Month: March 2021

Nearly two years after the battle began, the lawsuit between the estate for the late Nipsey Hussle and The Crips over “The Marathon Continues” trademark has finally come to an end. According to a report from TMZ, the rapper’s brother Samuel “Blacc Sam” Asghedom informed a Los Angeles County court that a settlement was reached between the two parties. Documents obtained by TMZ reveal that while Nipsey’s estate and The Crips are still working on the final details of the lawsuit, the formal terms of the agreement will be submitted in the near future.

The issue began in May 2019 when Blacc Sam filed a request for “The Marathon Continues” trademark, only to find out that The Crips filed one almost two weeks before his attempt. Sam intended to use the slogan for a number of endeavors including “charitable activities, the doing of good deeds for others and the promotion of ethical and character values.”

More than a year later, Hussle’s estate would file a lawsuit against the corporate section of the gang over the trademark. Through it they sought compensation for damages and an order for The Crips to destroy and remove any merchandise that was made with the trademark.

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

Much like Donald Trump’s time in the White House, Phil Jackson’s tenure as president of the New York Knicks ended in shame, unemployment and a lot of memes. And now the legendary NBA coach says he has a better understanding of Trump thanks to the way he was treated by the New York sports media.

As Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News recapped, Jackson appeared on the “The Curious Leader” podcast, hosted by former Los Angeles Laker Coby Karl. On the episode, he talked a lot about the “major disappointment” that was his time in New York, which included a number of controversies and a falling out with Carmelo Anthony that ultimately led to his dismissal.

The stories of Jackson’s time in New York that have come out since his firing have, admittedly, not been great. But Jackson has framed that as a media that was out to get him from the start. And, quite bizarrely, he sympathized with Trump and the way the media handled, well, everything that happened with him during his four years in office.

Jackson, 75, detailed several crisis points in his four seasons with the Knicks, which ended with an awful record and about $24 million remaining on his contract. But he steered much of the conversation to his persecution by a media that “was decidedly against the organization and they were looking for whatever they can do to throw aspersions.”

The Zen Master even compared himself to the former United States president.

“I kind of understand Trump had to live with probably for his first 3 ½ years in office with the media,” Jackson said.

Regardless of the self-reflection found elsewhere in the podcast, it’s a really weird thing to compare yourself to a president who was impeached twice and spent the final months of his time in office quite literally undermining the democratic process. Jackson is clear to say the last half year in office for Trump was not comparable to his time in New York, but the time he’s finding a connection with included one impeachment, a mismanaged COVID-19 crisis that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and countless controversies about corruption, stoking of racial tensions and other instances certainly worthy of media scrutiny.

It perhaps speaks to not only Jackson’s interpretation of media coverage of Trump, but of himself in the New York media. He, for example, claimed that his comments about LeBron James that were widely condemned as racist were overblown by reporters who were looking for things to get upset about.

Jackson was also blasted by LeBron James for referring to his business partners as “posse.” It was labeled a racist comment and James said he lost all respect for the Hall of Fame coach.

“There was a lot of distortion that went into it,” Jackson said on the podcast. “And texting and media was a big part of it … But I used that terminology that we used a lot. And it was roundly made a racist remark or whatever it was. That can be thrown into the mix.”

Jackson made it clear in the podcast appearance: the collective media never took his side on anything while he was in New York. But looking at all the things there were to take sides on, so to speak, perhaps it makes sense that Jackson would find similarities with Trump after all.

[via New York Daily News]

A strange week for the Toronto Raptors ended with an interesting roster result on Thursday afternoon. Following months of speculation about his future and a surprising blowout win that felt like a farewell on Wednesday, Kyle Lowry was not traded by the Raptors ahead of the NBA trade deadline. As such, he will be sticking around through the season, with unrestricted free agency currently scheduled to arrive this summer. Following the deadline, Raptors president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri visited with reporters and shed a bit of light on the decision-making process.

First, Ujiri took a fun dig at reporters, taking ownership of the fact that farewell stories couldn’t actually be written at this time.

Ujiri also made sure to note that there was real uncertainty entering the final hours before the deadline. In fact, he expressed surprise that teams did not end up meeting Toronto’s asking price for Lowry.

Ujiri did admit bias with regard to Lowry, who is perhaps the most valuable and beloved player in Raptors history.

The Raptors did make a relatively major trade, sending Norm Powell to Portland in exchange for Gary Trent Jr. and Rodney Hood. To that end, Ujiri thanked Powell for his work and spoke highly of the veteran wing.

And, finally, Ujiri’s own contract status was a prominent part of the conversation. He downplayed any notion that his own uncertainty made an imprint on the moves, and also reaffirmed his love and affection for the organization.

All in all, it’s been a profoundly weird season for the Raptors, from their temporary home in Tampa to roster challenges, win-loss struggles and more. Now, though, there is a bit of refuge from the transactional cycle for the stretch run, though a major offseason looms with organizational decisions involving Ujiri, Lowry and more.

The 2021 NBA Trade Deadline was a rather historic one, for a few reasons. For one, it was the most active deadline day in history, as 17 trades, spanning 23 teams, and including 45 players all set a record for the busiest deadline the league’s ever seen.

Those are pretty interesting stats with pretty graphs to show how the league’s trade activity has jumped over time, but I’m here to talk about something far more important. Thursday was the first time in NBA history that every player named Gary in the league got traded. Yes, it was a busy day for the NBA’s three Gary’s, as all of them are headed to new homes. Two were traded in the same deal, as Gary Harris is headed to Orlando in the Aaron Gordon trade that will send Gary Clark to Denver as well. The third NBA Gary, Gary Trent Jr., was shipped out of Portland to Toronto (this season, actually in Tampa) as the key piece in the Norman Powell trade. For any of you looking to “gotcha” this post by mentioning Gary Payton II, he has not played in the NBA this season and as such couldn’t be dealt, but was the DPOY in the G League bubble and could find his way back into the league soon.

I feel confident this is the first time every Gary in the league was traded on the same day, provided there was more than one Gary in the league at the time. All three will have an opportunity to start anew, although some landed in better situations than others. Trent Jr. will get a chance to develop in the Raptors excellent system, should he stick around as a restricted free agent. Clark heads to Denver where minutes may be scarce, but he’ll be on a winner. Harris, meanwhile, goes to a rebuilding Orlando squad, but he very well could be there for a relatively short time, as next year at the deadline, he will likely draw plenty of attention as an elite defensive guard.

As a student, I always thought perfect attendance awards were dumb. Then I became a teacher, and I still thought they were silly. Then I became a parent and the full scope of how ridiculous they are became crystal clear.

Apparently, I’m not alone. A mom’s post calling out perfect attendance awards for how they impact her chronically ill daughter has gone viral, with thousands of people agreeing with her.

Twitter user Kat (@chronicparent30) wrote, “All the kids with 100% attendance at my daughter’s school get an Easter egg this week. The rest don’t. I despise attendance awards. Anyway today I’m going to go buy my daughter, who’ll never get 100% attendance due to chronic illness, a huge Easter egg.”

Her post received more than 545,000 likes and 43,000 retweets.

Perfect attendance awards are presumably supposed to encourage good habits in kids. But there are two main reasons they need to go.

The first, as this mother points out without saying it directly, is that they are unfair. Children have very little control over when and how they get to school, so who is really being rewarded or punished for attendance? Parents? But the kids who get the reward are the ones who are able to get to school every day on time because they are privileged in some way—they never get really sick, they don’t have any ongoing health issues, they don’t have any tragedies that occur during the year, and they don’t have a parent with a disability/mental illness/work schedule/etc. that might occasionally impede a kid getting to school.

Not everything in life is fair, of course, nor does everything have to be. But if we’re rewarding kids for something that’s largely out of their control and for something that requires a certain level of privilege to attain, that’s not the kind of unfair that should be accepted and perpetuated. We’re literally teaching kids that privilege should be celebrated. Gross.

The second reason perfect attendance awards should be eliminated is because, rather than encouraging good habits, they actually encourage unhealthy ones.

Kids should absolutely not go to school sick, and they certainly shouldn’t be incentivized to do so. That was always true, but it’s especially important now that we’ve experienced a global pandemic. If you’re sick, you should stay home. Period.

There’s also real value in taking days off sometimes, even if you’re not physically ill. I’ve written before about how grateful I was to my dad for letting me take a mental health day when I was in high school. I was an honors student, very involved in school activities, and I broke down in tears one day on the way to school. I told him I needed a break, and he immediately turned the car around and headed home. It was the kindest thing he could have done, and it also taught me a valuable lesson about taking a break when you need one. Giving awards for perfect attendance discourages mental health care that some kids desperately need.

As a former teacher, I understand that it’s easier when kids always come to class. It’s extra work to help get a kid caught up on what they’ve missed. But I would much rather one of my students miss my class because they’re sick, overly stressed, visiting grandma on her deathbed, going to a doctor’s or dentist’s or therapist’s appointment—or heck, even going on a family vacation during the off-peak season because it’s what their family can afford—than to feel like they absolutely should never miss a day of school.

School is important, absolutely. But so is health. So is family life. And perfect attendance awards send the absolute wrong message that it’s somehow desirable and praiseworthy to never take a day off, even when you have good reason to. That’s a toxic message that none of us should embrace for our kids or for ourselves.

We have enough overworked, overstressed adults who don’t know how to care for their physical and mental health. We don’t need to instill into kids the message that taking the time you need, for whatever reason, is some sort of moral failure or that ignoring your needs is the right thing to do. Kids and parents know that kids need to be in class the vast majority of the time, and the kids who get perfect attendance awards aren’t the ones with attendance problems to begin with.

It’s time to just drop the whole idea once and for all.

The GameStop stock surge earlier this year made plenty of retail traders a lot of money, causing chaos across the stock market and drawing the attention of basically everyone online. That story is still playing out today, and those who still have the stock have followed along intently through those stock surges.

As it turns out, though, the Mormon Church has also found itself with diamond hands as it bought millions of dollars of tech stocks through its investment arm. As Business Insider outlined, the church’s $100 billion investment firm, Ensign Peak Advisors, bought big into some tech stocks in recent months according to SEC filings. And that includes millions of dollars in GameStop stock, which it bought for cheap and currently made a huge profit on.

The fund snapped up 46,000 GameStop shares for less than $19 each last quarter as well. That stake was worth $22 million at the height of the short squeeze in January, when GameStop’s stock price briefly hit $483. It’s still valued at about $7 million at the current share price, compared to less than $900,000 at the end of December.

Ensign, which is more than 50 years old, grew its total holdings from 1,740 to more than 1,850 during the period. The overall value of its US stock portfolio rose by 11% to $44 billion.

The SEC filing said that Ensign bought into companies like Tesla (quadrupling its holdings) and GameStop while cutting its positions on more traditional companies like Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft. Interestingly, as Business Insider points out the church doesn’t invest in companies it finds “objectionable,” or that sell products that go against their religious beliefs. Tobacco, coffee companies and gambling aren’t in the portfolio, even companies like Coca-Cola aren’t in there. But apparently, video games and Funko Pops are good in their book. And making them lots of money.

If you’ve ever wondered what pilots talk about while they’re queuing up in the taxi phase of your flight… maybe it’s better that you don’t know. According to travel site One Mile At A Time, two weeks ago a hot mic incident was recorded over the Mineta San Jose International Airport’s air traffic control scanner that caught a pilot ranting about San Jose in what we can only describe as very, extremely a lot.

The hard-to-decipher audio, which can be found at LiveATC, captures the pilot saying things like “F*ck this place, goddamn liberal fucks.” “Eight guns out here somewhere as it is” which, okay, not sure what that means. “F*cking weirdos, probably driving around in fucking Hyundais, f*cking roads and sh*t that go slow as f*ck.” And this gem, “You don’t have balls unless you’re f*cking rolling coal man, g*ddamnit.”

Coal. That famous fuel source that powers jet engines.

SF Gate reveals that the pilot in question is an employee at Southwest Airlines, with a spokesperson for the company confirming to the publication that they are “fully addressing the situation internally.” Aside from this being disturbing, it’s also a matter that the FAA — which officially operates the control towers — takes incredibly seriously. They’ve indicated that they reported the incident to the airline that employs the pilot and is further investigating the situation.

“FAA regulations prohibit airline pilots from talking about subjects that are unrelated to safely conducting their flight while taxing and while flying below 10,000 feet altitude,” wrote FAA spokesperson Ian Gregor in a statement regarding the incident.

We can all agree the last thing we want from our pilots is for them to openly express how they hate us all while dropping us off at home. If we could rate them like Uber drivers (not a terrible idea), this guy would be in trouble.

The Houston Rockets, fresh off a 20-game losing streak, spent the trade deadline frantically trying to salvage something in the way of value for Victor Oladipo. In the end, all they could manage for the former All-Star was Kelly Olynyk, Avery Bradley, and a 2022 pick swap with Miami — which seems like it will almost assuredly not convey since Miami is significantly better than Houston — thus wrapping up what will go down as one of the worst superstar trades in recent memory.

When James Harden made his request to be moved, Houston found itself in the unenviable position of having to find something approaching value for a perennial MVP candidate. That is almost impossible, but recent superstar deals have provided at least a blueprint for what success looks like.

Oladipo himself was part of such a deal in being sent to Indiana along with Domantas Sabonis for Paul George, as Indy landed a pair of young, talented players who became All-Stars in a bigger role. George was again dealt for a king’s ransom to the Clippers from Oklahoma City, which netted a number of future picks but, arguably more importantly, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who looks like a future All-Star in his own right. The Pelicans shipped Anthony Davis to the Lakers for a stable of young talent, one of whom became an All-Star in Brandon Ingram, and some picks. In totality, the formula was simple: Find the best possible young talent, add the picks, and hope they become something.

Brooklyn had the young talent to pique the Rockets interest, leading with Caris LeVert and Jarrett Allen. The Sixers were reportedly willing to part ways with a current All-Star in Ben Simmons, but Houston went with the Nets offer, which built itself into a four-team deal. In the trade, Houston got four first round picks, with the Bucks 2022 pick, the Nets’ first rounders in 2022, 2024, and 2026, along with three pick-swap rights in the odd years from 2021-2027. What those picks turn into will be important in possibly taking the sting out of what comes next, but the immediate return for Harden saw the other teams that joined the deal to help facilitate it all end up with the better players. Rather than bring LeVert and Allen to Houston, the Nets diverted Allen (and Taurean Prince) to Cleveland and LeVert to Indiana so they could nab Victor Oladipo, along with Dante Exum and Rodions Kurucs who are, effectively, non-factors.

That choice very well may end up haunting this Rockets franchise for years, as Oladipo, who was still yet to establish himself as the All-Star he once was pre-quad injury, turned down their extension offer and then failed to produce at a level to create any sort of market that would allow them to sell high at the trade deadline. The result was the aforementioned Olynyk and Bradley package that offers nothing in the way of future assets or quality young players, and simply was a deal to avoid the ignominy of seeing the centerpiece of the Harden deal walk for nothing. Still, when you put the entire package together, it’s clear that of the three teams involved, one got the absolute least out the Harden trade in terms of current players.

Rockets: Avery Bradley, Kelly Olynyk, Dante Exum, and Rodions Kurucs
Pacers: Caris LeVert
Cavaliers: Jarrett Allen and Taurean Prince
Nets: James Harden
Heat: Victor Oladipo

Yikes. The picks, of course, matter, but only one of those even seems to have a chance of being a lottery pick. It’s possible the 2026 Nets pick becomes valuable, if that coincides with a rebuild in Brooklyn, but considering the talent they gave up, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the Rockets did worse. The pick swaps with Brooklyn aren’t going to convey in 2021 or 2023, the 2022 Nets and Bucks picks will almost assuredly be at the very end of the first round, and the 2024 pick very likely will as well. Even if all they do is make the deal happen without the Bucks pick, keep the Cavs and Pacers totally out of it, and just bring LeVert, Oladipo, and Prince back to Houston, all of this looks significantly better.

There is naturally hindsight involved here, but even in the moment choosing Oladipo over LeVert and Allen was a gigantic gamble. Questions about his health weren’t new and after an offseason of trade rumors produced nothing, it should come as little surprise that a strong market didn’t form for him at the deadline. His strong desire to make lots of money in free agency was well known, and as such, an extension was never going to materialize. LeVert, meanwhile, was in the first year of a team friendly deal, and even with the time missed after finding the cancerous mass on his kidney, he has returned for Indiana and brought them some much needed scoring and helped stabilize them after a bit of a freefall. Allen will be a restricted free agent next year and has been terrific both in Brooklyn and Cleveland this year, meaning he at minimum would’ve been a great trade asset at the deadline if not a piece to add to their core for the future.

And then there is the objective fact that Simmons, if he was indeed on the table, is better than every other player mentioned in this deal other than Harden. Not only that, Simmons is under contract until the 2025 offseason, giving the Rockets time to build around him — this is where opting for Oladipo or the Nets players over him is particularly curious, because the team would have the security that comes from someone being under a long-term contract. The team would have something tangible in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term if it opted to bring Simmons on board, along with whatever combination of picks and players Philadelphia would have offered. Perhaps the Sixers ended up reneging on any sort of offer and took Simmons off the table, but even if we did not have the benefit of hindsight, it is fair to question the Rockets’ thought process here. If reporting that the Sixers offer was rebuffed out of the hubris of ownership not wanting to make a deal with the recently departed Daryl Morey, then it makes their situation even worse. If ownership isn’t willing to make the best decisions in the interest of the team, but instead out of personal feelings and contempt, then the situation in Houston won’t ever get better.

There was brief hope in Houston that this could all work, as they ran out to 11-10 behind Oladipo, John Wall, and Christian Wood, but injuries and a decline in efficiency and effectiveness from Oladipo quickly stripped away all of that optimism. It’s all highly unfortunate, but it wasn’t as though this outcome couldn’t be foreseen in the moment. Of all the superstar trades we’ve seen in recent years, somehow, the Rockets ended up with what looks like the worst return for arguably the best player of the bunch — and the player under contract for the longest, meaning the price couldn’t even get driven down from fears of him leaving after a year.

For a Rockets fan in search of something positive, it’s possible this all works out by winning the lottery after bottoming out this year, allowing them to draft Cade Cunningham, who becomes the generational talent he appears to be and lifts the Rockets from the morass. But if they don’t land that top pick — especially if they fall out of the top-4 and the pick conveys to Oklahoma City — it’s quite possible that the Harden trade will have set this franchise back for years. Even in a Draft with tremendous talent at the top, they won’t have added players or assets to assist in building around them for the future. They failed to get a quality draft pick for the first four-plus years of the trade, failed to get a young player that provides any promise, and failed to get a veteran that could be a core piece of a swift reload rather than rebuild.

The Indiana Pacers entered the 2020-21 season hoping to continue building off of a solid, even if unspectacular 2019-20 campaign. With Domantas Sabonis coming off his best season and the emergence of T.J. Warren in the Bubble, there was plenty to be optimistic about, but Warren suffered a foot fracture in late December after a solid start to the season and has been out ever since.

Warren had surgery in January and there had been hope he might return for the Pacers’ playoff push, but on Thursday the team announced that he was officially done for the season.

It’s a major blow to Indiana’s hopes of making much of a run in the postseason this year. After trading Victor Oladipo, they struggled mightily with finding enough perimeter scoring punch to keep up in games until Caris LeVert’s was finally able to play. With LeVert, they’ve once again looked like a solid playoff team, but without Warren it’s hard to imagine them as being dynamic enough to keep pace with the East’s best. Warren will hopefully be back next year in a contract year for him, as he hits free agency in 2022, and the Pacers will have to proceed the rest of this season without him and determine their best course of action for building this summer, with him back in the picture for next year.