Category: News

The Memphis Grizzlies saw Ja Morant get helped into the locker room on Friday night. Morant, the NBA’s reigning Most Improved Player and a second-team All-NBA selection, landed after an attempted floated, took one step, and accidentally stepped on the foot of Oklahoma City Thunder guard Luguentz Dort.

Morant was in pain, got examined by the training staff, and eventually got helped into the locker room without putting too much weight on his leg. And on Saturday afternoon, the Grizzlies announced that Morant suffered an ankle sprain and gave him a week-to-week designation as they attempt to figure out when he will be able to return to action.

“After further evaluation, it was determined that Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant suffered a Grade 1 sprain of his left ankle during the November 18 game against the Oklahoma City Thunder,” the team said in a statement. “Morant’s return to play timeline will be week-to-week, and updates will be provided as appropriate.”

The Grizzlies gained experience playing without Morant last season. The All-Star guard spent multiple lengthy spells on the sidelines due to injuries during the 2021-22 campaign, which limited him to 57 of a potential 82 games. The team accrued a 20-5 record when Morant was unable to play.

Memphis went on to beat Oklahoma City, 121-110.

Florence And The Machine‘s Dance Fever tour has come to an abrupt pause. Following an onstage injury, the band’s lead vocalist Florence Welch has taken to her Instagram stories to announce that the UK leg of the tour will be postponed, due to a broken foot.

“I’m so sorry to say that after an x-ray, it seems I was dancing on a broken foot last night,” Welch wrote. “It is not in my nature to postpone a show, and certainly not a U.K. tour, but I’m in pain and as dancers know, dancing on an injury is not a good idea. And [I] have been told not to perform to avoid further damage.”

Welch noted that those with tickets will be able to use them at a later date, as she and her team are working to get the dates rescheduled for next year.

She continued, “I’m heartbroken as the Dance Fever tour has been my favourite show we have ever put on. The communion with you. Your beautiful faces shining. I love you so much, and I’m so sorry to anyone who is disappointed. My heart is aching. I can’t wait to be back on my feet and back in your arms.”

The rescheduled dates have not yet been announced.

Tyrese Maxey had an excellent first half against the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday night. He was unable to play in the second half, however, after he stepped on Bucks guard Jevon Carter’s foot, which caused his ankle to roll and led to Maxey being in some serious pain. After shooting some free throws, he left the game and did not return.

A preliminary x-ray came back negative, but Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported that Maxey would need an MRI on Saturday. That ended up happening, and according to both Wojnarowski and Shams Charania of The Athletic, Maxey suffered a small fracture in his foot that is expected to keep him out for the next 3-4 weeks.

Shortly after that, the Sixers confirmed that their standout third-year guard is headed to the sidelines for a spell, but noted that he will be examined in two weeks.

The fact that he does not need surgery is encouraging, but considering James Harden is sidelined with a foot injury of his own, Philadelphia is going into the next few games with an extremely depleted backcourt. De’Anthony Melton has stepped into the starting lineup with Harden down, while Shake Milton played 31 minutes off the bench against the Bucks in Maxey’s absence.

Jung Kook is keeping the BTS Army fed. Ahead of the upcoming FIFA World Cup, the BTS vocalist has announced that he will perform a new single at the opening ceremony.

Jung Kook’s upcoming solo offering is called “Dreamers” and arrives in time for the opening ceremony Sunday. The song’s accompanying music video will premiere on Tuesday via FIFA’s official YouTube channel.

In a recent interview with WeVerse, Jung Kook revealed that he is working on solo material ahead of BTS’ hiatus, however, he is still learning to be comfortable singing in his natural voice.

“I want to receive a lot of recognition and hopefully be able to hear my own singing and think, ‘Wow, I’m really, really good,’” he said. “In other words, I want to be able to sing really well and feel comfortable doing so. I can’t feel that way every time I sing, but … I just want to be good. Now that I’m a singer and have appeared on so many different stages, there’s times I do such a good job up there that it gives me goosebumps, and with those experiences piling up, I keep thinking, How freeing and fun would it be to get up on stage and be able to sing the perfect song? Completely worry free, just like in my imagination.”

“Dreamers” is out 11/20.

Luka Doncic put on quite the show on Friday night. Doncic went for 33 points, 12 rebounds, and 11 assists in the Dallas Mavericks’ 127-99 win over the Denver Nuggets. But beyond that, Doncic got to catch up with one of his teammates from Slovenia’s national team, as Denver forward Vlatko Cancar is the only Slovenian in the league outside of Goran Dragic and the Dallas star.

Cancar played 23 minutes and scored eight points off the bench, but as Iztok Franko noted, one possession with Doncic on the bench and Cancar on the floor sticks out. Nuggets guard Bones Hyland dribbled into the corner, attracted the attention of Dallas’ Christian Wood, and hoisted up a contested three with time left on the shot clock that didn’t go in.

Wood was guarding Cancar, who was left wide open behind the three-point line. While Hyland is a guy who can hit this shot, Doncic was rather frustrated the ball did not get passed to his countryman, to the point that he screamed at Hyland after the miss to pass the ball even though this would have helped the other team.

Doncic does have a point here, as Cancar would get off an uncontested shot. But ultimately, this is just a funny moment involving a bunch of teammates.

Chance The Rapper has announced that he will kick off 2023 with a free festival. The “Yah Know” rapper revealed that his inaugural Black Star Line festival will take place in Accra, Ghana on January 6.

Among the performers are Chance himself, his longtime collaborator and fellow Chicago rapper Vic Mensa, Erykah Badu, Jeremih, Asakaa Boys, T-Pain, Sarkodie, Tobe Nwigwe, M.anifest, and soon to be announced special guests.

The name Black Star Line refers to a company founded by activist Marcus Garvey, who created the Black Star Line to seamlessly carry Black patrons back and forth to Africa. Garvey was also a proponent of Black economic independence.

In an interview with Sway’s Universe this past August, Chance revealed he was inspired by Garvey in the creation of his upcoming album, Star Line Gallery

“He started and ran this very important, integral shipping line” said Chance of Garvey. He had a fleet of ships, these giant ocean liners which are the size of cruise ships, that he owned and funded with common Black folks’ money. He created a trade route between the United States, all of the Black islands and the continent of Africa, and that created a network of people where people from all over the world were interconnected and working with each other and taking trips together.”

Attendees can register for tickets beginning Monday.

Some of the artists mentioned are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s been a bad time for far right politicians. The Republicans’ promised/threatened “red wave” failed to coalesce. Trump’s third presidential campaign got off to an inauspicious, boring start. There was a warning sign for the GOP downfall, and they came from Brazil: The week before America’s midterms, Jair Bolsonaro — the nation’s stereoidal version of Trump — lost re-election. Unlike Trump (or sore loser Kari Lake), he hasn’t really contested the results. He’s hasn’t even been seen. And there’s a good, strange reason for that.

As per Insider, Bolsonaro has been holed up in his official residence because, as Vice President Hamilton Mourao rcently told the newspaper O Globo, he “can’t wear pants.”

Why can’t Bolsonaro wear pants? Because he’s suffering from erysipelas, a skin infection, which has glommed onto his leg. As per Medical News Today, the disease is caused by bacteria that seeps into one’s body through poorly healed wounds. (What happened there remains to be made public.) Some symptoms of erysipelas include skin. Made swollen, shiny, and red, as well as sensitive to the touch.

But couldn’t Bolsonaro simply wear something else, something more revealing? Apparently not. “It is a health issue. He has a leg injury, a skin infection,” Mourao said .”He cannot wear pants. You want him to come here wearing shorts?”

Bolsonaro lost to Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva, who was Brazil’s president from 2003 through 2010. It was a tight race, and though there were fears Bolsonaro would pull a Trump and pull a Jan. 6, he has not (yet). Perhaps he realizes it’s hard to foment an insurgency in shorts.

During his reign, Bolsonaro was a wild card terror, even threatening the planet by opening up the Amazon Basin to deforestation. He was praised by Tucker Carlson and got into fights with Leonardo DiCaprio. And now he can’t wear pants.

(Via Insider)

Donald Trump used to have the most powerful job in the country, if not the world, and yet his four years in office didn’t exactly educate him about how American law works. The former president is currently in lots of trouble. His most recent problem is the Justice Department, which on Friday announced a special counsel to handle two separate cases of alleged wrongdoing. But Trump thinks he can weasel out of it thanks to a loophole popularized by a movie — a very stupid movie that actually got the loophole wrong.

On Friday, Trump spoke at an America First Policy Institute gala held at the resort in which he now lives. Clad in a tuxedo, he treated the crowd to one of his endless, self-pitying, fact-challenged rants. At one point he touched on the Justice Department stepping up their investigations into him, throwing out a bonkers theory about how he could evade legal woes: He can’t be indicted because he’s already been impeached. Twice!

“They tried it, and we went through the whole process, and we won,” he told the crowd. “We went through the whole process. So wouldn’t this sort of be, a – then you take a look at the other. We went through two of them. Isn’t this sort of like double jeopardy? In the old days we used to call it ‘double jeopardy.’”

Did Trump have a case? Nope, as Intelligencer’s Jonathan Chait pointed out, calling him “comically mistaken”:

There is some popular misunderstanding of the double jeopardy principle. The 1999 movie “Double Jeopardy” starred Ashley Judd as a woman whose husband faked his own death and framed her for the murder. In prison, a fellow inmate advises her that once she gets out, she can find and kill her husband and avoid prosecution because she can’t be charged for the same crime twice. (Hence the title of the film.) This advice is wrong — killing her husband years later would be a different crime, for which she could absolutely be charged — and in general you should not commit felonies on the basis of free legal advice you heard from a fellow inmate.

It’s even actually worse than that. In Double Jeopardy, Judd’s character thinks she can’t be prosecuted for murder twice. (She can.) But Trump seems to think that, having been twice impeached for the same crime, he is now free to commit any crime without prosecution. As Chait point out, were that true, it would be a “gigantic loophole in the legal system.”

Where did Trump get such an idea? As The Daily Beast pointed out, perhaps from Geraldo Rivera. On Fox News earlier that day, the sometimes quisling conservative argued that Trump had “already been impeached for exactly these charges concerning the insurrection of January 6th, that is what impeachment is for.” He then speculated, “To now have a special prosecutor go over the same ground, to me, I submit, is double jeopardy.”

Rivera wasn’t right and neither is Trump. The same goes for the movie Double Jeopardy.

Citing dubious, half-remembered legal advice from Geraldo wasn’t Trump’s only boneheaded legal take on Friday. After Garland announced the latest investigations, Trump told Fox News, “I am not going to partake in it. I’m not going to partake in this.” But that’s like a suspected murderer saying they weren’t going to collaborate with police. Maybe if Trump indeed becomes president a second time, he’ll have another four years to learn about how the law really works.

(Via Intelligencer and The Daily Beast)

Long snappers have one of the trickiest jobs in all of college football. Yes, they have to do one primary thing — get the football to either the holder or the punter — but if they mess that up, it will almost always lead to disaster. They have jobs after the ball gets snapped, but if they mess up that first thing, none of it matters and they end up making a potentially game-changing mistake.

On Saturday, we got the rare moment where something extremely good happened involving a long snapper. Vanderbilt is in The Swamp to take on the Florida Gators, and on a fourth-and-3 from their side of the field with fewer than four minutes remaining in the first half, the Commodores decided to send out the punt team. Everything went off without a hitch, as Matt Hayball booted the ball down the field.

Florida return man Jason Marshall Jr. took a poor angle to try and fair catch the ball on his own 8-yard line, which is a curious decision in and of itself. But he ended up muffing it and the ball rolled gently into the end zone, which led to a scrum. By the time things were sorted out, Vanderbilt long snapper Wesley Schelling had the ball in his hands for six.

This gave the ‘Dores a 14-6 lead they took into the locker room for halftime.

Dwight Howard made clear that he wanted to continue his basketball career, even though he struggled to find an NBA team that would want to bring him on board. As such, the soon-to-be 37-year-old Howard had to head overseas and sign a contract with Taoyuan Leopards of the T1 League in Taiwan.

Well, Howard made his debut with the Leopards on Saturday against New Taipei CTBC DEA, and he immediately took the league by storm. The 8-time All-NBA selection went for 38 points, 25 rebounds, nine assists, and four blocks in a 120-115 win. He also took 10(!!!) threes, and knocked down two of them.

The crowd is losing its collective mind as Dwight Howard is basically allowed to do whatever he wants is awesome, while you can tell that Howard is having a blast being on the floor.

Some of the ways this is fun: Howard’s previous career-high in attempts from three was three. This was the second time he made more than one triple in a game in his entire basketball career. The nine assists is a career-high, he hasn’t blocked four or more shots in a game since 2020, his 25 rebounds is the most he’s had in a game since he had 30 in 2018 as a member of the Charlotte Hornets, and this is the most points he’s scored in a game in nearly a decade, as he scored 39 points in March of 2013 during his disastrous first stint with the Los Angeles Lakers.