Month: June 2021

Game 7 of the Mavs-Clippers series began as so many have, with Luka Doncic dominating with 29 first half points, getting seemingly anything he wanted against the L.A. defense.

But unlike Dallas’ previous wins in L.A., the Clippers were able to match Doncic’s early offensive onslaught shot for shot to take a 70-62 lead into the break. That the Mavs were trailing by eight after a Herculean effort from Luka seemed to not bode well for them, but they made a quick run to take a five-point lead themselves early in the third quarter with some hot shooting and the Clippers going cold.

In a series filled with wild swings and runs, it was reasonable to wonder if L.A. was once again going to let Dallas march out to a big lead in their own building, but Kawhi Leonard had different ideas. Leonard had 13 points in the first quarter and none in the second, but he took over on both ends of the floor in the second half after Dallas’ initial burst and the Clippers ripped off a 24-4 run to close the quarter and take a 15-point lead into the final frame.

As big as the two top stars played in Game 7, it was about the others who were able to step up for L.A. in a way the Mavs simply couldn’t. Ty Lue pressed all the right buttons with his rotation, while Rick Carlisle was seemingly scrambling, trying to find anyone who could provide support for Doncic. Terance Mann was sensational getting early minutes off the bench and scoring 13 points in the first half to give the Clippers a big lift.

Luke Kennard, who had barely been used to this point of the series hit three big three-pointers in Game 7 on his way to an 11-point night in 14 minutes, including a few big buckets during L.A.’s third quarter run.

Marcus Morris hit a new playoff career high with seven three-pointers on nine attempts as he provided a much-needed 23 point effort.

On the other side, the Mavs just couldn’t consistently knock down shots, a combination of a swarming Clippers defense, headed up by Kawhi Leonard at the point of attack on Luka and just some flat out misses on good looks on the perimeter. Luka, after going cold and looking gassed for much of the second half, found a second wind late and got the Clipper lead down to as few as seven with just over two minutes to play in the fourth quarter with some ridiculous shot-making.

But as they had all game, L.A. had the answer to keep them at arm’s length in the form of threes from Reggie Jackson and Marcus Morris to put the dagger in the Mavs as they went on to win 126-111.

In the end, Doncic had 46 points, 14 assists, and seven rebounds, but he just couldn’t keep up the scoring pace by himself to keep Dallas close. Unlike early in the series, his teammates went cold from three-point range at the wrong time, with the non-Luka Mavs shooting a dismal 5-of-25 from three (and Dorian Finney-Smith was 4-of-7). On the other side, Kawhi was magnificent with 28 points, 10 rebounds, nine assists, and four steals, but it was the shooting of the others that was the difference. L.A. was 20-of-43 from deep, led by Morris’ 7-of-9 performance, while Jackson, Mann, and Kennard combined to go 8-of-16 from deep. Paul George gave a strong performance as well with 22 points, 10 assists, and six rebounds, as he and Leonard took turns orchestrating the Clipper offense and ran it beautifully.

The Mavs will now enter an offseason where they will be tasked with figuring out how to upgrade the roster to be more consistent in terms of two-way contributions. We know Mark Cuban will be aggressive if able to make that happen, but what that entails remains to be seen. The Porzingis pairing is clearly not maximizing the team upside in the way Dallas had hoped when they brought him in and it’s unclear if that can be fixed with a different rotation around them or if the Mavs will look to explore trade avenues to completely shuffle the deck around their young superstar.

For the Clippers, it was a show of resilience, both in Game 7 and in the series as a whole that could be massive for them as a franchise. After how they finished in the Bubble and how this series started, coming away with a seven-game series win and getting the best of Kawhi Leonard in two win or go home situations was the type of performance that will go a long way in building their confidence that they can in fact make a deep run in this year’s playoffs, with a stiff test against the top-seeded Jazz up next.

Kehlani has been known to date both men and women, but at the end of April she came out as strictly lesbian. “Wanna know what’s new about me?” she said during an Instagram Live. “I finally know I’m a lesbian.” A couple of weeks later, she doubled down in a TikTok video, saying, “I am gay gay gay gay gay.” Recently, Kehlani, who has a two-year-old daughter, shared how her child’s father, Javaughn Young-White, reacted to her coming out as lesbian.

“I have a two-year-old daughter…She’s the best,” Kehlani said during Facebook Watch’s Pride On! Kehlani & Larray’s Excellent Pride Ride. “Me and her dad are like really, really close friends, and the decision to start a family was really easy for us because we both believed in each other’s ability to be good parents.” She added, “We just focus on being a team, honestly, and when I was able to tell him, like, I’ve come to newer terms with my sexuality and he’s super super super supportive.”

Kehlani also detailed how she and Young-White normalize different parental relationships with their daughter, saying, “Like usually where people would bring up ‘mom and dad,’ we also say ‘mom and mom’ and ‘dad and dad.’”

You can watch the full Pride On! Kehlani & Larray’s Excellent Pride Ride episode here.

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

Taylor Swift’s second 2020 album, Evermore, was released a surprise follow-up to her summer record, Folklore. Something of a wintry counterpart to the earlier release, it took a few months for Evermore‘s vinyl production, so orders placed for the December 2020 album were only shipped out a few days ago. When those vinyl numbers were tallied, it became clear that sales of the album would set a new record for single-week purchases of a vinyl album, and now, the vinyl boost has taken the project back to the No. 1 spot on the Billboard albums chart.

With its return, Evermore has four non-consecutive weeks at the No. 1 slot, and that figure boosts Taylor’s total weeks with a No. 1 album to 53, breaking her out of a tie with Garth Brooks at 52 weeks, and giving her the third most weeks in the No. 1 spot. The Beatles have the most with 132 and Elvis Presley comes in second at 67. Hey, she might still be a long way off from the Fab Four, but if we get another pair of new records anytime soon, Elvis doesn’t stand a chance.

With 202,000 equivalent units sold, Taylor breaks her own record for biggest opening of 2021, when Fearless (Taylor’s Version) sold 179,000. And off the 202,000 units, 102,000 were from vinyl sales, no mean feat! Read more about the album’s record-breaking sales week on Billboard.

A lot of NBA teams have their very own high profile fans, sitting courtside, passionately supporting their team. The New York Knicks have Spike Lee. The Dallas Mavericks have Mark Cuban. (He, of course, is also the team’s owner, but his in-game support is uniquely fervent.) And the Atlanta Hawks have Quavo, who showed off his zealotry during their Sunday playoff game with the Philadelphia 76ers.

The Migos rapper attended the game, which took place in Philadelphia, not in his hometown of Atlanta. The final score was 128-124 in favor of the Hawks, but there was one point in the game where the Hawks led by a whopping 22 points. In-game clips show Quavo absolutely loving his team’s success, breaking out raise-the-roof gestures and a pair of three-point celebrations. Fans of the rapper watching the game at home took note of his antics on Twitter.

“Quavo in philly cheering for the hawks with this 26 point lead!!!” one person wrote, accompanied by a Spongebob meme. Another asked, “Is Quavo our Spike Lee?”

Quavo’s courtside celebrations come less than a week before he and his Migos counterparts are set to release their fourth album, Culture III.

You can check out more reactions to Quavo below.

The Brooklyn Nets won Game 1 of their first round series against the Bucks thanks in large part to the efforts of Mike James and Blake Griffin, who combined for 30 points in the opener to help fill the significant hole left behind by James Harden leaving the game a minute in after aggravating the hamstring injury that caused him to miss time late in the regular season.

Harden came up limping after his first drive of the game and never returned, but with the efforts of Griffin and James, alongside strong nights from Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, they still got the win. That said, the margin for error against a good Milwaukee team is much slimmer without Harden, and the team confirmed on Sunday that the star point guard would not play in Game 2 with what is officially being deemed right hamstring tightness.

That will put a premium once again on the Nets to find not just scoring from others beyond Durant and Irving, but most importantly more playmaking to keep their offense humming. Kyrie Irving will play more of that point guard role and he facilitated well in the opener with eight assists. James figures to get ample opportunity to continue his strong play from Game 1, and if there is a positive it’s that the Nets injury issues all season have given Steve Nash plenty of time to try different lineups and he knows what bench players play best with his starters and vice versa.

As for when Harden could return, Nash said Harden hopes to be back soon but that the team will protect his health first and foremost.

As president, Donald J. Trump wasn’t just evil and he wasn’t just stupid. He was also weird. Every day, it seemed, he gifted the world with something uniquely bizarre. You probably forget about some of them. Remember the orb? Him telling a seven-year-old Santa isn’t real? Kim Jong-un’s giant letter? The hidden Coke bottle? The weirdness, it piled up. We don’t get that every day, like we used to. But perhaps one can take comfort in this: On Saturday, he gave a speech while appearing to have his pants on backwards. He’s still got it!

The president-turned-failed blogger made a now-rare public appearance at a to-do for North Carolina’s Republican party. It was a greatest hits show. He bashed Biden. He spread 2020 election lies. He tried to take credit for the COVID-19 vaccine. He slurred words. In other words, he gave the people what they wanted. And he did it all while appearing to wear pants that didn’t have a zipper, at least in the front, where it’s supposed to be.

This was probably not true. The professional debunkers at Snopes declared the claim that he had backwards or elastic dress pants false, saying there was other footage from the same speech where he clearly had pants.

But the damage was already done.

Some remarked on how far he’s fallen. Sort of.

Others made Kris Kross jokes.

And other comparisons.

Some said Trump was making his successor look even better.

Others made jokes about Hope Hicks, his former political advisor, who he reportedly once chastised for not steaming his pants.

And there were other jokes.

True or not, it left some people outraged that they had to once more think about Donald Trump’s crotch.

Prior to Game 1 of the Hawks-Sixers series, the injury update from both teams seemed to indicate good news for Philadelphia. The 76ers announced Joel Embiid would start and play after missing a game with a small tear in his right meniscus, while the Hawks would be without De’Andre Hunter due to right knee soreness.

The scene in Philadelphia was lively as expected, with Joel Embiid emerging pregame with Triple H to throw crotch chops at the crowd and ring the bell, but the excitement for the Sixers faithful quickly turned to despair after one quarter of play as the Hawks jumped out to a 42-27 lead thanks to the continued sensational play from Trae Young. The Hawks superstar had 25 points and eight assists in the first half, carving up the Philly defense, who started the game with Danny Green on him who simply could not keep Young in front of him.

Around Young, the Hawks role players were doing there job, which is to hit the open threes that Young creates when he collapses the defense. Bogdan Bogdanovic, John Collins, Lou Williams, Kevin Huerter, and Solomon Hill all hit two or more threes on the night to help Young, as Atlanta went 20-for-47 from deep on the afternoon, doing what was needed to keep the Sixers at arms length for most of the day.

The Hawks led by 20 at the half and extended that further at points in the third, but in general, the second half was much better from the Sixers, who steadily chipped away at the Atlanta lead with a much improved two-way effort, headlined by this sequence in the third quarter from Ben Simmons.

But in impressive fashion, the Hawks were able to answer most of the Sixers’ second half runs with a timely bucket of their own.

However, things got very dicey late as Philly cut the Hawks lead to as few as three on a pair of occasions as Atlanta melted down with five second calls, turnovers, and other mistakes that showed their youth and inexperience in the worst possible situations, as Philly finally got going from deep and Embiid had some big baskets.

Despite going cold for much of the fourth, Bogdan Bogdanovic was the one able to hit the big three the Hawks needed after the Sixers got it down to three after Atlanta nearly turned it over once again at midcourt but Bogi got the three off in the scramble drill to push the lead back to six.

The Sixers would again cut it to three, but a clear path foul effectively ended the game, giving John Collins a pair of free throws and then he got an and-1 on this lob after Philly tried to steal/foul Young but didn’t get the whistle.

The Sixers somehow got it to all the way back down to two points with a late steal on an inbound, but Bogdanovic was able to convert both free throws with just inside 10 seconds to go and Tobias Harris’ late, leaning three went begging to give the Hawks a Game 1 win. It was a valiant comeback effort from the Sixers, but their early mistakes were just too much to overcome. Young was sensational, finishing the game with 35 points and 10 assists, with most of his damage coming in the first half. Bogdanovic and Collins each had 21 points and Huerter had 15 off the bench in a key performance.

Philly will be kicking themselves for their pitiful first quarter showing, and now has to regroup going into Game 2. If there were a silver lining for the Sixers it’s that Embiid looked like his usual self with 39 points, nine rebounds, four assists, and three blocks in his first game off of injury. The recipe for the Sixers disastrous afternoon was a combination of mediocre shooting (10-of-29 from three), far too many turnovers (19 including nine in the first quarter), and a dismal game-plan against the Trae Young pick-and-roll to start the game. There may be some confidence built off of what they did late, but the game was lost early, particularly with the bench unit to end the first quarter and open the second.

It’ll be interesting to see if Doc Rivers makes some major adjustments for Game 2 to his rotation, because the minutes without any of his Big 3 on the floor were dreadful. On the other side, the fourth quarter gave Atlanta plenty of film to watch themselves on how to better handle a lead and handle the pressure Philly is capable of turning up on defense, because in games where the shooting discrepancy isn’t as large, that’s going to be a deciding factor.

Nearly three years after Mac Miller’s tragic death, the individuals accused of selling him the drugs that led to his fatal overdose have received a new trial date. AllHipHop reports Cameron Pettit, Stephen Walter, and Ryan Reavis are all due in court on November 16 to face conspiracy and distribution of drugs resulting in death charges. The trio was arrested a year after Miller’s death following an investigation that revealed they were responsible for giving the rapper cocaine, oxycodone, and Xanax. Officers also noted that the pills Mac received were counterfeit and also contained fentanyl.

According to the charges, the rapper bought the pills from Petit after they were run to him by Reavis and supplied by Walter. US Attorney Nick Hanna’s case says the trio continued selling drugs following Miller’s death despite being aware of the fatal risk their supply posed against people. Petit was the first to be arrested and later on, Reavis’ Lake Havasu, Arizona home was raided by the DEA where they found prescription pills, guns, and ammunition. Walter was taken into custody in Los Angeles on the same day of the raid.

In addition to the aforementioned charges, Reavis also faces charges for fraudulent schemes and artifices, possession of marijuana, possession of prescription drugs, possession of drug paraphernalia, weapons misconduct by a prohibited possessor, and manufacture of a prohibited weapon. He requested to have his trial be separate from his co-defendants because he was only an “alleged runner and minor participant, who is only alleged to be involved in one transaction,” according to his lawyer Correen Ferrentino. This request, however, was denied by a judge.

Mac Miller is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

After going almost four years without an album, St. Vincent returned this year with her seventh full-length work, Daddy’s Home. Prior to the project’s release, St. Vincent spoke about the album’s sound with The New Cue — a new newsletter from former Q Magazine editors Ted Kessler, Chris Catchpole, and Niall Doherty. “I would say it’s the sound of being down and out downtown in New York, 1973,” she said. “Glamour that hasn’t slept for three days.” Now, the singer will dive further into the 1970s period with her brand new radio show on Apple Music.

The show is titled WSTV Radio and it will find St. Vincent taking on the role of a 1970s New York City DJ. According to Rolling Stone, each episode follows a “day in the life” theme as Vincent plays hit songs from the ’70s and premieres “new” songs from soon-to-be music legends. The official description of the show gave more insight into what fans can expect.

“On WSTV Radio, the innovative art-rocker introduces her latest persona as she throws it back to the ’70s—tapping into the decade’s news, traffic, weather, and biggest hits by playing an NYC radio DJ,” it reads. “Clark takes a ‘day in the life’ approach on each episode, staying true to the day’s events as pulled from news archives. She’ll transport you back in time by playing the top three charting songs and new song ‘premieres’ from up-and-coming artists (who ended up making it big, of course) she took inspiration from while making her latest album Daddy’s Home.”

The first episode of WSTV Radio aired on June 4 and was set on August 15, 1972. St. Vincent revisited Long Island’s Festival of Hope, which featured artists like Jefferson Airplane, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and James Brown.

You can listen to the WSTV Radio show here.

It’s been three years since the Dallas Mavericks made the blockbuster trade with the Knicks to bring Kristaps Porzingis in to be Luka Doncic’s second star, but to this point the partnership has been far more one-sided than the Mavs had hoped when they maxed out Porzingis.

Health has remained an issue for the Latvian star, but even when he’s been on the court his production, particularly in key situations like this year’s first round series against the Clippers, has not matched up with the investment the Mavs made in him. Alternately, the other player the Mavs got in that trade, Tim Hardaway Jr., has been good for Dallas, particularly during this postseason. That has been what many consider to be a bonus since Hardaway was considered a bit of an afterthought in the Porzingis deal, but his father insists it was the other way around.

Tim Hardaway Sr. went on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas this weekend and made the claim that it was Porzingis who was the throw-in player for the Mavs, saying they initiated conversations with the Knicks about Hardaway first and then found out Porzingis was available.

“Y’all wrong, the conversation was they were trying to get Tim here,” Hardaway said. “I’m serious. I’m going to tell you the truth. Dallas wanted to get Tim. … I’m telling you the God’s honest truth, and they aren’t going to tell you that, (but) I know for a fact that they said, ‘(the Knicks) what you think about Porzingis?’ And they (the Mavs) were like, ‘Porzingis is available?’ And they (the Mavs) were like, ‘what you thinking?’ And they (the Knicks) were like, ‘hmm, okay, let’s put this together and we’ll call you back.’ They put something together and something happened.

“Now, everybody is saying that Tim Hardaway Jr. was a throw-in. No, Porzingis was a throw-in. Because they (the Mavs) called for Tim Hardaway Jr., and they were going to make a deal for Tim Hardaway Jr., and it so happened that the Knicks didn’t want Porzingis anymore because of what he demanded. So, when people say Tim Hardaway Jr. was a throw-in that pisses me off because nobody knows what really happened.”

Now, one has to consider the source in something like this, but it’s not unthinkable for the initial conversation to be about Hardaway Jr. and for Porzingis to then later come up and the two sides realizing they could work something out for both. The Mavs have pushed back on the idea that Hardaway Jr. was anything less than a significant part of the deal and that seems to be the point that Hardaway Sr. is making — although, saying Porzingis was “a throw-in” is certainly going to raise eyebrows.

Porzingis’ production in the regular season has been terrific, as has Hardaway’s, but it’s been in key moments in close games and in these playoffs where the frustration about Porzingis has been clear. His impact has simply not been where it needs to be for the Mavs and if it were, Dallas may very well be already on to the second round against Utah rather than facing a Game 7 in L.A. on Sunday afternoon.