Welcome to Deadspin, where if someone the writers have decided they don’t like says something that they would normally agree with they’ll still find ways to attack the person for it. His statement was pretty on point and relevant, not that any of that matters here.

Instead of giving him a T he should give him a very demonstrative Z.

I’m also a DC resident and actually a (casual) Nats fan- where’s the evidence that people are hating on Harper? I honestly haven’t seen any of that in the area, but maybe I’m missing something...?

I live in DC and I’m a casual Nats fan. What makes you say that the relationship with the fans was fraught? I thought that he wasn’t worth paying $300+ million dollars for (but that’s cause it’s baseball- I don’t really think any one player can make THAT huge of a difference), but I liked the guy, and I don’t know any…

Genuinely curious since I have no idea who this guy is- all he did was maybe play poorly in an important soccer match or something? Is that what people are upset about? Cause I feel like people should still be able to live their lives even if they screw up in an athletic event. I was under the assumption we had all…

LOL, my bad. I didn’t realize the two comments were the same guy. I thought that the second post was a different guy responding to your initial post. I’ve removed my response.

Did you follow the season at all, or are you just throwing this out there based on how competitive their tourney games were? They literally beat the other 3 teams in the Final Four this year already (including beating UVA twice). They crushed Kentucky (a team that was a bucket at the end of regulation away from being…

Edit for error.

Of course you would. He’s a 6'7" 19 year old with quickness and speed, he averaged 22.6/7.6/4.3 (leading scorer for Duke), and has performed exceptionally well in some of the biggest games of the season. Just because he couldn’t come through last night doesn’t mean he’s not one of the very best players in the nation.

Quite a hot take. Duke loses by 1 point to the #5 team in the country and they’re overrated because they had a close game against a good team in the tourney? I’ll never understand these after the fact analyses people lob out there. March Madness is great precisely because you don’t know who’s going to win- one team…

The tweet’s sample size is especially egregious when you realize that Duke also WON a ton of close games this year, and there’s no mention of how Barrett did in those games (hint, in a lot of them he had unbelievable games). Heck, just go back all the way to TWO GAMES AGO when Barrett made the game winning layup…

That tweet looks like hot garbage to me. In looking up Duke’s record this year, I’m seeing a whole bunch of games where Duke just barely squeaked by. In many of those games Barrett had 28+ plus points. Claiming this guy is a choke artist because he happened to miss shots in games that Duke lost is just absurd…

It’s a pretty bad sign for a sports blog when the comments section are providing analysis and evidence that the writer wholly failed to include. Another factor not mentioned? Barrett was 3-5 from 3 when he put up that potential game winner. Or how about the fact that Duke had tried forcing it in to Zion multiple times…

Such an awful take. Despite Gabe’s after-the-fact analysis, the 3 to take the lead was a pretty good look, and Barrett was 3-5 from 3 point land when he put that up. If you ask any Coach in America “hey, you’re down 2- if you have a guy that’s 60% from 3 for the game get an uncontested look from the top of the key, do…

I’m not really sure how ANYTHING that was written above was true. If Coach K is to blame, lets see what his play calling actually resulted in: 1) He called a play that literally had Zion with the ball (undercutting the entire premise of the whole critique), but Zion passed it to an open Barrett (how is Coach K to…

This guy is absolutely off his rocker.

Dude, furiously spamming conspiracy theory articles at multiple people online to defend against the charge that you’re a crazy conspiracy theorist isn’t a good look. You’re even responding to yourself now to make supporting comments about the stuff you just posted? Just stop. This is sad to watch.

Hahaha, Shaq didn’t want to play for Orlando at all. You’re relying on Ayesha Curry’s tweet after Steph fouls out as evidence? And you don’t realize how insane you sound? And you’re basing that on the players bitching that the fouls that go against them must be bullshit? Not to mention the pure, unadulterated…

No, please god don’t make these sorts of plays reviewable. The refs already look at way too many calls that they actually made to ensure they got it right. If they can go back and look at plays that already happened where they did NOT make a call in order to determine if they should have potentially done something…

Responding to A) LA, Chicago, Miami, NY, and DC ALL had top 10 picks that year. Literally all of them. If the NBA wanted to put Lebron anywhere, they bump literally all of those cities ahead of friggin’ Cleveland.