Month: August 2020

After evening the series at 2-2 in a thrilling overtime win in Game 4, the Dallas Mavericks simply haven’t had enough for the Clippers in the previous two games and saw their postseason run end in a 111-97 L.A. win on Sunday afternoon.

The Clippers defense found its rhythm late in this series, showing the dominance they’re capable of on that end, and seeing Paul George come to life on the offensive end proved to be too much for the Mavericks. In Game 6, it was Kawhi Leonard who once again led the way with 33 points, 13 rebounds, and seven assists, with George chipping in 15 points, 10 rebounds, and seven assists as the two stars seem to be finding their comfort level together at the right time.

Dallas struggled mightily shooting the ball from deep in Game 6, hitting just 29.7 percent from downtown, and for a team dependent on playing at a historic level on offense to win games, that just made things untenable in what became a closeout game for the Clippers. Luka Doncic did his best, with 38 points, nine rebounds, and nine assists, but it just wasn’t enough to overcome a rough shooting night and Kawhi Leonard’s constant onslaught.

L.A. now moves on to the second round, awaiting either Denver or Utah, with the Jazz potentially being able to close things out later Sunday night and set up a Tuesday meeting with the Clippers. Dallas enters an offseason with plenty of optimism thanks to the presence of Doncic, but also areas to improve if they are to jump into contender status in the West.

Here are our three takeaways from Game 6 and this first round series as a whole.

Kawhi Leonard is still the Big Boss of the playoffs

There’s a reason the Clippers entered the Bubble as one of the three co-favorites to win the title, but they’re still trying to round into form as a complete team. Paul George emerging from his funk and opening up about the “dark place” he was in is, obviously, critical to their chances, and his play has been encouraging in the last two games. However, the north star for the Clippers is Kawhi Leonard who remains an absolute monster, capable of putting the team on his back for stretches on offense and locking down the opponent’s best player when needed on the other end.

He proved last year what his presence means for a team’s championship aspirations and even as the Clippers bench looks to find some semblance of the rhythm they had in the regular season, Leonard managed to all-but will this L.A. team to a series win. There isn’t a better tough shot maker in the NBA than Leonard, who regularly rises up over hard contests to calmly flick that flat jumper straight into the net or absorbs contact in the lane to push a floater over outstretched arms of opposing centers for demoralizing baskets.

Leonard became the first player in 20 years to have 30 points, 10 rebounds, five assists, and five steals in a playoff game on Sunday, finishing with 33/13/7/5 to turn out the lights on Dallas. Paul George chipped in 15 points, Ivica Zubac matched that with 15 of his own, but this was just a masterpiece from Leonard, who watched the Mavs chip away at a big Clippers lead to cut it to six, before putting his foot down and ending it down the stretch in the fourth — with help from some clutch Reggie Jackson threes.

As the Clippers go forward they’ll need their bench unit — chiefly Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell — to regain their rhythm, as well as getting Patrick Beverley back on the court. But what puts them in that class with the Bucks and Lakers is Kawhi, one of the few stars in this league capable of legitimately willing a team to a win in a playoff game against an opponent that is otherwise playing better. Just look at his production in this series.

Luka Doncic will be a playoff fixture for a long time, but Dallas has roster work to do

If there were any doubt Doncic was a bonafide superstar, he put that to rest in this series. His stepback game-winner in Game 4 will be legendary and live on his highlight reel forever. He put up astronomical numbers despite the absence of Kristaps Porzingis for the final four games of the series and an ankle sprain that knocked him out of Game 3. In Game 6, Doncic finished with 38 points, nine rebounds, and nine assists, at times dragging the Mavs back into the game despite otherwise putrid shooting from deep.

Doncic is going to be in the mix for MVPs for years to come, that much is clear, and we know he’s not going to fold under the lights of the postseason, even against the most robust of opponents. However, what remains to be seen is if Dallas can build a team around him that can compete for championships. Kristaps Porzingis’ health is, first and foremost, the crucial piece to the puzzle, because his presence as the other max player next to Doncic makes him necessary for them to have a chance. Beyond that major question mark, Dallas has to figure out the defensive end of the floor. Maxi Kleber did yeoman’s work in this series, but aside from him there was rarely another plus defender on the floor. Their imbalance between offense and defense proved to get ugly in Game 6 when their shooters failed to knock down shots and simply couldn’t get stops on defense when they needed them, as Kawhi just mowed them down and it took one good pass to create an open three.

Dallas has found itself with a superstar, but now the hard part begins for this front office. They have to decide how to tinker with this roster to find more balance and be at least a capable defensive team, while continuing to surround Doncic with shooters to find with his incredible vision. It’s the hardest thing to do in the NBA, take the leap from good team to great team, even when you have a great player. That’s the task going forward for Dallas that few successfully pull off.

The Clippers bench has to find their form

The one aspect of the Clippers that most would point to as the thing that can separate them from the Lakers is their depth, but with the absences of Williams and Harrell earlier in the Bubble and the injury that kept Beverley out of action for much of this series, their bench unit has not been an advantage just yet. Williams was spectacular in Game 4, but hasn’t found his consistent rhythm yet (he was 1-of-9 from the field in Game 6), which the Clippers really could use with the pressure George is facing (as well as Leonard, but he seems almost immune to it). Getting Beverley back on the court to limit Reggie Jackson minutes, even as Jackson played well offensively in the fourth quarter of Game 6, would be a big boost for a defense that seems to be finding its teeth again of late.

The next round against either Utah or Denver will see L.A. as heavy favorites once again, but if they want to be a title contender they have to get that second unit going. Getting Williams rolling will, in turn, get Harrell going as his offensive production is tied very closely to his favorite pick-and-roll partner’s, and expect that to be a focal point for Doc Rivers’ bunch early in the next round.

Fans expected an intense matchup at the Call of Duty League Championship on Sunday. Neither the Atlanta FaZe or the Dallas Empire felt like they were significantly better than the other CDL powerhouse. With five wins necessary to take the title this seemed like a contest guaranteed to go eight games minimum.

Perhaps we should have expected a tidier match, however, as the Dallas Empire dominated from the very first game on the way to a dominant 5-1 gentleman’s sweep of the Atlanta FaZe to win the 2020 Call of Duty League championship. FaZe certainly had the talent to put up a decent fight, but any momentum they took in any of the rounds was quickly dashed by an Empire counter attack throughout Sunday’s final. Their only real moment of success, the Game 5 Hardpoint victory on Gun Runner, was immediately followed by another loss to seal the championship for Dallas.

The first sign that everything was not what it seemed was when Dallas jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead over Atlanta including Cave, a map that Atlanta had historically been great on.

Where we really knew something was off for Atlanta was when FaZe went down 3-0 on Search and Destroy. FaZe, a great 1v1 squad, struggled to control the board and lost on a map they came into 11-2 on all year.

Atlanta started to show something in Game 4 and went into the second half of Domination with an 18-point lead. Dallas responded with a huge clutch and dominated to clear the gap and enter Game 5 with a 4-0 lead plus a chance at the title.

Using the momentum they had gained from Game 4, FaZe dominated the K/D portion of the leaderboard in Game 5. Sometimes it’s really as simple as killing your opponent more than you die. FaZe did that and lived on to fight another round.

Dallas responded well in Game 6 search and destroy. While Atlanta was clearly playing better and kept it to a close matchup, the Empire won the round, 6-4, and it felt like they just kept getting stronger as the round went on. They were always ahead in members alive and it always seemed like they knew where FaZe was going to set up. It was a strong performance and exactly what Empire needed to do to take home the title.

The Empire are now your 2020 Call of Duty League champions in an incredibly dominant performance. It was a shock to see for many, not because of the Empire winning, but the way they went about it. You don’t expect a team like FaZe to go away, but sometimes you get to the title matchup and it doesn’t go quite as expected.

That said, maybe the Empire should have been considered the stronger team from the start. They had the regular season MVP in Shotzzy, the winningest player in Call of Duty history in C6 (also known as Crimsix,) and a member of the 2019 World Championship team with Clayster. This team was set up well to be the inaugural winners of the Call of Duty league and as long as they keep this roster around they could be in a great position to dominate for a long time.

In an unprecedentedly difficult year for basically everyone, the video game industry has been far from immune to struggles due to the coronavirus pandemic. The release of Electronic Arts’ NHL 21, for example, was pushed to October amid “major adjustments” to its production schedule as employees worked from home at length amid the still-ongoing pandemic.

It seems the latest Madden game isn’t immune to these problems, either, and fans have expressed their frustration on social media on the game’s first weekend of release. As gamers got their hands on Madden NFL 21, they sent videos of their issues on social media, which started to trend in a big way on Sunday.

Sports simulators are bound to have imperfections, as the physics they try to create and the vast possibilities of play mean things get weird sometimes. There was a very successful series by Jon Bois intentionally trying to, well, break Madden that caused some very funny things to happen. But the response to Madden NFL 21 was overwhelming, and soon #NFLDropEA trended on Twitter as frustrated gamers shared more evidence of Madden‘s issues.

One gamer on the Uproxx staff had their copy of Madden NFL 21 crash the very first time the title screen booted up. Overall the game hasn’t gotten great reviews. And while our official review is still forthcoming, many on Twitter were more than ready to share some big problems they’ve encountered with Madden NFL 21 on launch.

It’s worth noting that bugs like these will likely be fixed, and one of the first things likely to go in a game crunch is bug fixes. Given the difficulties in completing anything amid life in quarantine, there’s an understandable amount of fixing that will likely come in the weeks and months ahead for Madden NFL 21. But it also speaks to the general frustration fans have had with many sports games that update yearly, especially ones that have an exclusive license to create games as EA has had with the NFL for years.

Even former NFL players seem frustrated.

While not every complaint amplifying the hashtag was a real human being, there was some creativity to the complaints. That is to say, there were also a lot of memes.

For some their frustrations aren’t just that the new game has bugs, but that newer iterations on the Madden franchise haven’t changed all that much in recent years.

As people shared videos from the current Madden, others showed that even simple things like updating logos from last year’s game appear to have slipped through the cracks in past editions of the title.

Online fan reviews are very prone to wild fluctuations on release, especially when there’s a groundswell of negativity. But the extent the game has seen in its first few days is startling.

No game is impossible to save, of course. And in the case of bugs and glitches these things can be fixed once they’re uncovered and made known. Unfortunately for Madden NFL 21, the glitches are seeing the light of day in a big way and fans are making it clear they’re not happy with the product they’re seeing on launch.

Returning to the stage for the first time since her traumatic shooting incident involving Tory Lanez, Megan Thee Stallion did a virtual performance presented by Live Nation on Saturday night. In addition to performing a number of her hits, Megan Thee Stallion used the platform to honor victims of police brutality. Names like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and Jacob Blake flashed stage behind Megan. Below their names were the dates and a quick summary of each incident.

Megan Thee Stallion’s concert served as her first performance on a public stage after she revealed Tory Lanez was the person who shot her last month. “Yes, this n**** Tory shot me. You shot me and you got your publicist and your people going to these blogs lying and sh*t,” she said during a livestream explaining the night in the Hollywood Hills. Prior to her livestream, a report from TMZ revealed that the Los Angeles district attorney was reviewing a possible felony assault charge against Tory following the shooting.

You can watch video of Megan’s concert above.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Rocky IV is easily the most deranged of the pugilist saga. It’s the one where Sylvester Stallone’s working class Philly boy takes on the Soviet Union and solves the Cold War. It’s the one with James Brown. It’s the one in which about half the length of the movie is montages, a couple for scenes that happened mere minutes earlier. It’s the one that was semi-remade, less nuts this time, as Creed II. But perhaps most of all, it’s the one where Burt Young’s Paulie spends most of his time hanging out with a giant robot. It’s the most ’80s of Rocky movies, if not the most ’80s of all movies.

Don’t fix what ain’t broke, as they say. And yet that’s exactly what Stallone is doing. In a post on Instagram, Stallone — who, as with half the Rockys, wrote and directed on top of starring in it — said he’s going back to the franchise’s most notorious entry, giving it a rehabbed director’s cut. Alas, it already sounds like he’s making it worse. When one commenter asked if it would “expand on the relationship between Paulie and his robot,” they were met with most grim news: “The robot is going to the junkyard forever,” Stallone wrote, “No more robot.”

When another commenter pleaded with Stallone to change his mind, asking him simply, “Don’t cut the robot,” they, too, were met with despairing news. “I don’t like the robot anymore,” Stallone replied.

Will cooler heads prevail? Can the internet save Stallone from himself? Will people take a quick break from protesting and social justice reform and whip out a change.org post defending one of the Reagan era’s strangest cinematic sights? Only time will tell.

The Mavs and Clippers met for Game 6 of what has become a contentious series on Sunday, and it didn’t take long for things to get heated once again.

Los Angeles has made it clear that they want to make life miserable for Luka Doncic, being very physical with him and, at times, possibly crossing the line. Marcus Morris came under fire after Game 5 for stepping on Doncic’s injured ankle in what he insisted was an accident, but in Game 6 Morris was involved in another altercation with Doncic, this time earning a swift ejection late in the first quarter for his actions.

Morris and Doncic had been jawing back and forth, but after a foul called on Morris as Doncic drove into him, the Clippers forward took a violent swing at the Slovenian star’s neck and head knocking him to the ground. Teammates stepped between the two as Doncic popped up to confront Morris, and after review Morris was tossed for a Flagrant 2.

It was always going to be a flagrant foul of some variety, but one can’t help but think that, like with Dennis Schroder being ejected for a low blow yesterday against the Rockets, this ejection had some to do with the history of Morris and this series. It was certainly a hostile act and the league has taken a hard line stance against hits to the head in recent years, and now the Clippers will have to look to close out Dallas without a key contributor.

After a number of brands touting Black marketing iconography, such as Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s, were exposed as white-owned, Master P took it upon himself to create food products for Black people by Black people. Introducing his own brand to the world, the well-respected entrepreneur launched his “Uncle P’s Louisiana Seasoned” food line, which includes products like rice, beans, grits, pancake mix, syrup, and oatmeal. With every purchase, a donation will be made to charities assisting both the youth and the elderly in Black communities. Speaking with CNN, Master P explained why he created the Uncle P brand.

“When you look at Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, a lot of those products are mockeries of African-American people and couldn’t even feed our communities. With Uncle P, the more we make, the more we give. And the only way to give is by owning these products,” he said. “If they made billions of dollars off Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, imagine how much we’ll make to give back to our own community. It’ll be us helping us without having to wait for the government. We can actually change the world.”

Uncle P originally launched in March, but it wasn’t until brands like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s retired or changed their branding in response to the Black Lives Matter movement that consumers took notice of Master P’s new line of products.

“Right now we’re burning down our blocks and our communities while protesting injustice, but if we are able to own products and put money back in our community, we could buy those blocks back instead of burning them down… It’s not just about having the Uncle P products, but also having a good cause behind it. I’m happy that I can make a difference in my communities.”

(via CNN)

Of all the second round series in this year’s NBA Playoffs, Boston and Toronto’s showdown in the East was the most anticipated (and expected) coming into the postseason. The Celtics and Raptors mirror each other in a lot of ways, and the expectation is this will be a highly competitive series.

They are two of the top defensive teams in the league, with Boston boasting a star trio in the backcourt with Kemba Walker, Jayson Tatum, and Jaylen Brown and Toronto with one to match in Kyle Lowry, Fred VanVleet, and Pascal Siakam. However, in Game 1 of their series, Boston took control early and never relinquished it, running away to a dominant 112-94 victory and setting the tone for the rest of the series.

It was a nightmare offensive performance from Toronto, who couldn’t buy a three-pointer in this one, hitting just 25 percent from beyond the arc, while Boston was on fire from deep, hitting threes at a 43.6 percent clip. It was quite the statement from the Celtics in Game 1, but there’s a long way to go in this series, still. Here are our takeaways from a lopsided opener.
The Raptors have a Kemba Walker problem

Jayson Tatum led the way in scoring for Boston with 21 points (tied with, of all people, Marcus Smart), as he is wont to do, and has the capability of just getting a bucket when the Celtics need one, even if the Raptors play excellent defense.

However, the bigger issue for Toronto wasn’t Tatum getting his, because he did so, mostly, against good defense and that’s something you have to live with. The problem in Game 1 was how often Kemba Walker was able to breakdown the Toronto defense to create open looks for his teammates — and, even, himself on his relocation three to end the first half.

Walker was masterful in the pick-and-roll game, attacking the rim when given a lane, pulling up from three when the Raptors dared go under, but most impressively he was able to beat the trap with great pocket passes, kickouts, and skip passes when the defense tried to collapse on him. He finished the game with 18 points and a team-high 10 assists, orchestrating a masterful offensive performance.

The Raptors are always creative with their defense and found solid success in the second quarter with a 2-3 zone, and you can expect Nick Nurse to dial up some different looks for Walker in Game 2 to keep him from going downhill the way he was in Game 1. Toronto is going to live with Tatum and Brown creating their own shots in isolation, but what they can’t have is Walker poking holes in their defense and creating so many open shots for the rest of his teammates.

Boston’s ball pressure really bothered Toronto

It was a game in which the Raptors got a taste of their own medicine and their guards did not respond well. Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet looked bothered by the Celtics ball pressure and traps and struggled to get into any sort of a rhythm. They were unable to get to the basket as they want and VanVleet, especially, found himself settling for a lot of outside shots when they weren’t falling (1-of-8 from three). One would expect that to regress some as the series progresses as he did miss some open looks, but Boston did a great job cutting off driving lanes and keeping VanVleet away from the rim and off of the foul line. They applied constant pressure to whoever was on the ball, and the result was a hefty turnover night for Lowry with five and a lot of discombobulated offense in the halfcourt from Toronto.

Lowry started to get it going a bit in the second half, but the damage was already done. The guards weren’t the only ones that struggled to find their rhythm, as Pascal Siakam had a brutal night, going 4-for-14 and scoring just 10 points. Siakam fell in love with posting up Boston’s various shorter, but exceptionally strong players and forcing up a lot of mediocre looks out of those post-ups, with the Celtics happy to let him have those and not sending much help at him to avoid giving up a much better look off of a pass.

The Raptors halfcourt offense was the big concern going into the Bubble, as they were a slightly below average group in the regular season. Those issues reared their head in Game 1, and while they certainly should hit more open shots than they did in the opener, they weren’t creating that many good looks that you feel like this was a matter of just not knocking down shots. Toronto has to figure out how to penetrate this Boston defense better, as Walker has against them, and make adjustments to their approach because the gameplan for Game 1 simply didn’t work.

Toronto has to get out in transition

This goes hand in hand with their halfcourt struggles, but the Raptors defense has to create more live-ball turnovers and has to force misses that allow them to run. They had just seven points off the break in Game 1 and they just generally need some easy baskets after such a dismal shooting performance. This is a championship team and while I’m not concerned they’ll suddenly lose confidence, they’re a team that feeds off of their defensive performance and that was simply lacking on Sunday.

They weren’t a disaster defensively and you don’t expect Marcus Smart to go 5-of-9 from three-point range, but at the same time it wasn’t they crisp performance on that end you expect from them — and that they need to take down a team like Boston. On offense, they’ll need to approach Boston the way a lot of teams approach Toronto, which is to try and push the action before their halfcourt defense can get set. Forcing some cross-matches and getting Boston to scramble a bit in transition and semi-transition might be their best bet to establishing a rhythm and getting themselves into this series.

Black Panther director Ryan Coogler released a lengthy, emotional statement about the death of Chadwick Boseman on Sunday morning, exploring his relationship with the actor who died on Friday after a four-year fight with cancer. Coogler wrote touchingly about his friend and collaborator, sharing stories about his work on the Marvel film and how he impacted his life.

The Hollywood Reporter published the statement in full on Sunday, in which Coogler recounted how he first decided to direct Black Panther, the attention to detail Boseman had in his work and how tough it’s been for him to accept that he died at just 43 years old. Coogler marveled at Boseman’s commitment to work, how supportive he was of others on set and how deeply he cared for the movies he made.

He was a special person. We would often speak about heritage and what it means to be African. When preparing for the film, he would ponder every decision, every choice, not just for how it would reflect on himself, but how those choices could reverberate. “They not ready for this, what we are doing…” “This is Star Wars, this is Lord of the Rings, but for us… and bigger!” He would say this to me while we were struggling to finish a dramatic scene, stretching into double overtime. Or while he was covered in body paint, doing his own stunts. Or crashing into frigid water, and foam landing pads. I would nod and smile, but I didn’t believe him. I had no idea if the film would work. I wasn’t sure I knew what I was doing. But I look back and realize that Chad knew something we all didn’t. He was playing the long game. All while putting in the work. And work he did.

The number of tributes Boseman has seen since his death is staggering, but the most emotional have come from those that worked with him on Black Panther and other Marvel movies. Coogler wrote that even he didn’t know the extent of his struggle with cancer and that he was battling illness for far longer than he knew.

Chad deeply valued his privacy, and I wasn’t privy to the details of his illness. After his family released their statement, I realized that he was living with his illness the entire time I knew him. Because he was a caretaker, a leader, and a man of faith, dignity and pride, he shielded his collaborators from his suffering. He lived a beautiful life. And he made great art. Day after day, year after year. That was who he was. He was an epic firework display. I will tell stories about being there for some of the brilliant sparks till the end of my days. What an incredible mark he’s left for us.

One of the most heartbreaking moments of Coogler’s piece, which absolutely should be read in full, is that Coogler admitted he’s had a year to decide what to say about his death and still struggled to find the words.

I haven’t grieved a loss this acute before. I spent the last year preparing, imagining and writing words for him to say, that we weren’t destined to see. It leaves me broken knowing that I won’t be able to watch another close-up of him in the monitor again or walk up to him and ask for another take.

Coogler spoke several times about African culture and traditions and how acutely Boseman understood them. In a loving, heartbreaking tribute, the director ended with a tragic distinction: the actor who so fiercely played T’Challa in his work is now an ancestor, not a peer.

“It is with a heavy heart and a sense of deep gratitude to have ever been in his presence, that I have to reckon with the fact that Chad is an ancestor now,” Coogler wrote. “And I know that he will watch over us, until we meet again.”

Professional eSports players in the Call of Duty League are used to large prize pools for titles, but usually, those prizes only come in the form of money. Occasionally though you’ll see teams get a little something extra for winning it all. On Sunday, as the Atlanta FaZe take on the Dallas Empire for the Call of Duty League Championship, there will be more than just a title and cash on the line. There will be Jordan’s.

Call of Duty League will be rewarding their champion on Sunday a plethora of goods along with the Jordan’s including a throne, ring, and trophy. The Jordan’s however have a lot of extra value to them beyond being the reward for a championship. These are custom designed for the Call of Duty League, a 1-of-1 design only for the championship team.

If you look closely at the shoes you can see the Championship logo towards the heel of the shoe with the CDL colors of black and gold present throughout the entire shoe. It’s a very clean design and one that the winners of this title should be excited to receive.

In every sport, you get a trophy and a ring, but it’s not often you receive a throne and a pair of custom Jordan’s to remind you of your championship victory. The Call of Duty League likes to go bigger when it can and with these Jordan’s they’ve exceeded expectations.

You can catch the Call of Duty League championship on the YouTube Gaming Channel, Sunday at 4 p.m. ET.