Month: August 2020

The Orlando Magic have been one of the teams that has looked the strongest out of the gate in the NBA restart, having dispatched of the Nets with ease in their opener and were dominating the Kings by 30 in the fourth quarter of their second game.

Orlando is seeking a 7-seed in the East, which would set up a second straight first round series with Toronto, and with Jonathan Isaac making a surprise return to the team, they’ve looked like a team that could at least give a good team a spot of bother in a first round series. Isaac is the Magic’s top defensive player and was looking to get back in rhythm and make an impact for Orlando in the restart after missing all of 2020 with a knee injury suffered on January 1.

Unfortunately, during their blowout of the Kings on Sunday evening, Isaac appeared to re-injure that same left knee that was in a brace on a drive to the basket in the fourth quarter. Isaac split two Kings defenders but when his left foot hit the ground to take off to the basket, his knee buckled to the inside and he collapsed to the floor.

The Magic training staff would bring a wheelchair out to take the young star big man to the locker room, as he writhed in pain on the floor.

It is a devastating injury for a player who had just made his return to the floor and hoped to get back into rhythm after getting four extra months of rehab before the restart. We will provide an update on his status when one becomes available on the specific details of this injury, but for now we will hope that it isn’t as severe as it looked.

When the NBA announced its plans for the eight-game seeding round prior to the playoffs, with a play-in series for the eight seed in each conference if the ninth place team is within four games, the focus of most went to the Western Conference race. The Grizzlies had a 3.5 game edge on Portland, New Orleans, and Sacramento, while the Spurs and Suns were also lurking, but with little expectation of leapfrogging their way into contention.

However, a slow start for the Grizzlies, Kings, Blazers, and Pelicans, has suddenly allowed San Antonio, despite the absence of LaMarcus Aldridge, to move into ninth just two games behind Memphis for eighth after back-to-back wins over Sacramento and, on Sunday evening, Memphis. The Spurs beat Memphis 108-106 in a game in which they lead for most of the game, but did see the Grizzlies claw their way back to tie it with 10 seconds to go.

Jaren Jackson Jr., who has emerged as one of the league’s best shooting big men in his second year, hit a ridiculous three-pointer from the corner on an inbounds play to tie things, but on the ensuing possession, DeMar DeRozan used his wily veteran tricks to get Dillon Brooks in the air on a pumpfake to earn two free throws with just a second to play.

DeRozan made his two free throws — after having just missed a pair to give Memphis a chance to tie — and a Jackson deep three from the top of the key bounced harmlessly off the backboard on the Grizzlies last gasp attempt. The loss moved Memphis to 0-2 in the restart, having also lost to Portland in the opener, and the four teams who came in eighth and ninth in the West are now 1-6 in their opening games (with Sacramento on down 21 to Orlando in the first half at the time of writing).

That’s opened the door for San Antonio to suddenly take control of their destiny in the bubble, which has to be the nightmare situation for the NBA. The Spurs are solid, if unspectacular, and in a West race filled with young budding stars, the league was surely hoping to see those players take center stage. Instead, it’s the team with the league’s longest playoff streak that is threatening to extend it, behind the play of DeRozan, who was dismal for much of Sunday’s game before coming to life late with some huge baskets, and a mixture of young talent in Dejounte Murray and Derrick White, and veterans like Rudy Gay.

Murray paced the Spurs on Sunday with 21 points and 10 assists, while white filled up the stat sheet with 16 points, seven rebounds, and six dimes. DeRozan had just 14 points, but they came when it counted most, including this preposterous shot over a textbook contest from Jaren Jackson Jr.

It maybe shouldn’t be a surprise that the Spurs and Blazers, two teams with the biggest leading veteran presences in the West race, have looked the most solid out of the gates. The Pelicans, Kings, and Grizzlies all fed off of the energy, momentum, and confidence they gained during regular season runs and now have to find a way to manufacture that again. San Antonio, meanwhile, plods along steadily and the Blazers look solid, even with a loss to Boston on Sunday that was not for a lack of effort in coming back from 24 down to take a late lead.

There was plenty of fascination entering the seeding round with the race for eighth in the West, but now it’s only become more of a jumbled mess, with the Spurs and Blazers separated by just a half game and New Orleans and Sacramento desperate to stop the bleeding and get back into the mix, 1.5 back of Sacramento.

It’s safe to say Elon Musk is almost certainly the world’s most eccentric billionaire, from his weird baby names to getting high with Joe Rogan to sharing beliefs that shock his also famous wife, Grimes. So perhaps you didn’t bat an eye if you caught him tweeting an old, tired claim: that the Egyptian pyramids, some of the wonders of the world, were built not by humans, but by aliens.

But there were some people who did bat their eyes: Egyptian officials. As per the BBC, Musk’s tweet — which simply read “Aliens built the pyramids obv,” seemingly apropos of nothing — was politely attacked by Egyptian Minister of International Co-operation Rania al-Mashat, who urged the entrepreneur to maybe do some research before disseminating easily debunked urban legends to his 37.4 million followers.

“I follow your work with a lot of admiration,” Mashat tweeted to Musk. “I invite you & Space X to explore the writings about how the pyramids were built and also to check out the tombs of the pyramid builders. Mr. Musk, we are waiting for you.”

Musk’s tweet also received pushback from Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass, who responded with a short video in Arabic. In it, he says (as translated by EgyptToday), “I found the tombs of the pyramids builders that tell everyone that the builders of the pyramids are Egyptians and they were not slaves.”

To his credit, when confronted, Musk relented, even tweeting out some helpful info to off-set his previous tall claims.

Though it’s incredibly easy to not reiterate claims of alien interference repeated in the 1994 blockbuster Stargate, the details of how the pyramids at Giza were constructed remains a mystery. Their purpose, however, is clear: They were intended as massive tombs to their mighty pharaohs. So even if you didn’t learn anything didn’t already know, at least Elon Musk did.

(Via BBC)

Throughout his basketball career Michael Jordan has been criticized for not letting his voice be heard when it came to political change. That does not appear to be the case anymore. In the month of June alone, Michael Jordan and the Jordan Brand have donated $100 million dollars to organizations committed to race equality. A portion of the funds will be allocated to organizations helping to protect black voting rights.

In the latest announcement, Jordan himself and his Jordan Brand are investing $2.5 in organizations to help combat Black voter suppression. In a statement from the Jordan Brand, it was announced: $1 million dollars is being donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. and $1 million to the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted People and Families Movement. The Black Voters Matter organization will receive $500,000 in the statement which was first reported by CNN.

In his own statement, Jordan says, “I’m all in with Jordan Brand, the Jordan family and our partners, who share a commitment to address the historical inequality that continues to plague Black communities in the U.S. There is a long history of oppression against Black Americans that holds us back from full participation in American society. We understand that one of the main ways we can change systemic racism is at the polls. We know it will take time for us to create the change we want to see, but we are working quickly to take action for the Black community’s voice to be heard,”

Examples of voter suppression range from uneven voting resource allocations to denying the right to vote for felons who have served their sentence. According to NBC News, the lawmakers who denied ex-felons voting rights said that it was up to them to decide when their sentence was complete. Third-party groups that register people to vote can also be charged with criminal penalties if the forms arrive with a mistake or are incomplete.

Back in June, Jordan made it clear he was personally moved by the protests around the country sparked by the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis.

However, it wasn’t always like that. During his playing career, Jordan once infamously joked that “Republicans by shoes too,” when asked why he didn’t leverage his global celebrity for cultural and political causes. Back in 2000, Jordan did endorse Bill Bradley’s run for president but that was largely seen as stemming from Jordan’s professional ties to Bradley, a former NBA star. Jordan also largely stayed silent during the late 1990’s when Nike came under fire for its labor practices and questions over alleged sweatshop labor.

In 2015, Jordan was called out in an ESPN article for his lack of philanthropy. The truth is Michael Jordan has given to over 20 charities including the Jackie Robinson Foundation, the Special Olympics and the United Negro College Fund.

On the court, Michael Jordan led by example. He has said that he never asked anything of a teammate that he wouldn’t do himself. Let’s hope that the ones who can afford to help are inspired by the likes of Jordan, LeBron James, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to name a few. Whether it is donating money or volunteering, let’s all be a little more like Mike.

Seth Rogen is in the middle of a strange controversy right now over comments he made that seemed to question the legitimacy of Israel — words he may have made in jest. Perhaps that’s why some people missed another big revelation the actor and filmmaker made while promoting his HBO movie An American Pickle: Hollywood, it seems, wasn’t interested in a sequel to one of his biggest hits, Pineapple Express.

As caught by Entertainment Weekly, Rogen was speaking to Howard Stern, and the two got on the subject of the 2008 movie that arguably proved the fame he acquired after Knocked Up was no fluke. A “weed action-comedy,” as Rogen put it, the film paired him and fellow Freaks and Geeks alum James Franco as a stoner and his dealer who get embroiled in some dangerous mayhem. It was a smash, which these days automatically leads to a sequel, a franchise, etc. But 2008 seems to have been a very different time. When Rogen and team circled back, they had the door slammed in their faces.

“We tried to make one and thanks to the Sony hack you can actually find the email when Sony decided to kill the movie and not make it,” Rogen told Stern, referring to 2014 incident when Wikileaks published oft-shocking emails stolen from the super-company. “So, it was something we were very open to several years ago but Sony was not that interested in it.”

Why on earth did Sony not want a Pineapple Express 2? Rogen has one theory. “I think we probably wanted too much money,” Rogen said. “Studios, they don’t like giving away money. Weird thing.”

But don’t cry too hard for Rogen, et al. He’s had plenty of hits since then, and he and Franco even returned to Sony for a movie that nearly caused an international incident: the Kim Jong-un satire The Interview. Meanwhile, supporting player Danny McBride and director David Gordon Green recently collaborated on the latest Halloween reboot whose sequel you’ll have to wait till next year to see.

Rogen also reflected upon how unique Pineapple Express was then (and, one could argue, now). “It’s a tough genre,” Rogen added. “When we made Pineapple Express there were not a lot of great weed movies. As we would tell people we were making a weed action movie, they looked at us like we were f*cking so stupid and crazy.”

(Via EW)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Season 1 of The Mandalorian.

The list of things we know about Season 2 of the Disney+ show The Mandalorian is short, but at least we know two key things: that it was able to wrap filming before quarantine began back in March and that it’s definitely hitting the streaming platform this fall. Beyond that, all we have our random clues about where the show may be heading.

The biggest of those clues is the fact that the de facto villain, Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon, wields the darksaber, which he used to get out of trouble in the final moments of Season 1’s last episode.

We’ve already seen Esposito tease some “major, major, epic, epic lightsaber action,” which is a lot of excitement, and for good reason: His lightsaber is the only one we’ve seen in the show itself thus far. And a new interview teases more details about the weapon’s place in Star Wars lore and its origin in the character’s story. In an interview with Deadline, Esposito suggested an “explanation” for how the weapon came into Gideon’s possession in what he described as a “collapsed world.”

“You’ll see more of the darksaber, you’ll get the explanation of this ancient weapon to the modern world, a collapsed world,” Esposito said today. “Where did this saber come from and how was it revived? It’s a key in our second season, which will be back sooner than later.”

Season 2 is expected to be back this fall, but, how soon is soon?

“(The saber) is a key to Moff Gideon’s past, which possibly has a lot to do with where he comes from and his desire to build a planet and bring it back together,” added Esposito.

The darksaber’s extensive history in Star Wars lore was one of the reasons why its appearance in Season 1 was such a delight, so knowing it will be a “key” to the upcoming season is very good news. That plot point will likely revolved around how Gideon ended up with the device in the first place, given that in the past it appears elsewhere, with other characters. Hearing quotes like this from Esposito doesn’t bring Season 2 any closer to our streaming devices, but it certainly gets fans excited about what’s to come.

Only 11 months after her album Lover, Taylor Swift surprised fans by dropping a quickly-made follow-up, Folklore. Recorded in the midst of her quarantine, the album’s quick arrival, she revealed in an Instagram post, could be credited to her gut “telling me that if you make something you love, you should just put it out into the world.” In its first 24 hours the album surpassed a million global sales, enough to score it the No. 1 spot on the Billboard albums chart.

With 846,000 equivalent album units, the album’s success earns Swift her seventh consecutive No. 1 album. Of those units, 615,000 account for album sales and 218,000 for streaming equivalent units. By earning her seventh No. 1 album, Swift is now tied with Janet Jackson for the third-most no. 1 albums behind Barbra Streisand (with 11) and Madonna (with nine). The album also gives her the most No. 1 debuts among fellow female artists.

On top of all that, Folkore now holds the record for the biggest first week in 2020, surpassing the previous number set two weeks ago by Juice WRLD’s Legends Never Die. Other accolades for Folklore in its first week include the biggest sales week for an album since Swift’s Lover, becoming 2020’s top-selling album, and making Swift the first act to have seven different albums sell 500,000 copies or more in a single week.

Elsewhere on the charts, Logic’s final album No Pressure comes in at No. 2 with 221,000 equivalent album units, giving the late rapper his seventh top-10 release. Juice WRLD’s Legends Never Die pops in at No. 3 107,000 units sold. Pop Smoke’s Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon came in at No. 4 and original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton: An American Musical at No. 5.

Read our review of Taylor Swift’s Folklore here.

(via Billboard)

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

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a badass in the movies, but he’s increasingly building a reputation as a heroic “action star” in real life. Only, instead of dropping ungodly amounts of fake bullets into his enemies, Schwarzenegger has been dropping rhetorical bombs against his political opponents while building intellectual and emotional bridges to those who disagree with him but still have open hearts and minds.

The most recent example found Arnold responding to a comment someone made on Facebook. On the surface, that may sound like just about the least unique or original jumping off point for a story.

But so far as Arnold’s “critic” goes, I challenge you to find a better example of someone lashing out behind the safety of a keyboard. The anonymous commenter apparently doesn’t like Schwarzenegger chiming in on world events like the coronavirus or the president of Donald Trump, telling the former California governor: “Stick to lifting and making movies … Snowflake is a title you do not want.”

Now, there are all kinds of ways an 8-time Mr. Universe could respond to being called a “snowflake.” Simply put, Arnold’s response is brilliant, taking an attempt to go negative and reminding everyone of the power of positive, constructive political dialogue:

“I never mind picking up new titles. Mr. Universe, Mr. Olympia, Terminator, Governor… If you want to call me Snowflake, that’s fine – it would have been a fantastic Mr. Freeze line. But let me give you some advice. If you’re going to call someone a snowflake because they believe in a different policy than you, you might want to look in the mirror. When you see an idea you disagree with, you can get angry, or you can learn. I’d recommend you research and learn and grow. You can still disagree – that’s the best part about being American! But at least you can disagree with evidence and analysis. We can all be better if we don’t simply react. Pause, reflect, learn, and then decide if you still want to call someone a Snowflake. Good luck with everything.”

Oftentimes, the most powerful statements are simple, emotionally evocative and built around an airtight argument Honestly, it doesn’t matter what your politics, religion, values or agenda is, Arnold’s thinking applies to them all. When we believe in our ideas and have truly examined them, including our own motivations for latching on to them, we should be willing to engage in dialogue with those who have different points of view After all, our beliefs are not contingent on their support. And each party might just learn something along the way by talking it out … and listening.

Of course, this isn’t Arnold’s first rodeo in the “doing good” space of social media.

He has been trying to make a difference on social media like talking about the importance of wearing a mask since March when the coronavirus lockdown went into effect across most parts of the country.

He also responded to a fan who contacted him about being depressed, and had some wise words about why mental health trumps any flexing from time at the gym.

What Arnold is proving is that it is vital to think before we speak. Try to be informed about your opinions. When someone disagrees, try to see if they might have a point. Don’t try and be right. Try and get it right. That requires having an open mind. Whether you have believed something for five minutes or 40 years, it is important to be open to all ideas. This is how we grow.

He is also showing how to bring an errant and cavalier comment back down to earth rather than getting swept up in some frivolous emotional exchange. Arnold was the bigger person (I am assuming in more ways than one). And while he might not have changed the mind of the person he was responding to, if you read the comments, his words made an impact on others.

Walking the walk is contagious. It is much like that moment when you are behind a disadvantaged person in the checkout line at the grocery store, and they either forgot their wallet or can’t afford what they’re trying to buy but then someone steps up and offers to pay for them. You feel a little ashamed that you didn’t think of doing it first. The good news is that the next time that happens, you could be the one who steps forward and makes everyone in the line wish they had thought of it.

Another key lesson here is patience. Arnold didn’t take the bait. He didn’t give Mr. Keyboard Tough Guy the response he was hoping for, unless typing an insult to Arnold Schwarzenegger just made him feel empowered. And that would be sad, but I digress. Arnold is showing us the way we need to be communicating. It’s not rocket science but the basic tenets of civil discourse seem pretty rare these days, especially on social media.

The Internet is the ultimate marketplace of ideas. Instead of cancelling those we disagree with, maybe the best way forward is through open dialogue and transparency. The best ideas will win, the worst ideas will lose and everything in between can be discussed back and forth to find the best ideas from both sides. If that’s the role of Arnold’s third act in the public eye, we can’t wait for him to “be back” next time.

For the past few weeks, Tekashi 69 has been anticipating his freedom from house arrest. The Brooklyn rapper was released from jail back in April after a judge granted his request for an early release citing after Tekashi’s team expressed concerns over the rapper’s asthma and the coronavirus outbreak. After he was granted another request to begin shooting music videos in his backyard, Tekashi quickly got back to his troll ways with his first single, “Gooba.” The antics would continue with “Trollz,” which gave him first Billboard chart-topping single, and “Yaya.” Continuing to celebrate his newfound freedom, Tekashi returns once again with his new single, “Punani.”

The single arrives as the rapper is no longer on house arrest. Wasting no time in returning to the streets, “Punani” comes attached with a video that finds him happily and boldly walking the streets of Brooklyn supported by a huge entourage. Aiming to give off the look that they are untouchable, even more so thanks to Tekashi’s freedom, the video also presents Tekashi and his crew driving through the streets in Lamborghinis, sometimes with Tekashi sitting or standing on them as they speed through the city.

The new single arrives after Tekashi was reportedly seeking a court-ordered option that would allow him to see his 4-year-old daughter after it was reported back in January that his ex-girlfriend barred him from seeing his daughter due to safety concerns.

New York Mets outfielder Yoenis Céspedes gave baseball fans cause for concern on Sunday when it was reported the Mets didn’t know where he was. The result is the outfielder abruptly opting out of the 2020 season as Major League Baseball’s abbreviated 2020 campaign grew further in doubt on Sunday.

Reports circulated early Sunday that Céspedes didn’t report to the Mets and team officials didn’t know where he was. No reason was given for his absense, but many were worried to the extent that a Ken Rosenthal report made later in the day attempted first and foremost to clear the air and say that Céspedes was not in danger.

Later, Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen made it official and said Céspedes would not be back with the Mets in 2020.

It’s unclear why Céspedes had opted out initially, but Major League Baseball got more bad news on Sunday as more positive COVID-19 cases were reported in the St. Louis Cardinals organization. It’s the second major outbreak among MLB teams, as the Miami Marlins saw nearly half its active roster test positive, forcing a slew of postponed games and added measures to attempt to finish the season such as 7-inning doubleheaders later in the year.