Category: News

The Los Angeles Lakers didn’t see their season end as they had hoped. Despite aspirations of defending their NBA title, the team suffered a first-round exit against the Phoenix Suns as injuries piled up and some of the holes on the roster beyond their superstar duo of LeBron James and Anthony Davis became more apparent.

This offseason has become a fascinating one for the Lakers, as after seemingly pressing all the right buttons in building the 19-20 title squad, the opposite was true for this year’s squad. Dennis Schröder seemed to have some “fit in or fit out” moments after being dealt to L.A. for Danny Green as the Lakers were desperate to upgrade their point guard rotation. Andre Drummond’s signing on the buyout market only proved to upset everyone in the center rotation, with Marc Gasol, Montrezl Harrell, and Drummond all feeling like they weren’t being given enough opportunity.

All of this leads to an offseason where Rob Pelinka and company have to figure out how to undo the mess they made despite not having much in the way of cap space to make additions. That means trades will be the leading avenue for roster shakeups, and as we approach the Draft and free agency, reports of trade exploration out of L.A. have emerged. Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report brought word on Wednesday that Schröder was a prime candidate for a sign-and-trade, if the Lakers aren’t willing to meet his demands, both on price and role, with the Knicks and Bulls mentioned as two teams with interest — although the Knicks wouldn’t need a sign-and-trade to make a signing happen.

Maybe more interestingly, the Lakers are also apparently taking the temperature of the league when it comes to Kyle Kuzma, who has voiced his desire to take on a larger role than what he was given with the 20-21 Lakers.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles continues to gauge rival teams’ interest in Kyle Kuzma, sources told B/R, although Schroder does carry a higher trade value around the NBA.

Kuzma has talked about wanting to be more than a spot-up shooter recently, and its hard to see exactly how he gains an expanded offensive role next to LeBron and AD. It also remains to be seen if other teams see Kuzma as a guy that you want as having a significant on-ball role, which is seemingly what he wants, as his best attribute as an offensive player is his cutting — which the Lakers could certainly utilize more of if they had better perimeter passers beyond LeBron James.

In any case, this offseason is set to be a very interesting one in Los Angeles, as the Lakers clearly need to make some changes if for nothing else than to fix what appeared to be some serious chemistry issues late. There are also plenty of on-court needs for this team to get back to being a title favorite. The health of their two stars is at the top of that list, but better balance on offense is also needed and it’s possible that Schröder and Kuzma would be the leading candidates to be trade chips to make that happen.

Detroit multi-hyphenate Langston Bristol, New York rapper Marlon Craft, and DMV rapper Redveil link up on the new song “Activate.” The song contemplates the hard work it takes to climb to the top and live your dreams and suggests that the three artists’ time is nearing. They each spit sinuous verses reinforcing this point, along with Langston’s crooning on the chorus.

The three rappers all have reason to believe their own hype. Bristol, who released his M-Side Odyssey 2 album in February (which also features Redveil) has slowly been building his momentum over the past year, despite the pandemic, appearing on Apple Music with his and Redveil’s song “PSA.” Craft also released a new project in February, the 17-track How We Intended, showing off his intricate flows and polished pen. His album also featured a number of up-and-coming super rappers, including Katori Walker and Radamiz.

Finally, Redveil, in addition to appearing on Bristol’s independently released album, has picked up a few fans thanks to a collaboration with rising rap group AG Club and his own August 2020 album, Niagara. The three MCs display scintillating chemistry here and Bristol’s production sounds like a warm summer day. It’s worth giving a spin.

Listen to Langston Bristol’s “Activate” featuring Marlon Craft and Redveil above.

Gunpowder Milkshake (Netflix film) — Look, Netflix original action films might seem like they’re in plentiful supply these days, but this one’s worth particular notice. Karen Gillan portrays the assassin-daughter of an elite assassin, portrayed by Lena Headey, and the pair come back together again to help protect a young girl from an organization known as The Firm. Nope, Tom Cruise does not make a cameo in this picture, but there’s a group called The Librarians, who are played by Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett, and Carla Gugino. Essentially, we’ve got three generations of badass ladies here, doing their best to wipe out pesky henchmen and raise a lot of hell.

Heist: Season 1 (Netflix series) — Three of America’s greatest heists shall be examined in the finest of detail here by the people who did the heisting. These adventures include a Vegas casino heist, a Miami airport heist, and a a Kentucky bourbon heist. The shooting style here aims for Ocean’s Eleven and Catch Me If You Can, and the planning of these heists is flat-out meticulous, so it’s no wonder that the initial heisting went well. However, one must realize that these heisters were eventually busted, so there’s that part of the story, too. Crime doesn’t pay in the long-term, kids.

Loki: Episode 6 (Disney+ series, releasing in the wee hours of Wednesday morning) — Tom Hiddleston’s fetchingly charming, mercurial trickster can’t stop showing us all of his forms, and hopefully, he and Sylvie stirred up some good forces at the end of the season’s penultimate episode. We’ll see if the Time Variance Authority lasts the test of, well, time this week, won’t we?

Shark Week 2021 (Discovery+, Discovery, Nat Geo) — The annual shark-involved festivities continue with several new entries, including Tiger Queen on Discovery+ as well as three entries on Discovery: MechaShark (8:00pm), The Real Sharknado (9:00pm), and Return to Lair of the Great White (10:00pm).

My Unorthodox Life (Netflix series) — A fashion mogul belongs to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, which doesn’t exactly jive with her CEO job. No matter, she manages to revolutionize her world and still pull off motherhood, which makes me freaking exhausted to think about. Still, the promise of an untamed and unpredictable heroine, who’s struggling to balance her upbringing and her actual life, is an intriguing premise to pursue.

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon — Don Cheadle, Cecily Strong, BTS

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Mindy Kaling, Wally Baram

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Florence Pugh, Questlove, Walk The Moon

In case you missed this pick from last week:

Monsters at Work: Season 1 Premiere (Disney+ series) — Twenty freaking years ago when Monsters Inc. came out in theaters, Pixar films’ very existence still felt like a revelation, given that adults could straight-up dig these kid-geared movies, too. These days, that’s no longer a novel concept, but this franchise has persisted with a prequel and a few shorts, and now, John Goodman and Billy Crystal return as James P. “Sulley” Sullivan and Mike Wazowski. They have both been promoted, and a new crop of monsters (voiced by Mindy Kaling, Henry Winkler, Ben Feldman, and Alana Ubach) are doing the harvesting. The twist here is that although the franchise is going back to basics, the franchise is trading scares for laughter after realizing that — surprise — laughter generates so much more energy for Monstropolis than screams can produce.

The 2021 WNBA All-Star Game might be the most competitive event in the league’s 25-year history. Typically, the WNBA doesn’t hold All-Star Games during Olympic seasons, but this year, the league will have its 12 All-Stars play against Dawn Staley’s Team USA roster in an exhibition match before the group heads to Tokyo.

It’s a brilliant idea that will put 24 of the best players on the court and give them incentive to actually play. For Team USA, this game is just one of three pre-Olympic opportunities before things get real, and for the All-Stars, it’s a chance to avenge an Olympic roster snub or impress scouts for 2024.

Here’s who’s playing on ESPN at 7 p.m. ET July 14:

Team USA
Ariel Atkins
Sue Bird
Tina Charles
Napheesa Collier
Skylar Diggins-Smith
Sylvia Fowles
Chelsea Gray
Brittney Griner
Jewell Loyd
Breanna Stewart
Diana Taurasi
A’ja Wilson

Team All-Stars
DeWanna Bonner
Liz Cambage
Kahleah Copper
Dearica Hamby
Brionna Jones
Jonquel Jones
Betnijah Laney
Arike Ogunbowale
Candace Parker
Satou Sabally
Courtney Williams
Courtney Vandersloot

With the rosters so stacked, it shouldn’t surprise many if the WNBA All-Stars take down Team USA. And no — if it happens, that does not mean Team USA is in trouble of winning a seventh consecutive gold medal.

Let’s look at a few reasons why an upset could be brewing.

1. Jonquel Jones is the best player in the world right now

Team USA may have the better roster, but Jonquel Jones is the best player in the world. The 6’6 center, who can stretch the floor, blow by defenders, and use her size in the post has dominated both the WNBA and EuroBasket over the last two months. The MVP frontrunner is unstoppable, and if the All-Stars can pull off the win, it’s likely because of Jones’ performance.

2. Team USA doesn’t have experience playing together yet

Team USA hasn’t played a game together yet, and the WNBA season only officially took its midseason break on Monday. They’re going to be learning a lot on the fly. We already saw the men’s USA squad drop two of its first three exhibition games, and it wouldn’t be too shocking if the women’s team doesn’t click right away either.

3. The All-Stars are playing with a purpose, too

There’s a lot of underlying beef in this game. Candace Parker, who was snubbed from the Olympic team in 2016 and been outspoken about the “politics” behind the program’s roster decisions, will compete for the All-Stars. She’ll be teammates with Arike Ogunbowale, last season’s WNBA leading scorer who didn’t make this year’s Olympic roster, and one of Team USA’s biggest threats at winning gold in Australian center Liz Cambage. They’ll want to put on a show.

4. Diana Taurasi is unlikely to play for Team USA

It hasn’t been confirmed yet, but Taurasi is unlikely to play due to a hip injury. She missed the last two regular season games.

“I probably won’t play. My goal is to be ready for the Olympics,” Taurasi said according to ESPN. “Preparation is key. So at this point in my career, I think being ready for Tokyo is what’s best for our team and me. So I’m taking it day by day. I’m getting better, and I’ll be fine once the real games start.”

5. The WNBA All-Stars are stacked with scoring guards

Good luck to anyone trying to stop a backcourt with Ogunbowale and Betnijah Laney launching shots from everywhere. Chelsea Gray, Sue Bird, Skylar Diggins-Smith, and Ariel Atkins will have their hands full against the duo scoring 37.9 points per game combined.

6. The WNBA All-Stars could have the better starting five

We’re waiting to see which five players each side will roll with to start, but it’s very possible the All-Stars could play the most unguardable unit of all. With Ogunbowale at point, DeWanna Bonner and Parker facilitating plays as point-forwards, Jones dominating inside-out basketball, and Cambage in the post, this team straight up does not have a weakness.

You can thank Caitlyn Jenner, transphobia, and this weekend’s CPAC event for the latest Republican catfight going down on social media right now.

Jenner made an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas this weekend to, among other things, drum up support for her California gubernatorial campaign. Despite being a loud and proud right-wing cardholder, Jenner was followed by hecklers during the conference who deadnamed her, calling her a “tranny” and a “sick freak.” Pretty despicable behavior, though not that surprising considering the kind of crowd Jenner’s been hanging out with, politically speaking. Still, that kind of abuse and transphobic bullying didn’t sit well with Tomi Lahren, who made a point to condemn anyone attacking Jenner for how she identifies herself:

Now, we know what you’re thinking. This seems like a fairly progressive stance from a woman who once compared the Black Lives Matter movement to the KKK but we guess even a racist chatterbox like Lahren has the capacity to be tolerant sometimes? Anyway, this surprising show of acceptance didn’t sit well with Lahren’s Republican cohort Candace Owens, who took to her podcast to condemn the bullying of Jenner before she laid into Lahren for … suggesting that conservative Christians can be pro-choice and supporters of trans rights?

“You don’t need to be a warden of Christianity to know that supporting abortion and supporting transgenderism is problematic,” Owens said. “All you have to do is actually read the Bible. I cannot support Caitlyn Jenner for governor because Caitlyn Jenner believes…in the deception that men can be women and women can be men. There is no bigger lie right now going around in society than the belief that men can be women and women can be men.”

Weird stance, but ok. Sadly, the drama didn’t end there because Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis apparently got wind of this argument and decided to add her two cents in, on Twitter obviously.

Which meant Lahren then needed to fire back.

And that’s where things stand — three women, all of whom support ideals of religious intolerance and oppression but, for some reason, can’t agree on which minority group truly deserves their hatred. Look, normally we hate to see people feuding on Twitter but if social media ends up helping to topple the GOP from the inside, well then, we can forgive Jack Dorsey for trying to make Fleets happen.

The first reviews are in for Space Jam: A New Legacy, the sequel to the 1996 classic that originally paired Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes for a campy basketball adventure. This time around, LeBron James is the NBA star teaming up with Bugs and the gang, and well, it’s not exactly being welcomed as warmly as its predecessor. In fact, most of the reviews are in the vein of a tweet by IndieWire‘s Kate Erbland who bluntly stated “Space Jam 2 hurt me.”

Outside of a review by Variety writer Amy Nicholson, who generously argued that Space Jam: A New Legacy jam-packing its runtime with way too much Warner Bros. IP could “seed curiosity about cinema history in kiddie audiences,” the overwhelming consensus is that the sequel is a soulless exercise in corporate synergy that fails the Looney Tunes name. And that’s putting it nicely, which a lot of these reviews did not. Some of our favorite selections so far…

Bilge Ebiri, Vulture:

In the grand scheme of things, the new Space Jam isn’t hateful or inept. It fills a two-hour hole in the schedule, which will keep parents happy, and it brandishes the brand, which will keep shareholders happy. Whether it could have also been a good movie might not have crossed anyone’s mind.

David Sims, The Atlantic:

As the spin-off of a successful advertising campaign, Space Jam represented the apotheosis of crass commercialism in 1996. So it makes sense that its sequel attempts to do the same, essentially functioning as a glitzy advertisement for the studio that created it. The cast has been updated—our hero is now LeBron James, Jordan’s successor as the reigning king of basketball—and so has the shamelessness, as James and Bugs Bunny zoom through scenes from past WB movies and marvel at how one company could have such a grand history.

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter:

To whom this is meant to appeal is anyone’s guess, except presumably the studio’s marketing department. Children are unlikely to recognize many of the fleeting cameo appearances and cinematic references, while adults will be bored silly by the frenetic pacing that makes you feel as if you’re watching somebody else play a video game. It all feels like Warner Brothers ingested an emetic and vomited up all their intellectual property.

Kate Erbland, IndieWire:

“Space Jam: A New Legacy” attempts to land on a feel-good message. All this cheap, cloying material? It’s really about bringing together a family and encouraging our best and brightest young minds to follow their dreams. It’s a sentiment that should be immune to cynicism, but somehow “Space Jam: A New Legacy” finds the space for it. Truly, it has everything, except an actual heart.

Joshua Rivera, Polygon:

Space Jam: A New Legacy — which premieres in theaters and on HBO Max on July 16 — is so overwhelmingly suffused with corporate propaganda that it seems like the filmmakers are seeking exactly that sort of praise: not satisfying cinema, not a worthwhile story, not a fun time at the movies, but “a great product.”

A.A. Dowd, The A.V. Club:

Space Jam: A New Legacy takes almost nothing but wrong turns, all leading to a glittering CGI trash heap of cameos, pat life lessons, and stale internet catchphrases.

Charles Bramesco, The Guardian:

As commercial propaganda, this isn’t even convincing, portraying the studio it set out to glorify as a fading institution entering its decadent last-days-of-Rome phase. In this display of expensive corporate onanism, we arrive at a creative dead end for a studio reliant on classics that they’ve stopped minting. Gee, ain’t it a stinker?

And on and on and on. Please go through and click all of those links if you want a full picture. It’s kind of remarkable. It’s been a while since we’ve seen this sort of brutal consensus beatdown. It’s hard to look away from it. Like staring into the sun, it can’t be good for you, but it’s fascinating to behold.

Space Jam: A New Legacy dribbles into theaters and HBO Max on July 16, 2021.

In the weeks since Britney Spears gave a damning 23-minute testimony around the alleged abuses she’s faced in her long-running conservatorship, the singer’s team has collapsed in on itself. Britney’s court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, has stepped aside; the bank overseeing her finances has pulled out; Britney’s father and conservatorship manager Jamie Spears fired shots at Britney’s personal conservator, Jodi Montgomery (and vice versa), and Britney’s sister, Jamie Lynn, has essentially become a Homer Simpson-backs-into-the-bush gif, claiming that she doesn’t care what Britney does. As for Britney herself? Well, if the news is to be believed, she’s taking much-deserved vacations in Maui and reportedly in discussions with high-profile Hollywood lawyers to represent her as more court dates, deciding the conservatorship’s next steps, loom.

This considerable fallout was to be expected, given the no-holds-barred magnitude of what Britney had to say on June 23, where she described herself as “traumatized,” and her conservatorship, in place since 2008, as “abusive.” For the first time in more than a decade, advocates for her freedom, aka the #FreeBritney movement, can see a tangible path opening up for the singer to regain control of her life and finances. This is all tremendous, undeniably so. The think pieces — about the Y2K-era music industry, gender, the systemic abuse of the mentally ill and disabled — write themselves. All of these discussions are equally important and necessary. But there’s another piece of the puzzle I have not seen addressed to quite the same extent: women’s emotional labor. Specifically, emotional labor and the amount that we regularly ask female musicians to shoulder for the sake of their careers.

Emotional labor is one of those things that, once you know what it means, you start to see it everywhere. Today, the term tends to be thrown around when describing the unpaid “second shift” many women undergo to keep the house clean and the kids fed, on top of full-time or hourly day jobs. Other times, people like to use “emotional labor” to describe needy friendships and familial relationships. But when it was first coined in the early 1980s by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, “emotional labor” was primarily a work-related term, describing the way we — again, mostly women — feel forced to regulate our emotions to meet certain job requirements. A contemporary example could be when a flight attendant must smile through their teeth when an unruly passenger refuses to wear a mask, or when women feel compelled to pepper in extra exclamation points to emails. In Britney Spears’ case, the term feels applicable to her entire life, pre-conservatorship and beyond.

You see it as early as Britney’s 1992 turn on Star Search. At just 10 years old, after wowing audiences by singing The Judds’ “Love Can Build a Bridge,” she noticeably squirms as host Ed McMahon asks if she has a boyfriend. “They’re mean,” says Britney, about boys her age. “I’m not mean, how about me?” McMahon suggests. “Well,” Britney says, eyes shifting around, “That depends.” 30 years later, this scene invites an obvious full-body-cringe. But the moment also marks the start of something else: the first step in an infinite ladder of Britney regulating her feelings for others’ comfort, especiallythose who will ultimately decide her career success.

As Britney evolves, from the early mall tours to the TRL-topping singles to the many (many) uncomfortable press interviews to her eventual dealings with paparazzi to the conservatorship itself, she becomes the living embodiment of emotional labor. You can see it happening as Britney is questioned about her virginity status, her breasts, what she “did” to cause her breakup with Justin Timberlake. In every interview, across a spectrum of horrifying questions, she tries to maintain a game face. Be a nice girl. Don’t show your embarrassment. Say the right thing. Everyone’s watching. On top of her demanding job, to produce hit records and sold-out tour dates, this is Britney’s second shift.

Naturally, because she is human, Britney had her limits. “That’s when she just really started becoming more free and less concerned with pleasing everybody, which is also just a whole other metaphor for what women do. At some point in our lives, we stop trying to please everybody,” Britney’s former stylist Hayley Hill says in The New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears. Over the next five to seven years, Britney’s “very carefully managed image,” as New York Timesculture reporter Joe Coscarelli added, appears to unravel as Britney marries and divorces Kevin Federline, has two children, and is hounded by the paparazzi, who know that candid, unflattering pictures will earn them heaps of money.

All pop stars — men included — have that “managed image,” as Coscarelli put it. Last year, Taylor Swift opened up to Variety about how her “managed image” could not, under any circumstances, include any political messaging, describing how her label managers held The Chicks over her head as a cautionary tale of a booming career gone bust. “I saw how one comment ended such a powerful reign, and it terrified me,” Swift said. “These days, with social media, people can be so mad about something one day and then forget what they were mad about a couple weeks later. That’s fake outrage. But what happened to the Dixie Chicks was real outrage. I registered it — that you’re always one comment away from being done being able to make music.” In many ways, nearly every famous person, women especially, and women of color to an even greater degree, have to walk some version of this tightrope Swift describes. If they are perceived as falling, there is only the concrete of public opinion to catch them.

Under her conservatorship, Britney has spent the last 13 years of her life catering to every single person in her life except for herself. On paper, it might look as though every last one of her decisions — down to the color of her kitchen cabinets — is made for her. Where’s the labor in that, some (Jamie and his lawyers in particular) might ask? But if we look back at emotional labor at its core, the process of managing your feelings and emotions for the sake of your employer, it’s easy to see how Britney would “cry every day,” as she said in her testimony. As Britney herself noted, if she refused a dance move, or expressed displeasure with any aspect of her life, the walls start closing in. Her managers threaten her with less time with her kids, or less time off. They (allegedly) conspire to make it look like she isn’t taking her medication and send her, against her will, to a mental health facility. They force her to take lithium. They prevent her from making personal reproductive choices. This is the cost of Britney pushing back against the emotional labor that has plagued her not just for 13 years, but for nearly her entire life. This is an extreme, microcosmic example of what women risk when they say no. We owe it to Britney — and every woman, for that matter — to learn from and erase the burden.

Brooklyn native Fivio Foreign nearly saw his upward career track derailed this spring when he was arrested for carrying an unregistered firearm after fleeing police officers in New Jersey. Fivio was taken into custody and booked at the Bergen County Jail for weapons possession, having a defaced firearm, and resisting arrest. He apparently wasn’t able to secure bond until very recently; yesterday, he tweeted simply: “Free,” with an unlocked padlock emoji.

In addition to celebrating his release, Fivio hinted at his plans for the summer now that he’s free. “Summer Jam?” he wrote, adding a pair of curious eyes and a flame emoji. If he does join the lineup of the annual New York festival in August, he’ll be joining a stacked roster that includes the also recently released Bobby Shmurda and Rowdy Rebel, Saweetie, Moneybagg Yo, Migos, Meek Mill, and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie. Also, many other drill-related artists will be appearing, including Dusty Locane, Sheff G, and Sleepy Hallow.

Fivio may have to work a bit to regain his momentum this year but he’s certainly laid a solid enough foundation, with both solo tracks like “Self Made” and his guest appearance on Lil Tjay’s “Headshot” video alongside Polo G.

Much ado has been made about the “Herogasm” episode in the upcoming season of Amazon’s The Boys. It’s like the Westworld orgy but with horny superheroes and way, way, way more graphic. I don’t know how showrunner Eric Kripke, producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and the cast, including Antony Starr (Homelander) and newcomer Jensen Ackles (Soldier Boy), are going to pull it off, but I can’t wait to find out.

“Herogasm” won’t be the craziest moment of the season, however.

“Beyond even ‘Herogasm,’ I still think the craziest thing we’ve ever done is in episode one,” Kripke told Entertainment Weekly about season three. That being said, viewers should still look forward to Herogasm. “I’ve been around the block a few times. I’m a seasoned producer. Every single day on those dailies, my jaw was on the floor,” he said.

Kripke continued:

“I just could not believe how insane those dailies were. It’s just crazy. I can tell you that for anybody who is a fan of the comic and is expecting to see Herogasm, we are delivering it. That is happening.”

Congratulations in advance to The Boys — Outstanding Drama Series nominee The Boys! — for topping a speedboat blasting through a beached whale twice in one season.

The Boys season three does not currently have a premiere date.

(Via EW)

After securing a No. 1 album for his 2019 effort Kirk, DaBaby’s career has taken off. The rapper has gone on to earn multi-Platinum certifications and perform at awards shows like the 2021 BET Awards. But his fast track to fame has apparently left him seeking some advice. To get his questions answered, DaBaby sought wisdom from someone who he has looked up to his entire career: 50 Cent.

DaBaby recently got together with 50 to pick his brain about making a lasting impact in the music industry. 50 obliged, agreeing to take on DaBaby as a mentee and teach him a few tricks of the trade.

“Somebody I been studying for a MINUTE lent me a few hours of his time today,” DaBaby wrote in an Instagram post. “N****s so scared to let me in the room they f*cked around & let me end up in the room w/ @50cent BIG MISTAKE! Beyond grateful for the game. Couldn’t have come from a better source. Now watch me put this shit to use #BackToWork”

The post was noticed by 50, who said he hopes to mentor DaBaby to “be better” than him. “I lost Pop [Smoke] before he could get it, This one already got it and he listen,” he wrote. “I’m a teach him all the mistakes i made, so he can be better than me. THIS IS HIP HOP!”