michael Jordan. So, at the end of the 2007–08 season, the voters gave the award to Jordan cosplayer Kobe Bryant, to congratulate him for being lucky enough to have Pau Gasol on his team. David West and Caron Butler were all-stars. Steve Nash, Chris Paul, and, to a far lesser aesthetic extent, Deron Williams were carrying forth the point guard position, which was in a pretty dire state. Not for long, it turned out. The first bit of Westbrook's career came alongside the immediate success of Derrick Rose, taken at the top of the same draft, which became the natural and obvious way to make sense of it. Both were among the best athletes in the league the second they joined it, promising to remake the point guard position, before that primarily thought of as the domain of tricky little craftsmen and heady floor generals, into something crazier. Move over, Jose Calderon—we got guys who can dunk now.

This piece was originally published in The Small Bow on Aug. 7. If you like it, consider subscribing. He was always referring to himself as a “guy like me,” in a baffled sort of way, like how the fuck did a guy like me pull this whole thing off? And part of what James Gandolfini meant was the son of the bricklayer and the lunch lady, this King Konging ex-jock with a neck like a paint can, a guy from New Jersey, where they were not what you might call beautiful but were magnificent. They were loud and tough and hugging and kissing; they were mowing the lawn shirtless in sandals and black dress socks, like his father did. They were having operatic conversations with their mothers. They were a little rude and they were breaking shit just for the hell of it, like the night at college Gandolfini broke the automatic arm in the parking garage just by ramming his whole body into it, no reason; that’s showtime, baby.