Category: News

The Chicago Sky are WNBA champions for the first time in franchise history, thanks to an 80-74 win at home in Game 4 of the WNBA Finals to beat the Mercury 3-1 in the series.

For much of the game, it looked like Phoenix would force a decisive Game 5 back in the desert, using a late second quarter burst to take a 7-point lead to the halftime break and led by as many as 14 in the third quarter. Brittney Griner was dominant inside, scoring 28 points and pulling down seven rebounds, and it seemed there were just no answers from Chicago for her presence in the paint — particularly as their three-point shot had gone cold for the better part of three quarters.

However, the Sky’s offense woke up and they figured out how to get stops — helped in part by Phoenix missing some good looks — and began to reel in the Mercury. Allie Quigley got hot, scoring 26 points on 9-of-14 shooting (5-of-10 from three), serving as the scoring catalyst for the Sky’s comeback.

With six minutes to play, the Mercury still held onto an 8-point lead at 70-62, but would see their offense go ice cold at the worst possible time as Chicago went on an extended 18-4 run to end the game and pull away for the win. Phoenix didn’t score a field goal in the last 4:42 of the game, with their only points coming on two Diana Taurasi free throws, as they went away from Griner and their perimeter players simply couldn’t put the ball in the basket. Taurasi and Skylar Diggins-Smith both missed bunnies late on the few times they created open looks, and otherwise they were stymied by the Sky defense down the stretch.

On the other end, Chicago’s stars shined brightest in the biggest moments. After Quigley got them within striking distance, Kahleah Copper got loose for a layup on one of 15 dimes from Courtney Vandersloot to cut the lead to three, and then Candace Parker hit a game-tying three to send a pulse of energy through the Wintrust Arena.

Then Vandersloot took over, orchestrating the offense to set up Stefani Dolson for a bucket and creating one of her own as well as she finished with 10 points, 15 assists, and nine rebounds in yet another sensational performance.

It was a phenomenal finish from Chicago or a gutting collapse from Phoenix, depending on which side you fell on, but it was a fittingly thrilling fourth quarter in a series that, while it didn’t go the full five games, produced some tremendous drama. Chicago now joins the ranks of WNBA title winning franchises and Candace Parker, who had 16 points, 12 rebounds, five assists, and four steals in the win, delivers a championship to her hometown team in her first season.

As for Finals MVP honors, those belonged to Kahleah Copper who came up big in key moments in each of the Sky’s wins in the series.

Aaron Rodgers might not play his entire career in Green Bay as he spent this offseason feuding with management and worked out a deal that will give him the opportunity to demand a trade this offseason from the Packers. However, whatever comes next for the future Hall of Famer certainly won’t involve him going to Chicago, a team he has tortured for his entire career.

The Packers paid a visit to Soldier Field on Sunday afternoon for what could be the final time with Rodgers at the helm, and No. 12 made sure that, if it was the final time, he reminded Bears fans of his dominance over them in a 24-14 win. Rodgers sealed the Green Bay win with a touchdown run in the closing minutes, getting popped as he crossed the goal line, but he bounced up immediately to tell the Chicago crowd “I’ve owned you all my f*cking life,” and yelling “I own you” over and over as he ran through the end zone to deliver the same message to the fans behind the end zone.

It is some tremendous villainry from Rodgers, who embraces the hate in Chicago and seemingly lives to rip out the hearts of Bears fans — although, to be fair, he does this to most teams in the NFC North. But the Bears in particular seem to be a team he loves to beat, and he’s done it a lot, going 21-5 in his career against Chicago, certainly backing up his taunt on Sunday. The good news for Chicago is that, maybe, possibly, he’ll be gone soon and the boogeyman that lived in the division will be no more.

There are a number of reasons that Ed Orgeron is going to be leaving LSU at the end of this season, as the school and football coach worked out terms of his departure on Sunday morning. For one, since winning a national title in January 2020, the Tigers have been downright mediocre on the field, posting a 9-8 record and falling completely out of contention in the SEC West.

Beyond the poor performance on the field, there was the investigation from a year ago into organizational culture within the program that revealed the team had failed to follow proper protocols when it came to rape and sexual harassment allegations against players like Derrius Guice. And on top of all of that, Orgeron committed the cardinal sin of any football coach: he crossed the wrong people higher up. Football programs at both the college and professional levels will willfully look the other way on a lot of things, which is among the larger overall issues with the sport as a whole, but making enemies out of the people with hiring and firing power is the surest way to get yourself ousted.

Much like Jon Gruden’s emails, which contained horrific language offending many groups and people but reached the point of no return by lobbing that hateful language towards commissioner Roger Goodell, one of the ways Orgeron pushed his way across the line by reportedly trying to hit on the pregnant wife of a high-ranking LSU official, per The Athletic’s Brody Miller.

It created messes for him, like the time Orgeron pulled up to a woman at a gas station wearing exercise attire. “Hey, you look like you work out,” he said, according to multiple sources. “We could work out together.” The woman informed Orgeron she was married and pregnant, to which he responded, “Why does that matter?”

That woman was the wife of a high-ranking LSU official. Word of this reached the LSU Board of Supervisors, the collection of prominent Louisiana attorneys and business owners appointed by the governor who make the most important decisions at LSU. And of course, it reached LSU athletic director Scott Woodward.

Following up on that report that Orgeron, who filed for divorce from his wife of 23 years weeks after winning the national title, became distracted by chasing women in the past two years was this one, which stated he would bring some of those women to practices to the point the distraction became one for the whole team.

This wasn’t the lone factor in Orgeron’s ouster from LSU, but it would stand to reason that it played a role in accelerating the timeline for his dismissal and made it so things couldn’t be repaired even if things on the field turned around, something that is evidenced by this all coming a day after the Tigers beat Florida.

The Phoenix Suns had a 2018 Draft for the ages, landing two core pieces of the team that would go to the NBA Finals last season. No. 1 overall pick Deandre Ayton has expressed his frustration with the lack of a max extension offer after he played a pivotal role in that Finals run, wanting the organization to show him the respect and commitment his counterparts like Luka Doncic, Trae Young, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander have received.

While the Ayton situation puts a bit of a damper on the enthusiasm of this upcoming season in Phoenix, Suns fans can be happy that the other core piece from that draft is now locked in long term, as Mikal Bridges agreed to a 4-year, $90 million extension on Sunday, a day before the extension deadline — as relayed via Adrian Wojnarowski.

Mikal was, understandably, pretty excited about the news.

Bridges has become a tremendous defender in his first three years in Phoenix, as his length, quickness, and activity allow him to wreak havoc on opposing offenses on the wing. Offensively, Bridges has made steady strides each season both in productivity and efficiency, having a career-best season in 2020-21, averaging 13.5 points with 54.3/42.5/84.0 shooting splits. With Bridges locked up, the Suns can shift full attention to Ayton, who it should be noted would, at the worst, head into next summer as a restricted free agent with Phoenix able to match any offer on him.

Who doesn’t love Cousin Greg? As portrayed by the freakishly tall Nicholas Braun, he’s the bumbling, awkward heart of Succession, and the closest thing the show has to a decent person. (Although even he’s not that decent, and he’s been known to stab family members in the back.) He’s also the closet thing the show has to a sex symbol. And so the inevitable has happened: He’s inspired a sex toy.

Just in time for the long-delayed third season to start dropping, the adult entertainment company CamSoda (link definitely NSFW, so be forewarned) has unveiled a new “teledildonic,” which is to say “Internet-connected sex toy,” entitled “Greg the Egg.” Here’s how it works, as per a press release:

• People synch their teledildonic device (aka Internet connected sex toy) on www.camsoda.com [ed. again, NSFW] to the “Greg the Egg” cam room every Sunday night before every episode of Succession at 9 PM ET/6 PM PT.
• Once a user’s toy has been synched, they insert it into their vagina or butthole (depending on the toy).
• The toy will vibrate at a consistent, moderate pace through the duration of each episode.
• The vibrations will increase in frequency whenever Cousin Greg makes an appearance, with the ultimate goal of causing a “Greg-gasm”

So there you have it. Go forth and prosper.

Succession begins its third season Sunday at 9pm on HBO and HBO Max.

The Chiefs came into Week 6 at 2-3, having lost to three of the AFC’s top contenders — the Ravens, Chargers, and Bills — already. It has been a strange year for the defending two-time AFC champs as the defense has been downright atrocious, but the offense has looked rather pedestrian at times.

Patrick Mahomes can be included in those having a bit of a down year considering the lofty standards he’s set for his play so far in his career. He entered the week with 16 touchdowns and six interceptions, as turnovers have been a major issue for Kansas City this season after years of being one of the best at avoiding giveaways. The turnover woes continued against the Football Team, including an early contender for the worst interception of the season from any quarterback from the typically reliable Mahomes.

On a third and one from the Football Team 20, trailing by three late in the first half, Mahomes dropped the snap and then, rather than just eating a sack to preserve a field goal to tie before halftime, decided to try and heave the ball downfield only to see it flutter out of his hands as he got hit and fall into the waiting arms of a Washington defender.

Mahomes has had a few of uncharacteristic interceptions this season where he’s forced the ball when nothing’s been available, but this one is the worst of the bunch. There is absolutely nothing there — his receiver isn’t even running a route and is looking to block on a run play that got botched by the snap — and yet he tosses one up anyways as he gets hit. If anything, it feels like a guy who is desperate to recapture that magic from years past but can’t seem to get it going, leading to some forced throws and poor decisions that he typically doesn’t make.

Rick Ross has a new business venture. The rapper recently teamed up with Rap Snacks’ CEO and Founder James Lindsay as well as the San Diego-based hemp manufacturing company Hempacco to create a new company that will deliver a line of smokeable products, which includes cannabinoid cigarettes and hemp blunt rolling papers. The company is called Hemp Hop Smokeables LLC and it seeks to use Hempacco to introduce something new to the smoking industry.

In a press statement, Ross said that his past health issues pushed him to help create safer and more beneficial products. “Having had my own health scares, and through my healing process, I decided I would develop a line of smokables to help others with the benefits of Hemp cannabinoids,” he wrote in the statement.

This news comes after Ross bought his son a Wingstop franchise for his sixteenth birthday. Prior to that, he appeared alongside Lil Wayne on Drake’s “You Only Live Twice” from Certified Lover Boy. He also recently signed Boston rapper Smoke Bulga to his label Maybach Music Group.

Hemp Hop is currently holding a giveaway for Ross fans who register on their website, where more information about the product can be found.

She believes in “Jewish space lasers” and had to go to a museum in her late 40s to learn about the Holocaust. He’s been compared to Butt-Head and is being federally investigated for ties to a sex trafficking ring. They’re both United States representatives. But the combined power of far right stars Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz is not as strong as one may think.

A new report by Mother Jones alleges that the PAC they created together, entitled Put America First, is all but broke only six months after it was started:

In its first few months, the Put America First PAC seemed like it was off to a hot start, raising $360,000 in its first two months—but according to new campaign finance filings made by the PAC it now has just $13,000 in cash. Multiple tour stops were cancelled this summer. Gaetz and Greene did hold at least one major event in Iowa in August. Despite attracting big headlines, the rally was, apparently, a financial bust. The group spent $159,000 from July 1 to September 30, and raised just $57,000.

Individually they’re not doing great either. Greene has been far more successful at fundraising than Gaetz, having raised over $8 million in less than a year in office. But almost half of that was amassed in her first three months as a Congresswoman, and has been trending downward ever since. What’s more, the cash she’s raised, Mother Jones says, has been “increasingly eaten up by the costs of chasing donors and paying off the operatives and professional fundraising consultants and vendors that she hires.”

Gaetz’s fundraising, meanwhile, has all but dried up, probably because he’s being federally investigated for ties to a sex trafficking ring.

But maybe he can scrape a couple bucks together as a Rick Astley impersonator.

(Via Mother Jones)

Jay-Z and Beyonce are reportedly putting their New Orleans mansion on the market for the price of $4.45 million, according to TMZ. The building, which is located in the city’s Historic Garden District and was originally a Presbyterian church, covers 13,292 square feet and features seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms. Spanish baroque architecture and four separate living spaces can also be found throughout the mansion. There’s also a rooftop garden, which one of them said was a kind of magical space: “I did my best writing ever, while watching the sunset from the rooftop garden!”

The musicians’ decision to sell the home comes less than two months after it caught on fire. The reports for the incident called it a one-alarm fire that required about two hours and 22 people to put out. An investigation afterward named cause of the fire as simple arson, but a suspect has yet to have been arrested.

As a part of the mansion’s sale, Jay-Z and Beyonce will have the house repainted to the preference of the new owner prior to the deal’s official deal. Altogether, the couple looks to make just under a $2 million profit on the mansion, having bought it in 2015 for a whopping $2.6 million.

It’s been less than two calendar years since LSU was on top of the college football world, but after a disastrous 2020 and little in the way of a bounce back to start 2021, head coach Ed Orgeron found himself firmly on the hot seat in Baton Rouge.

On Saturday, the Tigers stunned Florida in a thrilling 49-42 win that many thought might keep Orgeron in town a bit longer, but even a big win over a ranked rival won’t be enough to save Coach O’s job. On Sunday, word broke from Ross Dellenger, Steven Godfrey, Pete Thamel, and others that Orgeron was negotiating an agreement to leave the program and would be out after the 2021 season — with the expectation that he will not receive his full buyout amount as he departs.

Not only was the on field performance lacking after the national title winning season, but an investigation into the football program’s culture revealed the program had mishandled rape allegations against former running back Derrius Guice while he was at LSU and not followed their legal responsibility in reporting them. That seems to have provided LSU with leverage to move on from Orgeron and push him into taking less than his buyout amount.

As for who could be next to take over in Baton Rouge, Bruce Feldman reports Mel Tucker is a favorite of many around the program for what he’s done in turning around Michigan State quickly.

There will be plenty of coaches floated as possibilities for the LSU job in the coming months, as Orgeron becoming a lame duck coach opens the door for plenty to put their name in the ring for one of the nation’s biggest jobs.