Tom Ley

This is how it feels to watch the Nuggets play basketball

A Helpful Explainer Of Kansas's Lunatic Anti-Trans Law | Defector Last Thursday, the Kansas State legislature passed SB 244, overriding a veto by Governor Laura Kelly and enshrining anti-trans law as unhinged in its fury as it is disheveled in structure. Here at Def...

a banger of a blog by @groan.bsky.social
defector.com/a-helpful-ex...

An Exquisite 2026 Formula 1 Preview For True Sophisticates | Defector The trick with every Formula 1 season is to believe, at the start, that it will be exciting. Fortunately, if last year’s preview was any indication, sports fans tend to be quite good about doing…

An exquisite 2026 Formula 1 preview for true sophisticates:

How I Became A Target For Right-Wing Freaks At The Australian Open | Defector Before I went to Melbourne in January to cover the Australian Open for Defector and a couple other publications, I spent some time in New Zealand with my family. We lived there for five years when I w...

Really good story about the indignity of reporting from big sporting events: defector.com/how-i-became...

Don DeLillo's Funniest Novel Is A 1980 Hockey Sex Romp He Won't Acknowledge | Defector The end of the 1970s seemed to be a moment of uncertainty for Don DeLillo, creatively speaking. The previous decade had seen him become a rather important American author, enough so that he had left h...

defector.com/don-delillo-...

Lost Recipes | Defector In 1991, Spin magazine took the Compton rap collective N.W.A out to eat for a profile at the Russian Tea Room in Manhattan. The white author presents gangsta rap as a cynical enterprise, no different ...

Really enjoyed these two semi-related pieces we ran on Defector this week, about finding and reading old stuff:

defector.com/lost-recipes

Lost Recipes | Defector In 1991, Spin magazine took the Compton rap collective N.W.A out to eat for a profile at the Russian Tea Room in Manhattan. The white author presents gangsta rap as a cynical enterprise, no different ...

Really good deep dive on the terrible state of hip-hop media archives and what that means for culture writing today

Anyone Want To See Kash Patel Fall On His Ass While Playing Hockey? | Defector 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...

The Batkid Arc continues. defector.com/anyone-want-...

The NWSL Offseason Put Important New Faces In New Places | Defector 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 c...

NWSL preview time? NWSL preview time! There's been plenty of wheeling and dealing heading into the 2026 season, so I tried to make some sense of it:

defector.com/the-nwsl-off...

Nikola Jokic Is A Mountain Of Angst | Defector 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…

Nikola Jokic is a mountain of angst:

Anyone Want To See Kash Patel Fall On His Ass While Playing Hockey? | Defector 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…

Anyone want to see Kash Patel fall on his ass while playing hockey?

I think that’s the most pathetic game I’ve ever seen Nikola Jokic play. He needs to fix his soul.

I love that the Nuggets traded MPJ and a first-round pick for a guy who pisses down his leg every game and can’t be on the floor in the clutch. It’s fucking awesome.

I have only one prediction for the NBA postseason: Lu Dort is going to do something so nasty to Wemby that it will kick off a week-long discourse about whether the league needs to crack down on physicality.

Victor Wembanyama Sighting Confirmed In Brooklyn | Defector A couple months ago, some friends and I made plans to see the San Antonio Spurs when they were in town to play the Brooklyn Nets. Obviously, we weren’t going for the opportunity to see the Nets’ youth...

Here’s a dumb little blog about the experience of witnessing Wemby in person: defector.com/victor-wemba...

Victor Wembanyama sighting confirmed in Brooklyn: defector.com/victor-wemba...

🤷‍♂️

The Mournful Ballad Of Punch The Monkey | Defector When I first heard rumblings that the world had assembled a conclave to elect a new celebrity zoo animal, I felt preemptively wary, partly due to world events and partly because we still don’t know th...

I wrote about Punch the monkey and who, if anyone, is really to blame for the suffering of primates
defector.com/the-mournful...

What I Listened To In The Hospital | Defector Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music I’ve been fixated on recently. Having a severe chronic illness has made me intimately familiar with the American healthcare system and…

New Listening Habits! What I listened to in the hospital:

An Extensive And Exhaustive Player-By-Player Preview Of 'Survivor 50' | Defector There’s nothing quite like a returnee season of Survivor. Wednesday night’s Season 50 premiere will begin the sixth season in the show’s history featuring a cast entirely of returning players: 24 vete...

Happy Survivor 50 day!

Ahead of tonight's premiere, the Defector jury got together to explain every player's deal and pass judgement on their chances of winning.

You can read our (massive) preview here: defector.com/an-extensive...

What I Learned From My Annoyingly Long Correspondence With "Elena Ferrante" | Defector Earlier this month I received an email that, for a moment, made my heart skip. The email came from someone named Elena Ferrante, at “elenaferrante800@gmail.com,” and I feel no remorse leaking Elena’s ...

I wrote about my friend "Elena Ferrante" and what it was like to try to engage with a scammer
defector.com/what-i-learn...

The U.S. Hockey Men Spoil The Fantasy | Defector To be a U.S. Olympian is to represent the best that your country has to offer. That sounds extremely lofty when it’s written out like that, but I think that’s really how it works, ideally, if you’re t...

On the ideals of the Olympics, the fiction of hockey romance, and the real world: defector.com/the-u-s-hock...

Really cool story about a legendary player.

Rich Paul's Podcast Was Built To Be Useless | Defector Rich Paul, CEO of Klutch Sports and active NBA agent, has drawn some ire this season for things he said on his new podcast called Game Over, which he cohosts with Max Kellerman. Anonymous members of…

Rich Paul's podcast was built to be useless:

Alysa Liu Is Untouchable | Defector When athletes are said to thrive under pressure, that generally does not mean that they do not feel it. Rather, the common understanding is that athletes, or at least the great ones, are capable of ta...

for anyone craving more Alysa Liu content @yuekaxu.bsky.social has been on a tear of figure skating blogs that are simply beautiful to read and learn from defector.com/alysa-liu-is...

How Is A Figure Skater Like A Tree? | Defector Since returning to figure skating, Alysa Liu has displayed an indifference toward earthly happenings that a bodhisattva would envy. That is not to say that she doesn’t express joy upon completing a st...

4. defector.com/alysa-liu-am...

Are The Fellas In Sync? | Defector Gather ’round, friends, for it is time to play my favorite newly invented game of the Winter Olympics. The game is called “Are The Fellas In Sync,” and the way you play this game is by scrolling throu...

3. defector.com/are-the-fell...

Beautiful Wolfdog Now An Olympian | Defector By the end of a cross-country skiing team sprint competition, the athletes are on the brink of collapse. The best teams complete their six-mile sprint in about 20 minutes. Their legs burn, and their l...

2. defector.com/beautiful-wo...

The Suffering Of Lindsey Vonn | Defector I woke to a flurry of notifications on my phone. Overnight in Cortino, Lindsey Vonn violently crashed in her Olympic downhill race and was airlifted from the mountain. My group chat, made up of colleg...

1. defector.com/the-sufferin...

Threading four high-quality Olympics blogs that can be read right now on Defector dot com.