An oral history of the 2003 World Series of Poker, as poker went mainstream in America and online players invaded the competition.

The NFL attempts to set up a beachhead in China.

A trip to the Iditarod.

A drunken evening with the Primer and Upstream Color director.

Charles Pierce’s classic GQ profile of Tiger Woods, annotated.

Two decades later, unpacking a historic bust.

The crumbling of an American icon.

In February, Jerusalem’s FC Beitar, the only soccer team in the Israeli Premier League to have never signed an Arab player, signed two Chechnyan Muslims, sparking national controversy and pitting the organization against their ultras fan club La Familia.

Investigating a former NFL star’s new business: renting professional athletes to their biggest fans.

How Singaporean mobster Tan Seet Eng, aka Dan Tan, and a global network of fixers influenced as many 680 soccer matches at the highest levels.

Larry Brown’s mystifying, unpredictable career.

An essay on television and race.

Royce White’s theories of mental illness.

On high school basketball star Chris Tang and the pressures of being the “Great Yellow Hope.”

The many reasons Lost shouldn’t have happened.

The relationship between Buffalo and its team.

Dunks, drugs, and disappointment: an oral history of the 1980s Houston Rockets.

Catching up with the controversial radio host, who recently returned to the air after years away.

The evolution of cheating in chess.

A profile of Mo Isom, a former goalie on the LSU women’s soccer team now trying to kick for the football team.

Why people play violent video games.

How Sherwin Shayegan pulled off a 3,000-mile, piggyback ride-fueled road trip.

An oral history of WFAN.

An interview with Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich on his career afterlife as a “a clocker and chart-caller” and occasional breeder at an Iowa race horse track.

The political fight over a new football stadium in Minnesota.

On the lost pickup basketball games in D.C. between Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor, then both still in college, during the summer of 1957.

A writer’s trip home to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and the racetrack inextricably linked with the histories of his family and his hometown.

An oral history of the Pacers/Pistons melee in 2004.

On the “unfair significance” of Jeremy Lin.

How the game gets made.

On the death of a high school basketball star in New York City.

On the enduring appeal, both amateur and academic, of man vs. dinosaur.

He rose from poverty to fame as a marathon champion at only 23. But was his fall from a balcony outside of Nairobi murder, accident, or suicide?

"At the end of the cycle of Morning Glory, I was hailed as the greatest songwriter since Lennon and McCartney," Gallagher recalls. "Now, I know that I'm not, and I knew I wasn't then. But the perception of everybody since that period has been, 'What the fuck happened to this guy? Wasn't he supposed to be the next fucking Beatles?' I never said that I was the greatest thing since Lennon and McCartney … well, actually, I'm lying. I probably did say that once or twice in interviews. But regardless, look at it this way: Let's say my career had gone backwards. Let say this new solo album had been my debut, and it was my last two records that sold 20 million copies instead of the first two records. Had this been the case, all the other albums leading up to those last two would be considered a fucking journey. They would be perceived as albums that represent the road to greatness. But just because it started off great doesn't make those other albums any less of a journey. I'll use an American football analogy since we're in America: Let's say you're behind with two minutes to go and you come back to tie the game. It almost feels like you've won. Right? But let's say you've been ahead the whole game and you allow the opponent to tie things up in the final two minutes. Then it feels like you've lost. But the fact of the matter is it's still a fucking tie. The only difference is perception. And the fact of the matter is that Oasis sold 55 million records. If people think we were never good after the '90s, that's irrelevant."

On FIFA’s history of scandal.

On the shift from the “triple-A video-game production cycle — the expensive development process, in other words, by which games like Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Uncharted, and BioShock are unleashed upon the world” towards the simpler pleasures of gaming on the iPad.

Live from the World Series of Poker.

A 1980 profile of Nolan Ryan by Tony Kornheiser from Inside Sports, annotated 30 years later by Michael MacCambridge and Kornheiser. The first story in Grantland’s Director’s Cut series, which “looks back at classic works of sports journalism and gives the writers, athletes, and other figures involved in making the articles an opportunity to reflect on their work and recall some deleted scenes.”

“Radically brilliant. Absurdly ahead of its time. Ridiculously poorly planned.” An oral history of the National Sports Daily.

On LA Noire and the gaming paradoxes presented by pairing nuanced storytelling with a player’s free will.

On witnessing an incredible junior college basketball game 23 years ago in North Dakota.

On recommitting to the Knicks after “a decade of dysfunction and delusion.”