Month: September 2021

The Chicago Bulls will be without perhaps their best defensive player for the next few weeks, with the expectation being that he won’t be ready for the start of the 2021-22 regular season. According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, second-year forward Patrick Williams suffered a “severe” sprain of his left ankle, with the initial timeline for his absence being up to six weeks.

The news — both of Williams’ injury and the timetable for his return — was eventually confirmed by the Bulls.

The team will play its first regular season game on Oct. 20 against the Detroit Pistons, which is just under four weeks away from the day Williams suffered the injury. Should he need the full six weeks to recover, he’d miss the first eight games of the Bulls’ season, with his return coming on Nov. 6 against the Philadelphia 76ers.

Chicago spent this offseason fortifying its backcourt alongside Zach LaVine and trade deadline acquisition Nikola Vucevic, but there was a hole on the defensive end of the floor that was expected to be filled by Williams, the No. 4 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft. A second-team All-Rookie selection last season, Williams averaged 9.2 points and 4.6 rebounds in 27.9 minutes per game while connecting on 27.9 percent of his threes. He was the only rookie to play in more than 70 games last season, as Williams started all 71 contests in which he appeared.

Much of Olivia Rodrigo’s album Sour is indebted to 2000s-era rock and punk music, so it’s not surprising that she’s a fan of The Regrettes, whose new song “Monday” has a similar aesthetic. In fact, Rodrigo actually guest stars in the track’s video, which premiered today.

The clip takes place at a school dance at some point in the 2000s, and Olivia Rodrigo is there to DJ the proceedings. At one point in the video, the song cuts out, which leads to Rodrigo’s apologetically scrolling through her iPod Video (or iPod Classic, depending on the specific model) to find the song.

The band’s Lydia Night explains that the song was written during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns and how that period took a major toll on her:

“At the time I was pretty much at the peak of my anxiety disorder, every morning I was waking up and absolutely dreading the idea of functioning and being ‘productive’ (whatever the hell that even means) for another day. Like most of us, I was still at home, where all my issues still existed. So, whatever I was dealing with didn’t slowly fade away while stuck in traffic on the way to go write somewhere. I didn’t have the space to think of “what do I want to write about,” instead, I just rolled out of bed and all my horrible f*cking thoughts were still with me, just waiting to be unboxed.

As LA locked down, I felt a huge part of my Identity and ego being stripped away because of no touring, and no connecting with people at our shows. I’ve been touring since about age 12, so I had to come up with a new way to function in the world. It was really rough, and still is rough, but I found writing this song to be super therapeutic.

It’s special that this is the first song we’ve put out in a while because it’s an important moment in time for me to mark. Part of the healing process for me is really learning and trying my best to keep on dancing the pain away so I hope people can relate to that and dance with me, even if it’s not at a show and in the safety of their own kitchen.”

Watch the “Monday” video above.

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

As Morray gears up to head out on tour with J. Cole, the Fayetteville native (Morray, not Cole) releases a triumphant new single celebrating his year of success. “Bad Situations” may have a haunting title, but in its lyrics, Morray marks his overcoming bad situations, coming from the “Trenches” to getting money. Over a soulful beat, Morray trains his church-honed vocals on telling his rags-to-riches story and expressing his gratitude for the positive changes in his life.

Morray, who broke out in the spring of 2020 with the viral video for “Quicksand,” has seen a whirlwind rise to stardom after “Quicksand” received co-signs from fellow Carolina natives DaBaby and J. Cole. In April of this year, Morray announced he’d signed to Interscope Records, releasing his debut mixtape Street Sermons that same month. Debuting at No. 41 on the US Billboard 200, the tape received further attention when Morray was featured on “My Life” from J. Cole’s long-awaited album, The Off-Season. “My Life” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, further solidifying his burgeoning stardom.

All of that was enough to secure Morray a spot on the 2021 XXL Freshman Class, which he commemorated with a remix of “Trenches” featuring Polo G. And while not everyone is happy about Morray’s ascent, he’s in position to earn himself a spot in the upper echelon of rap stardom.

Listen to Morray’s new single “Bad Situations” above.

Click to download here.

Wetwork Dreams

Felix Biederman of the Chapo Trap House podcast joins Matt & Vince to talk about The Sopranos season five episode twelve, “The Test Dream.”

As the title of the episode suggests, the improbably named Brian Benben would feel right at home, as Tony is Dream-ing On through much of the runtime. Dream sequences are a polarizing topic on this podcast, but even Vince has to agree with Felix that while it may run long, it does feel like an actual stress dream. Teeth are falling out, there’s a thing Tony needs to do that he can’t get done, and wait, who was he just having sex with? Classic dream stuff.

If you’re less interested in what your brain is up to at night, and more interested in modern murder techniques, stick around for a digression about the practicality of the garrote as a killing device. Seems hard to use. Like you’d have to practice at home. Imagine that — a little practice garrote next to the Bowflex adjustable dumbbells in that corner of the garage you call the weight room. It’s all just collecting dust and then one day you’re trying to take out a rat and your arms are shaking and you’re all out of position and you think, man, why did I buy all that gear?

What would be your weapon of choice if you were to murder one of us? Let us know in a five-star review on Apple Podcasts

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-Description by Brent Flyberg.

The latest release in 2K Sports’ longtime basketball franchise, NBA 2K22, came out earlier this month. Three of our writers — Chris Barnewall, Bill DiFilippo, and Ryan Nagelhout — spent some time playing the game and came to a near-unanimous conclusion that, while this year’s release is better than 2K21, there are fundamental problems with the game that need to be remedied.

Game: NBA 2K22
Available On: Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Publisher: 2K Sports
Price: Standard Edition ($69.99 on next-gen consoles, $59.99 on all others), WNBA 75th Anniversary edition ($69.99, next-gen consoles only), Cross-Gen Edition ($79.99), 75th Anniversary Edition ($99.99)

—

NBA 2K as a franchise has the benefit and misfortune of being considered one of the best sports simulation games out there. When comparing this series to Madden or WWE, it’s hard to complain too much. The gameplay around 2K has always, for the most part, worked as intended at launch. In 2K22, that is no different. When buttons are pushed, the character does what they are supposed to do. Character models don’t morph. The basketball doesn’t randomly turn into a medicine ball. The video game works the way it should.

The problem is that the video game is no longer fun. Basketball as a sport is something that is supposed to be fast, fluid, and beautiful. This fights against that with individual defenders that are godlike in their on-ball defense. Breaking someone down with dribble moves just isn’t an option and moving the ball around the perimeter does not force the defense to react. They’re able to stand there, firm as ever. Getting them to react to what you are doing with the ball is extremely challenging.

For some players, that might be part of the fun. A lot of the actual basketball part of the game is about breaking the defense down and making the right play, but it creates a learning curve that is going to turn newer players of the series away. It also drastically reduces the ability to just have fun playing a quick game against a friend.

One of the less fun aspects of the game is that it still feels so heavily designed towards playing as three classes of player: Guards, post-up bigs, or super athletic wings. Anyone that’s ever wanted to be one of those tweener, Jerami Grant-type of players need not apply, because they aren’t really sure what to do about someone that isn’t elite at one particular skill.

So much of the gameplay feels like it’s still a result of corrections from previous games. There was a time where someone could put in any athletic wing and dominate a game. As such, they made dribble drives harder, but then everyone started dominating with shooters, so now it’s harder to be a jump shooter. While these short-term fixes got results, it’s really just created a game that does not feel like a fun basketball game to play or a realistic simulation. It’s stuck in the middle, unsure of which it wants to be.

When 2K was beginning its rise as one of the top-tier sports simulation games out there, it wasn’t rising because it perfectly created the feeling of playing basketball. No, it did so because the game was really fun to play and future changes to the game always made it feel better. It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly the gameplay changed course, or maybe it was just a slow decline, but there is little joy in playing 2K besides grinding out VC to get a super character.

Maybe that grind is where the issues all began in the first place. It used to be possible to work a player up to a respectable star through the grind. Playing games, picking the right stats, and a good AI balance created a sense of progression that was rewarding, even if it was sometimes slow. That sense of progression is gone. This feels like a game where purchasing VC is no longer optional. To avoid dozens of hours of grinding to maybe reach the point the game becomes fun, it is essential to pay beyond the — at the bare minimum — $59.99 price tag. That ruins a game that has the potential to be something better.

It only gets worse when we consider that everything around the gameplay is deteriorating alongside it. The cinematic prologues are not good. Humans do not interact with each other the way they do in 2K22. We aren’t expecting lifelike realism, but two “best friends” consistently gaslighting each other for entertainment is neither entertaining nor funny. It just leads to mashing past cutscenes to get back to the unfulfilling basketball.

This game should be better. It deserves to be better, but the inability to get out of its own way takes a franchise that is supposed to be among the best and hurts its ability to clear that bar. Unfortunately, there is no incentive to stop any of this. The money keeps coming in. 2K continues to sell incredibly well. Brands flock to them. Maybe this franchise is just no longer for me. — CB

—

It took about five minutes for me to get bored with NBA 2K22. This is not to say the game is horrific, or unplayable, or any of the other collection of knocks that you hear whenever a sports game drops and everyone races to the internet to post videos of whatever misfortunes befall them. If anything, I think this is probably a better game than last year’s edition.

The big thing is I just cannot muster the energy to care about 2K anymore. One complaint that pops up every single year, without fail, is that the people behind the game seem to care exponentially more about getting you to acquire VC so you can head into The Neighborhood — decked out in gear from brands most regular folks can’t afford, or in a throwback uniform with a pair of Jordan XIs that you’ve always wanted but can never get because the SNKRS app doesn’t pick you, or with video game-y haircuts and tattoos, while riding a bike or something — and play games of 3-on-3 against folks who spam the right joystick with dribble moves than actually creating a fun, well thought out game. The experience is not fun. It is also one of the most lucrative things in gaming. It makes all the sense in the world that this is the focus, and it is going to continue to be the focus of the gigantic, multi-billion dollar corporation that gives us 2K games.

I had to get that out of the way first because it’s impossible to ignore. Any advances in gameplay feel like they are second to this. I do not think that this is going to lead to 2K Sports changing its priorities or anything — I am simply an internet doofus — but perhaps this will add some clarity to your decision to pick up the game or not based on what is and is not prioritized.

Having said all of that, I do think this version of 2K is a step forward from the rest in terms of gameplay. While the game will always have the inherent issue that many sports games have regarding spacing — there’s just never going to be enough to make things feel anywhere near as fluid as real basketball, and the approach its designers take is “real basketball” instead of “slightly more realistic NBA Jam” — things feel more smooth than last year’s edition of the game, which felt far more choppy and sluggish in the never-ending (and, one can argue, poorly prioritized) attempt to make a video game feel realistic. The people who put this game together on an annual basis, particularly amid our current landscape where timelines have been all thrown off by the COVID-19 pandemic, work incredibly hard, and I want to be clear: Their efforts deserve to be commended, because having to make a brand new sports game every single year that feels different is not easy at all.

The problem I have here is, again, it does not feel like any of this is overhauled to the point that it’s worth everything else that comes with spending $60 or $70 or $80 or $100 on the game and [INSERT MORE MONEY HERE] on VC. Yes, you can tell that the act of moving on the court feels better (at least on my Xbox One), and you can tell that they emphasized taking a step forward with dribbling by making the stuff you can do with the right stick more comprehensive, while shooting is nowhere near as ghastly as last year’s game and there’s an emphasis on defense so you’re not constantly lost on that end of the floor, even if that means the AI is much better and things like “you will be thrown into the depths of hell by TJ McConnell” happens.

My hunch is that if I had never played a 2K game before, or my last 2K game was back during Barack Obama’s first term in the White House, I’d find this game fun and exciting, with all of these marginal increases in changing up the gameplay from prior editions I had never touched being cool. I know this because that is exactly what I did with NBA 2K20. With NBA 2K21, I thought the games felt ever so slightly different, so whenever it came time for me address an itch to play a 2K game, I’d just fire up 2K20, because I had sunk enough time and effort into MyCareer that it just did not seem worth deviating away from that, and I did not care enough about having a totally up-to-date roster.

Now? I am fairly sure I will rarely (if ever) fire up NBA 2K22 again, and odds are I won’t spend much time playing NBA 2K20, either. The franchise needs a break to change things up, because things have grown stale. Perhaps no video game series in the world needs to just not be a thing for a year and release a big roster update instead of a brand new game in 2022 more than 2K, so it has ample time to figure out what it is and how it can make a product that won’t receive reviews like this one from Luke Plunkett of Kotaku that I agreed with wholeheartedly.

If you spend money on this series as something of a social exercise where you and all your friends get the new 2K and enjoy the communal experience, I earnestly hope you enjoy it. But if you want to know if it’s worth dropping cash on this game for the updated rosters, or the gameplay experience, or the latest editions of MyCareer and MyTeam, or anything else, I cannot in good conscious recommend spending that money. — BD

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Let’s get this out of the way: The Xbox Series X version of this game is better than the last-gen version. It’s prettier and smoother, while the gameplay generally flows better. The Series X controller is great for sports sims and shines here. There are little things about this game that make it an improvement over last year’s 2K — small animations and graphical bits that reward you for upgrading your Xbox. But the juice of the game itself was never going to be worth the squeeze for all of the reasons Bill and Chris already covered above.

The heartbreaking thing about a game like NBA 2K22 is that it’s a miracle it even exists. Making a game at the scale of a sports simulation on a yearly schedule is insanely difficult, let alone to do it during a pandemic year. And yet despite that hard work and time to make this game beautiful, there’s something utterly lifeless about it. Maybe it’s the soul-reaping microtransactions for high-end fashion or Jake from State Farm making his way into everything from replays to The Neighborhood, but it all feels fairly hollow. Behind the very sleek sheen of next-gen processing is a synthetic Krabby Patty decaying ever-so slightly with each virtual possession.

There are diminishing returns all over the place in this franchise, and no real indication that anyone will ever make meaningful, positive changes. Because despite all that effort to make it lifelike and perfect, NBA 2K22 still so often struggles most to achieve the thing that all games should aim to be: fun to play. — RN

Just as you “never forget your first doctor” –a saying popularized by the Doctor Who fandom — you never forget the showrunner who helped make all that on-screen magic happen. For many millennials, the man behind it all was Russell T. Davies, a Welsh screenwriter credited with reviving the series back in 2005 and who helmed it for its first four seasons. For all those longing for the same sci-fi spectacles we saw in the days of Davies, Christopher Eccleston, and David Tennant, do we have good news for you. After 16 years away from the hit BBC series, Davies is coming back.

According to Variety, the former showrunner is returning to the world of Doctor Who for its next season in 2023, which coincidentally is also the series’ 60th anniversary. Davies is taking up the mantle left by current showrunner Chris Chibnall, who revealed he would be leaving alongside the show’s current star Jodi Whittaker earlier this year. The screenwriter has also announced the next season will be a co-production between BBC Studios and the Welsh-based studio Bad Wolf, the company behind recent series such as The Night Of, Beddgelert, A Discovery of Witches, and His Dark Materials. This could indicate that Doctor Who‘s production might return to Wales for the first time since Davies left the project.

Unsurprisingly, the decision for Davies to come back has been met with universal praise by the BBC and fans alike. Chibnall especially had only glowing words for the big return:

“It’s monumentally exciting and fitting that Doctor Who‘s 60th anniversary will see one of Britain’s screenwriting diamonds return home. Russell built the baton that is about to be handed back to him — Doctor Who, the BBC, the screen industry in Wales, and let’s be honest everyone in the whole world, have so many reasons to be Very Excited Indeed about what lies ahead.”

Over on Twitter, Doctor Who fans have spent the morning talking about the big announcement and how it will be a great boost following a decline in viewership. While we might be waiting a while to see this reunion come to fruition, there’s certainly no lack of fanfare in the meantime.

Earlier this month, former Dancing With the Stars contestant—and, oh yeah, once-upon-a-time press secretary for Donald Trump—spent some time whining about how the mean ol’ Joe Biden administration was planning to strip him of his position on the board of the Naval Academy. It’s a prestigious role, and one handed over to him in early 2019 by the former president, probably as a bonus for keeping to his inauguration crowd size lie for all those years.

Shockingly, Biden and company don’t seem to consider an undying allegiance to Trump the most important qualification to serve on the board of our country’s military academies, so set about asking the doltish likes of Spicer and Kellyanne Conway to resign their positions, or be fired. Spicer chose the latter. And now, alongside former Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought, is suing the Biden administration for threatening to remove them from their appointed positions.

As CNN reports, “The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the US District Court in DC, alleges that the pair is being unlawfully threatened with removal from the board to which President Donald Trump had appointed them in the latter half of his presidency. Both were appointed to three-year terms.”

When previously asked why Team Biden wanted Trump’s lackeys out, White House press secretary Jen Psaki explained that it was to “ensure you have nominees and people serving on these boards who are qualified to serve on them.”

But don’t tell Spicer that! The first thing the lawsuit does is lay out the pair’s qualifications… and it reads as if Spicer may have written it himself:

“Plaintiffs Sean Spicer and Russ Vought were appointed to the United States Naval Academy Board of Visitors by former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Spicer served for 22 years in the United States Navy Reserve and earned a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College. He has held leadership positions in multiple presidential administrations. Mr. Vought previously served as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.”

Wow—way to really sell the courts on Vought’s qualifications there!

As for what they’re seeking to gain? Just not being fired, presumably. Which seems like a lot of wasted time and paperwork just for Spicer to save face, considering that his term ends on December 30, 2021—three months from now.

You can read the full lawsuit here [PDF].

(Via CNN)

Paul Verhoeven, the eccentric Dutch director of RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Starship Troopers, and Elle, has made an erotic lesbian nun movie. It’s about time. Benedetta stars Virginie Efira as Benedetta Carlini, a real-life nun (she even has her own Wikipedia page where she’s described as “a Catholic mystic and lesbian nun” — the OG girlboss) who Catches Feelings for another nun. We’ve all been there.

Benedetta premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it was greeted with positive reviews (and tweets about a Virgin Mary dildo). “If Benedetta is a joke that Verhoeven is in on, and that is designed to play to those in on it too, we can at least be thankful that it’s a good joke — not that there’s anyone up there to be thankful to,” critic Jessica Kiang wrote for The Playlist.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

A 17th-century nun in Italy suffers from disturbing religious and erotic visions. She is assisted by a companion, and the relationship between the two women develops into a romantic love affair. Based on Judith C. Brown’s Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy.

Benedetta, which also stars Charlotte Rampling, Lambert Wilson, Daphne Patakia, Olivier Rabourdin, and Herve Pierre, opens on December 3.

Trump’s former National Security advisor Michael Flynn is peddling a new Covid conspiracy theory and it may just be the most bizarre one we’ve heard so far.

Now, just as a reminder, Flynn — once a respected military general — pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about meetings he had with a Russian ambassador. He’s gone on to spread dangerous misinformation about the results of the 2020 Presidential Election and has publicly stated he believes the current pandemic was created specifically to harm Trump during an election year. He should be in prison right now, but, here we are, listening to his absolutely bonkers hysterics on conservative podcast shows.

Flynn guested on one such show this week to try out his latest deep state paranoia pitch and it’s a doozy. Flynn told “The Thrivetime Show” host Clay Clark (via Rolling Stone) that he thinks the government might be sneaking Covid vaccines in our salad dressing. You read that right. Salad dressing, people.

“Somebody sent me a thing this morning where they’re talking about putting the vaccine in salad dressing. Have you seen this? I mean it’s – and I’m thinking to myself, this is the Bizarro World, right? This is definitely the Bizarro World,” Flynn said. “These people are seriously thinking about how to impose their will on us in our society, and it has to stop.”

Flynn is right about one thing: he’s definitely living in his own bizarro alternate reality, but the hogwash about vaccines being added to Hidden Valley ranch packets is just the rantings of a sad man trying to achieve some kind of relevancy after trashing his own reputation by aligning with a badly-spray-tanned despot. Still, the way these people convince others to believe this bullsh*t is by taking a kernel of truth and twisting it to fit their fascist-fighting delusions, so here are the totally unremarkable origins of Flynn’s crackpot theory: According to Snopes, Flynn was most likely referencing a preliminary study from the University of California-Riverside. Scientists there are trying to figure out if they can grow produce containing mRNA material so that vaccines with that technology — like the COVID-19 vaccine — won’t need to be preserved by deep-freezing, meaning we could distribute them more efficiently.

So please, don’t stop putting ranch dressing on things. One, it makes everything taste better, and two, no one should deprive themselves of the simple joys in life right now just because of some fear-mongering hysteria.

(Via Rolling Stone)

The Killers did a, uh, killer performance of “Dying Breed” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last night, where they rocked out in front of a live audience from the roof of 30 Rockefeller Center. In addition to the Imploding The Mirage track, The Killers also bought out a classic, “When You Were Young,” from 2006’s Sam’s Town. Watching Brandon Flowers bust out “When You Were Young” from a skyscraper in New York City? The thought alone is chills-inducing! Watch it all go down above and below.

“I love ‘Blowback,’ ‘Dying Breed’ — it’s strange that we’ve never played these for people yet,” Flowers told Uproxx earlier in this year. “It seems like they’re going to go off.” Flowers also looked back at making Sam’s Town in that interview, telling Steven Hyden, “I had a tough time with Sam’s Town. I was still so young, and emotionally and socially not where I should have been to be doing interviews. I took the bad reviews pretty hard because I loved it so much, and I was so proud of it. Critics were really hard on it, but I do attribute those pretty terrible reviews with the live band that we became because I set out to prove to whoever the critic was coming to the show that night how good this album was. I really think that we became a greater live band because of that.”

The Killers’ latest album, Pressure Machine, is out now via Island Records. Get it here.