Category: News

The 2022 NBA Draft has a pretty clear top three, as Jabari Smith, Chet Holmgren, and Paolo Banchero have separated themselves on most big boards ahead of Thursday’s draft. What order one has those three big men is up for debate, but the expectation was Orlando would be choosing between Smith and Holmgren, with Smith as the frontrunner to go to Orlando at most sportsbooks, Holmgren the expected selection of the Thunder at No. 2, and Banchero mocked almost entirely to the Rockets at No. 3.

Monday brought some significant change to those expectations, however, as books saw serious steam on Banchero to go No. 1, pushing his odds up from the 16-1 (or even 18-1) range all the way to 4-1 (or 3-1) by Monday evening. That is a significant change as sharp money hammered the long Banchero odds and forced oddsmakers to adjust their thinking that this was a two-man race for the top spot. Now, what remains to be seen is whether this is real intel or just a sudden belief that Banchero’s odds shouldn’t be that long considering how close most evaluators see the top three.

Matt Moore of the Action Network laid out a variety of potential reasons for the move, from Holmgren reportedly withholding medicals and reportedly having a preference for OKC to the simple fact that many evaluators put Banchero as the top player on their big boards. We’ll find out if the sudden Banchero steam was for good reason on Thursday night, or whether the initial projections will prevail. In any case, oddsmakers that took big money on Banchero at long odds will be sweating it out until the Magic make their selection.

The Mars Volta, consisting of members Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, are no stranger to teasing things. Since breaking up in 2013, the band posted a cryptic video last year teasing what would end up being La Realidad De Los Sueños, a massive, career-spanning box set. “It not only contains the band’s whole studio discography,” the description read, “but also some true treasures like ‘Landscape Tantrums,’ unreleased material from the De-Loused In The Comatorium Sessions and a photo-book with exclusive behind-the-scenes shots.”

Now they’re teasing something again in an even weirder way. There is a cube installation in Grand Park, Los Angeles, whose longitude and latitude coordinates were tweeted by the band’s account. Inside is a three-minute preview of a new single in a decade—their first new material in a decade. No cell phones are allowed inside.

After seeing the major success of their 18 LP box set La Realidad De Los Sueños, The Mars Volta announced last year that they were focusing on reissuing individual albums. They made newly-pressed vinyl of each of their six LPs, including their debut EP Tremulant and Landscape Tantrums, the recently discovered eight-song collection of recordings that eventually became their debut studio album De-Loused In The Comatorium.

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

With the Golden State Warriors winning their fourth championship with the Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson core on Thursday, there has been plenty of chatter about the key member of their last title team who isn’t on this one, Kevin Durant.

Durant has become a lightning rod of sorts for fans and pundits alike who look down on his two rings (and Finals MVP awards) from his time with the Warriors as the worst of the superteam era. Charles Barkley has been front and center in questioning Durant’s ability to be a “bus driver,” insisting that those Warriors teams were still Steph’s even when Durant was winning Finals MVP awards. Chuck began that commentary as the Nets were getting swept by the Celtics, but circled back and brought the “bus driver” comment back out after the Warriors title win during an appearance on ESPN’s Get Up! on Friday.

CJ McCollum defended KD’s credentials on Monday in response to Chuck on the same program, which is when Durant caught wind of Barkley’s latest comments and offered a rebuttal of his own, calling Barkley a “hatin old head.”

It’s not the first time Durant and Barkley have gone at it, and surely won’t be the last. As for the legacy talk, Durant is so used to it from fans at this point that he pointed out that this latest Warriors title does nothing to him, explaining that for those who hated his time on the Warriors, his legacy died when he signed there in 2016.

What will be fascinating is whether Durant has a chance to make a run of his own next year to answer the struggles of the Nets this season, with rumors swirling about the future of Kyrie Irving. How that saga plays out is more impactful on KD than the Warriors latest title, but he’s at least happy that Steezy is happy.

PJ Tucker has been a key figure on two of the best teams in the NBA over the past two years, first winning a title in Milwaukee and this past year helping the Heat to a 1-seed in the East and the conference finals.

Tucker had the option to stay in Miami at just over $7 million next year, but will decline that to become a free agent and see if there’s a bigger pay day out there waiting for him — either in Miami or elsewhere — per Shams Charania of The Athletic.

Tucker averaged 7.6 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 2.1 assists per game last season in Miami, shooting 41.5 percent from three (mostly in his beloved corner spot) and providing tremendous defensive intensity and versatility, as has become his calling card. Tucker’s play was instrumental in Miami’s defense being as good as it was this season, and the Heat will surely be interested in bringing him back. However, as he showed a year ago, if they aren’t willing to pay him what someone else will, he will walk and take his talents to a different contender who values him more.

There aren’t a lot of contenders with cap room this summer, but Tucker is the type of player just about every title hopeful would be interested in and teams could look to shuffle their space around to make room for him.

Yellowstone is such a massive hit with Boomer parents that it’s received not one but two prequel series. One, set in the late 19th century and titled, simply, 1883, aired earlier this year. That did so well that Paramount+ ordered another one, set in the early 20th century. It’s set to star no less than Harrison Ford — in his first-ever regular TV gig — and Helen Mirren as yet more Dutton family ancestors. But now there’s been one tiny but crucial alteration.

Originally the show was to be called 1932, and would take place in Montana as the nation was suffering through the Great Depression. But as per Variety, the producers have suddenly decided it’s going to hop back just a little bit further. Now it’s called 1923, which means all they did was switch two of the numbers around. Heck, maybe it was a typo all along.

According to Variety, the show will now focus “on the Dutton family’s next two generations as they struggle to survive historic drought, lawlessness and prohibition, and an epidemic of cattle theft; all battled beneath the cloud of Montana’s great depression, which preceded the nation by almost a decade. The show will also touch on the end of World War I, which occurred in 1918.”

In the meantime, there is no forthcoming second season of 1883. 1923 — formerly 1932 — is the second season, in a sense, while the main show will soon get its own spin-off, 6666, which isn’t set in the far-flung future but rather at the same time as the modern-set, Kevin Costner-starring show. We hope this has all been clear.

(Via Variety)

FKA Twigs and Jorja Smith have both managed to rise to the top of their respective fields: Twigs is a highly respected indie/pop/R&B/genre-bending artist and Smith’s voice earned her a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 2019. The two worked together on Twigs’ new mixtape Caprisongs, with Smith featuring on “Darjeeling.” Well, after making that song together, they both realized they’re actually cousins.

In a new GQ interview, Twigs said of Smith:

“I’d never met her before, and I jumped in her car with her… and I remember thinking to myself, ‘Gosh, that’s really strange: we’ve got exactly the same kind of skin.’ […] A few months later, I was on the road to go to LA and [Smith] left me a voice note saying, ‘You’re never going to believe this, but I’ve just spoken to my dad and he’s spoken to his sister and we’re related.’”

Meanwhile, Twigs has a lot going on right now. She recently launched her post-Caprisongs era with “Killer,” her first new song since the mixtape. She’s also expanding her acting profile, as it was reported last month she has landed a starring role in a reboot of The Crow.

Check out the full interview here.

Harry Styles’ “As It Was” has quickly become the biggest song of his career, as it’s the first song of his career to spend multiple weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It has managed to hang around the top for a while now and this week, it has done it again: On the new Hot 100 chart dated June 25, the Harry’s House highlight is No. 1 for a seventh total week.

Elsewhere on the chart, Kate Bush’s 1985 now-hit “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” stays in the top five, placing at No. 5 this week, down from No. 4 last week. The other most notable tune in the top-10 is Joji’s recent single “Glimpse Of Us,” which debuts at No. 10 and is Joji’s first top-10 single.

Meanwhile, Bush recently offered another new “Running Up That Hill”-related statement, noting in part of Stranger Things, “By featuring Running Up That Hill in such a positive light — as a talisman for Max (one of the main female characters) — the song has been brought into the emotional arena of her story. Fear, conflict and the power of love are all around her and her friends. I salute the Duffer Brothers for their courage — taking this new series into a much more adult and darker place. I want to thank them so much for bringing the song into so many people’s lives. I’m overwhelmed by the scale of affection and support the song is receiving and it’s all happening really fast, as if it’s being driven along by a kind of elemental force. I have to admit I feel really moved by it all.”

Captain America wasn’t Chris Evans’ first superhero movie rodeo. When he was a young man without chest tattoos, the future Steve Rogers played Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch in the mid-aughts Fantastic Four diptych. It was a simpler time, when comic book movies hadn’t yet taken over the industry. And it was a different, goofier, more fratty Evans, who played perhaps the least introspective/tortured superhero in the genre.

Well, Evans wouldn’t mind going back. In an interview with MTV News, the character came up, in part because John Krasinski filed one of Doctor Strange 2’s many cameos, playing Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards. And so Evans was asked if he could see himself doing one of those superhero callbacks that have enlisted the likes of Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Michael Keaton.

“God, wouldn’t that be great?” Evans replied. Alas, no one’s yet asked him to dust off the Human Torch. “I mean, I don’t exactly look the same anymore. That was 15, almost 20 years ago. Oh my God, I’m old. I really love that character, but I think… aren’t they doing something now with Fantastic Four?”

They are, but it’s in development hell. But Evans remains optimistic.

“Look, I would love it,” he said. “That would actually be an easier sell to me than coming back as Cap. Cap is so precious to me, and I almost don’t want to disrupt what a beautiful experience that was. But Johnny Storm, I feel like he didn’t really get his day. That was before Marvel really found its footing. So, I loved that role and, you know, who knows?”

Of course, going back to Johnny Storm would entail going back to the gym as well. And, well, maybe he’s not so into that right now.

(Via MTV News)

Before their upcoming US headlining and summer festival tour dates, Nine Inch Nails are in the midst of their first tour through the UK in four years. And this past weekend, they played back-to-back shows at The Eden Project in rural Cornwall, England — the world’s largest greenhouse complex, which also happens to house the largest indoor rainforest in the world.

It’s one hell of a setting for the pop-up stage at the foot of the complex where Nine Inch Nails performed, yet the weather systems for the two shows could not have been more different. Friday’s show took place under the scorching summer heat, before Saturday gave way to glorious rainfall sweeping over the grounds, dissipating just enough for Trent Reznor to take center stage for the last of the two-night run. Smack in the middle of the band’s set, as the band started to play “Less Than” (off of 2017’s Add Violence), a giant rainbow emerged from the sky. Nobody thought that it was possible for colors this bright to pierce through the sea of black that is a Nine Inch Nails crowd, not even Reznor, who cut through his lyrics to point mightily at the heavens and happily proclaim, “A f*cking rainbow,” and then almost instantly goes into the song’s chorus.

Happiness and light swept through the darkness of the NIN crowd — perhaps for the first time ever? — proving that Trent Reznor holds his fans’ emotions at his fingertips. Your moment of zen is below.

After winning their fourth title in eight seasons on Thursday night in Boston, the Golden State Warriors came home to celebrate with their fans in San Francisco on Monday morning.

Klay Thompson took his boat to the facility to join the team for the parade, and didn’t think to secure his championship hat well enough and had it fly off into the bay on his way in.

The Warriors championship parade didn’t feature a massive rally with drunken speeches like we sometimes get at the end of a parade, but instead a smaller stage setup with a small crowd for a pre-parade, made-for-TV segment where the players could pass the mic and give out their speeches. There, the players were all introduced and none came better prepared than Jordan Poole, who had a squirt gun and sprayed the crowd as he strode onto the stage for the first time as a champion.

As far as attire, Chris Chiozza’s choice of shirt featuring Stone Cold Steve Kerr was certainly a highlight, but no one had a better flex than Stephen Curry’s chain featuring his three prior championship rings.

Klay Thompson, fresh off losing his championship hat in the ocean, swapped that out for his captain’s hat, which is honestly more fitting.

Even though the speeches weren’t fueled by the beverages consumed during the parade this time, they still couldn’t avoid Draymond F-bombs.

When it came time for the Splash Brothers to get on the mic, Klay had some fun with Steph crying in the final moments of Game 6.

Steve Kerr didn’t take the mic on stage, but did speak in an interview with the NBC Sports broadcast and offered the update everyone was waiting on: Was he still hungover?

From there, the fellas boarded their various buses for the parade through the streets of San Francisco to celebrate with the fans. Some of those Warriors fans were taking more audacious shots than the Splash Brothers themselves.