Month: March 2021

For the first time since 2004, the NHL will have games played on ESPN as part of a new rights deal that will bring games to 25 games a year to ESPN and ABC, along with the majority of playoff and Stanley Cup Final games, as well as 75 games a year on ESPN+ and Hulu, as streaming rights are the biggest part of the deal.

It is highlighted by: exclusive coverage of the Stanley Cup Final on ABC in four of the seven years of the agreement, with the ability to simulcast/megacast on ESPN+ and additional ESPN networks; the return of live NHL action to ESPN networks with 25 exclusive national regular-season games on ABC or ESPN; 75 national regular-season games per season produced by ESPN that will stream exclusively on both ESPN+ and Hulu; half of the Stanley Cup Playoffs on ABC and ESPN each season; and coverage annually of NHL’s Face-off (opening night games), the NHL All-Star Game and Skills Challenge, plus other NHL special events each season.

Additionally, the NHL’s out-of-market streaming package, with more than 1,000 games (formerly on NHL.TV), will now be available for fans to stream only as part of an ESPN+ subscription.

For many fans, having the NHL back on ESPN will take them back to the sounds of their childhood watching games, as ESPN’s NHL theme music is iconic and, yes, is coming back.

However, the NHL on ESPN won’t sound exactly the same unless the network brings back play-by-play commentator Gary Thorne, who just so happened to have his time with the Baltimore Orioles come to an end. The replies to ESPN’s NHL announcement features a ton of fans calling for the legendary voice to be brought back to the network, as he is the soundtrack to so many memories of the network’s NHL games.

We’ll see if ESPN is able to make that happen, but there’s no doubt that fans want to hear the legendary voice back on the call.

Natalie Portman will officially make her television debut in the new AppleTV limited series Lady in the Lake. Joining her for the project is fellow Marvel veteran Lupita Nyong’o, who like Portman, will also serve as executive producer along with Dre Ryan (who will co-create and co-write the show). Apple is so excited about it that it already received a straight-to-series order.

Here’s the official synopsis from Apple:

“Lady in the Lake” is an adaptation of Laura Lippman’s New York Times best-selling novel of the same name. The limited series takes place in 60s Baltimore, where an unsolved murder pushes housewife and mother, Maddie Schwartz (Portman) to reinvent her life as an investigative journalist and sets her on a collision course with Cleo Sherwood (Nyong’o), a hard-working woman juggling motherhood, many jobs and a passionate commitment to advancing Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda.

The Apple series marks another high-profile move for Portman, who is currently filming Thor: Love and Thunder after sitting out for the well-received Thor: Ragnarok. She is slated to become The Mighty Thor, who for the record is not Lady Thor or the girl Thor, but a hero in her own right who’s worthy to wield the mythical hammer Mjolnir.

As for Nyong’o, she’s just coming off of the espionage thriller The 355 and will also be returning to the Marvel universe for Black Panther 2, which will have the difficult task of carrying on the legacy of Chadwick Boseman after the actor passed away over the summer at the age of 42.

If the interaction between you and your budtender typically goes something like this: “Hi, what can I get for you today?” “Can I see your top-shelf indicas, please?” and that, for the most part, ends your interaction — well, you’re leaving the shop with less than half of the picture of how your chosen strain will affect you. And you’re paying the full price for it! Call that the cost of ignorance.

It seems easy enough to think about weed in very simple terms: how high is the THC content (translation: how high will this get me)? Is it going to make me feel lazy, energetic, or somewhere in between? And thinking about weed along those lines is all fine and good if you’re purely smoking for recreational reasons. But if you’re using cannabis for one of its many purported medicinal-creative-sexual-lifestyle benefits? You’re going to want to zero in on what exactly you need. And to do that, you need to be asking about the strain’s terpene profile.

To put it simply, terpenes are the chemicals in cannabis that are responsible for the plant’s distinctive smell and taste, and, more crucially, the nuances between different strains. Like most plants, cannabis is packed with various terpenes, but the most common include terpinolene, limonene, linalool, pinene, myrcene, and beta-caryophyllene. And they’re all responsible for the different effects, flavors, and aromas of your weed. If you’re looking for a strain to knock you out and help you sleep, is it better to reach for an indica with a high amount of terpinolene, or is it better to reach for one with lots of limonene?

Don’t know the answer? It’s safe to assume you don’t know enough about terpenes.

We’re not trying to make you feel bad here, we also didn’t know enough about terpenes. So we reached out to Dr. Ari Mackler, chief science officer at PLUS. PLUS makes a whole host of THC products that include CBD and THC mints and gummies. We’re huge fans of their PLUS Strains line — which relies on the terpene flavors and aroma profiles of some of the best cannabis strains out there to craft easy-to-eat, delicious cannabis gummies that’ll get you high and help you to zero in on the effects you’re after by printing the terpene profile right on their Altoids-like tin.

After listening to me rave about the PLUS “Sugar Plum” holiday gummies I tried before Christmas, Dr. Mackler was kind enough to offer a starter course for anyone eager to understand terpenes better in order to find the high that best fits their needs.

As I understand it, terpenes are responsible for a lot of weed’s effects, why is buying solely along the categories of indica, sativa, and hybrid a shallow way of selecting strains?

Back several years ago the industry grew up with folks really focusing in on distinctions like indica, sativa, and hybrids. Over the course of the last few years though we’ve been really able to push boundaries of chemistry — I like to call it phytochemistry — to understand what’s inside the plant and how that chemistry is affecting, impacting, and benefiting our physiology. That pushed us for the last couple of years into the direction of being very specific here at PLUS — having ratioed products instead of just spectrum products. We’ve continued to learn and push those boundaries of phytochemistry, we are now at a point that is allowing us to better unpack, not fully unpack, but better unpack our knowledge of the chemistry and its components, inclusive of the nuances between the indica, the sativa, and the hybrids, which is now allowing us to better understand and leverage the full spectrum capacity of the plant to really get to what is often been termed the “entourage effect.”

Meaning the amplifying effect of CBD, THC, other cannabinoids, and terpenes working in unison rather than being isolated, right?

For the sake of today’s conversation, take a sativa — how does Lemon Jack distinguish itself from a different sativa? The Grandaddy Purple for indica, we can now actually understand the chemistry and the nuances there, such as the terpenes, to find there are distinctions between and nuances between two different types of indica or sativa.

Lemon Jack has the dominant terpenes of terpinolene, beta-Caryophyllene, and linalool. Several months ago, as a holiday SKU, we developed another sativa based product called Sugar Plum. That one leans into limonene, beta-caryophyllene, and linalool. Although there is overlap, the limonene is in both but in a different combination, the beta-caryophyllene are in both but in different concentrations, there is a subtle difference between the linalool in the Sugar Plum and the limonene in the Lemon Jack, using that as an example, we can now dial in to understand the subtle differences between not just the categories, but to get down into the plants themselves, which is really exciting.

What are terpenes exactly, can you run us through the different types found in weed and what they do?

A terpene is a compound that most people will understand as being responsible for aromas and flavors. That’s what gives cannabis its potent pungent smell, you’re smelling the terpenes. The terpenes are a very interesting chemical because not only do they provide interesting sensory effects like smell and taste, but now we’re understanding that they’re probably going to have a big impact on the psychoactive impact and benefits. It rounds out the cannabinoids, they’re not working in isolation, they’re working with all these different chemistry. You have this milieu that has terpenes, and flavonoids, cannabinoids major and minor, all of these things work together to create the effect, but simply, terpenes are known as the chemicals that give you flavor and smell

In terms of the common ones, there are a lot, there are dozens of them all throughout nature. You’ll have things that are clearly identifiable — pinene, for example, you just know by its name, or limonene, these have relationships to other plants, fruits, trees out there in nature. Within cannabis you have many, north of 100, I forget what the exact number is today. The major ones that keep playing out over and over again are limonene, beta-caryophyllene, myrcene — you’ll find them in many different strains cutting across your categories — but what’s interesting is the combination there will often give you the fine control vs the coarse control.

Just using a sativa as an example, in Lemon Jack you have terpinolene, beta-caryophyllene, and linalool, vs the sugar plum you have the same limonene but in a higher, concentration, beta-Caryophyllene and linalool, which you don’t have in a high degree of in the Lemon Jack.

It really comes down to the balance and, mind you, balance will change from strain to strain, depending on how you’re growing it, just like winemaking. A lot of it comes down to how that grape is grown, where that grape is grown, it’s the same thing in cannabis.

All of this equals a certain unique effect for each combination of terpenes?

Terpinolene, that’s a sedating calming terpene. Beta-caryophyllene is often linked to pain relief and anti-inflammatory characteristics. Limonene is often associated with elevated or stimulating effects. They don’t seem, on the surface, to jive, you have something that is calming or you have something that is a bit elevated, but the combination of them is what gives you the total impact of that flower.

Just to circle back for a second… because my definition might have been clumsy — the entourage effect is something being talked about more and more thanks to the rise of CBD. For those who don’t know, please describe what the entourage effect is?

Let’s talk from a basic science perspective. I grew up as a basic scientist and I was taught when I was in school that to really get to the answer to a question about a chemical response you need to be reductionist. Reduce yourself to a single molecule. Think back to high school biology days, you have a hormone, and a receptor, and it’s going to give you a response — I’m being simplistic about it.

The entourage effect on the other hand is looking at the plant’s effects in a more holistic way. We shouldn’t think about one chemical giving you one response. THC is intoxicating but if you were having a cocktail of chemicals — all-natural not suggesting otherwise, don’t be mislead by the word chemical — it’s neither good nor bad, but if you have this cocktail so to speak of THC with a little CBD to round it out, maybe a smidgen of CBN and a smidgen of CBG plus you have this milieu of terpenes, that’s going to give you a different level of physiology. It’s taking your physiology to a different endpoint.

You’re not just being binary in terms of intoxication vs non-intoxication, you may have this more rounded effect, you’ll have a different high, perhaps a more mellow high or a more headstrong high vs a body high, all depending on the terpene cocktail that may come along with those cannabinoids, if that makes sense.

That gets to explain the differences between an indica and sativa, the indica being much more laid back chill, that milieu is helping to define that vs the sativa, which is helping you to be more inventive or artistic, which is different than that body high.

Are terpenes something you can smell out like a wine connoisseur or do you have to rely on manufacturers or budtenders to give you the breakdown of an individual strain’s terpene profile?

That’s a great question — there are definitely people who have a trained nose and can go into the shop and take a deep breath of some flower and get a good appreciation for the notes they are sensing. If you’re talking about flowers, you have a better opportunity to be a bit more artisanal about it. Like the wine connoisseur, you can take a taste and take apart the different components.

I suspect you can do something similar with edibles, but because the edible is taking terpenes and infusing them, and embedding them in a different medium, I think it’ll be a bit muddied. I don’t think that means you can’t taste the difference, you can definitely taste the difference between our Jack vs our Plum vs our Pineapple, there are, for sure, differences in taste and effects. But to be able to take that whiff as you could with flower? Maybe there are some well-trained noses out there but that’s not me!

We definitely have some super palates that we have on my team at PLUS, but I’m not the person who can just take in a deep breath and know exactly what I’m smelling. If you have a strong pinene or strong limonene, there is no question you can pull that out — as those are so distinct — but some of the other ones are a bit more nuanced.

For example, myrcene has a musky smell. That one you’d be able to pull out, but would you be able to say “oh this is a myrcene heavy edible” just from the smell? Maybe not.

Are there any strains you feel have a particularly interesting terpene profile? Is it clear cut between the strains — Is a sativa going to have a completely different profile than an indica or is there a lot of cross between?

There is a tremendous cross between, it’s most definitely not black and white. It’s less a binary of this has this, and that has that, and with the advancements to breeding that have happened over the decades, those lines have become even more blurred. You’ll have very similar notes between the different categories, but that doesn’t mean you can’t seek out specific effects from different flowers. My point is that there is still cross over, even if its a pure strain or a hybrid,

It’s like you have one deck of cards, you’re playing you’re game with the same deck of cards, it’s just a question of how you make up that hand.

How does PLUS approach terpenes differently than other cannabis brands? When you’re going with strain selection how do you go about choosing what strains to pick? For example, the Sugar Plum, why did you guys choose that strain?

We really want to be able to take our science to a place where we can meet our customers in a happy place. We know there are definite strains that are more flavor-forward. We want a strain people can enjoy, there are strains people enjoy for one reason or another that have a flavor-forward component to it. Because we’re working with edibles it seems natural to go with those.

What about weed chemistry do we still not understand? There has been so much advancement in the last couple of years but we still don’t know everything — what’s gnawing at you?

That’s what I thoroughly enjoy about this business right now. I was trained as a basic scientist, I went into medicine and the pharmaceutical field, left there and went into food, and spent a decade in food. I wanted to keep pushing with my science and phytochemistry and that led me to cannabis. What I really love about cannabis is that there are still doors to be opened. On a real basic-chemistry perspective, we are becoming really good at identifying the different chemicals. We know the major cannabinoids, we know the minor cannabinoids, we know most of, if not the vast, majority of the terpenes, but what we still need to understand is how this complex chemistry makes people happy. That’s on a simple level, but there are the much more subtle and perhaps interesting nuances between the different types of effects. These are not just haphazard effects, either. Yes, you can become intoxicated; yes, you can prevent your nausea; yes, you can tend to inflammation or pain or anxiety; but to be able to really understand those, and we’re getting there, to really be able to understand those is exciting.

That’s where the rubber is going to have to hit the road, as we move forward in the science. To understand the right chemistry, the right concentrations for the right people to get the best effect. We want to move adjacent to the recreational space, the therapeutic space, and the pharmaceutical space — we’re not a pharmaceutical company don’t misunderstand my comments, but the adult-use space, people use cannabis for many reasons, not just to get high. That’s exciting to start to unpack that. There is still a lot of work to be done with that!

We started off talking about how choosing strains along the lines of sativa, indica, and hybrid is kind of shallow. In addition to terpenes, what else are we as weed shoppers overlooking?

I think what’s important is how you approach the chemistry. There may be a distinction, you may have a purpose to say “oh I want to use an isolate or a distillate” or you want to approach your extract selection through the use of a solvent or not. This gives you the ability to control things, there are all different levers you can choose as a manufacturer, as a grower, as an extractor as a buyer of cannabis to get what you want out of your experience.

There are all subtle differences, hash for example is a very exciting space. Or the solvents, or one extraction method vs another. If you’re going to use butane or not butane, ethanol or not ethanol, there are all subtle dials that allow you to dial into your ultimate product.

In the end, you’re still getting that basic chemistry. Do you have your cannabinoids and in what concentration? Do you have your terpenes and are they being biased by what you’re choosing to do with your extraction methodology? And how are you going to take that chemistry and infuse it into, in the case of my company, your edible? Can you do it in a way that is authentic, clean, robust, efficient, effective, and delicious? These are all the different levers we try to pull to create the best possible product.

Countries like Australia have been able to slowly bring back in-person concerts over the last year, but the same cannot be said for the US and many other places. That’s why Courtney Barnett cooked up a clever way for fans from all across the globe to be able to experience her performances: The singer launched a massive online archive Wednesday as a home for all of her filmed concerts, tour posters, music, and behind-the-scenes photos.

According to press materials, Barnett originally came up with the idea to give fans who were hoping to see the singer perform live in 2020 a simple way to enjoy her shows. But after developing the website, it became clear to Barnett and her team that the project could turn into “so much more.” It chronicles Barnett’s 14-year career, rounding up all available footage from the nearly 800 shows she’s played, which were personally documented in her mom’s well-kept spreadsheets.

Alongside the archive website, Barnett has made available the only full-band live show she played in 2020. It was filmed last January at the Corner Hotel, shortly after yet another heatwave in the midst of Australia’s devastating bushfires. The opening scene of the concert film states, “At the beginning of 2020 Australia was in the midst of its largest ever bushfire crisis — we felt afraid, overwhelmed and angry. Courtney Barnett, Camp Cope and Alice Skye announced a bushfire relief benefit concert for 1600 people over two sweltering nights at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne. The community wanted to unite and help those in need in whatever way we could. It sold out in a just a few minutes.”

Watch Barnett’s full Live From The Corner Hotel film above and visit her online archive here.

Contact Tracing is a three-part series examining the decisions the NBA has made in a year since the 2019-20 season was suspended due to COVID-19.

Part 1: What We Can Learn From The Challenges And Pitfalls Of Remote Sports Media

It was barely a week into the season when Spencer Dinwiddie went down. Ten minutes into the third quarter against the Hornets, Dinwiddie drove into the paint and crumpled, his hands jerking to his right knee as he rolled protectively onto his back. At first it looked like a contusion for how he’d knocked knees with Bismack Biyombo, but as Dinwiddie’s right leg continued to reach out and down toward hardwood in his lengthened stride, there’s an almost imperceptible bulge and wobble at his knee when his foot plants and his weight shifts over entirely from left leg to right.

It went almost identically for Markelle Fultz a week after that. Fultz, going full-tilt, cut to center court. As his left leg planted on his first stride into the paint, the knee contorts, shifting in, and Fultz instantly dropped. There was no contact, the Cavs’ Isaac Okoro had already lifted into the air for an anticipated block as Fultz fell and rolled into a fetal position, hands cupping his knee. Four days later and Thomas Bryant, tangled up for a rebound, landed on his left leg with no more force than usual, only the leg bowed out, his knee popping like a hip would. As Bryant’s right leg kicked out at the shock, he fell to the floor, one arm wrapped around his injured knee while the other reaches out, pleading for help.

All three suffered season-ending ACL tears on what were practiced plays in routine, early-season games typically meant to gradually ramp players back up to a consistent level of performance. They wouldn’t be the only ones. It was during practice in Chicago that Marquese Chriss broke his leg, and in a preseason game where Chris Clemons tore his right Achilles tendon, putting him out of his second season in the league before it officially started. Chriss, in a late-January scrum a month after his injury, recalled that it had been a “lighter” practice meant to help players with their conditioning, something that might have traditionally been achieved throughout a regular preseason.

Within the NBA’s first month of the 2020-21 season, four injuries had players officially out for the season and seven were serious enough that players were forecast to return sometime in mid-March, if they weren’t then reevaluated and declared out for longer. It’s a noticeable shift not only in the number of season-ending injuries compared to the same window of the 2019-2020 season — Gerald Green broke his foot in an October 2019 preseason game and Al-Farouq Aminu tore his meniscus in November — but in the nature of the injuries.

Unlike other pro leagues, where injuries spike in training camp and within the first month of a season, the NBA tends to see injury events trending upwards as the season progresses, peaking in March. Factor in fatigue and players pushing themselves to secure playoff contention and the spike makes sense, as players return from the offseason and months away from high-impact and high-load levels of performance there is a greater risk of soft tissue injury — things like sprains, muscle pulls, and bruises. Because of this, one thing is top of mind all season long among those whose jobs are helping athletes navigate a grueling regular season.

“It’s the soft tissue mobility,” explains Dr. Michael Gordon, orthopedic physician for the Milwaukee Bucks from 2005-2015. “It’s working on flexibility, it’s trying to minimize risk for a lot of soft tissue injuries, being muscle strains, muscle pulls. Things that are traumatic stuff. The contact injuries, you get knocked over and you break something, those are hard to prevent. But the non-contact, you plant your leg and you cut hard and your knee shifts, that’s a non-contact ACL injury. Those things we can’t prevent, but we try to mitigate those risks by focusing on muscle balance, landing mechanics, strength balance, things like that.”

But if mitigating risk can be challenging enough for professionals in a typical season, how hard would it be in a season that saw its start date bumped forward by a month, its 71-day offseason the shortest of any pro league in history? Where players fresh from deep playoff runs, for whom the downtime would feel more like a flash of respite, and those who hadn’t had access to training facilities since before the Orlando Bubble, would meet again as perceived equals on a steeply lopsided floor?

“In this situation, it’s unprecedented,” Dr. Martino Franchi, an assistant professor in skeletal muscle physiology at Padova University, says. “It’s not a bed rest, it’s not a unilateral limb suspension, it’s not something called tapering — which is basically the willingness to reduce the amount of load during a season, but it’s controlled, but it’s not that. it’s not detraining, purely, because we are not studying, ‘I’m training, and now I stop,’ and that’s it. So it’s a mixture of all these things. And what we wanted to say was: be careful.”

Franchi, who previously worked as head of sport science and an athletic trainer with the Nottingham Wildcats Basketball Club, and is a faculty member at the Football Science Institute, contributed to a study last April concerned with the sudden physiological changes athletes faced due to the home confinement and training restrictions of coronavirus.

“We are based in Italy, so we are probably one of the first who experienced the lockdown situation,” Franchi recalls. “Also we are big soccer fans, so we asked ourselves, all these athletes that are used to high-impact and high-load, and used to receive load stimulation during every training session. If you train on the court, or the pitch or field, you get some sort of stimuli on soft tissue. So tendons, muscles.”

None of the examples that existed to researchers like Franchi prior to COVID-19 fit with the circumstances athletes were facing. There are studies that focus on prolonged bedrest campaigns of athletes in recovery, periods of up to 60 or even 90 days in bed, or unilateral lower limb suspension, where focus is directed on the muscular and tendon stiffness decline when a limb is suspended for days or weeks at a time.

But they were good starting points. As Franchi points out, “What we know from these studies, they shock the system pretty badly. There’s reduction in muscle mass, reduction in force that is produced by the muscle, a reduction of the stiffness of tendon.”

Tendons are crucial for athletes exerting high amounts of pressure and strain on their muscles because, Franchi explains, “the tendon is what transduces the force from a muscle to the tendon the bone.” In early lockdown, NBA trainers made sure players stuck at home had access to portable equipment as possible. But when the pandemic and its lockdown measures continued and players, scattered across states with varying restrictions that continued into the offseason, were unable to recoup meaningful full-court training time, there was a pronounced lack of stimuli on these crucial muscles and tendons.

“[The] Achilles tendon, or patella tendon, are so important because they pick up the stress. And if they are a little bit slacker, that might lead to risks but also to different adaptations, or maladaptations,” Franchi says.

It’s these kinds of soft tissue and tendon-based injuries that are currently proliferating in the league.

“We don’t have a model of adaptation for lockdown. There was no model in science, at least not a perfect model of this. And I’m not sure that, it’s too little time right now, to make a conclusion,” Franchi stresses. Like any researcher mired in the science, he can’t speak in absolutes, there just isn’t enough hard data yet for a season still underway. But as someone with a concentrated background in studying the impacts sports like basketball and soccer have on the body, and who witnessed the effects of lockdown on athletes in Italy months before players in the NBA would experience the same, it’s caution he circles back to throughout our conversation. “All we can say is that yes, probably the preseason was short.”

While Franchi is adamant that NBA team trainers and doctors are aware of the dangers a season like this one presents, he stresses the need to proceed with caution, “The risk is out there because the science tells us that if you practice unloading, there is a risk.”

There was one example that continued to come up in conversations with experts as being the closest possible comparative study for the current rapid deconditioning concerns the pandemic has produced, for two reasons. During the NFL’s 2011 lockout, players were barred from training facilities for three months. It wasn’t as lengthy as the prolonged conditions COVID-19 has forced, but it was just as sudden. The first similarity is upon return to play: There was a substantial increase in Achilles ruptures, with 12 Achilles tendon ruptures occurring in the first 29 days post-lockout when compared to the total amount in the two seasons prior of six and ten Achilles ruptures, respectively.

The second is rhythm. Whether referred to as routine, a grind, or putting in work, athletes have a rhythm. Everything from training to diet to travel and sleep schedule supports it, and even during the offseason, it exists as an underlying metronome. In the NFL lockout study, there was no noticeable uptick in hard injuries, only injuries traditionally related to conditioning that came via a player’s rhythm being thrown out of whack.

“Everyone’s routines are different right now, from the athletes just to our daily routines. I think that that definitely needs to be considered,” Dr. Gordon says. “But I would certainly be concerned that the change in the offseason regimen and routine, that most players have pretty consistent plans, has been thrown off. They have to adjust to the new normal and I would be concerned that could lead to more injuries, particularly the soft tissue injuries.”

Routine exists on court, too, and it’s possible that the injuries that have resulted so far this season are beginning to have a much more permeating effect.

When Chriss was injured, Warriors rookie James Wiseman and Kevon Looney split his minutes in the starting rotation. On Jan. 30, in a game against the Pistons, Wiseman sprained his left wrist catching a lob from Draymond Green. Three days later, Looney sprained his left ankle sliding into the key to catch a baseline pass from Steph Curry. This season, without Summer League, regular training camp, and the standard docket of preseason games, NBA rookies had just 34 days between Draft day and season start to get themselves up to competitive speed when compared to the class a year ahead of them who had 123 days.

But Wiseman didn’t even have that. He’d tested positive for COVID-19 in the days leading up to Warriors training camp and missed it completely due to his resulting quarantine.

It would be impossible to examine the potential increase in injuries this season without factoring in the effects of the pandemic. Fatigue, which has run ravenously parallel to the relentless drive of the product the NBA pushes, has found a deeper notch this year. The anxious fatigue of COVID-19, along with the additional time testing, distanced practices and pre and post-game treatments, media, and travel takes, whittle down what little rest players might have been able to squeeze in previously during game and off days. Joining J.J. Redick on his podcast, The Old Man & the 3, Steven Adams outlined how this season “screws up your sleep cycle,” especially after games when Adams said players, too wide awake to sleep sometimes until 4 a.m., are up again at 7 a.m. for testing.

Even in a shortened season of 72 games, there are a slew of back-to-backs, with teams averaging seven in the first half of the schedule and some playing as many as 11 in the second half. Moreover, postponed games stacking up due to health and safety protocols will need to be made up, crammed somewhere on the other side of what’s already a compact season. And while resting procedures for players have relaxed slightly, the rules are still dictated by the broadcast schedule, with teams potentially incurring $100,000 fines for resting star players during high-profile, nationally televised games. In recent weeks, Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kawhi Leonard have all sat due to injury.

Exhaustion has not been limited to players, with the league’s new COVID-19 protocols the start of the season saw a request to teams that one staff member be designated a protocol compliance officer. This person would be responsible for fielding and implementing the daily memos and oft-changing procedures in the NBA’s response to the virus. It’s also been a job that’s fallen largely to team trainers.

In an ESPN story on the NBA’s health protocols, a league “health source” shared the following quote: “What scares me — and I know it’s happening — is that their normal job of doing health care on players [is impaired]. I’ve had some trainers tell me, ‘I haven’t touched a player in two weeks because I’ve been so busy doing all this logistics and testing and all that.’” A head trainer went on to admit that there would be “some decline in player health care” this season, as if the current precarious state of things without knowing the strain team trainers and doctors are under isn’t difficult enough.

While Dr. Gordon and Dr. Franchi both admit it is too early this season to make a definitive call on whether any increase in soft tissue injuries is firmly indicative of shortened camps, longer absences of conditioning and the strain of a rapid return to regular gameplay, both urged caution and close attention to the next portion of the season in order to frame a larger picture.

Within the NBA, there has been a gradual trend upward of player injuries season-over-season. Looking as far back as 1998 when the conclusion of a ten year study in the changing nature of the game and its impacts on player’s health determined a 12.4 percent increase in game-related injuries. In the modern era, some of the blame for the upward trend has been placed on the league’s scheduling of games, with calls for a shortened regular season coming from stars and the NBPA, while others look to factors inherent in the way the game is played. Pace, for example, has seen a steady increase for the last six seasons. When paired with the fatigue of travel catering to a packed game schedule influenced by broadcast opportunities, a shift in how the game is packaged, pushed and consumed could also lend to more injuries over time.

The reality is that as the game and its demands have changed, injuries have too. That there are increasingly more factors to consider when looking at the number of players getting hurt each season, including going from rapid deconditioning to the sudden high-impact, high-loading of muscles that experts are concerned about specific to this season, only underscores the rise overall, even if they can’t be explained by one, leading reason.

As far as solutions that address the same concern, Dr. Gordon pointed out the prevalence of load management now compared to even two seasons ago. It was a method he admitted to “never really liking” but has since “come to grips with more” as a tool.

“In watching,” Dr. Gordon says, “you can kind of see when things are starting to change, the moving patterns are different. I think that the really experienced trainers are great at picking up on that. The load management type stuff now gives you numerical justification for some of the decisions you’re making. You say hey, look, we’ve gotta pull this person back. We know when you hit this threshold that the risk of injury goes up X-fold. So I think that’s going to be a big part of it. I think a lot of it’s going to be the soft tissue work right now.”

That more games will be lost to illness this season than any other seems like the rock, the steady increase in injuries per season the hard place, and the league, stuck between the two with potentially more damaging data of injuries due to lockdown, with nowhere to responsibly go. The best hope is that the numbers this season prove an anomaly, that players did not succumb to more than average soft tissue injuries typically mitigated, or at least better prepared against, in the ramping up to a regular season. But that still squares the NBA to the sharp reality that more of its players are, by the existing data, getting hurt every season.

As we wait with our breath held and fingers crossed for a healthy second half of the season and a better overall picture of what happened within it, we can remind ourselves not to lose the gruesome shock of a muscle unraveling, or the agony in someone collapsing to the floor only weeks after they set a confident foot on it for the first time. To remember that the league is a structure only as strong as the bodies supporting it, like tendons fixed to bone until it breaks.

Paul McCartney has been active in the music industry since the 1950s, and between then and now, he has collaborated with a bona fide ton of people. Based on a new teaser video, it appears he’s getting ready to add a slew of new names to that illustrious list.

The four-second clip shared on social media features a handful of quickly flashing photos of dice (much like the one on the cover art of his 2020 album McCartney III, and aside from the dots, there are names on some of the dice. The people alluded to via the text on the dice seem to be Anderson .Paak, Phoebe Bridgers, Idris Elba, EOB (Ed O’Brien), Dominic Fike, St. Vincent, Damon Albarn, Beck, Khruangbin, Josh Homme, 3D, and Blood Orange. He also captioned the post with 12 dice emojis, which coincides with the number of names seen in the clip.

It would seem, then, that McCartney is planning some sort of collaborative project, like a series of remixes featuring these artists. Alternately, perhaps the potential project is an album of different artists covering McCartney III, like what Sharon Van Etten is doing with her tenth anniversary reissue of Epic.

Whatever the case may be, it seems McCartney has something going on, so stay tuned.

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

Sixteen teams will get new threads for the remainder of the season as the NBA and Nike unveiled new “Earned Edition” uniforms for last year’s playoff squads. The jerseys largely incorporate alternate designs and colors to give a bold pronouncement of the teams’ accomplishments in 2020, fighting to the postseason despite the stoppage and the challenges of playing in the Bubble.

In its announcement, the NBA said the new uniforms will be available for purchase starting March 18, with teams debuting the new threads in the coming days.

Most of the teams offered closer looks at the new uniforms on Twitter, as some pay homage to the past with retro looks — like the Lakers black unis that are similar to the Black Mamba unis they brought back for last year’s title run — while others just go with something completely new.

The Earned Edition are the fifth uniform version for playoff teams under the NBA’s partnership with Nike, adding to the Association, City, Statement and Icon Editions. The partnership has allowed teams to use secondary color schemes such as the Heat’s Vice patterns, as well as incorporate the culture and personality of a team’s home into what players wear on-court.

The Earned Edition goes a step further, building the pride of the team’s success into the jerseys they wear, and the bold colors and large logos on each uniform strongly build on how the fan base connects with each team.

Welcome to SNX DLX! We’ve got a pretty light week this time around, with Nike and Adidas landing almost every spot on our weekly list and few worthwhile offerings from the other brands. That sounds grimmer than the reality, though, because if you like the Nike SB Dunks, this is very much your week. Three high-top SB Dunks and a low in one week sets a new SNX record. We’ve never quadruple-dipped on a single silhouette — leave it to the SB Dunk to pull it off.

Elsewhere on the list, we’ve got the latest Yeezys, new Suicoke sandals, and a new addition to the Adidas 4D lineage. If you’re not about the Nike Dunk, you’ll be glad to hear the silhouette will be taking a break for the next couple of weeks with some truly exciting sneakers set to drop from New Balance, Nike, Jordan, and Adidas next week and into spring. Let’s dive in!

Adidas Yeezy BOOST 700 V2 Cream

The Yeezy 350 may be the world’s most popular sneaker these days, but the Yeezy 700 will go down as the brand’s most beloved and respected silhouette, mark our words. This week a V2 iteration of the silhouette will drop in a clean Cream colorway. Featuring an upper of rolled knit and suede with nubuck leather overlays, the 700 V2 is dressed in an off-white and pale grey colorway and sits atop a full-length Boost unit. The shoe features a grippy rubber outsole with a herringbone traction pattern.

The Adidas Yeezy Boost 700 V2 Cream is set to drop on March 12th for a retail price of $240. Pick up a pair at GOAT.

Nike Dunk High Barley Green

This minty pair of Dunks was released as part of Nike’s NBA All-Star Weekend collection and features glossy black overlays on a barely green upper. The overlays have a zig-zag, almost zebra-like patterning on them, which is shared on the shoe’s wraparound swoosh. Rounding out the design is matching barley green laces and official NBA All-Star Indianapolis branding.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “wasn’t the game in Atlanta?” you’re not wrong. This means Nike had this ready for us well before the game was moved. But when sneakers look this good, we can easily overlook the error. If anything, this makes the pair even more interesting.

The Nike Dunk High Barley Green is out now for a retail price of $110. Pick up a pair at Asphalt Gold or StockX.

Nike Dunk High Orange Blaze/Syracuse

Also known as the “Syracuse” this Orange Blaze hightop Dunk is a refresh of a coveted 1985 colorway and drops in a full-size run today. Note to Nike — make all of your releases full-size runs! The Orange Blaze, or Syracuse if you’ve got school spirit, features a leather upper with vibrant orange material overlays.

Wearing these are like rocking highlighters on your feet, no one is going to not notice your kicks. This is good because we’re getting closer and closer to a world where we can actually show off the fits we’ve been collecting all pandemic long.

The Nike Dunk High Syracuse are set to drop today for a retail price of $110. They’re likely clean sold out at Nike SNKRS, pick up a pair at Foot Locker or StockX.

Nice Kicks x Adidas Ultra4D Have a Nice Day

We mentioned this a few months back but we’re going to reiterate — Adidas 4D sneakers are getting doper by the day. Okay, we didn’t quite put it that way, but we’re loving the direction Adidas’ future-tech kicks have been heading in since the tech that makes the shoes so expensive has gotten cheaper. For this iteration, Adidas called on the talents of San Francisco retailer Nick Kicks, who supplied a Haight Ashbury hippie-inspired psychedelic dye pattern printed on the 4D’s eco-friendly upper.

The midsole graphic is printed with light and oxygen, resulting in a less wasteful printing process and the whole thing sits on that distinct 4D webbed sole.

The Nice Kicks x Adidas Ultra4D Have a Nice Day is set to drop on March 12th for a retail price of $225. Pick up a pair exclusively at Nice Kicks.

Dr. Martens Suicoke Sandal Collection

If you’re on the hunt for some new sandals for the spring season but everything you’re finding isn’t… I don’t know… tough enough? Dr. Martens has got your back. The iconic brand has linked up with the Japanese label Suicoke for two reworked versions of the brand’s Boak and Depa silhouettes. They pretty much look exactly what you’d imagine a Dr. Martens sandal would look like, with that distinct punk rock aesthetic the brand is known for — now in sandal form!

The collection combines Suicoke’s footbed with Dr. Marten’s Lorsan outsole.

It’s kind of funny but at the same time, incredibly stylish. If the formless alien-like sandals that are en vogue right now are a bit of a turn-off for you, this sandal is for you.

The Dr. Martens x Suicoke Sandal collection is set to drop on March 13th. Pick up a pair at the Suicoke and Dr. Martens web stores.

Nike SB Dunk High x Carpet Company Royal Pulse

This high-top Dunk made in collaboration with Baltimore-based skate brand Carpet Company is probably the week’s most hyped drop. Featuring a white leather upper with semi-translucent screen printing-inspired blue overlays, and a tearaway fabric that reveals some unique Carpet Company graphics and a deconstructed (literally) aesthetic as you abuse them.

We know they are meant to be skated in, but the Royal Pulse just looks so perfect in its un-distressed state that you’re going to want to keep them pristine for as long as possible.

The Nike SB Dunk High x Carpet Company Royal Pulse is set to drop on March 12th for a retail price of $125. Pick up a pair via Nike SNKRS or select independent skate shops like Berric’s Canteen and Carpet Company.

Nike Dunk Low Orange Pearl

In a week packed with must-cop high-top Dunks, it’s good to see the low top continue to get some love. Featuring pale coral overlays over a white leather base, the WMNS-sized Orange Pearl sports a perforated toe box with a padded nylon tongue, woven Nike branding, and a two-tone white and pink outsole. What it have killed Nike to give this spring-friendly iteration a full-size run? Apparently!

The Nike Dunk Low Orange Pearl is set to drop on March 15th. Pick up a pair at GOAT for $260.

Disclaimer: While all of the products recommended here were chosen independently by our editorial staff, Uproxx may receive payment to direct readers to certain retail vendors who are offering these products for purchase.

We’re over a year into the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s fair to cut each other a little slack over our appearances. Some of us have put on a few pounds while stuck in isolation. Others have got a little too used to bumming it around the house in sweats and T-shirts.

Most of us have all suffered from months of bad hair because it’s been tough to get a haircut.

Jacob Lee-Stokes, 15, a student at the Humberston Academy in Grimsby, England was excited to return to school after months of distance learning, but on the first day back got in trouble for violating the school’s dress code.

During lockdown, he experimented with his natural ginger-colored hair by dying it blue and pink. Then, he attempted to even out the color by dying it blonde. This resulted in a two-tone look that wouldn’t fly at Humberston. But he couldn’t have it fixed by a hairstylist because they were closed due to the pandemic.

All his mother owned was a pair of dog clippers.

So on the first day back, Jacob was immediately put in isolation where students are forced to work alone the entire day. It’s the UK version of being sent to the principal’s office.

“After all the weeks of home learning and he goes off to school for 8:20 am and then I get a call at 9:15 am on the first day to say he is in isolation for the whole day, is outrageous,” his mother, Gemma Leaning, told Grimsby Live.

“I understand the school policy and would normally have taken him to the hairdressers but no one has that option during lockdown,” she added.

The mother had few options when for fixing her son’s hair and assumed the school would have some sympathy for him on the first day back. However, the school suggested that she “shave it off.”

“I don’t know what they expect parents to do,” the mother said. “They would not say ‘shave your hair’ to a girl. Who is to decide what looks nice and what doesn’t?”

After all, according to Gemma, her son is a model student.

Humberston Academyvia Google

“It is not as if he is a naughty pupil. He is part of the school’s Shine Project and is looking at which university he wants to study at. He did all his work in lockdown, set up a mini-enterprise, and is predicted to have good grades.”

The mother said she believes the school’s response was “petty.” Her son agrees.

“I would like to see schools focus more on how well kids are doing in themselves rather than how they look and how the school looks,” Jacob said. “All schools need to focus on kids’ mental health and not just say they are looking after students’ mental health. I just want to get back into lessons.”

Spending the first day back in isolation was so stressful he took the next day off from school.

In a statement, the school said that it’s “empathetic,” but stands by its decision. “We also have clear expectations of appropriate hairstyles, including hair dye,” the statement said, “parents and students have known for some time now that the first day back at school would be March 8, and we expect families to take appropriate steps meeting our existing policies for a smooth return back to school.”

Schools have rules and parents and students should respect them. But the academy should have realized that after a long, stressful time off that some students may not be 100% ready to return to school. It would have been appropriate for them to issue a warning and ask that his hair be fixed when hairdressers reopen. Or give his mother a few days to order a shaver off Amazon.

“Jane the Virgin” actor Greice Santo revealed that a scene featuring her and Looney Tunes character Pepé Le Pew has been cut from the upcoming Warner Bros. film, “Space Jam: A New Legacy.”

The film is a sequel to the 1996 film “Space Jam” which paired NBA legend Michael Jordan with Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters.

Santo and Le Pew were supposed to appear together in a black-and-white scene parodying “Casablanca” where she beats up the cartoon skunk for being sexually aggressive.

Le Pew has come under fire recently for being seen by some as the epitome of rape culture. The French skunk was known for being overly aggressive in his pursuit of a black cat known as Penelope Pussycat. Le Pew would kiss the cat’s arms and hold her in a deep embrace, even when they protested.

Every time a female fought back against Le Pew, he’d misinterpret it as a sign of interest.

Simply put, “no” never meant “no” to Le Pew. In a 2021 column for The New York Times, Charles M. Blow wrote that Le Pew “normalized rape culture.”

While some will say that cutting Le Pew from the “Space Jam” sequel makes the character another victim of today’s intolerant “cancel culture,” criticism of the skunk isn’t a new thing.

Comedian Dave Chappelle realized that Le Pew was a terrible example for kids back in 2000, when he made fun of the skunk in his “Killin’ Them Softly’ standup special.

Warning: Strong language.

“Some wild shit! Like, I was with my nephew, sitting there watching Pepé Le Pew, and I said, ‘Now, pay attention to this guy because he’s funny. I used to watch him when I was little,” Chapelle says in the bit. “And we’re watching gPepé Le Pew, and… Good god, what kind of fucking rapist is this guy? Take it easy, Pepe!'”

In the bit, Chapelle’s nephew responds to Le Pew by taking a terrible lesson from the skunk — sometimes you just have to “take” what you want from women. That’s the exact reason many of today’s parents don’t want him in their children’s movies.