Month: July 2020

Rye whiskey is a step to the side of bourbon. A whiskey variant that some people swear by and others pretty much ignore. The use of rye grains in the mash bill (recipe) makes for a dram that tends to have more heat via a peppery spiciness. Ryes also lean more into fruity/floral natures, compared to bourbon’s vanilla foundation.

As for production, ryes are made under the same rules as bourbon except for one. Whereas bourbons need a minimum of 51-percent corn in their mash bills, ryes need at least 51 percent rye grains as their base. That other 49 percent can be made up of a mix of any other grain or cereal.

The other major ripple with rye whiskeys is the Canada factor. In Canada, the term “rye” is used colloquially to refer to Canadian whisky overall. And yes, that means that there are Canadian whiskies with zero rye grain in their mash bills that people will still call “rye” when asking for a dram at a bar. It’s slightly confusing, but you can always ask before ordering.

The ten ryes below aim to bridge the gap between the low-end offerings and the higher-end stuff that might be a little too pricy for every day sipping. Overall, these are all quality bottles that live up to their price point and are (for the most part) widely available.

Sazerac Straight Rye

ABV: 45%
Distillery: Buffalo Trace Distillery, Frankfort, KY (Sazerac Company)
Average Price: $32

The Whiskey:

Sazerac Rye is a great entry point for a refined touch and a throwback to the 1800s. The brand was named after the famed Sazerac Coffee House on Royal Street in New Orleans where the Sazerac cocktail was born. This expression is a true classic.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a hint of vanilla that’s in place to support the clear notes of star anise, clove, and black pepper. The body of this sip leans into a Christmas cake overloaded with spices and candied fruits, with a crack of pepper over the top and a lush-yet-subtle sweetness.

Finally, the spices fade towards a dark licorice essence on the warming final notes.

Bottom Line:

The only way to make a Sazerac is with this. It’s also a very decent highball base.

Lot 40 Canadian Rye Whisky

ABV: 43%
Distillery: Hiram Walker Distillery, Windsor, ON
Average Price: $40

The Whiskey:

Lot 40 is a true rye whisky. The mash bill is comprised of 90 percent Canadian rye and ten percent malted rye. The juice is blended by a Canadian blending icon, Dr. Don Livermore, who’s often been called the mad scientist of whisky.

Tasting Notes:

Caramel spiked with orange zest combines with mild rye spiciness and a slight savory fruit presence. The sip leans into fresh florals with a coriander feel, alongside notes of pepper and cardamon. A hint of that caramel sweetness returns with a flourish of vanilla as the sip luxuriates in the rye spice.

Bottom Line:

Solid sipper but also a worthy Old Fashioned base.

Oak & Eden Rye & Spire

ABV: 45%
Distillery: Sanctified Spirits, Westlake, TX
Average Price: $40

The Whiskey:

At first glance, Oak & Eden feels like a gimmicky brand. But that heavily charred oak spire in the bottle adds that little extra something that helps elevate this expression. The mash bill is 95 percent rye and the juice goes through standard aging in new American oak.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a real sense of floral notes married to rye spice up top. Wildflowers, peppery spice, rich caramel, and charred oak lead towards a hint of bitter espresso. The sip embraces all that bitter, floral, and spiciness and slowly fades towards a billow of pipe tobacco on the end.

Bottom Line:

This is designed for cocktails. Try it in a Manhattan.

Woodford Reserve Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey

ABV: 45.2%
Distillery: Woodford Reserve Distillery, Versailles, KY (Brown-Forman)
Average Price: $40

The Whiskey:

Woodford’s master distiller Chris Morris took nearly ten years to get this one just right. The juice is made from a meager 53-percent rye mash bill (the rest is malted barley). The whiskey is then aged until it hits the right spot and is small-batch bottled.

Tasting Notes:

Black pepper and cedar bark counterpoint marzipan and apple orchards with a hint of pear. The taste broadens the spices towards clove and more pepper while a lush floral nature sits next to molasses sweetness and a hint of fresh mint. That molasses mixes with the spice as the sip slowly dissipates from your senses.

Bottom Line:

This is a great workhorse whiskey. On the rocks, in a mint julep, or deep in a highball — it all works.

Sagamore Spirit Rye

ABV: 41.5%
Distillery: Sagamore Spirit Distillery, Baltimore, MD
Average Price: $45

The Whiskey:

This rye, originally sourced from Indiana, is a blend of high-rye and low-rye whiskeys that are cut with spring water from a Maryland farm. The expression was the brainchild of master distiller Larry Ebersold who spent 30 years at Seagram’s mastering his trade, giving this bottle some serious history to live up to.

Tasting Notes:

This one opens with classic notes of vanilla, caramel, and Christmas spices. Those Christmas spices carry on and are supported by brisk orange zest, candied fruit, and wet brown sugar with a faint hint of straw. The sip hits a fatty walnut edge as the spices slowly fade through the senses.

Bottom Line:

This one would make a great gift around the holidays.

Russell’s Reserve Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey 6 Years Old

ABV: 45%
Distillery: Wild Turkey Distillery, Lawrenceburg, TN (Campari)
Average Price: $45

The Whiskey:

Wild Turkey’s Jimmy and Eddie Russell worked together to create Russell’s Reserve and this rye serves as a crucial gateway to the line. The juice is aged for six long years in heavily charred barrels and placed specifically in the center of the rickhouse. Then the Russells hand-select bottles for small-batch bottling.

Tasting Notes:

This is accessible and classic at the same time. The sip has the rye signifiers of both peppery spice and crusty bread. The florals and fruitiness are dialed in and accentuate the rye spice but never overpower it. The oak is present as a supporting act to the spice as a hint of vanilla pops in late in the dram.

Bottom Line:

Try this one and get lost in the rest of Russell’s Reserve offerings. (It also makes a great Sazerac.)

Templeton Rye Aged 6 Years

ABV: 45.57%
Distillery: Templeton Rye, Templeton, IA (MGP Indiana)
Average Price: $45

The Whiskey:

Templeton Rye is a solid sourced rye. The Iowa based company has started distilling and aging its own juice, so this bottle from Indiana will soon be gone. For now, the juice is a classic 95 percent rye base that’s modeled on a pre-prohibition taste to create a throwback feel.

Tasting Notes:

The sip opens with a sense of cream soda vanilla and sweetness next to bright fruitiness that leans almost tropical. The fruit and vanilla carry the sip through a mild oaky stage towards building levels of spice.

That spice soon overpowers the fruit and vanilla on the short end.

Bottom Line:

Solid mixer. We’re patiently awaiting their homegrown spirit in 2022.

Michter’s US*1 Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey

ABV: 42.4%
Distillery: Michter’s Distillery, Louisville, KY
Average Price: $48

The Whiskey:

This expression from Louisville’s Michter’s is a star of the style. The fact that you can grab a single barrel expression of this quality at around $50 per bottle is fantastic. This bottle could easily be $75 or more (and often is on the secondary market).

Tasting Notes:

Orchard fruit and black pepper greet you along with a touch of fresh mint and freshly mowed green grass. It’s the wildflowers and pepper that carry the sip with a note of tart apple covered in very light salted caramel. The barrel starts peeking through near the long end as the spice fades out and a billow of campfire smoke puts the cherry atop the sundae.

Bottom Line:

It’s billed as the perfect cocktail base but we’d argue that it makes for a great sipper too.

Balcones Texas Rye 100 Proof

ABV: 50%
Distillery: Balcones Distillery, Waco, TX
Average Price: $50

The Whiskey:

This rye is Texas in a bottle. The expression is made of 100 percent rye from a mix of Elbon Rye sourced from Northwest Texas as well as crystal, chocolate, and roasted rye. The juice is then aged for just under two years in a hot Texas rickhouse and cut with Hill Country spring water and nothing else.

Tasting Notes:

Cherries dipped in chocolate support black tea bitterness, light oak char, and rush of cracked black pepper. The pepper leads the way as the bitter chocolate leans into espresso bitterness and the sip gains a creamy toffee nature. The dram ends with a flourish of roasted peanuts and more of that bitterness from the dark chocolate.

Bottom Line:

This is the perfect highball base or sipper that could easily be twice the price.

Basil Hayden’s Dark Rye

ABV: 40%
Distillery: Jim Beam, Clermont, KY (Beam Suntory)
Average Price: $50

The Whiskey:

This expression is a combination of Kentucky, Alberta, and California in a bottle. Kentucky rye from Beam is layered with Canadian rye from Alberta Distillers and then Californian port. That makes this a “flavored” whiskey technically. Either way, the result is a deeply layered and satisfying dram.

Tasting Notes:

Cherries and raspberries mingle with black molasses and a hint of oak. Those notes carry on and allow the spice and vanilla to peek up through the rich sweetness and tart berries. The molasses becomes a more familiar caramel flavor as the fruits dry out and the vanilla, oak, and spice pop in for a late final bow.

Bottom Line:

A great “specialty” rye to try at a reasonable price point.

This week brings us the online release of The Secret: Dare To Dream, a romantic comedy adaptation of Australian television producer Rhonda Byrne’s famous 2006 self-help book The Secret, which Oprah helped spawn a kind of self-actualization cult. From what I can glean about the book, which was itself adapted from a documentary Byrne produced, inspired partly by Wallace D. Wattle‘s 1910 book, The Science of Getting Rich, the gist of The Secret‘s thesis is “think positively and good things will happen,” a philosophy it calls the “law of attraction.”

Now there’s a rom-com version, sadly not titled “Magnets: How Do They Work?” (“Rules of Attraction” was also taken). It stars the random shuffle dream team of Katie Holmes (ex-Mrs. Tom Cruise), Josh Lucas (the voice of Home Depot), and Jerry O’Connell (the current Mr. Rebecca Romjin), with direction from Andy Tennant (Hitch, Sweet Home Alabama) and a script adapted by Bekah Brunstatter (This Is Us). Dare To Dream delivers The Secret‘s philosophy in classic Nicholas Sparks movie format, complete with deferred scholarships, single mothers finding love, and copious Spanish moss.

Holmes, constantly doing the weird side-faced smile that got her through Dawson’s Creek, plays Miranda Wells, a widowed mother of three to whom bad things just keep happening (presumably because she’s such a gloomy grumbleguss). On top of her dead husband, she needs a root canal she can’t afford, has a hole in her kitchen ceiling from a tree branch, and a beat-up minivan that needs a new bumper. She lives in gorgeous coastal Louisiana (seriously, Spanish moss is like crack for the directors of pseudo-religious schmaltz), where she works as some kind of vaguely defined fishmonger with strong feelings about softshell crabs. She’s too proud to let her boss, played by Jerry O’Connell, pay for anything, even though he wants to, even though he’s also her boyfriend. This man is named, improbably, “Tuck Middendorf.”

One day a gratingly sunny stranger with obnoxiously good posture hoves into Miranda’s life. That’s Bray, played by Josh Lucas (muthafuckas act like they forgot about Bray), who secretly has traveled all the way from Nashville to deliver Miranda a manila envelope, unbeknownst to her even after she rear-ends him with her car (it’s like they’ve been… brought together… by some kind of… mysterious attraction). He quickly becomes her unhired handyman, fixing her bumper and roof while delivering choice nuggets of wisdom to her grateful children. “Nature can be very powerful but so are you,” and “coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

He is, essentially, a Magical Negro, rendered here in a Josh Lucasite shade of Caucasian. He’s even a professor of engineering at Vanderbilt, a great Magical White Bro job. We know basically from the jump that Bray’s secret Macguffin envelope will inevitably contain the solution to all of Miranda’s problems (will it just be a fax that says “DUMP TUCK MIDDENDORF?”) but it’s almost as if he has to wait until she puts on a sufficiently happy face before she can be worthy of receiving good news. Remember, kids, if bad things happen to you, it’s all your fault.

The first night Bray meets the Wells children, Miranda is busy ruining their dinner of microwaved chicken tenders (a clumsy dolt! the perfect relatable rom-com heroine!) while the children loudly fantasize about pizza. This is when Bray delivers his first soliloquy comparing mental desires to physical magnetism and assuring the children that they can have everything they want if they can only imagine it. The children all speak aloud the type of pizza they want, and literally seconds later the doorbell rings, revealing a pizza delivery guy with a couple hot pies even though a hurricane is about to hit.

It’s a staggeringly idiotic scene. But here’s where I admit that I don’t think everything The Secret preaches is entirely bankrupt. At one point, Josh Lucas tells his hotel clerk “How can you achieve your goal if you can’t see it?”

If you strip away the unsolicited nature of this advice and pedantic delivery, there’s a kernel of genuine if obvious wisdom there: the first step towards achieving your goals is identifying what they are. That’s not so crazy!

Of course, because we are a nation of idiot children, it’s not sufficient to offer this reasonable advice, as one adult would to another, we have to convince people that they can literally manifest fresh hot pizzas with their mind. This is a close cousin to the kind of prosperity doctrine peddled by overscrubbed pastors at nü-Christian megachurches everywhere. It’s not enough to promise everlasting life in a forever utopia to all those who do unto others, love thy neighbor, and remember the poor and the meek, and whatnot. This is America, we need the good shit tomorrow. Strike that, right now. Not only will you go to heaven, you might even get a Lamborghini. It’s the gentle reassurance of religion mutated by capitalism’s relentless drive for instant gratification.

As Hunter S. Thompson wrote in 1972, “This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”

I think about that quote a lot lately, for obvious reasons, and it rattled around in my head more than a few times while I was watching The Secret: Dare To Dream, a movie whose relevant insights are constantly undercut by mind pizza. It’s like we’re so accustomed to constant grifting that we can’t even recognize good advice unless it’s delivered in the form of a wild-eyed huckster making outrageous claims. “Visualize my goals and achieve them, that’s sounds pretty goo–” “ALSO YOU GET A RANGE ROVER AND A HOT SWEATER HUSBAND!”

Anyway, just shut up your brain and listen to your wise uncle Josh Lucas. He’s a professor at Vanderbilt, for God’s sake, and have you seen this man’s posture? If you can stop being such a nattering nabob of negativity for a while you just might find yourself dumping your shitty boyfriend, going back to school, and living in a gorgeous mansion with a wrap-around porch outside Nashville. With Spanish moss as far as the eye can see and a soft-shell crab in every pot.

‘The Secret: Dare To Dream’ opens on premium video On-Demand July 31st, from Lionsgate films. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

As the Philadelphia 76ers get ready for their first game at the Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando on Friday night against the Indiana Pacers, Joel Embiid is running a giveaway in Philadelphia in which fans can win Mountain Dew/Process-themed Under Armour sneakers.

The bright-green sneakers, adorned with Embiid’s signature phrase, “PROCESS,” will be given away through riddles post on Embiid’s social media accounts that will lead fans to different spots in Philadelphia. Three winners will be selected who find each secret location, where they will scan a QR code to claim their potential prize.

The giveaway will give fans an opportunity to interact with Embiid from a distance as the NBA tips off from its clean site in Orlando.

If they win, fans will receive a pair of HOVR Havoc 2 sneakers, designed specifically around the Mountain Dew brand as well as Embiid’s trust for The Process. The design was done by Texas-based Dank and Co. and certainly will be unique for the winners to wear around Philadelphia during the 2020 NBA season.

Embiid and the Sixers begin the seeding round of games on Saturday at 7 p.m. ET as they take on the Pacers in a game with potentially big seeding implications for the NBA playoffs.

Masks have become more important in everyday life this year than they’ve been in recent memory. Wearing a mask in public is a safety measure, yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t look cool while doing it, too. A bunch of artists started selling their own masks towards the beginning of the pandemic as part of a Universal Music Group/Bravado initiative, and now Travis Scott is getting in on it, too.

He’s going at it on his own, though. Through his Cactus Jack brand, he has started offering a collection of new coronavirus-related merch. His web store was updated today to add branded hand sanitizer for $12, face masks for $25, and SafeTouch tools for $30.

The masks have the Cactus Jack logo embroidered on one side. Meanwhile, the hand sanitizer comes in a spray bottle, is 72 percent alcohol, and is agave-scented. Then there’s the touch tool, which reads, “I ain’t touching that sh*t.”

It is not clear if, like has frequently been the case with sales of masks and similar products during the pandemic, any portion of proceeds will go towards a charitable cause.

All items are available on Scott’s shop, and can only be shipped to the continental US. Check them out here.

Sam Smith delivered their last album in 2017 with The Thrill Of It All, an effort that would go on to give them their first No. 1 album in the US. Standing as their sophomore effort, The Thrill Of It All arrived three years after Smith’s debut album In The Lonely Hour, so in the name of consistency one could expect Smith’s third album to arrive at some point this year. But, has been the case recently in the industry, it’s probable the coronavirus threw those plans off, if they were even in motion in the first place.

Nonetheless, Smith returned with new music earlier this year with their Demi Lovato-featured single, “I’m Ready.” Now, Smith drops their second single of the year alongside another popular name.

Cruising through with Burna Boy, the two connect for their first-ever collaboration, “My Oasis.” Serving as the follow-up to their “I’m Ready” single, Smith’s second release of 2020 should be a more promising sign that their third album will arrive this year. The track also arrives after Smith shared their thoughts on the coronavirus. “I didn’t get tested but I know I had it. 100% had it,” they said. “Everything I read completely pointed to that. So, yeah. I definitely had it.” The track also arrives exactly one month after he delivered a joyful video for his “Wonderful” video.

Listen to “My Oasis” above.

Burna Boy is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Before hearing it, there’s an understanding of what the voice will be like. Because there have been 15 years worth of press conferences, fifteen years worth. There’s been the voice ratcheted to its breaking point, screaming hoarse and vaguely architectural instructions with the kind of vehement, austere assurance even Rem Koolhaas couldn’t hope to muster. And most recently, there’s been the voice superimposed over basketball games he’s not coaching, explaining with punch and luster exactly what you’re seeing on a court and why it matters.

Still, when Stan Van Gundy sails over speakerphone with a breezy, “Hel-lo,” there is a suspended second of disbelief that the inventor of all of it — the career, the triumphs and wincing wrecks, the personality, the occasionally fuming lodestar — is simply calling from his home in Tampa.

This is the nucleus of Van Gundy’s career: excelling in the self-possession of showing up. He did it in Miami, when he coached the team out of the swampy dregs of the bottom East and made them shine enough for Pat Riley to want them back. He did it in Orlando, a near-Sisyphean set-up with Dwight Howard as the boulder. He did it in Detroit, all-in as head coach and president of basketball operations with a roster on the edge of almost. And with coaching reluctantly behind him, Van Gundy gamely sat where ESPN might want him as a sub for a season before landing, this past fall, a multi-year contract with Turner as a game and studio analyst. Between every stop there was a year or so off, as if he had simply taken a scenic route, but he always arrived.

This sense of pacing was partially set by opportunity, and for a coach as tenured as Van Gundy, the rhythm of its knocking may never be absent for too long. But whatever you think of his coaching record, his history, even his personality, it’s always been the tungsten of tenacity at his core that has cast the most enticing light. In his determination, even when it hurt him, there’s resolve and a lasting quality that feels so largely absent from the world at hand.

“I think honestly I’ve been pretty adaptable,” Van Gundy says, a vocal shrug, when we start in on his coaching trajectory. “I’ve done things differently in all three situations both on the court and the way that I felt with my superiors and my relationships with players. Everything’s evolved for me over the years. I’ve been different in all three stops and I think I’ve been willing to adapt.”

Van Gundy, in stark contrast to coaches of his era, didn’t arrive as a prototype. Unlike Phil Jackson’s Type-A Bohemian tycoonery, or Pat Riley’s gritty-wise-guy-gone-south swagger, Van Gundy arrived as-is. There was no brand. He was loud, could be gruff on court and in pressers, tipped occasionally close to frantic, but was almost sprightly in how agile he could be game planning. As a coach he gave as good as he got, but he also listened, adapted.

The mismatch in Miami, now with over a decade of distance, could be chalked up to optics. Van Gundy was never going to be the slick, Vice Nights coach Riley seemed destined to be. He was short and blustery, but he also helped create the regimented system for which the Heat are infamous, working closely with its earliest prototype, Dwyane Wade, in his formative years.

The offer from the Magic came after Van Gundy had declined the Pacers, and after Orlando had already offered the gig to Billy Donovan, who’d accepted and backed out. There was something in that team Van Gundy waited for, and whether it was a fresh start or autonomy, nearly everything on the team ramped up. Their offensive rating climbed from 22nd to seventh, pace from 26th to ninth, defensive rating eventually hit first in the league along with the team’s record, and the Magic made their second-ever appearance in the NBA Finals against Jackson’s Lakers. Orlando saw the postseason every year under Van Gundy, but despite it, he was fired in 2012 after the Pacers, the team he’d turned down, beat the Magic four out of five in the first round.

When asked if, retrospectively, there was a time when his desire for autonomy as a coach overrode what could have been a better decision in the long run, he digs in.

“In those moments, I mean I’m not afraid of conflict. I don’t think conflict is a bad thing,” Van Gundy says. “I think you’re gonna have disagreements with players and other people that you work with and you can have those conflicts and be respectful, find answers, find solutions, find things like that. But you do have to be wiling to stand your ground at certain times.”

He had every right to stand it in Orlando, even facing a rebuild. But if the fabled presser, since doubled-down on by Howard, was any indication, the franchise had already decided to dismantle the ground under him. It was an early sign of trends to come league-wide, coaches flipped for someone more “aligned” with a franchise.

Stubbornness is a quality that has shortened or stalled out careers of coaches and players both, but without it there’d be no magic, no double-takes of “Did he?” as a player comes loose from gravity, no guts. Like most things worth working hard for, sustainable nerve takes balance and composure.

“I think finding that balance is a lot the same as what goes on with players. Players need to be coachable, but the best players I’ve been around also have a level of stubbornness. I think that’s part of what makes you who you are, those major things, you’ve gotta stick to your guns on those,” Van Gundy says on finding the midpoint between staying true to yourself and seeing the larger picture. “I think that’s true of high performers in any field. There is a level of stubbornness involved in things that you really believe in, are musts for team success, for winning games. You’ve gotta be willing to stick to your guns.”

It’s when entrusted with other people’s livelihoods Van Gundy yields, “I don’t think that you can be stubborn as an NBA coach and have your style of play, your system, and that’s the only way you can play. Because I think you have to develop your system to the talents of the players that you have and you have to be adaptable in that regard. The way we played in Orlando was a lot different than the way we played in Miami, and then we had to play a lot differently in Detroit. I think those are just necessities.”

In Detroit, a team and civic ethos that felt in many ways better shaped for the work ethic of its incoming coach, Van Gundy never got the full runway, partially because of inhabiting two roles simultaneously. Coaches look at what a team needs and presidents balance that with what a team can, or should, get. As president of basketball operations and head coach, Van Gundy shuffled and upgraded where he could, sacrificing, in some cases, the short-term for the long. Leveraging the future for a star like Blake Griffin backfired, but it was the most aspirational move the franchise had in years. What felt like the forward impulsion the team needed to get out of a decade long rebuild turned into a further hobbling by salary.

Griffin’s swapping conferences and Van Gundy’s eventual departure from Detroit feel like decades ago instead of 16 months. The pace of the league, along with the rest of the world, is accelerating. Team overhauls, playing style and player development are happening faster, the pressure on players to transcend any one position feels like a new kind of insurance, or future-proofing when looking ahead at the league’s next evolutions.

Did Van Gundy have to deal with this?

“I wouldn’t say that it was a matter of actually ‘future-proofing,’” Van Gundy says. “I think two things. I think the main thing you’re doing is you’re taking the team you have and you’re trying to figure out the best way to play that gives them their best chance to be successful and win games. But I do think also, you have to look around and see, always sort of see, where the game is headed. And be prepared to be able to be successful in that realm and so you’ve got to be able to, you know.”

When he begins to get into specifics, there is the sense that he’s seeing these things from the sidelines, his voice taking on the lilt and rise of a coach calling out instructions. “Adjust your defensive schemes as teams went smaller and shot more threes, played smaller guys, things like that, your defensive schemes, your system, that has to change,” he says. “You certainly don’t want to be behind the curve, you’d love to be ahead of it, but you certainly don’t want to be behind it and have things happening on the floor that you’re not prepared for.”

It’s the last sentence of his answer, as straightforward as it sounds, that reveals what unsettles a coach — to be without a plan on the floor, to watch the game unfold as if you were a spectator, could be the first step toward losing a team, a job, a career. Your brain lives in basketball instead of your body.

“Coaching is,” Van Gundy sighs, “you’re going at it long days all the time. Even in the offseason your mind never turns off. You’re thinking about it all the time.”

When it comes time for a coach to transplant their brain back inside their own head, especially a brain like Van Gundy’s that has witnessed coaching firsthand since he was a kid (his father coached in high schools and colleges across the U.S., family in tow), there’s bound to be an adjustment. In an interview Van Gundy did the summer after the Pistons let him go, he admitted to feeling “really lost right now,” that he had planned to coach the next season and was unsure on what to do next. So much of the business of basketball is done behind closed doors with authorized leaks to insiders, the truth coming out a little at a time in interviews the years after, if at all. Coaches are changing, many are vocal on political and social issues, but it is a job that requires a certain remove. To hear Van Gundy admit to feeling untethered in losing what so much of his identity had become tied up in was relatable, if a little heartbreaking.

Asked if he’s let himself slow down since then, he’s loose: “Oh, there’s no question.”

“I think about the game a lot, in broadcasting, I certainly watch a lot of games, but it’s a whole different level of … you know, I’m trying to look for a better word than ‘pressure,’ because I didn’t really ever feel pressure as a coach,” Van Gundy notes. “I guess there’s not the sense of urgency, would be the word that I would use. Where you’ve got the next game to get ready for and everything else. And so I’ve had a lot more time to spend with my wife, we’ve been able to do a lot more things — well, until the pandemic. And then you can’t do anything.”

Van Gundy says he’s been reading and spending more time with family. At the same time, there’s also the small point of his starting an entirely new career.

When his ESPN contract was up, his criteria for a new job was a more well-defined role, less hopping around and filling in, and the opportunity to call games. TNT’s analysis team consists mainly of former players, so when they approached Van Gundy, he admitted feeling surprised. Since he started with the network in earnest this season, it’s been a role he’s approached with modesty.

“I’ve had a lot of experience coaching, thought I was pretty good at it, the broadcasting’s a whole new thing,” Van Gundy says. “I’m trying to learn something new. I’m a beginner, and I need a lot of help. And that challenge has been good for me too. Trying to gain confidence in an entirely new endeavor.”

That help has come from veterans like Ian Eagle, who Van Gundy says he is “really, really lucky” to be paired with for eight games in the Orlando bubble and who has “mentored” him and offered feedback. It’s a trait he realizes is not typical. “A lot of times somebody might be good at their job but they just do their job and expect you to do yours.”

Van Gundy’s excitement is apparent in his on-air commentary. He is joyful, sharp, proximally enlivened by being back alongside a sport he’s spent most of his life dissecting. His voice adds an additional element to games where he deviates from the traditional birds-eye approach, grappling in real-time with the urge to get in close that makes for an animated, two-fold experience: watching the game and watching Stan Van Gundy watch the game. When asked to stylistically compare himself to his brother, who has been a color commentator with ESPN since 2007, he balks almost instantly.

“This will be his 13th, 14th straight year of doing the NBA Finals,” Jeff’s older brother says. “He’s been at this a long time, after his coaching career, he’s one of the best in the business, if not the best. So there’s no comparison.”

Aside from being a job that allows him, as he says, to have his “mind back in the game,” broadcasting gives Van Gundy the outlet to showcase what made him such an impassioned coach: communication. One of the things that made him so fascinating to watch was his press for getting his message out, loud and clear, even when he’d lost the voice to do it. He could be a desperate communicator only in the sense that he needed you to hear what he was saying, not that he was in any way unclear of what he wanted to say. With broadcasting, he gains a new platform from which to build the widest bridge he’s had yet for translating what happens on court via the fierce interpreter of his brain.

That makes the fact that it’s so surprising he’s only recently joined Twitter, the platform that’s become the largest conduit for communication — fraught, frantic, sincere, absolute trash, heartbreaking, a quagmire of everything all the time. There was no a-ha moment when it came to getting an account now. Van Gundy has always been political, but he had more time on his hands, was looking for a way to tap into a larger, local community, and his wife suggested he do it.

“My wife and I have always been pretty involved politically,” Van Gundy says. “[But] I think when you’re not coaching you have more time to really follow what’s going and to get involved in campaigns and things like that. And then the pandemic obviously brought that to a new level, I had a lot more time. So we were actually on a call with a candidate for State Attorney, down here in Orlando, Monique Worrell, and we were on with her and her advisors and some of her key supporters. And they were talking, you know, strategy for the campaign and several of them were talking about things on social media, and I just asked my wife, ‘Do you think I should get on social media to be able to promote some of these candidates and issues?’ And she thought that I should, and that was really the impetus behind it. So I dunno, I’ve been on a couple of weeks.”

In those couple weeks he’s amassed more than 65,000 followers, a slight uptick from “a few more people” that he said he was hoping to reach by creating an account. And even if for him there was no strategic motivation behind his timing, that like much of his career he arrived at this point by taking his own route, he acknowledges that we’re in a critical time.

“I think 2020 — I think every year is really important — but I think where we are, it’s really an important time,” Van Gundy notes. “This election’s important. But also I think because of the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd and then the resulting protests, and COVID and everything else, what’s going on in the world, I think everybody’s engaging a little bit more, and wanting to learn about these issues, talk about these issues. So, I think it’s a good time to be engaged right now. And hopefully if I can get just a couple of people who will maybe tune into a campaign or listen to a candidate or think about an issue that they haven’t before, then it’s worth my time.”

Earnest without pandering, sharp, and smarm-free, scrolling through his timeline is a balm. When I tell him a friend of mine said his feed has been giving her life, he laughs. You can spend five minutes in Van Gundy’s feed — mass incarceration, education reform, equal representation in politics, racial injustice, voter registration, local community engagement, student loan relief, pandemic response — and feel better informed and more balanced from it than the news alerts Apple pushes into the palm of your hand.

This full roster of causes and issues deserving of attention can quickly turn overwhelming, but in Van Gundy’s thumbs hands, there’s a thoughtful pacing that avoids the dreaded doom scroll and its resulting fatigue. Unlike vocal coaches we know to be political via soundbite, like Gregg Popovich or Steve Kerr, Van Gundy’s dissemination of issues on his radar isn’t solely reactionary or radicalized, just a steady, well-informed stream. There’s relief, especially on Twitter, of not having to get worked up anew with every post. Even the frequency that Van Gundy shares to the platform isn’t overwhelming to keep up with. If anything he’s a lighthouse, a steady pulse in the storm of information and vitriol.

“I think being around athletes in coaching has solidified views I already had, and really solidified views in terms of racial justice. It’s been more of an evolution than a one moment thing,” Van Gundy says when asked if there was a moment that shifted his perspective and subsequent politics.

But there was a jolt, “It was the election of 2016,” he recalls, “I would say to [my wife and I], both of us, our major issue is equality. Gender equality. LGBTQ equality. Racial equality. And when we elected President Trump and some of the other people that we elected in 2016, it was a wake-up, if not a wake-up because I already knew, certainly a heightened sense of alert that this can’t be going on.”

To watch Van Gundy coach is to have seen galvanizing bursts of fury in action. It’s this anger of forward impulsion, and what’s spilling out now from pent up pain and frustration in the form of civil unrest in the streets, that I reference when I ask if he thinks people could stand to be angrier given everything that’s on the line. But with this he’s more measured.

“Anger, like you say, sometimes it can be good,” Van Gundy says. “I think hopefully it will lead to a greater commitment to changing things. I think we’ve seen that with some of the protests. I think the question is how sustainable all this will be? Are people willing to do the not so noticeable work that it takes? To get out and vote, to contribute to campaigns, to promote candidates, to learn the candidates, to learn the issues. We need a heightened level of engagement from a lot people.”

It was this kind of actionable work Van Gundy was doing with his family “pretty much every day this year, in 2020, knowing what we’re leading into.” Whether looking for races he views as competitive that could use time and money, or getting behind issues he finds important, it was committing, and re-committing, to an engaged civic role he saw as most imperative, and what he cautions is going to take the most sustained energy once the anger burns out.

“I think it’s commitment more than anger,” Van Gundy says, “and a lot of perseverance. Because these things should be, but they’re not going to be, changed overnight. And it’s not going be just even a straight line upward of things being solved. You’ll get some wins, you’ll get some losses, just like you do in a basketball season and you’ve got to keep moving forward.

The advice to dig in might seem disingenuous if it was coming from someone who had not made a career from their natural inclination toward it. It is difficult, and potentially dangerous, to be stubborn in the real world depending where you are and what you look like. But Van Gundy’s approach, as always, is to get there through sustainable pace and push.

“We’ve seen that lesson from some of the great leaders — John Lewis who just passed away,” Van Gundy says. “If you look at all he had to go through in the Civil Rights movement and even since then, it’s been a lot of times two steps forward and a step back, and then two more steps forward, maybe two steps back, and you just keep going. That’s what it’s going to take. That’s what I hope people will have, the resolve to just continue the fight until we have a much more equal society than what we have right now.”

What is comforting about Van Gundy’s reemergence into the frame now is that it feels as much like a fresh voice to rally around as it does familiar. He was new to the platform, gamely holding up a piece of lined paper with his name as proof, but there was no need to catch him up because he’d been on his way here all along. Perseverance, whether in the NBA or the course of a coach’s career, is rarely the thing that gets written about or lauded. We want the big, instant, resounding force, the splash and flash.

Van Gundy has stayed evergreen because he’s never been elegiac about his career, the choices he made or where he ended up because of them. And he’s never been prepared to mourn any of it because it wasn’t over, he was still moving forward. The fluke of his arrival when we collectively need his kind of sustained, rational, won’t-back-down-able energy most could be serendipitous, or it could just be the next, self-possessed step in a career of showing up.

Since his latest release, Action Bronson has undergone many lifestyle changes. Not only did the rapper impressively shed 80 pounds over the course of a few months, but he also welcomed a newborn baby. With all the new changes, the rapper is putting energy into new music. On Thursday, Bronson returned with “Latin Grammys,” his first new song of 2020.

Directed by Video Connection, Bronson’s “Latin Grammys” video is filmed to emulate a 1995 World’s Strongest Man competition. Bronson effortlessly lifts up a car with two passengers, bench-presses giant logs, pulls a firetruck, and is eventually crowned the World’s Strongest Man.

About the single, Bronson says the song is a coming-of-age anthem: “It’s all about metamorphosing, this song is about coming of age. I love a good latin-jazz, upbeat vibe. It’s got that funk, you know? You can do all kinds of dances to this song. You know a song is good when you can do all different types of dances to it, and you’re still on rhythm.”

Bronson has yet to reveal whether or not the single is arriving on a larger project. Seeing as the rapper has been adding yearly projects to his catalog since 2017, it’s likely Bronson has something larger in store.

Watch Bronson’s “Latin Grammys” video above.

As more and more of entertainment media moved online over the past few years, some of that media’s more prominent members have increasingly run afoul of the subjects they cover thanks to social media and the like blurring the lines that once separated them. Besides foregoing some of the tenets of journalistic objectivity, many of these new media members have risen to prominence because of their relationships to the public figures they “cover.”

One example is DJ Akademiks, who is neither a DJ nor a journalist, but is one of the most popular figures for hip-hop news — for better or worse — thanks to his tendency to post inside scoops on the doings of controversial figures like his friend Tekashi 69 on Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch. However, that close connection also tends to bring him into conflict with … well, just about everyone in hip-hop. So far, he’s been threatened by members of Migos and Vic Mensa, and ruthlessly roasted by Erykah Badu in an elaborate flame that built up for most of an entire episode of Complex’s Everyday Struggle, on which Akademiks is a co-host.

Add to that list Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill, who has carried a longstanding feud with Tekashi 69 that has spilled over to include adjacent figures like Nicki Minaj and Akademiks. When Meek demanded for Akademiks to stop posting about him on Instagram, Akademiks instead needled him by posting him yet again with a snide reply.

Akademiks also referred to Meek as a “hypocrite” for his anti-snitch crusade against Tekashi, saying, “Just remember that Meek Mill is nothing but a hypocrite. I don’t know if you have issues with 6ix9ine, you clearly don’t wanna address it. You got issues with Nicki’s man, you don’t wanna address him. You got issues with Nicki, you don’t wanna address that. Cool, I get it. Ak is supposed to be the dude who you can get everything off on. I’m just trying to tell you that I’m just not into being bullied.”

However, for all that tough talk, Akademiks seems to genuinely be worried about retaliation from Meek, as he revealed during a recent livestream with Tekashi that he heard Meek Mill had put a “green light” on him — essentially ordering associates in the street to attack Akademiks on sight — and he immediately contacted the authorities.

Given Tekashi’s own propensity for inciting animosity and then turning tail to avoid consequences, it seems Akademiks may be letting the celebrity of his position go to his head. Meanwhile, Meek Mill seems disinterested in addressing Akademiks any further; he hasn’t commented about the video as yet, instead focusing his attention on recently restarted NBA season.

Meek Mill is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In an appearance on the beloved Sixers podcast Rights to Ricky Sanchez, cohosts Spike Eskin and Michael Levin got Joel Embiid to open up about his teammate Ben Simmons and the pair’s unconventional fit on and off the court. There has been some buzz in recent days about Simmons’ newfound willingness to take threes when he’s open, and Embiid praised Simmons’ willingness to get out of his comfort zone and do something that will heighten the ceiling of this Sixers squad.

A h/t to Liberty Ballers for the quote:

“I’m so happy that he finally now understands [how to improve spacing] and I think that’s what it takes for us to win a championship,” Embiid said. “And when you think about it, we’ve only played, this is what, our third year together playing? I mean, a lot of people always, you know, they expect [more]. Like, we’ve only played for three years. The potential that we have. I love him, and I wanna be with him for the rest of my career, because I think he still has a lot of potential and me too. Like, we can get so much better than we are right now, and I don’t see the point of ever playing with somebody else. So, that’s someone that I would love to be playing with for the rest of my career.”

Simmons took two triples in the Sixers’ first scrimmage but has not taken any in the two games since. Over the course of his career, Simmons has attempted 23 threes total. It makes the fit difficult with Embiid, a bruising post play-maker who does the most damage inside.

Embiid touched on much more in a wide-ranging interview with the two biggest Sixers fans on the internet, including his memories of finally getting onto the court; Embiid’s connection with Sixers fans; and a game of “Which is weirder?” going through the entire history of the Process Sixers that features a lot of Embiid abstaining from answering questions.

In his first press conference as the new head coach of the Knicks, Tom Thibodeau predictably had a lot of good things to say about the franchise hiring him for his third opportunity as head coach in the NBA. Still, it was surprising to see Thibodeau proclaim that the Big Apple is “synonymous with winning and championships.” The Knicks have not won an NBA title since 1973, when current color analyst Clyde Frazier was on the court leading the team, and of the major sports teams that have “New York” in their names, the last one to win a title was the New York Giants in 2012.

New York did not hire Thibodeau to win a championship in the near-term. They are a rebuilding team who will likely hope Thibodeau can do exactly what he’s done during stops in Chicago and Minnesota: Get his players to compete hard and develop on-court chemistry. Thibodeau was the front-runner in the search all along, according to reports, and though names like Jason Kidd and Spurs assistant Will Hardy came up during the interview process, Thibodeau was indeed the man to land one of the highest-profile jobs in the NBA.

New lead executive Leon Rose doesn’t want any assumptions to be made about the legitimacy of the search, however, especially because Thibodeau is represented by CAA, the agency where Rose used to run the arm that managed NBA coaches.

From Thibodeau’s perspective, it was also his relationships with Rose and fellow former CAA coach rep William “Worldwide Wes” Wesley that stood out, in addition to the young roster and ample cap space. Young players like Mitchell Robinson, Julius Randle and R.J. Barrett do seem to fit the hard-nosed style Thibodeau prefers.

The last bit of news from Thibodeau’s introductory press conference was reported just before Thibodeau logged onto his Zoom call with the media, but has not been confirmed by the team.

According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, Thibodeau’s hiring will coincide with the return of Mike Woodson, who coached the Knicks from 2011-14 and interviewed for the top gig this summer. Woodson has not coached in the NBA since 2018.

The Thibodeau era in New York is already off to an interesting start.