How does human keg stand Rob Gronkowski respond to being Gronkshamed by a stodgy Boston sports columnist? He grabs his "Sorry For Partying" tank top and heads to Universal Studios to party, obviously.

This photo of Gronk was captured by a Patriots fan who was lucky enough to stumble upon Gronk while he was in a good mood. (Who are we kidding? Gronk is always in a good mood.) The picture is made so much better by this added bit of context, taken from the comment thread of the fan's Instagram account:

he was cool! first said he was only takin pics with kids but I persuaded him... he said my entrance fee would be making out with the alligator stuffed animal, but he didn't think I'd say yes to doing it lol #clearlydoesntknowme

The Summer Of Gronk Part Two rolls on.

Via

It's been a tough week for Nicholas Capes, the Iowa boxer who stepped into the ring against NFL defensive end Ray Edwards and proceeded to take an unforgettable and hilarious dive. According to the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Capes has been indefinitely suspended from boxing in North Dakota.

Capes shouldn't be looked at as a villain, though. He was thrown into the ring as a last-minute replacement, and only took a dive to protect himself from the much larger and more powerful Edwards.

Event promoter Cory Rapacz says Capes was a last-minute replacement for a couple of no-show boxers and didn't realize what he was getting into before he got into the ring with Edwards, a former Vikings defensive end. He says officials expected Capes to try but says the backlash against Capes is unfair.

Honestly, every single one of us would have done the exact same thing. We should really be praising Capes, because his wish to not get his face caved in gave us a very funny video to watch, which we will now do a few more times.

Update: Cory Rapacz, the promoter quoted by the Pioneer Press, sent us this email:

I was the promoter of the event in West Fargo, ND on Saturday night.

I was misquoted. I said the criticism of Edwards is unfair. Not the criticism of Nick Capes.

Thank you.

[Pioneer Press]

I'd like to draw your attention to this passage from ESPN draft insider Chad Ford's analysis of how University of Kentucky big man Nerlens Noel's torn ACL might affect his draft stock (emphasis mine):

"Our scouting staff has seen enough of him to know what type of player he projects to be," one NBA GM said. "He's really raw, but he has so many athletic abilities and plays so hard. He was injured on an incredible hustle play. It's the thing I love about the kid the most. If he checks out with our doctors, I wouldn't hesitate to draft him high. He's going to heal. You're going to have to be patient with him anyway. He moves from being a risky No. 1 pick, to a potential value pick, like Andre Drummond, a little bit later in the lottery."

To recap: Nerlens Noel came to Kentucky as the projected first overall pick in the NBA draft. He gave Kentucky and the NCAA three months of unpaid playing time, during which he could only maintain or diminish his already sky-high draft stock. He suffered a torn ACL, a sad circumstance which all but guarantees that he has lost his chance to be drafted first overall, but actually increases his value to NBA GMs, who now have the opportunity to add a potential superstar to their team at a severely discounted price. Noel's only options going forward are to enter the NBA as a bargain-bin deal, or return to Kentucky and spend one more season filling the NCAA's coffers.

Here we have a system in which the athletes are the only ones who ever have anything to lose. Noel won't be the last player we see writhing on the ground in pain, his future possibly evaporating in front of him while NCAA and NBA cash in.

You probably remember Brian Bosworth as the crazy linebacker with weird hair who was good in college but sucked in the NFL and once got trucked by Bo Jackson. Regardless of what you know about The Boz, though, you probably wouldn't expect him to be the kind of guy who sends tweets like this from The xx concert:

If you aren't familiar, The xx is a perfectly mellow, enjoyable indie pop band from England. You've definitely heard their music playing in the background of various TV shows and commercials and not been offended. In other words, they are not the kind of band that you would peg as capable of eliciting an orgasmic experience from a guy who once looked like this.

Brian Bosworth is like an onion. He has many layers, people.

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. You've got a smörgåsbord of NBA and college basketball action to keep you busy tonight, so enjoy that. We'll be back at it tomorrow.

Trevor Bauer is one of the most highly touted pitching prospects in baseball. He is also a terrible, terrible rapper and possibly kind of a dick. When he was traded from the Arizona Diamondbacks to the Cleveland Indians in the offseason, his former teammate and catcher Miguel Montero made some pointed comments about Bauer's headstrong and stubborn nature before wishing Indians catcher Carlos Santana good luck in dealing with Bauer.

And now, it appears that Bauer, who is one half of the truly awful rap group consummate4sight, has bitten back at Montero with a diss track titled "You Don't Know Me." Get a taste of this hot fire:

Just kidding, don't listen to that. It will make you want to punch your computer screen. It's not clear that this song was produced for the specific purpose of sonning Montero, but it does make repeated reference to an unidentified hater who "hides behind a mask to facilitate a task." (Like a catcher's mask! Get it?) The track also includes killer lines like this one:

Knock me down/I'll pop back up like rubber bands/and sting these bees a hell of a lot better than a bumble can

Boom! Sorry Miguel, but I think you just got ethered.

[Waiting For Next Year]

OK, so he probably didn't do this on purpose, but we still can't help but be impressed by Motiejunas's deployment of the old throw-the-ball-off-some-poor-sap's-shoulder move during last night's Rockets-Clippers game. Blinded by the brilliance of the trick, the Clippers' defenders could do nothing but stand and watch as Motiejunas coasted into the lane for an easy layup.

This gives hope to anyone out there who likes to play basketball but finds themselves incapable of dribbling effectively. Some day, the ball might just bounce your way, and you'll look awesome without even trying.

[YouTube]

Over the weekend, the Washington Post's Mike Wise wrote a column about Wizards point guard John Wall's recent encouraging play. For whatever reason, this made former superagent David Falk very mad, mad enough to call up Wise and go on a tirade against Wall and the Wizards organization. Lucky for us, Wise used his conversation with Falk to write a highly entertaining follow-up column in which Falk comes off like a salty old man. Some highlights:

"I'm going to save you from embarrassment," Michael Jordan's former agent said as an introduction Monday night when he called.

A Wizards season ticket holder, Falk added: "You guys are in dreamland. Because this team [stinks] so bad you guys want John Wall to be someone he will never be."

"Let me ask you a question," Falk said, maybe 28 times over 30 minutes, often answering for you. "Who's bigger, Kyrie Irving or John Wall? John Wall. Who's a better athlete? John Wall. Who's faster? Who's stronger? John Wall.

"Now, who's a better player? Kyrie Irving," he said of Cleveland's all-star point guard who was rookie of the year in 2012. "John Wall will never be good as Kyrie Irving was in his first week in the NBA.

"I don't think he'll be a much smarter player," he said. "You can't become a smart player. You either are or you aren't."

As Wise points out in his column, it is very strange for an active agent to take such blatant shots at a current player, nevermind the fact that writing off a 22-year-old player who has John Wall's athletic gifts is aggressively shortsighted.

So what's Falk's deal? He's certainly not the power player he once was when he and Michael Jordan and Nike conquered the sports world together, but why take his frustration out on John Wall? Wise guesses that Falk might hold a grudge against Wall because he was picked ahead of Evan Turner, a client of Falk's, in the 2010 draft.

Either way, we'd like to take this opportunity to remind David Falk that John Wall is in fact very good at basketball.

Update: David Falk says that he is real sorry.

The worst thing about little league sports will always be what it does to the players' parents. There is just something about children playing sports that draws out the darkest parts of the adult soul. Case in point: the madman in the video above who shouts, "He's a midget!" at a child who is trying to play hockey, and then threatens that child's father by saying, "Don't touch me, or I'm gonna cave your fucking glasses in, you got that?"

God help that woman—presumably Ragey McRagestein's wife—who just stands there, staring helplessly into the void while her husband embarrasses himself. Also, is there any threat that drips with more cringe-inducing dadditude than, "I'm gonna cave your fucking glasses in?"

h/t Tim

Here's Kobe Bryant, well on his way to suffering through yet another blowout, driving into the lane and making a nice kick-out pass during last night's Clippers-Lakers game. Unfortunately for Kobe, this play was canceled out by a three-second violation called against Dwight Howard. Fortunately for us, one of the mics on the arena floor was aimed right at Kobe as he exclaimed, "Goddamn! You fucking asshole!" after the play. It's always fun to hear athletes curse!

But the real question is this: Who was Kobe calling an asshole? Was it the referee for having such a quick trigger on the three-second call? Was it Dwight Howard for parking himself in the lane and eliciting the violation? Or perhaps it was himself, for not being perfect and finding a way to single-handedly erase his team's 22-point deficit with one play. We're just going to assume that he was yelling at Howard, because everybody hates Dwight Howard.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers pulled out a thrilling overtime victory against the Wisconsin Badgers last night, and the postgame mood in Gophers' locker room was understandably light. Everyone was feeling so good that head coach Tubby Smith was only able to get one sentence into his postgame speech before somebody cued up a Ke$ha party anthem, causing an impromptu dance party to break out.

This is really how all victory speeches should go down. Just one declarative statement ("Today is a wonderful day fellas. Valentine's Day!") followed by raucous dancing to the most current Ke$ha hit. Tubby Smith doing an adorable little shimmy is more inspiring than any collection of platitudes ever could be.

h/t Brady

After the Super Bowl, it was revealed that Joe Flacco had seriously considered running onto the field from the sideline to tackle Ted Ginn if Ginn had broken off a big kick return on the last play of the game. Flacco's idea was a ridiculous one, and would have resulted in the 49ers being awarded a touchdown, but it wouldn't have been the first time such a play had happened. In this week's excerpt of Slate's Hang Up And Listen podcast, you'll hear the story of Tommy Lewis, who left the sideline to tackle an opponent during the 1954 Cotton Bowl.

You can listen to the full podcast here or subscribe on iTunes.

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Now that spring training has officially kicked off, it's time for baseball writers to spend the next two months filling column space while absolutely nothing of consequence happens. Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal got started today, asking various members of the San Francisco Giants to share their favorite offseason memory. The best answer came from the newly sophisticated-looking Tim Lincecum, who told Rosenthal that he spent a portion of the offseason in Mexico "just kind of finding an epiphany toward baseball."

Lincecum likened the experience to, "Seeing a light that...opened up a whole bunch of exciting feelings in yourself that make the upcoming season right now more of an exclamation point than a question mark."

[...]

"You're kind of just in touch with yourself, coming into contact with your weaknesses and accepting those weaknesses and knowing how to get out of them, how to work with them," he said.

So it sounds like Lincecum had a really nice time smoking weed in Mexico.

[Fox]

Hey everyone, Lil Wayne is being crazy again. Wayne gave a performance in Houston last night as part of the NBA All-Star Weekend festivities, and he took some time out of his set to take his beef with the Miami Heat to Defcon 1. Recall: Wayne was recently involved in some kind of kerfuffle at a Lakers-Heat game, and he claimed he was kicked out of the game by arena security.

Last night, Wayne told the crowd that he has been banned from all NBA events at the request of the Miami Heat. It's hard to believe that this is actually true, but that didn't stop him from telling the NBA and everyone associated with the Miami Heat to go get fucked. The coup de grâce came when Wayne loudly proclaimed that he has boned Chris Bosh's wife.

Thanks to TMZ, you can watch video of Wayne's entire rant:

If we're lucky, this will give birth to a long and vicious feud between Wayne and Bosh, consisting of Wayne dropping diss tracks and Bosh repeatedly photobombing Weezy and his entourage.

[TMZ]

If we wanted to, we could probably track down information that would add context to this photo. But we aren't going to do that, because context does not matter in this case. All that matters is that this photo exists and that it makes us laugh, as do all photos of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar posing with shorter women.

[Twitter]

It super sucks to be Mat Gamel right now. The Milwaukee Brewers' corner infielder, who was at one time a fairly promising prospect, will miss the entire 2013 season after tearing his ACL. Gamel's injury is all the more depressing due to the fact that he just finished a rehab stint after tearing the same ligament last May. It gets even worse, though, because Gamel's latest ACL tear was a bit of a freak occurrence:

"It's a tear of the middle portion of the repair, which as (team physician William) Raasch explained to me, is unusual," assistant general manager Gord Ash said. "There are failures — 10 percent seems to be the historical number. But of those failures, they're mostly at either end (of the ligament)."

Gamel has yet to play a full season at the major league level, but the Brewers were planning on making him the team's starting first baseman while Corey Hart recovered from his own knee injury. Instead, Gamel is left to spend another season in solitude, rehabbing his knee and pondering the inherent cruelty of life. Poor bastard.

[Journal-Sentinel]

Everyone's favorite gun-humping birther, Luke Scott, arrived at the Tampa Bay Rays' spring training facility with a special guest: the stuffed head of a slain hellboar. How did Scott come to claim this bloody prize? By sticking the beast with a spear, of course! Scott told Rays Report that the boar was his "first confirmed kill with a spear."

We wouldn't have expected a guy who has such a fondness for shooting stuff to take up spear hunting, but he's most likely just making sure that he'll still be able to kill things when the government comes to take his guns.

Related:

David Booth Hath Slain The Goatbeast
Carey Price Hath Slain The Hellhound

[The Big Lead]

The only thing worth talking about that has come from Andrew Bynum's first season with the 76ers has been the big man's ever-changing, ridiculous hairstyles. Today, Bynum met with the local media to give an update on the progress of his rehab (Spoiler alert: he's still a few weeks away from returning) and revealed his newest creation, an unholy marriage of his flattened afro and whatever the hell this was.

The good news for Bynum is that if he ever gets arrested, his mugshot will end up being only the second most embarrassing picture of him on the internet.

Photo via

Yesterday, former Atlanta Braves star and beloved-by-the-internet old dude Dale Murphy decided to celebrate President's Day by showing his Twitter followers a picture of one of his prized pieces of memorabilia: a baseball with Richard Nixon's autograph on it. The autograph reads, "To Dale Murphy, from one of his fans-Richard Nixon."

Two things: Richard Nixon's handwriting was kind of terrible, and that autograph is bland and impersonal and uninspiring in a perfectly Nixonian kind of way. I like to imagine that Nixon spent a good five minutes coming up with that message, settling on it after also considering, "To Dale Murphy, swing that bat-Richard Nixon" and "To Dale Murphy, from a human man-Richard Nixon."