Month: July 2021

While it took him a little longer than he’d have liked, Chris Paul has finally gotten a team to the NBA Finals. And in the eyes of the star of the other team his Phoenix Suns are playing, what Paul has been able to do to get them to this point has been nothing short of amazing.

Giannis Antetokounmpo spoke to the media on Saturday afternoon and praised the way Paul has performed during his first year in Phoenix and his 16th in the league. While he stressed that “we gotta compete against him, we gotta make it as tough as possible for him” when they step onto the floor, Antetokounmpo took some time to marvel at the “high level” Paul’s played at during the Finals.

“It’s amazing, everything that he’s accomplished,” Antetokounmpo said. “It’s amazing that he can still play at a high level. Growing up, we all knew who Chris Paul was, but at the same time, you know you gotta go out there and compete. This is the NBA Finals, it’s the playoffs, you gotta compete against those guys. But, like, he’s a great player, and he’s proven it year after year after year, and he’s helping his team do some great stuff right now.”

Paul’s averaged 19.3 points and 8.7 assists per game this postseason, and while the sample size his small, he’s been even better through two Finals games — 27.5 points and 8.5 assists while connecting on 56.4 percent of his field goal attempts and 58.3 percent of his threes. It has been breathtaking to watch, both for onlookers and, apparently, those who are tasked with trying to beat the Suns.

It didn’t take long for Chris Paul to get used to life in Phoenix. In his first season in his new digs, Paul and the Suns had the second-best record in the NBA and earned a spot in the Finals for the third time in franchise history. Upon getting there, the team won the first two games of their series against the Milwaukee Bucks, with Game 3 coming up on Sunday.

Paul’s been a seamless fit in Phoenix, and seemingly all of his coaches and teammates have made it a point to stress how much they’ve learned from having the future Hall of Fame inductee in town. But during his media availability on Saturday afternoon, Paul discussed the things he’s learned from his teammates and, in particular, Devin Booker.

“One thing about Book is he stays in kill mode all game on, no matter what’s going on,” Paul said. “If you’re thinking you need to hold the ball with, like, 40some seconds left, you might be up four or five, Book’s gonna shoot it. He’s gonna let it ride. That’s just his mindset, which you gotta appreciate.”

Paul then went on to speak about the team more broadly, praising them for stressing the importance of having fun.

“We have a very fun team,” Paul said. “You know, guys who try not to take themselves too serious, and I think that’s what’s really good about our team. One of the things we say before we run out on the court is, you can be so serious and all that, we say have fun, have fun. And I think that’s what keeps us focus, is remembering that this is a game, we gotta go out there and enjoy ourselves.”

The joy that Paul and his teammates play with has been evident all season, and as a result, they’re two games away form the first championship in franchise history.

While it’s been scarce on the music side of things for Travis Scott lately, the rapper has proven himself to be the king of brand partnerships over the past twelve months. He’s teamed up with the likes of McDonald’s, PlayStation, Fortnite, and more to deliver merchandise and content that his fans rushed to get their hands on. Scott looks to continue that streak as he joined forces with marijuana cultivator Connected Cannabis to launch his very own cannabis line, Cactus Farms. The strains are already available in some dispensaries in a few states across the country.

For those who are interested in trying out the Cactus Farms line, they’ll have to stop by dispensaries that stock Connected Cannabis products in California or Harvest dispensaries in Arizona. According to Connected Cannabis, the first strain from Travis’ Cactus Farms line is a hybrid that was hand-picked by the rapper himself. It’s labeled as an “Indica-leaning strain” that features a “dense, purple bud that releases a pungent, funky-sweet gas aroma rounded out by a unique berry twist,” according to NME.

The news comes after a report revealed Travis and Meek Mill had to separate from each other following a verbal altercation at a Fourth Of July event earlier this month. The cause of the fight is still unknown at the moment, but thankfully, the two rappers walked away from each other before things turned physical.

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

Natasha Romanoff, aka Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, doesn’t have the happiest origin story. It involves being brainwashed at the Red Room, a top secret Soviet training program that turned women into deadly assassins. Among the atrocities inflicted upon those forced into the program — including Natasha’s sister Yelena, played by Florence Pugh — was a hysterectomy. It’s grim stuff, and while the new solo Black Widow movie tries to be one of the funnier MCU entries, there is a darkly comic clapback to the two characters’ unhappy upbringing.

In a new interview with Polygon, director Cate Shortland — previously of dramas like Somersault and Lore — talked about a scene where David Harbour’s Alexi tries to make an old school sexist joke about his two “daughters.” “Why the aggression?” he asks them. “Is it your time of the month?”

But Yelena isn’t having it. “I don’t get my period, dips*it,” she responds. “I don’t have a uterus.”

“Or ovaries,” Natasha adds.

“That’s what happens when the Red Room gives you an involuntarily hysterectomy,” Yelena continues. “They kinda just go in and rip out all your reproductive organs. They just get right in there and chop them all away. So you can’t have babies.”

Thing is, the clapback to their Red Room origins wasn’t in the original script, credited to Eric Pearson. But the time-of-the-month joke was.

“So Eric, who is our writer, had written a joke about women being in bad moods because they have their period,” Shortland told Polygon. “And I remember Florence and Scarlett and I reading it and just being like, ‘Oh, my God, this is ridiculous.’”

Shortland thought about cutting it entirely, but Johansson and Pugh had another idea: They’d “answer” it by delving into their Red Room origins.

“I love it,” Shortland said. “Because it’s like, if you’re gonna make that joke, I’m gonna unleash Florence Pugh on you. She’s gonna Yelena you. It’s one of my favorite moments in the film.”

It was in keeping with Black Widow’s mordant tone. “What we tried to do was use humor to talk to the trauma,” Shortland added. “Most people in this film who’ve been victimized, are actually making jokes about that because they’re trying to overcome it.”

In other words, listen to your actors. They might come up with one of the most talked-about parts of your film.

(Via Polygon)

Joe Biden has been a transformative president, but he hasn’t been able to do as much as he’d like. That’s because Republicans, who don’t control any branch of government, have a magic tool up their sleeve: the filibuster. And the reason they still have the filibuster in the Senate is because two Democrats — Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — refuse to help destroy it. They’ve stuck by their guns, saying it’s imperative that the Senate remain bipartisan. But now we know how Republicans really feel about them.

As per Insider, a new, surreptitiously filmed video finds a group of Republicans praising the two senators, even laughing at how much they’re helping the GOP cause. The video was taken by Democratic activist Lauren Windsor in late June at a Patriot Voices event, and it finds them singing the praises of the two lawmakers.

One of them is Representative Andy Biggs, also from Arizona, who warns that Democrats are “pushing as far as they can.” And they’d get away with it if it weren’t for these meddling senators. “Fortunately for us, the filibuster’s still in effect in the Senate. Without that we would be dead meat and this thing would be done,” he said, adding, “Thank goodness for Sinema and Joe Manchin.”

Byron Donalds, a representative to Florida, is also a Sinema-Manchin stan, saying he gets to profit off of all the hate they get. “I like it when AOC is going after Joe Manchin,” Donalds says. “IIt makes my job easier as a conservative, you know, because I can go to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and be like, ‘Hey, guys, I’m really sorry you’re having to go through that. That’s just a shame.’” This one elicited knowing peals of laughter from the crowd.

And then there’s Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania senator and ex-CNN talking head. His message was simple: “Call Joe Manchin and say thank you. Seriously. Call Kyrsten Sinema and say thank you.”

Both Sinema and Manchin have been roundly criticized for thinking they’re preserving democracy. But at least they have the support of Republicans. And they’re laughing all the way to the bank.

(Via Insider)

For years, Major League Soccer had the reputation of being a place where older, well-traveled European players go to retire. It wasn’t always a fair one, but with the league’s most prominent non-American names frequently being older players in large markets — think David Beckham in Los Angeles or David Villa in New York City — the “retirement league” tag followed MLS around.

But in recent years, there have been concerted efforts to change this. Teams have invested more and more into their youth academies, and whether that’s led to young standouts showing what they can do in MLS or European clubs identifying up American teenagers to be part of their long-term vision, there’s more young American talent than ever being cultivated and getting the chance to play professional soccer.

Last year, Major League Soccer expanded on all of this by launching MLS NEXT, a collection of youth soccer leagues across the United States that gives its players access to high-level coaching, competition, and development. And last week, the league capped off its inaugural season by heading to Dallas for a tournament to crown champions at the U15, U16, U17, and U19 levels. The winners at each level, respectively, were Real Salt Lake Academy, Weston FC, Orlando City SC Academy, and Chicago Fire FC Academy.

In celebration of the season coming to an end, Uproxx Sports caught up with Fred Lipka, the technical director of MLS NEXT, to discuss the tournament, the season as a whole, the program, and the number of MLS-developed players who will participate in CONCACAF’s top continental tournament, the Gold Cup, this month.

Can you take me through the general idea behind having this tournament?

The playoff and the showcase were the final step of our year-long season. We started last year in the regions where we could play, so it’s a kind of like we are in MLS, the pinnacle of our competition, with each other. It was the best of the season, plus all the club which played the showcase. So it’s kind of celebration of the season, but also, to crown a champion for specific ages, to celebrate the game and our platform.

Was the idea of ending the first season with a tournament something that you guys always thought was going to happen or was it something that just kind of popped up as you guys spoke through everything and eventually decided was a good idea?

It’s usually the case in every single competition across the world. You always have a climax to the final moments. It was existing with the former iteration of the Development Academy, which was a platform which was run by U.S. Soccer. Basically, we took over the platform and we added some pieces. So it’s a classic advance in the U.S. soccer landscape, but we added more layers to have more games, streamed to give a look, which gives an experience which is unique for each player and clubs. It is a professional environment here in Dallas, on MLS facilities, the sort of thing which is difficult to produce in every single market. It’s something that clubs and players expect, it’s more of a way to do it, which was a bit different with NEXT.

And you’ve mentioned the professional environment. What have your conversations with teams been like about the importance of having this kind of showcase — it’s in that kind of professional environment, you’re not playing training games, you’re playing really competitive games for a trophy against other teams on your level?

Professional means to try to, for example, be close to the first team — the first team stadium, to the first team training pitch, to be able to have more pressure and more stakes when the kids play, and not only playing to play. And the drama around the games increased, and it’s good. It’s good for development, and it’s good also to build players with more resilience, which also take more ownership of the game.

Professional means also being able to offer a pro pathway. So, being able to offer, for those kids, the capacity to sign in MLS, to join MLS, but also, for the club to offer options for the players to go into the pathway, but also, to join the best colleges around the country. We had 400 college coaches with a presence to scout all players.

It tries to create a symbiotic environment with two objectives, because sometimes the objective can be different. I think this event and this platform, you can deliver for every single club, player, and family.

Where have you been happy with what you’ve seen and where do you see some things that you might want to change the next time this rolls around?

We’re happy, because the objective was to celebrate the platform and to finish the season with something fresh, something which projects us into next season. And not to finish the season like we started with things in limbo because of the COVID crisis, so it wasn’t about MLS, it wasn’t about who is going to win, it’s more give the opportunity for teams, clubs, parents to be able to achieve their objective, individual and collective. It was all about celebrating a community of clubs which are now, we are quite sure, a part of something new, which looks like what the Development Academy was, but with a huge difference in the future, and to its approach to the competition in the future, around the competition. So we were very happy.

Next year it will be better, next year we will have more programs around it to serve the players, and our clubs, so we have to reflect about what went well and what can be improved. Overall, the feedback that I’ve received is very, very positive.

I want to ask about the role that MLS NEXT plays in the league as a whole. Because it seems like a really smart thing to have around as teams, from my perspective, are placing more of an emphasis on homegrown, young talent and having them be the players who eventually make up their senior rosters.

Yeah, that’s exactly the objective. And then NEXT has been created for the pathway to flow that way, and NEXT is our way to go pro or to go to the best college program, so it’s exactly the strategy is to create the right competition, the right environment, to develop more homegrown players and better homegrown players, because competition is very important to develop homegrown players, and NEXT is a strategic investment to be more efficient in our endeavor to develop homegrown.

We’re coming off of the Nation’s League, we have the Gold Cup roster, and a bunch of those guys came through the MLS pipeline. It feels like, and correct me if I’m wrong, there’s increasingly a pathway and there’s an emphasis on creating that pathway for young players to use those lower levels of MLS as a springboard to an MLS team, and to the national team, and maybe even to one of the top leagues in Europe, is that fair?

Yes, you’re right. I think you want to become an international player, to play with the national team. The best way to do it is to go through the MLS pipeline and then to sign an MLS contract, and then to play in the national team. And then also, because it’s a logical objective for a young player to dream about Europe for now, because Europe is the best competition in the world. It’s logical for some of them, maybe not all of them to go overseas and to challenge themselves, like Bryan Reynolds, Brenden Aaronson. And now, we all know that MLS is the best way to do — it isn’t the only way, but I would say it’s a less risky way to do it.

I mentioned the Nation’s League and the Gold Cup a second ago and the guys who came through MLS to make up those rosters. You just mentioned Brenden, he’s a great example, who are the guys that make up those teams that came through MLS that you have the most fun watching?

There are a lot. We have young players — 19, 20 years old — which play at the level of a [designated player], who are what we call an impact player. He cannot play, but he’s a young kid who plays at Red Bulls, he won’t make the Gold Cup because he’s injured, Caden Clark. You have Daryl Dike, which, by the way, he came from the college pathway, which is very exciting and college can also develop players, we all know. It was the case before, and with MLS now, we have found a way to develop more efficiently and more importantly regularly the players. You have James Sands in New York City, which now, he should have played more than enough games in MLS, and he’s only 20 years old. We have Sam Vines, Colorado, which is a young left fullback. Cole Bassett, the same way in Colorado. You have all the young players with quality and will certainly catch the eyes of bigger clubs.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

The drama behind Britney Spears’ conservatorship hit new heights after an explosive hearing for the court arrangement was held at the end of last month. For the first time in the 13 years, the singer openly expressed her desire for it to be terminated, calling it “abusive” and detailing the many ways it restricted her lifestyle. Weeks later, her longtime lawyer, Sam Ingham, resigned from his position, leaving Britney to search for new representation. According to a report from TMZ, that search has already begun.

The publication says that the singer has already contacted a large law firm, and as long as are allowed to represent her, Britney and her team will look to file the necessary legal documents that would ask a judge to remove her father as the conservator of her estate. TMZ adds that, according to “multiple sources with direct knowledge,” Britney is seeking to hire one Mathew Rosengart.

“Pursuant to my statement in open court on June 23, 2021,” a document, which TMZ says is signed “BRITNEY JEAN SPEARS,” reads, “my rights, and my desire to end the above-referenced conservatorship as to my father Jamie P. Spears, it is my desire to choose and retain my own counsel, at Greenberg, Traurig, LLP as set forth above.”

Ingham reportedly stepped down from his position because he was “extremely upset” that Britney told the court “that she never knew she could end the conservatorship.” Ingham denied her claim, saying, he “regularly gave Britney options, including requesting that the conservatorship should end,” but she decided not to act on them.

Ever since his days as president, Barack Obama has been very open about his musical taste. Year after year, he’s shared playlists of favorite songs, both old and new. On Saturday he continued that trend. He dropped his 2021 summer playlist on Instagram, and it’s comprised of 38 songs featuring some of the biggest names of today and yesterday.

“With so many folks getting together with family and friends, there’s a lot to celebrate this summer,” Barack wrote. “I put together a playlist of some of the songs I’ve been listening to lately — it’s a mix of old and new, household names and emerging artists, and a whole lot in between.”

Some of the artists include Rihanna (“Desparado”), SZA (“Good Days“), Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak (“Leave The Door Open“), Drake (“Wants And Needs”), Migos (“Straightenin“), and J. Cole (“Neighbors”). Older additions include The Rolling Stones (“Tumbling Dice”), Stevie Wonder (“If You Really Love Me”), Bob Marley and The Wailers (“Exodus”), Erykah Badu (“Didn’t Cha Know”), Bob Dylan (“I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”), and many more.

You can see the full list of songs on the playlist in the post above.

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

For much of his life Donald Trump Jr. wasn’t sure what to do with his life. But now he’s found purpose: He makes deranged, awkward speeches, at Republican conferences or in videos, to the amusement (and, sometimes, concern) of social media. His appearance Friday at this weekend’s CPAC conference in Dallas was for the most part pretty typical, with plenty of basic red meat tossed into the hungry crowd. But when he tried to make a joke about Texas, he only got tumbleweeds.

Things started off well. The former president’s oldest son praised the Lone Star state, saying, “Texas has always led the charge.” The crowd ate it up. But then Don Jr. got a little too confident. “Well, ’til about like a couple of months ago and then Austin sort of took over,” he added. “Like, I don’t know guys. Like, Texas was leading the charge. You’re still top 25.”

The crowd, stationed some 200 miles from the largely progressive city, did not find it funny. And it clearly threw Don Jr. off his game. He tried to get back on track. “We got to work on that stuff because those people have lost their minds,” he said, adding a weak “Right?”

He powered through it, though. Once he called journalists “propagandists,” he was back. His speech featured some Greatest Hits grievances, railing against CNN, against Dr. Fauci, against cancel culture, and he generally painted a utopian vision of world he said is “going to hell.”

But Don Jr.’s latest apoplectic rant wasn’t all that well-received on social media either.

Others just found it par for the Don Jr. course.

Surely Texas — who already have a senator who skips town at the sight of a catastrophe — deserves better.

Drake promised fans they would get his sixth album Certified Lover Boy by the end of January. A knee surgery forced that back, and since then the rapper has been extremely tight-lipped about a new release date, only going as far as to say it would be out by summer’s end. And, as of now, at least, it seems he’ll make good on his promise.

Drake made a surprise appearance on the Sirius show Fry Yiy Friday, where he slipped in a casual update about Certified Lover Boy. “You know Uncle Drake’s on his way back home to mix the album,” he said on the show, adding that there’s “a bunch of new tracks coming.” While there isn’t a timetable for the album’s mixing stage, fans can rest assured knowing Certified Lover Boy is very close to arriving.

While the wait for Certified Lover Boy has been a pretty long one, at least Drake has been releasing new music. He recently teamed up with Brent Faiyaz for “Wasting Time,” which arrived after he lent verses to Migos and Nicki Minaj for their respective tracks “Havin My Way” and “Seeing Green“.

You can listen to Drake’s comments in the video above.