The media have swarmed the North Attleboro, Mass., home of Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who has been questioned in connection with the murder of a 27-year-old Boston man. WBZ said the victim is Odin Floyd, a semi-pro football player whose body was found by a jogger on Monday in an industrial park not far from Hernandez's home. Floyd's family has also said that Floyd dated Hernandez's girlfriend's sister.

WBZ did manage to speak to the man who discovered the body:

“He was stiff, motionless, one of the police officers came back later and said it looked the guy had been shot somewhere else and dumped here.”

As Sports Illustrated first reported, Hernandez was initially tied to the case because a Chevy Suburban rented in his name was found not far from Floyd's body. Hernandez was questioned yesterday by police, who searched inside and outside his home, including the inside of a vehicle parked in the driveway. A cop last night was also seen leaving the house carrying a cardboard box. Investigators returned to Hernandez's house today around 10 a.m., knocked on the door, and made several phone calls before leaving.

Coverage of the case is already turning into a speculative shitshow. The Boston Globe, for some reason, felt the need to include a completely irrelevant pair of sentences about Hernandez's "prior off-field issues" in its report today from the scene:

Hernandez has had prior off-field issues during his playing career.

NFL team sources told the Globe in 2010 that Hernandez, who played at Florida, slipped to the fourth round in the draft because of multiple failed drug tests for marijuana as a collegian.

Meanwhile, TMZ has just learned that on June 13, some dude filed a $100,000 federal lawsuit alleging that Hernandez shot him in the face after an altercation at a Miami nightclub strip club back in February. Huh? You have to read nine paragraphs into TMZ's report to discover the case was dismissed four days later. (Update 3:06 p.m.: TMZ has updated its story to say the man's legal team "dismissed" the suit because of a "paperwork error," but that it intends to re-file it again today.)

And WBZ, citing "a law enforcement source," said Hernandez has not been ruled out as a possible suspect, and that Hernandez has not been cooperative with investigators. (This is contradicted by a Boston Herald report that said Hernandez has been cooperative.) It's important to note that none of this means Hernandez is an actual suspect. It's also important to note that any supposed lack of cooperation could mean many things: Hernandez could simply be exercising his constitutional right to remain silent, or he could be waiting to speak to police in the presence of a lawyer. Or he could be blowing the cops off. As the investigation unfolds, none of this is known. At this point, to read anything whatsoever into reports like these is to speculate.

Photo via

If only one play could be said to define this scintillating NBA finals, it has to be Ray Allen's game-tying three-pointer from the right corner with 5.2 seconds to go to force overtime.

With the Heat's season hanging in the balance, Allen's shot was the culmination of a moment of delicious panic that played to perfection: LeBron James missed a three-pointer. Chris Bosh grabbed the rebound over Manu Ginobli. Bosh quickly tossed the ball to Allen. Allen knew he had to step back to get himself behind the arc.

Then?

First, watch the video:

But let's freeze the moment Allen lifted himself into the air to launch the ball over Tony Parker. These photos—some from AP, some from Getty, some from Twitter—tell the heart-pounding story of what Allen would later call "a shot that I'm going to remember for a long time":

Check out the faces of everyone in this incredible photo taken by Charles Trainor Jr. of the Miami Herald. The image ran this morning on the paper's front page:

They're not good dancers. (Click the image to start the party.) But that's not the point.

[@alexscordelis]

The Bruins' defensemen have been mostly mistake-free in these playoffs. But Boston hasn't been perfect. At one point last night, the NBC Sports Network found a rather obvious flaw.

Updated with a gif:

Chara did need to get stitches in the back of his head as a result of the wipeout. The Oilers' Taylor Hall (rightly) took issue with the idea that this was the "most dangerous warmup ever":

I disagree “@FriedgeHNIC: Healy says Chara needed stitches in back of head after pre-game collision with Lucic. Most dangerous warmup ever.”

— Taylor Hall (@hallsy04) June 18, 2013

[Busted Coverage]

A Naval Academy superintendent has reviewed a report about the alleged rape of a female midshipman by three football players and determined the case should proceed.

An academy spokesman told NBC News that Vice Adm. Michael H. Miller "'has decided to send this case to Article 32 proceedings,' the military equivalent of a preliminary hearing."

It is not known if all three players—including one whose recent graduation was put on hold pending the Naval Criminal Investigative Services's inquiry— will face charges. The allegation dates to an off-campus party in April 2012. The woman didn't initially cooperate with investigators, but she came forward again earlier this year, when she hired a lawyer who has said the woman has faced ostracism and intimidation.

[NBC News]

Photo credit: Getty

Bear with our hyperbole on this one. Because there was what Will Venable did—sprinting back toward the wall and laying out to make a backhanded catch over his head, à la Jim Edmonds—and there was the situation in which he did it.

Tie game, two outs, bottom of the 12th. The Giants had Brandon Belt on second. Put simply, if Venable didn't get to this ball hit by Juan Perez, the Padres lose. But he got to it all right, even though it looked like he had no chance. San Diego wound up scoring twice in the top of the 13th, and Huston Street locked down the bottom of the inning to finish it off.

It's a cliché to say every game matters, even in a 162-game season. And there are still more than three months to go. But the NL West has four teams within 1.5 games of first place, with the Padres now sitting in third, just .5 games in front of the Giants. This game mattered. This spectacular catch did, too.

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Week's over. Our gang will be here Saturday and Sunday. Have a good one.

Another one for the archive of the absurd thanks to Russian drivers and their all-seeing dashboard cameras. There's plenty of suspense here, so be sure to watch this video all the way through.

An old man crosses the street. He's walking on the trolley tracks. A trolley pulls up behind him. The trolley driver honks. The old man flips off the trolley driver and continues to walk on the tracks. The trolley driver gets out and decks the old man. The trolley driver argues with a passenger. This holds up traffic. The traffic begins to move. The old man just lies there on the side of the road. Does anyone bother to help him? It's a cliffhanger.

[Barstool]

Bobby Abplanalp, the sports editor for a tiny North Dakota newspaper, was one of two men arrested this week for allegedly trying to pay for sex with a person known to be under 18 years of age.

Abplanalp and Aaron S. Collins were both charged with human trafficking, a Class A felony that carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. They're being held on $50,000 bond.

The Dickinson Press, a daily with a circulation of about 7,000 in a town about 100 miles west of Bismarck, was forced to include this line in its story about Abplanalp's arrest:

Abplanalp, 29, is the sports editor of The Dickinson Press.

The paper had hired Abplanalp just last month. He previously worked as the sports editor at the Cortez (Colo.) Journal.

[Dickinson Press | The Big Lead]

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Sean's around a bit later, so drop on by. Game 4 of the NBA finals tonight. Enjoy your evening.

Heinz Field is 12 years old. It's still in great shape, even if its playing surface never was. The Steelers have a waiting list for season tickets that stretches as far as the eye can see. But the stadium's capacity is just 65,500, one of the smallest in the NFL. So the Steelers would like to add another 3,000 seats. And, like most other corporate welfare recipients NFL teams, they want the public to pick up most of the tab.

The Steelers have designated the seating expansion as a capital improvement, which sounds a lot more palatable than saying "easy additional revenue stream" when you're angling for space at the public trough. The Steelers claim a clause in their lease with Heinz Field's owner, the city-county Sports and Exhibition Authority (SEA), requires the authority (read: the same public that paid for most of the stadium's construction) to pay for two-thirds of any "designated expansion" of up to 10,000 additional seats. The estimated tab for the SEA's share: $20 million. (And the seating expansion is only part of a larger, $40 million upgrade the Steelers want that includes a new scoreboard.)

The SEA's position is that the seating expansion is a "modification" rather than a capital improvement. According to the SEA's reading of the lease, per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for any changes to be capital improvements, they must be installed in at least half of all NFL stadiums, with government funding accounting for up to a quarter of the cost. The SEA thus wants the Steelers to foot the bill themselves.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review says the Steelers' lawyer claims the SEA's position is a "smokescreen" because the SEA doesn't have the money to cover its share. Which appears to be true: The SEA's executive director told the Trib the authority has just $4 million in capital reserves.

The Steelers and the SEA had an agreement in place to fund the expansion by passing the cost on to those who attend games. The plan called for raising an existing surcharge on ticket prices in addition to implementing a parking surcharge. When the deal fell through, the Steelers took the SEA to court. There was a hearing today in front of a county judge—who happens to be a Steelers season-ticket holder, natch—and a ruling is expected within a week.

Mark Hart, the Steelers' director of planning and development, stressed to the Trib that the hearing was vital because the Steelers are really the ones being civic-minded here:

“If this matter is not resolved in the near future, another year of increased fan attendance and increased tax revenue will be lost.”

That "increased tax revenue" won't come close to paying for the cost of the expansion. But that's the point. Hart's comment is a variation of the same theme we've seen play out lately in NFL cities like Miami, Oakland, Buffalo, St. Louis, and Charlotte. It's what teams always say whenever they pass the hat for their profitable playgrounds: Fuck you, pay me. Because you need us a lot more than we need you.

[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]

Photo credit: Getty

Because he doesn't move out of the way. He barely flinches. And he calmly acts like that baseball didn't just carom off the side of his head.

[MLB]

This is more than a year old, and it's already bounced around the internet a little bit, but it was just brought to our attention. We're posting it because it's Jaromir Jagr. Dressed as a fire chief. Who gets tricked by some ladies. Ladies who wanna party with him. In a 20-second commercial for the Euro Milony lottery.

Jagr actually has been a silent Euro lottery pitchman for quite a while. In other ads, he delivers pizza on a Vespa, plays a super hero, dresses as Santa Claus, looks really pensive, and just rolls over in his sleep. He's such a natural. There's no look he can't pull off.

[Boston Globe]

h/t to Tim Baffoe

This week's Sports Illustrated (print edition) includes a lengthy rundown of the bureaucratic troubles plaguing the NCAA's enforcement division. SI's take: That the ineptitude created by these troubles is preventing the NCAA from properly administering its rulebook. SI treats this as a problem, as something we all ought to lament. But isn't it good news?

SI's story picks up where Yahoo! left off with Nevin Shapiro, the shady former Miami Hurricanes booster who owned up to being a shady former Miami Hurricanes booster after he went bankrupt and was convicted for his role in a high-end Ponzi scheme. Shapiro now says he frequently bet on Miami football games using inside information he got from players, coaches, and athletic department employees. He even provided SI with financial documents that show how he used to move large sums of money into an account belonging to a guy who ran a gambling website.

The NCAA, naturally, screwed up its investigation of the Miami case by contracting with Shapiro's bankruptcy lawyer to get her to depose two uncooperative witnesses, though its committee on infractions is supposed to make a decision on whether to punish Miami this week. SI uses Shapiro's surprise at the NCAA's incompetence to frame how fractured the enforcement division has become in recent years under president Mark Emmert.

Here's what we learn:

1. The NCAA now has performance metrics (codes for difficulty, a 12-month time limit with a justification required for exceeding that limit) in place to try to expedite its handling of cases.

2. Emmert has been more involved than past NCAA presidents in dealing directly with college presidents, and his defensiveness over criticism of the NCAA has hurt staff morale.

3. The NCAA's new enforcement model, instituted two years ago, places additional personnel on the same investigation. Staffers who talked to SI say this has created less efficiency.

4. Enforcement staffers are upset over two other prominent cases: The NCAA's abandonment of its inquiry into the recruitment of UCLA's Shabazz Muhammad, and the harsh penalties placed on Penn State without any NCAA investigation.

SI quotes an unnamed former enforcement employee to say what this is all supposed to mean: "The time is ripe to cheat. There is no policing going on." To which we say: Great! The NCAA's rules only exist to perpetuate the lie of student-athlete "amateurism." If the NCAA recognized its lie as a lie, there would be no need for Nevin Shapiros, and no "cheating." Instead, the NCAA "enforces" its rules to justify its own existence, to show that it's doing something about the problems its rules support. So the structure is starting to crumble from within? So what?

Photo credit: Associated Press

Phil Esposito was a five-time NHL scoring champion whose best playing days were with the Bruins. But he began his career in Chicago, where his brother, Tony, was a Hall of Fame goalie. That said, Esposito's rooting interest in this year's Stanley Cup final is easier than you think.

He's pretty much pulling for a meteor.

"You want to know the truth," said Esposito, the fifth-leading goal scorer in hockey history. "This series doesn't mean s*** to me.

"I have no feeling for these teams. There's nothing emotional about it. They both got rid of me, traded me. So screw them."

Well then. Esposito was was traded from the old Black Hawks to the Bruins in May 1967 in one of the most one-sided deals in league history. But he's still pissed he had to find out about the move from teammate Bobby Hull. Eight years and two Stanley Cup titles later, Boston sent Esposito to the Rangers, where he later coached and served as GM before he helped found the Tampa Bay Lightning. Tony Esposito says Phil and the Bruins have "no relationship" these days.

[Toronto Sun]

Photo credit: Getty