Month: October 2020

For the fourth time in his illustrious NBA career, LeBron James is the NBA Finals MVP. James and the Los Angeles Lakers capped off a 4-2 series win over the Miami Heat on Sunday evening, wrapping up the 2020 Finals in style with an emphatic, 106-93 victory that brought the Lakers their 17th title in league history.

In one of the most prolific games of his Finals career, the soon-to-be 36-year-old James exploded in Game 6, going for his 28th NBA Finals triple-double, second only to the 30 put up by Magic Johnson. In his record-setting 260th playoff game, James scored 28 points on 13-for-20 shooting while reeling in 14 rebounds and doling out 10 assists. For the series, James was a menace, averaging 29.8 points, 11.8 rebounds, and 8.5 assists while connecting on 58.6 percent of his shots from the field and 39 percent of his threes.

After winning the award, James spoke to Rachel Nichols of ESPN, emphatically saying that he wants respect for what the franchise accomplished this season.

James is a deserving winner of the award, which was viewed as a two-man race between himself and his teammate, Anthony Davis, who was magnificent on both ends of the floor during the series. But ultimately, James got to add this packed trophy case. Only Michael Jordan, who won six Finals MVPs during his career, has more. James is also the first player to win three Finals MVPs for three different teams, and did so unanimously this year.

The Atlanta Falcons have finally done what many have been expecting for quite a while now. They have fired coach Dan Quinn and general manager Thomas Dimitroff. Quinn and Dimitroff in Atlanta formed a duo that took the Falcons to a Super Bowl in 2016 and helped earn Matt Ryan an MVP award, but ever since that appearance they have been going backwards, culminating in an 0-5 start to the 2020 season. That start, coupled with a couple of epic collapses this season led to Atlanta owner Arthur Blank losing faith in them to keep the team at the standards they had set for themselves.

Dan Quinn, hired in 2015, initially started off well in Atlanta. He took them to the Super Bowl in only his second year on the job as Matt Ryan blossomed into an MVP quarterback, but once offensive coordinator Kyle Shannahan left to become coach of the 49ers the offense never found that same level of success. That, alongside the deterioration of the defense the last few years, has caused many to question his coaching ability. This came to a head this season when the Falcons had a pair of the most demoralizing collapses in back-to-back games.

Dimitroff on the other hand has been a bit of a staple in Atlanta. Hired in 2008 as the GM he built the team into the playoff contender it was and had it on the rise, but as the team tried to recover from their Super Bowl loss he failed to continue to add the talent, particularly defensively, needed to win games and stay at that level.

A new era of Falcons football will be beginning soon, which might be for the best.

As a series, Fear the Walking Dead had a very slow start back in 2015 and steadily improved until around the fourth midseason finale when Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) was killed off the series. It’s been downhill since, reaching its nadir in last year’s terrible season finale. I am a fairly forgiving fan of The Walking Dead universe, but I have not been kind to Fear in recent seasons. In fact, since the fourth midseason finale, there have only been three or four decent episodes (the June and John origin story, among them), and those decent episodes all seem to have had something in common: they were stand-alone stories.

Still, I was skeptical of the idea that the sixth season of Fear would split the characters apart and evolve into something akin to an unofficial anthology series (as opposed to Tales of the Walking Dead, the official anthology series that will arrive after The Walking Dead ends its run). But if the opening episode of the sixth season — the best episode since Madison died — is any indication, maybe the strategy might work out for showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg. I’m not going to count my chickens or anything, because Fear has delivered decent episodes in the past only to devolve once again, but this week’s Morgan-centered episode was Fear at its best.

For those who may have forgotten, all the surviving Fear characters were split up by Virginia last season and taken to separate quarters. Each episode of this season, we have been promised, will center on a separate character or characters and tell disparate, stand-alone stories about their struggles to get out from beneath Virginia’s rule.

If you’ve paid any attention whatsoever to the marketing or trailers for the sixth season of Fear the Walking Dead, there is nothing surprising about the fact that Morgan Jones survived the events of the fifth-season finale, when he was shot by Virginia and left to die, surrounded by walkers. He not only survived, but some still unknown character (perhaps Sherry?) saved him and sort-of nursed him back to health.

The sixth season premiere opens several weeks after those events. Morgan has a bushier beard, bloodshot eyes, and the walkers mysteriously leave him alone. It’s an interesting new wrinkle: Morgan has a gangrenous infection. He smells like death, so the walkers believe him to be one of their own, which allows him to traverse among them without rubbing himself in zombie guts. It’s a good twist.

Meanwhile, Virginia has hired a post-apocalyptic hitman, Josiah LaRoux (Demetrius Grosse), to track Morgan down and kill him. LaRoux is easily the best villain that Fear the Walking Dead has ever had. He is sufficiently menacing, and his whole deal is that he brutally, unmercifully decapitates his targets and collects their heads in labeled boxes. He’s terrific, and I almost wish he could stick around for a few more episodes because Fear has otherwise had a history of terrible villains.

In any respect, Morgan is in a very bad way, and he has Josiah LaRoux trying to track him down, which is when Morgan meets Isaac, whose wife is pregnant, about to go into labor, and holed up behind a dam that is surrounded by walkers. Isaac can’t get to his wife to bring her supplies, and so he recruits a reluctant Morgan to help since he is able to walk invisibly among the zombies. After Isaac saves Morgan from an attempted hit by Josiah LaRoux, Morgan agrees, but instead of quietly walking through the zombies, Morgan goes full-Morgan — just like old times! — and kills them. Josiah LaRoux enters again, and this time, Morgan is able to kill Josiah, allowing Isaac to bring supplies to his wife, although we quickly learn that Isaac is close to death, having been bitten by a zombie while hunting down the necessary supplies for his wife. Before Isaac dies, however, he and his wife (who successfully gives birth to a baby girl) remove the bullet from Morgan’s chest, which probably means that he will no longer smell like a dead person.

There are two tags to the episode. In the first, Virginia discovers that Morgan has put Josiah LaRoux’s decapitated head in the box labeled “Morgan Jones,” and while Virginia initially seems to appreciate that Morgan is a bigger threat than she anticipated, she’s terrified to get a transmission from Morgan on her walkie talkie. “Morgan Jones is dead,” Morgan says to her. “And you are dealing with someone else now.”

Old-school, killing-machine Morgan is back!

The final tag of the episode, meanwhile, suggests a season-long arc about two men searching for a key, which we saw Josiah LaRoux collect from one of his targets. We don’t know if the two men are good or bad, and we don’t know what the key opens, although it possibly opens up something in a submarine stranded in the desert. We do know, however, that that key is in Morgan’s possession. Given the nature of this season, however, it may be several more weeks (or longer) before we see Morgan again. We will see a lot of new communities this season, and a number of standalone stories. I am guessing that next week will focus on Strand and Alicia.

After a thrilling duel in Game 5 between Jimmy Butler and LeBron James, in which the Heat emerged with a win to force Game 6, the Lakers left no doubt of the outcome of Game 6 or the series on Sunday as they dominated from the opening tip en route to a 106-93 win that was not as close as the final indicated, and their latest NBA championship.

It is title No. 4 for LeBron James on his third different team — all of which have won a title — and the 17th overall championship for the Lakers organization. It will be the second ring for Rajon Rondo and third for Danny Green and JaVale McGee, but for the much of the Lakers roster, Sunday was their first time hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy.

For the Heat, it was a bitter end to an incredible season, as they simply never seemed to have anything for the Lakers in Game 6, falling behind by 28 at the half and never mounting a charge to get back into the game. It was an emphatic exclamation point on the season from the Lakers, and we now head into an offseason where 29 other teams know who they’re trying to chase down and knock off in 2021.

Here are our takeaways from Game 6:

1. LeBron James is still the best postseason player in the NBA

LeBron was ready to be done with the Bubble on Friday, but Jimmy Butler spoiled his 40-point effort at closing things out. As such, he had to spend another weekend in Orlando and by Sunday, he once again was ready to assert himself and put an end to this season and take home another title. The result was a 28-point, 14-rebound, 10-assist performance in which he put the finishing touches on another Finals MVP win, becoming the first player to win that award with three different teams.

James was in attack mode from the jump, going downhill and at the rim all night, with Miami having no answers for him when he put the ball on the floor.

In a league filled with talent like we’ve never really seen before, it remains incredible the way LeBron is able to continue separating himself and putting forth incredible performances as he continues to rewrite playoff record books — he passed Derek Fisher for the most playoff games played on Sunday with 260. It has become cliche to say we need to appreciate LeBron James while he continues to do this and I personally have little interest in relitigating the GOAT debate, but what he continues to do is astounding and few players have ever had the ability to find that extra gear in big games that James is able to.

2. The Lakers “others” stepped up big time

LeBron was sensational and Anthony Davis was terrific in Game 6, but. as has been the case for much of this postseason, the Lakers role players stepped up to give them big contributions on both ends. All year the question for the Lakers is whether they have enough support for James and Davis to win a title, and this postseason they answered that with an emphatic yes.

Rajon Rondo and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, in particular, gave them a huge lift, as Rondo had 13 first half points and the two combined for 36 on the night.

The were two players that heard plenty of criticism during the regular season from the L.A. fans, but the Lakers don’t win this title without their steady contributions this postseason. Playoff Rondo became a meme, but what he did for the Lakers in stepping into a ball-handling void was huge, while also upping his shooting and scoring efficiently. Caldwell-Pope was their most reliable three-point shooter in the playoffs, hitting 38.4 percent from deep this postseason entering Game 6, showing consistency after some serious lulls in the regular season.

Elsewhere, Alex Caruso proved his value as a point of attack defender all playoffs long, and really every rotation player for the Lakers gave them great effort on that end, which was a major factor in what led them to a title. James and Davis will get the lion’s share of the credit and deservedly so, but the contributions from the rest of the roster deserve to be highlighted as they were excellent in Game 6 and, really, for much of the playoffs.

3. The Heat looked out of gas

Some of this is certainly due to the Lakers defensive pressure, but Miami simply didn’t seem to have their usual edge on Sunday. Jimmy Butler was unable to replicate his Game 5 scoring output, with just 10 points, eight assists, and seven rebounds, and the rest of the Heat couldn’t pick up the slack. Bam Adebayo finished with 25 points and 10 rebounds, but despite solid numbers he continued to look just a bit off as he never appeared to be at his best since returning from his Game 1 neck strain. Tyler Herro struggled with efficiency all series and went just 2-for-9 in Game 6, as he never fully acclimated himself to the defensive attention the Lakers gave him and suddenly looked a lot like a rookie.

Goran Dragic made his return in Game 6 and moved far better than I think anyone anticipated, but likewise wasn’t able to impact the game as he had before his plantar fascia tear. Pretty much everyone on the Heat had a down night in Game 6 and that’s a recipe for disaster against a team like the Lakers. Miami shot just 40 percent from the field and 30 percent from three on the night, and it honestly looked worse than that for much of the evening.

For a team that has thrived on being able to out-effort their opponents pretty much throughout this postseason, Sunday night was pretty jarring to see. The Lakers deserve plenty of credit for never taking their foot off of the gas and offering Miami anything in the way of hope, and the Heats played much better in the second half to make the final score borderline respectable, but this game was over early in a way few expected to see after the hard-fought battle of Game 5.

4. The Lakers are officially the team to beat

They were always among the co-favorites this season with the Clippers and Bucks, but what they did this postseason was nothing short of tremendous. Their defense was there from the jump and, even as shooting came and went, that never wavered. That was on full display as they closed out a title, with LeBron and Anthony Davis embracing on the sidelines as the clock wound down having given up just 93 points — and 36 in the first half — in an NBA Finals game.

Going forward, the question to the rest of the NBA is going to officially be how do you summit the mountain and knock the Lakers off of it. Their defensive effort and adaptability are spectacular, they have a pair of superstars that play off of each other as well as any two we’ve seen in some time, and they are likely only to become a hotter destination for veterans looking to join a contender on a minimum deal after showing the proof of what they can do.

5. Where do the Heat go from here?

It was a sensational season for Miami and a playoff run few expected, and that deserves to be celebrated. Jimmy Butler was everything they wanted him to be and more. Their young players developed into contributors on a Finals team and showed the upside they all have, as well as the work ethic to continue to get better.

That said, the job for Pat Riley and company is now to figure out what to do with some key roster decisions they’ll have to make this offseason. They’ve been very clear for some time that they want cap flexibility for next summer to make a run at the 2021 crop of free agents. Goran Dragic played himself into contention for a serious contract from someone this offseason with his play this postseason, and the Heat certainly love his presence but may not want to clog up their cap sheet with longterm money. Elsewhere, there’s some clear need for frontcourt reinforcements behind Bam Adebayo that can play deep into the postseason, and Jae Crowder, who played a big role for this team in the playoffs, is likewise entering free agency.

Miami’s a team not just on the rise but a team that has established themselves as one of the best. Now we’ll see how Riley maneuvers this offseason with both the present and future in mind.

21 Savage and Metro Boomin put a lot into their newly-released joint album, Savage Mode II. They recruited Morgan Freeman to not only voice the album’s trailer but also do several skits on the album itself. The duo invoked nostalgia to listeners by calling on Pen & Pixel to design the album cover, but kept things updated enough to successfully pull off the ever-tricky sequel album. It all seems to have worked out, as 21 Savage and Metro Boomin jointly landed the second No. 1 albums of each of their careers.

The pair’s new album posted 171,000 equivalent album units, of which 148,000 were streaming equivalent album units and 22,000 units album sales. 21 Savage’s previous chart-topper was his 2018 sophomore album, I Am > I Was. Meanwhile, this is Metro Boomin’s second No. 1 after his 2018 album, Not All Heroes Wear Capes.

Elsewhere on the top five of the albums chart, Blackpink came in at No. 2 with their debut full-length release, The Album, which posted 110,000 equivalent album units. Pop Smoke remains a consistent top five mainstay, with Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon coming in at No. 3. Meanwhile YG’s My Life 4Hunnid and Bryson Tiller’s Anniversary round out the top five, coming in at No. 4 and No. 5 respectively.

You can read our review of Savage Mode II here.

(via Billboard)

The Miami Heat might end up getting some major reinforcements during Game 6 of the 2020 NBA Finals. With the team in a 3-2 hole against the Los Angeles Lakers, injured guard Goran Dragic is active for the first time since Game 1, when he suffered a plantar fasciitis injury that has kept him sidelined.

While Dragic has attempted to warm up before games ever since suffering the injury, he hasn’t been able to go, which isn’t a surprise due to the fact that this sort of foot injury can be debilitating for players. In his absence, Miami has turned to a number of ball-handlers — Jimmy Butler has taken on the lion’s share of duties, Kendrick Nunn’s role has grown throughout the series, and both Tyler Herro and Andre Iguodala have been able to deputize at times.

According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Dragic “has been determined” to take the floor again in the first Finals appearance of his career, and he’s apparently been told that playing cannot make things worse.

Still, prior to his going down, Dragic was playing at an All-Star level during the postseason, averaging 19.9 points, 4.6 assists, and four rebounds per game while connecting on 45 percent of his shots and just a hair under 36 percent of his threes. It is unclear how much he’ll be able to play and what he will be able to give them when he’s on the floor, but the Heat are generally better when Dragic is on the floor. His presence will, certainly, be welcomed as they try to force a Game 7.

The Dallas Cowboys have gotten off to a terrible start to the 2020 season under new head coach Mike McCarthy, and things got significantly worse for the Cowboys on Sunday as they found themselves locked in a close game with the Giants.

In the third quarter, Dak Prescott took off scrambling in the red zone and got his right leg rolled up on while being brought down in what looked to be a gruesome right ankle injury. Cowboys and Giants players were immediately calling for trainers to the field and the injury cart quickly arrived as they stabilized his leg and put it in an air cast, with Cowboys players visibly emotional on the sidelines having seen their star quarterback go down in that way.

Many from the Cowboys team surrounded Dak as he was being tended to, with McCarthy and Jason Garrett, Prescott’s former coach and the current offensive coordinator for New York, both coming out to check on the star. Prescott was in tears as he was carted off of the field, raising a fist to the Cowboys crowd, before being taken to the back for what will surely be X-rays and an MRI to determine the exact extent of the injury, but given the way his foot and ankle looked, it seems likely that Prescott’s season is over.

Prescott has been waiting to get a longterm contract from the Cowboys, with the two sides unable to come to terms this offseason, leading to him playing on the franchise tag. We will provide updates when more become available, but for now the hope is that Prescott will be able to make a full and, relatively, speedy recovery from what appears to be a significant injury.

For now, he has been taken to a local hospital for evaluations.

President and almost-Superman-impersonator Donald Trump has had a difficult relationship with Dr. Anthony Fauci, longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. While Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic has been widely seen as catastrophic, Dr. Fauci has remained popular — which is to say, trusted — with the American public. Nevertheless, the immunologist has refused to publicly criticize his boss. That said, he occasionally will firmly push back at things he’s said.

Such a time came Sunday, when Dr. Fauci spoke out against a new Trump ad that tries to argue for the efficacy of his handling of an outbreak that has resulted in over 200,000 American lives dead, with no end in sight. The ad, released last week, features a brief clip of Dr. Fauci saying, in an undated interview, “I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more.”

If his words sound like they were taken out of context, that’s because they were. Just ask Dr. Fauci. When asked by CNN about his involvement in the ad, he said he had nothing to do with it, and that he effectively does not endorse that message.

“In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate. The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials.”

The ad tries to spin the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic to make it sound like it’s on the way out. The same with his own contracting of the virus, which he claims is out of his system, despite him (allegedly!) testing positive less than two week ago. “President Trump is recovering from the coronavirus, and so is America,” the narrator says. “Together we rose to meet the challenge, protecting our seniors, getting them life-saving drugs in record time, sparing no expense.”

As per CNN, the Fauci clip was taken from an interview he did with Fox News back in March, not long after much of the nation went into quarantine. Not only are Dr. Fauci’s words over six months old, but they were referring to the entire White House task force, before things got even worse. His complete comments at the time.

“We’ve never had a threat like this. The coordinated response has been…There are a number of adjectives to describe it — impressive, I think is one of them. We’re talking about all hands on deck. I, as one of many people on a team, I’m not the only person … Since the beginning, that we even recognized what this was, I have been devoting almost full time on this. I’m down at the White House virtually every day with the task force. It’s every single day. So, I can’t imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more.”

Team Trump tried to spin their own spinning of Dr. Fauci’s words. Tim Murtaugh, the president’s campaign communications director, tried to gloss over the whole out-of-context charge, made by Dr. Fauci himself. “These are Dr. Fauci’s own words,” Murtaugh told CNN. “The video is from a nationally broadcast television interview in which Dr. Fauci was praising the work of the Trump Administration. The words spoken are accurate, and directly from Dr. Fauci’s mouth.”

Even Trump himself got in on the action, spouting the same line, ignoring Dr. Fauci’s rebuttal.

In other news, on Saturday an allegedly still contagious Trump told a largely maskless crowd of supporters that he still believes COVID-19 will go away, presumably without him doing anything. “It’s going to disappear,” Trump said, repeating a disproved claim he’s been saying since March. “It is disappearing.”

(Via CNN)

It’s been about three-and-a-half years since Warner Bros. and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment announced they’d found another ‘90s IP to reboot: their much-loved cartoon show Animaniacs. Those who’ve been patient won’t have to be for much longer: The revival is set to hit Hulu right before Thanksgiving. And during this weekend’s New York Comic-Con, they dropped a first look at what the madcap show would look like in 2020.

Short answer: A bit more slick, a bit more widescreen, but generally the same. The clip is a pretty much shot-for-shot parody of an iconic scene in Jurassic Park, in which our scientist and mathematician heroes first espy the successfully revived dinosaurs of the titular isle. As Laura Dern’s Ellie Sattler (alas, not voiced by Laura Dern in the clip) holds up an old animated cel from the show — “This species of cartoon has been extinct since 1998!” — Sam Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant (ditto) grabs her head and directs it to the looming shadows of Warner brothers Yakko and Wakko and their Warner sister Dot.

And just to tie it all together in a neat little bow, in comes Steven Spielberg, director of Jurassic Park and Animaniacs executive producer, who’s returning to his old duties.

Running from 1993 through 1998, the original Animaniacs may have been aimed at kids, but its sense of humor and pop culture focus was distinctly older, or at least precocious. The show regularly parodied movies few kids were allowed to see, let alone even hear about, from Goodfellas and The Godfather to Apocalypse Now to Duck Soup and The Maltese Falcon. And, of course, there was one-half of the characters Pinky and the Brain, the latter voiced by first-rate Orson Welles impersonator Maurice LaMarche. Expect more parodies where this teaser came from.

The revival will be showrun by Wellesley Wild, a Seth MacFarlane regular, and Hulu were evidently so impressed with what he’s doing that they gave it a two-season straight-to-series run, right out of the gate. You can see how they did starting November 20.

(Via Deadline)

Over the past few months, Selena Gomez has been very open about her emotions in varying moments with her fans. Earlier this year during an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, for example, she revealed that Billie Eilish’s “Everything I Wanted” made her cry when she heard it.

“I just sobbed because I’ve been doing this for so long and it’s like, damn, that’s so true,” she said during the interview. In turns out that the time of that interview, which occurred back in April, was a hard period for her as Selena revealed she went through a “bit of depression” at the start of the coronavirus pandemic during an interview with Dr. Vivek Murthy on the Rare Beauty Instagram page.

“In the beginning, I couldn’t deal with it that well. I kind of went into a bit of a depression,” Selena told Murthy, who was a surgeon general during Barack Obama’s presidency. “And then I started going into a place where I was really writing and being active. I guess it just forced me to have that time.” She later explained that as time went on, she put her time into the things that she enjoyed which has helped bring her out of her depression.

“Slowly, towards the end, I found thing things I’m doing are coming out, and that was extremely exciting for me,” she said. “I’ve worked on personal things like a beauty line that has a goal of reaching $100 million in 10 years for mental health, and recently, I’ve been able to go to the studio. So I would say right now, I’m fully coming out again and I just think I had to handle it the way I needed to handle it, and got through it with the right people and doing the right things and doing the right steps to not make me go crazy.”

You can watch a playback of the interview in the Instagram post above.