Month: May 2021

Kevin Garnett will forever be associated with Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan. Their careers all intersected with one another, and Garnett had to go up against both on numerous occasions — with Bryant, it was in multiple Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals tilts, and with Duncan, it was for the title of the best power forward in the league. All three fierce competitors, each member of the trio seemed to have that little something extra saved up for when they’d go toe-to-toe on the hardwood.

Now, their association is more powerful than ever, as all three are getting inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in the class of 2020. Garnett kicked off the ceremony on Saturday night, and in his speech, he made it a point to celebrate his fellow headliners.

“I wanted to say, Timmy, thank you, man,” Garnett said. “Congratulations to you and Kob, seriously. There was nothing [more] epic than when we battled, I looked forward to all the battles, seriously. And I thank you for taking you to another level, you and Rasheed [Wallace]. I appreciate you. It’s an honor to go in the Hall with you, bro, you and Kob. Congratulations Vanessa, I love y’all.”

Garnett’s battles with both certainly seemed to get quite heated, which isn’t a surprise when players as good and competitive as these three took the floor. But at the end of the day, there’s love here, and KG made it a point to end his speech by making that clear.

Joe Exotic’s attempts to get a pardon from Donald Trump failed before his fellow reality TV star left office in disgrace, but according to the animal enthusiast his health has taken a turn for the worst. Exotic, who owned a wild animal preserve in Oklahoma and was convicted of setting up a murder-for-hire plot of a competitor, says he has prostate cancer.

According to TMZ, the Tiger King star who is still in jail for the various crimes he committed that were detailed in the Netflix series is hoping for a release from jail due to his diagnosis. As Exotic told the outlet, his PSA count for prostate cancer came back “very high” but has not been diagnosed by a doctor.

He seems to say it’s clear he has prostate cancer, because he says, “The prison has approved testing to verify what state it is in.” It appears there has been no diagnosis by a doctor.

Joe’s lawyer, John M. Phillips, tells TMZ, Joe is scheduled to undergo further testing in prison, however, the facility is limited in what it can do. Phillips is trying to get Joe a new trial.

Joe says he’s riddled with disease … “I have lost a tremendous amount of weight, the mouth sores are out of control, I throw up more than I eat. I don’t want anyone’s pity, what I need is when John Phillips gets the evidence he is working on, I need the world to help him get President Biden, VP Harris and the Attorney General to listen to the evidence.”

It’s the latest turn for Exotic, who has tried since Tiger King’s release on Netflix early in the pandemic last year to find a way out of prison. The show’s success made Exotic a household name, but he’s been unable to turn that publicity into any legal reasoning for him to get out of prison. Exotic even famously tried to secure a pardon from Trump near the end of his term, later remarking that he was “too gay” to get one from Trump after his efforts failed.

Hopefully he’s OK and gets treatment, but it’s unclear if Exotic’s case is anywhere near Biden’s to-do list these days.

[via TMZ]

The reunion of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez was a shock for many celebrity observers, one of several unexpected coupling announcements in recent weeks. But Jeopardy! is a game show all about knowledge, and some fans wondered what its question writers knew after Friday’s episode featured a question about the now-current couple.

News that the one-time celebrity couple had gotten back together nearly two decades later caused a lot of reaction last week. The phrase “Go Yankees” was among the most notable of responses from Alex Rodriguez. But the term “Bennifer” was now back en vogue, which is why it was shocking for some Jeopardy! fans when a question about the celebrity couple appeared on Friday’s program.

“As a couple, they were jointly known as ‘Bennifer,’” the question read.

As many pointed out online, the show is filmed weeks in advance, so this question about recent history would have been filmed well before even the first rumors that the two were talking. But that didn’t stop a lot of fans from losing it a bit at the oddity of it appearing on Friday’s taping. Especially when, well, a contestant got the question wrong.

Plenty of folks gave the show credit for predicting the future, even if it was just a very fortunate coincidence on their part.

And if you REALLY want to get conspiratorial, the show also had a Montana category. Which is, of course, the state the couple had a very public romantic getaway to seemingly confirm their relationship.

Truly, this life is full of mysteries. And occasionally answers in the form of questions.

The “undo tweet” function is something many users of the social media network Twitter have long asked for, and according to reports getting access to it will cost them. As The Verge detailed on Saturday, that function and more may come to the microblogging platform by way of Twitter Blue, a subscription service that will give users who opt in additional features the free version doesn’t have.

The news was shared by Jane Manchun Wong on, you guessed it, Twitter.

It doesn’t appear to be a true “edit” button, which is what many folks have long asked for. Rather, this appears to operate much like the “undo” function Google’s Gmail has in which it actually delays the sending of an email about a minute in case you change your mind or realize you forgot to include or edit something.

At $2.99 monthly, according to reports, it would be a small price to pay for power users who want additional ways to collect and view Tweets, not to mention additional failsafes in their own tweeting. Wong said it all seems to be part of the company’s recent acquisition of Scroll as well.

Twitter Blue was the talk of the platform on Saturday, with people making jokes about the features and, of course, asking for an edit button as well.

The news is the latest change the platform has added to the social media network, following the more official announcement of a “tip jar” function for people to pay other Twitter users directly for their content. But in this case, it seems the company is asking people to pay them for a few new fun abilities while they tweet.

J. Cole’s The Off-Season is the talk of the music world this weekend. The project is his first solo effort in over three years and everyone is raving about it, from everyday fans to NBA players. And in what’s been a unique press run, at least on Cole’s term, the rapper has shown his face to the media more than some might’ve expected.

From a documentary and a SLAM Magazine cover that also arrived with an interview to an LA Leakers freestyle, it’s clear Cole is not sticking in his cave this time around. Just a little over a day removed from the release of The Off-Season, J. Cole sat down for another interview with Kevin Durant and Eddie Gonzalez on the duo’s podcast, The ETCs.

One highlight of the trio’s nearly 90-minute conversation came when Cole spoke about competing with fellow heavyweight rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar and how he eventually realized it would be better to dial back his competitive nature.

“I’ve never been a reach-out [person], especially because when there’s competition involved,” he said. “It’s almost like working out together. I guess in the NBA, in the past, that was unheard of. Like, ‘Why would I work out with this n****? … I’m trying to destroy this n****.’ That was kind of my mentality early on.”

He added, “But as I’ve gotten older, I realize … no one is truly my peer or can relate to what’s going on in my life better than these people right here — just in terms of whatever pressures there might be … nobody can really relate to that like these dudes, and I really genuinely f*ck with these dudes.”

At that point, Cole realized he had to “strip competition” from not only his approach to Drake and Kendrick but music altogether. “I also see a time when I’m not doing this. That seems very realistic to me,” he revealed. “And in the time when I’m not doing this, I don’t wanna be like, ‘Damn, we never kicked it, we never really did nothing.’”

You can watch a clip of the interview above and listen to the whole episode, which touches on Cole’s family, basketball, and the new album, here. The Off-Season is out now via Dreamville/Roc Nation. Get it here.

Tee Grizzley is a few weeks removed from his latest project, Built For Whatever. The effort is the Detroit rapper’s seventh project since 2017 and it’s one that saw him work with the likes of King Von, Quavo, YNW Melly, Lil Tjay, Baby Grizzley, G Herbo, Big Sean, Babyface Ray, and Young Dolph. It also arrived after he joined Lil Yachty on his Michigan Boat Boy mixtape. While some might expect his focus to be on the project and its promotion, Grizzley took a second to speak about something he deems as important and a topic that fellow rappers need to look into.

In a video he shared to his Instagram story, Grizzly urged rappers to invest in life insurance. “So look right, as rappers, as successful Black men from the trenches, we the No. 1 target and the least prepared,” he said. “I feel like everybody should have life insurance. I need everybody to go get life insurance if you don’t got it. If you got kids, I need you to get a will set up for your kids so, God forbid anything happen, but if anything happen your people ain’t bold after you gone because you weren’t prepared and have your sh*t together.”

He added, “We’re the No. 1 target and we’re the least prepared bro. I need us to get on top of this sh*t, get life insurance, we need get to our wills right so the next generation don’t have to go as hard as we did and have to go through everything we did.”

You can listen to Tee Grizzley’s thoughts in the video above.

It’d be inaccurate to label this stage of Chance The Rapper’s career as anything along the lines of idle or inactivity. The Chicago native is busy on the music side of things as he recently shared “The Heart And The Tongue,” as well as “Shelter,” a collaboration with Vic Mensa. He also premiered a new movie titled, Magnificent Coloring Book, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of his mixtape, Coloring Book, and he’s set to headline the Summerfest 2021 show with Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus.

While that’s an ample plate of tasks, the rapper is adding something else to the mix.

During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Friday night, Chance revealed that he’s working on a reboot for a particular classic movie.

“It’s a secret thing. I’m working on…I got this pitch for a Home Alone reboot,” he said. “As a lot of people know…I’m sure everybody here is a huge fan of Home Alone and John Hughes. Chicago guy, Macaulay Culkin, it’s a Chicago film. Since I was young, I always watched it and I was like, ‘What if there was a hood Home Alone?’ Or Hood Alone, if you will.”

He added, “Just a little more realistic story about what happens when people try to kick in the doors at the wrong house. Hilarity ensues. I can’t give you too many details, but yeah.”

You can watch him talk about the reboot in the video above.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame class had to wait for their enshrinement ceremony. That’s going to get resolved on Saturday, when a loaded class headlined by the late Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, and Kevin Garnett gets forever immortalized in Springfield. But as a separate issue, we still don’t know the players, coaches, and other individuals who will make up the 2021 group.

That is slated to change on Saturday, as the 2021 class will be announced at the museum. According to multiple reports, we know two of the players who are expected to make up the list. Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated brings word that Ben Wallace is headed to Springfield, while Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe reports that Paul Pierce will unsurprisingly be inducted.

Wallace and Pierce were two of the best players of the ’00s, although their impacts were most frequently felt on opposite ends of the floor. Wallace is one of the greatest defensive players of all-time, a four-time Defensive Player of the Year who anchored the fearsome defense that the Detroit Pistons rode to an NBA championship in 2004. The first undrafted player to get inducted, Wallace played for the Washington Bullets/Wizards, Orlando Magic, Detroit Pistons, Chicago Bulls, and Cleveland Cavaliers in his career before eventually returning to the Pistons and retiring in 2012.

Pierce, meanwhile, was an offensive maestro during his career, earning 10 All-Star nods and winning NBA Finals MVP with the Boston Celtics in 2008. While he suited up for a number of other teams — the Brooklyn Nets, Washington Wizards, and Los Angeles Clippers — towards the end of his career, Pierce is one of the greatest Celtics of all-time, owning a number of team records from his 15 years with the franchise.

Getting vaccinated against the novel coronavirus certainly has its perks, starting with an almost certain escape from hospitalization and death if exposed to COVID-19. But there are other benefits to getting the jab, and for race fans in Alabama on Saturday, one of those perks was pretty spectacular.

Talladega Superspeedway, the legendary NASCAR track where restrictor plates do very little to prevent people flying three wide at more than 200 miles per hour, let vaccinated race fans take their own cars out onto the track to get in some laps after taking a COVID test. Or, better yet, you could get the jab and then celebrate with a few spins around the 2.5-mile behemoth.

There’s getting a free beer in Buffalo for getting a jab, and then there’s experiencing a 33-degree bank in the corners of a superspeedway with your street-ready Subaru.

As several people experienced for themselves and then tweeted about, the experience looks cool as hell.

Even pro drivers understood the experience would be one-in-a-lifetime for many fans, which is why guys like Jeff Gordon seemed just as excited about the offer as anyone.

Hopefully everyone was as safe on the track as they were in getting vaccinated and helping us get closer to ending the pandemic once and for all. And at the very least, they got a very cool experience at one of the fastest tracks in America.

Lil Reese was reportedly caught again in the midst of gunfire in his hometown of Chicago. The city’s local news station, CWB Chicago revealed the rapper was among three men who were shot in Chicago’s River North neighborhood on Saturday morning. The outlet reports that two of the men are listed in critical condition at Northwestern Memorial Hospital while the remaining individual was taken to Stroger Hospital in serious condition. It’s unknown to which of these two hospitals Reese was admitted.

CTWB says police officers were called to 6 West Grand Avenue around 9:53 a.m. on Saturday after calls about a shooting were made. When they arrived at the scene they discovered Reese and the two other victims, one who is 20 years of age while the other was 27 years old. Officers also found a stolen Dodge Durango riddled with bullet holes that crashed near the scene. A video of the aftermath shows cops investigating the scene and detaining a man.

The incident comes 18 months after Lil Reese was left in critical condition following a previous shooting that also occurred in Chicago. Here, according to WGN, the rapper was shot in the neck by a man with an AK-47 assault rifle in the Country Club Hills suburb of the city. Witnesses at the scene claimed to have heard as many as 12 gunshots. Fortunately, the rapper was able to make a full recovery following the shooting.