Month: August 2020

The NBA will return to play on Saturday afternoon when the Bucks take on the Magic in their Game 5, which was postponed from Wednesday following the Bucks refusal to play in protest of police shooting Jacob Blake seven times in the back in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

What followed was the rest of the league’s players joining the Bucks in refusing to play in protest, and a tense two days of meetings among players and later between players and owners. The result was an eventual decision to return to play this weekend, with the league and NBPA working together on an agreement to create a social justice coalition, turn every team-owned arena into a voting location, and air advertising and PSAs during the playoffs encouraging people to vote and addressing social justice issues.

While there had been some contention around returning to play initially, the resulting plan of action put into place — plus a conversation between some top players like Chris Paul and LeBron James with Barack Obama — led to the agreement among players to come back. On Saturday, Andre Iguodala spoke with CBS This Morning’s Dana Jacobson about the pause in play and the factors that went into their return to action.

Iguodala is among the few that haven’t shied away from the fact that the financial element of continuing to play was a factor in their decision, noting that NBA players continuing to accumulate wealth allows them to invest that further into the Black community. This was also something LeBron James reportedly pushed owners to do more of, as they have exponentially greater wealth and resources that could be put into those communities and create long-standing impacts.

He also notes the importance of the platform, something Draymond Green likewise noted on Friday, and that players needed a refresh as much as anything to take a break and talk about these issues that are impacting their mental health, seeing continued instances of police violence and the oppression of Black people. As games return, the focus will remain on social justice and the issues facing Black Americans outside of the Bubble, and players proved with the pause in play that anytime that is lost, they will bring it back to the forefront.

The Chicago Sky’s Diamond DeShields and Azura Stevens have left the WNBA bubble at IMG Academy, as first reported by the AP’s Doug Feinberg. According to the AP’s report, DeShields left for personal reasons and Stevens is out for the season with a left knee injury. Stevens will be evaluated by a cartilage specialist to address an osteochondral defect in her left knee, the team later announced.

The players’ departures will hurt the Sky, who entered the 2020 season with heightened excitement surrounding a potential title run. Last season, Chicago exceeded expectations in head coach James Wade’s first year in charge. After missing out on the playoffs the previous two seasons, the team turned things around in 2019 to qualify for the postseason and fell just short of a spot in the WNBA semifinals.

So far this season, the Sky have looked solid, but not good enough to challenge the top of the pack. Currently, the team sits in fifth place in the league standings with a 10-5 overall record as Courtney Vandersloot puts up MVP-caliber numbers, posting a 50-40-90 shooting plit while running the Sky offense, and Allie Quigley is as dependent as ever, averaging 15.3 points per game while shooting 47% from the field.

DeShields has struggled to get going this year, missing some time due to injury and not looking like her usual electric self when on the floor. She was averaging just 6.8 points per game while shooting 43% from the field and just 17% from beyond the arc. During a game against the New York Liberty on Aug. 20, she suffered a quadriceps injury and was taken to a nearby hospital for evaluation.

Meanwhile, prior to injuring her knee, Stevens was enjoying her best season in a Chicago uniform. The 6’6 forward was averaging a career-high 11.5 points and 5.9 rebounds for the Sky before missing the team’s last two games while dealing with soreness in her left knee. In the same 101-85 win against the Liberty on Aug. 20, she exploded season-high 25 points and seven rebounds in what would be her last game of the season.

In a recent trade with the Indiana Fever, the Sky acquired forward Stephanie Mavunga and two picks in the 2021 WNBA Draft in exchange for former All-Star center Jantel Lavender. Additionally, Chicago has rookie Ruthy Hebard, Cheyenne Parker and Gabby Williams on their roster at the forward position who will all help cope with the loss of Stevens.

After the shocking death of actor Chadwick Boseman, social media has been teeming with moving tributes, from colleagues and fans alike, to a performer taken away from us far too soon. Plenty of clips have been shared, not only from his movies but from appearances during press junkets, awards shows, and so forth. One of the most gutting ones hails from the Black Panther press tour in 2018, and it finds him breaking down as he speaks about receiving letters from kids who succumbed to cancer.

“There are two little kids, Ian and Taylor, who recently passed from cancer, and throughout our filming, I was communicating with them, knowing that they were both terminal,” Boseman tells reporters. “And their parents said, ‘They’re trying to hold on until this movie comes.’…It’s a humbling experience, because you’re like, ‘This can’t mean that much to them.’ But seeing how the world has taken this on, how it’s taken on a life of its own, I realize that they anticipated something great.”

We now know that Boseman was himself dealing with his own health battles, having been diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 2016. But at the time he was keeping the news quiet. But he still found a way to relate his own experiences with these kids’ hardships.

“I think back now to [being] a kid, and waiting for Christmas to come, waiting for my birthday to come, waiting for a toy that I was gonna get a chance to experience, or a video game, I did live life waiting for those moments,” Boseman said. “And so it put me back in the mind of being a kid, just to experience those two little boys’ anticipation of this movie.”

It’s at this point that Boseman breaks down, finally willing himself to be able to say, “Yeah. It means a lot.”

The clip is one a of number being shared that find Boseman seeming to cryptically acknowledge his own health concerns. In another, from 2017, comes from an interview he did with The Huffington Post’s Matthew Jacobs, who asked him about the difficulty of weight fluctuations between various projects. “Oh, you don’t even know,” Boseman responded with a laugh. “You have no idea. One day I’ll live to tell the story.”

Boseman was only 43.

Joyner Lucas returns with a remix of Jack Harlow’s “What’s Poppin” entitled “What’s Gucci” — a song that joins a long list of remixes by the Massachusetts-bred artist, including ones for 21 Savage’s “Bank Account” and Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA.” In conjunction with the newly-released single, Lucas also said he would also soon release a remix of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s chart-topping hit, “WAP.”

Prior to the new remix, Lucas confirmed that his upcoming EP, Evolution, would arrive next month, on September 18. Lucas shared the cover to Evolution on his Instagram page, which depicts the face of a younger Lucas on his adult body. The EP would serve as his second release of the year following the album ADHD from March. After a slew of delays and pre-release singles, the album arrived with 18 songs and guest appearances from Logic, Young Thug, Fabolous, and more.

Aside from the album, another high point in the year came when Lucas shared a video for his ADHD track, “Will.” In it, Lucas celebrated Will Smith and his numerous acting roles over the last decade. The actor later joined Lucas on a remix of the track.

Listen to “What’s Gucci” above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

A very difficult week for the basketball community continued on Saturday, as the UConn and NBA families lost Clifford Robinson at 53 years old, as confirmed by the UConn men’s basketball team on Twitter.

Robinson was part of Jim Calhoun’s first teams at UConn, helping build a program that would become one of the nation’s best and most consistent teams for decades. In the NBA, he played for 18 seasons, earning Sixth Man of the Year honors in 1992-93 and appearing in the All-Star Game in 1994 while a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. He would later play for the Suns, Pistons, Warriors, and Nets. For his career he averaged 14.2 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 2.2 assists per game, shooting 43.8 percent from the field and 35.6 percent from three-point range.

Robinson ranks 13th all time in games played in the NBA, having played 1,380 games and being one of the league’s true iron men. He also was ahead of his time in the NBA as a stretch big man, as he ranks 55th in NBA history in career made three-pointers with 1,253 and 52nd in three-point attempts with 3,515.

Fans beyond the NBA got to know Robinson as he was a beloved figure during his time on the 28th season of Survivor. Robinson had battled cancer in recent years, but no official cause of death was given for Robinson’s passing.

Last week, former Disney Channel star Bella Thorne broke records when she joined OnlyFans, the subscription service known as “the paywall of porn.” Within 24 hours of joining, the actress had racked up a whopping $1 million in revenue from new subscribers. She was only getting started: By the end of the week she had added another million. But there’s one group of people who weren’t pleased with Thorne’s windfall: sex workers, who claim her presence has negatively affected their own business.

According to The Wrap, some OnlyFans members voiced their frustration over social media. “So cute how Bella Thorne made her OnlyFans on a whim without doing an [ounce] of research on how it would impact the community and she immediately f–ed it up for us,” wrote OnlyFans user Savana Solo.
“LOVE that!”

What are some of the accusations laid at Thorne’s feet? For one thing, after the enormous sum she acquired, OnlyFans put a cap on how much users are allowed to charge for pay-per-view content. That reportedly came after Thorne, who had been charging $20 a month for no-nudity content, was allegedly charging a $200 for a photoset. On top of that, OnlyFans suddenly extended the waiting period for when users can cash out their earnings, from seven days to thirty.

In a statement provided to The Wrap, OnlyFans denied that any of their new changes had anything to do “any one user,” and that the transaction limits were “set to help prevent overspending.”

In an interview, Thorne stated that she sees her OnlyFans account as a way that she “can really just be more personal with my fans.” But she also said she primarily joined it as a form of research for a project she claimed she was making with filmmaker Sean Baker, of Tangerine and The Florida Project. But Baker — some of whose films are deeply compassionate looks at people who work in the sex industry — denied that that project had ever gone beyond a meeting.

“I would like to make it clear that the news of me making a film (documentary or fiction narrative) about OnlyFans and using Bella Thorne as research is false. I’m NOT attached to this project,” Baker wrote. “Earlier this month I had a conversation with Ms. Thorne and discussed a possible collaboration in the far future that would focus on her life and the circumstances leading to her joining OnlyFans.”

Furthermore, he said he does not approve of Thorne’s action negatively impacting the sex worker industry. “On that call, I advised her team to consult with sex workers and address the way she went about this as to NOT hurt the sex worker industry. This has been the extent of my involvement,” he wrote. “I’m an ally and have literally devoted my career to tell stories that remove stigma and normalize lifestyles that are under attack. I would never do anything that could possibly hurt the community.”

Thorne isn’t the only major celebrity to recently create an OnlyFans account. Cardi B launched one in early August, promising a behind-the-scenes look at her and Megan Thee Stallion’s in-some-circles-controversial single “WAP.”

(Via The Wrap)

Chadwick Boseman only broke through in 2014, after playing Jackie Robinson in the biopic 42. In the short period that he was a major star, he racked up a peerless résumé, playing other great African-American historical figures, like James Brown in Get On Up and Thurgood Marshall in Marshall. He also played a key role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as T’Challa, aka Black Panther — the franchise’s first black superhero to get a solo movie.

The MCU employs a ton of great actors, so it was inevitable that when news broke Friday night of Boseman’s death to colon cancer — a struggle he kept quiet, telling only close family and friends — many of his colleagues would sound off on social media, paying tribute to an actor who everyone assumed had decades’ more great work in him.

There was Nick Fury himself, Samuel L. Jackson.

There was Chris Evans.

And Mark Ruffalo.

And Chris Hemsworth

Don Cheadle, the MCU’s first black superhero, whose “Rhodey” Rhodes suited up as War Machine back in 2010’s Iron Man 2, was there to honor him.

So was Brie Larson.

And Chris Pratt.

And Zoe Saldana.

Tom Holland, the youngest MCU superhero, was there to honor him.

Ditto Clark Gregg, who’s played S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson since the start.

Taika Waititi, who now directs the Thor pictures and voices Korg, weighed in.

As did Marvel Studios itself.

One of the most moving tributes came from Angela Bassett, who played T’Challa’s mom in Black Panther and Avengers: Endgame, and who shared the story of how they first met, long before they played mother and son.

On Friday night, the world was shocked to learn of the death of Chadwick Boseman, who had spent the last four years quietly battling colon cancer. He was only 43. Tributes to the acclaimed actor came pouring in, from fans, from colleagues from Marvel and elsewhere, from musicians and sports figures, stunned at the incalculable loss. One of the most moving of these came from Angela Bassett, who played Ramonda, mother of Boseman’s T’Challa in Black Panther.

“It was meant to be for Chadwick and me to be connected, for us to be family,” the Oscar-nominated actress wrote on her Instagram feed. “But what many don’t know is our story began long before his historic turn as Black Panther.”

Her story went as follows:

“During the premiere party for Black Panther, Chadwick reminded me of something. He whispered that when I received my honorary degree from Howard University, his alma mater, he was the student assigned to escort me that day. And here we were, years later as friends and colleagues, enjoying the most glorious night ever! We’d spent weeks prepping, working, sitting next to each other every morning in makeup chairs, preparing for the day together as mother and son. I am honored that we enjoyed that full circle experience. This young man’s dedication was awe-inspiring, his smile contagious, his talent unreal. So I pay tribute to a beautiful spirit, a consummate artist, a soulful brother…”thou aren’t not dead but flown afar…”. All you possessed, Chadwick, you freely gave. Rest now, sweet prince.” #WakandaForever

Bassett also appeared as Ramonda in Avengers: Endgame. On top of that, she and Boseman both appeared in a 2008 episode of ER — a full six years before his break-out role in the 2014 Jackie Robinson biopic 42.

We’re deep into spirits award season and the accolades continue to drop. This week, the Internation Beverage Competitions — which runs spirits, beer, and wine competitions in Berlin, Melbourne, New York, and Hong Kong — just dropped their list of 2020 winners from the New York slate of spirits. All told 42 spirits across eight categories were awarded the coveted “Double Gold” this year. While there were a lot of favorites in the mix (shout out to Uncle Nearest), Jim Beam Single Barrel also popped up in the Double Gold winner’s list. We dig it.

Jim Beam often gets overlooked for being too big a brand with too many expressions. That’s a shame. Standard Jim Beam is solid workhorse bourbon to have on your shelf. Their rye is a delight. And their single barrel is a damn fine bourbon at one of the most accessible price points for any single barrel bourbon out there.

This is a bottle you should have on hand. Let’s break down why with our tasting notes.

Jim Beam Single Barrel

ABV: 47.5%
Distillery: Jim Beam, Clermont, KY (Beam Suntory)
Average Price: $35

The Whiskey:

A classic mash of corn, rye, and malted barley is the base of this bourbon. Where this expression veers from the inexpensive standard most people know is the aging that goes into this dram. While standard Jim Beam is aged for around four years, this single barrel expression goes as long as it needs (though there’s no age statement).

The barrels are hand-selected by Jim Beam’s head distiller when those barrels hit just the right point of both look and taste. That means that less than one percent of the barrels in the Jim Beam rickhouses are used in this expression.

Tasting Notes:

This is a classic bourbon in every sense. The nose opens with a clear note of oily vanilla pods next to campfire embers spitting wisps of smoke. Fairground kettle corn dripping in caramel and crisp, tart apples mingle with heavily charred oak with an orange zest edge and ground dark spices. That spiciness edges into pepper territory as a billow of dark chocolate powder comes in on the end, especially with a few drops of water. The sip tends to fade away at just the right pace as your body warms and senses come alive.

Bottom Line:

I tend to keep this on hand to pour after dinners with a single rock. People are always pleasantly surprised when I tell them it’s just Jim Beam. And, at around $35 a bottle, you can actually keep this one stocked.

Chadwick Boseman, known best for his roles as T’Challa in the Black Panther and James Brown in Get On Up, died at 43 Friday after privately battling with stage IV colon cancer. Upon news of his death, many musicians like Chance The Rapper, Drake, The Weeknd, SZA, Kehlani, and more came forward to mourn the actor’s death and send his family their prayers.

Chance The Rapper took to Instagram to share a heartfelt photo of Boseman with his wife and daughter. “Thanks for being so kind,” the rapper wrote. “God bless you and your family.”

SZA, who collaborated with Kendrick Lamar on the Black Panther soundtrack, said she was “honored” to have had the chance to meet Boseman. “thank you for changing our lives,” she wrote continuing: “thank you for always being kind. I’m so Honored to have met you at all.”

Drake, Kehlani, and The Weeknd also expressed their heartbreak over Bosemen’s passing. “gone way too soon,” The Weeknd wrote.

Other artists like Tinashe and indie group Mannequin Pussy praised the actor for continuing to star in films amid his health struggles.

See Chance The Rapper, Drake, The Weeknd, SZA, and more react to Boseman’s sudden passing above.

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