Category: News

The playoffs are only two days old, but we already have a strong frontrunner for the dunk of the postseason courtesy of RJ Barrett.

As anticipated, Game 1 of the East’s 4-5 matchup between the Hawks and Knicks was a highly competitive, back-and-forth affair, but things really got going in the third quarter. That is when the second-year Knicks guard got the ball on the break against the Hawks and proceeded to punch one in on top of Bogdan Bogdanovic, sending the 15,000 fans in Madison Square Garden into an absolute frenzy.

The atmosphere in the Garden for Game 1 was remarkable, with Knicks fans thoroughly enjoying their first taste of playoff basketball in eight years. After a year with limited capacity crowds, the Knicks, with a robust vaccinated section, had a nearly full building, and for the first time in a long time, it felt like normal. Well, as normal as a Knick playoff game can be.

They were living and dying on every bucket, but nothing got them going quite like seeing their young sophomore star put, as Greg Anthony said on the call, “not a mani, not a pedi, but a FACIAL” on Bogdanovic to tie the game after the Hawks had opened up a solid advantage earlier in the quarter. New York exited the quarter with a two point lead after going up as many as seven, and the stage was set for a sensational final period of play.

Ever since SZA teased her upcoming collaboration with Doja Cat in their interview for V Magazine — where the TDE star also praised Doja’s entire ethos — fans were eagerly awaiting the joint track. When “Kiss Me More” arrived, it was a little different than what we were expecting, an upbeat, jittery track with the girls taking turns on the verses, but it’s been slowly gaining momentum since April, and tonight the pair teamed up for their first live performance of the song at the Billboard Music Awards. The song has been holding steady at No. 5 on the Billboard chart, and tonight’s performance helped prove why — the pair managed to turn the song into a retro-futurist spectacle that was equal parts ’70s throwback and intergalactic vibes.

Doja kicked things off with fringe-y, orb-filled outfit surrounded by dancers, only to have SZA appear just in time for her own verse, rocking bright yellow hair and eventually joining Doja at the front of the stage to end the song with a final dramatic dip. The song is likely going to be on Doja’s long-rumored new album, Planet Her, but who knows… SZA also has a record on the way soon. Check out their performance above.

DJ Khaled shared his twelfth album, Khaled Khaled, at the end of last month, and just like his previous albums, the project was a star-studded affair that flaunted some of the biggest names in music. It’s this aspect that helped propel Khaled Khaled to No. 1 on the album charts. In the latest chapter of the project, Khaled calls on HER and Migos to accompany him on the 2021 Billboard Music Award stage where they delivered a colorful performance of their collaboration, “We Going Crazy.” Backed by pyrotechnics and a wide display of vibrant colors onstage, the group kept the energy high to kick off the award show.

Since dropping his twelfth album, Khaled has kept busy by dropping videos for a number of songs off Khaled Khaled which includes “Body In Motion,” “Let It Go,” and “Every Chance I Get.” However, it’s not Khaled who’s been highly active in recent weeks. HER is gearing up to release her official debut album, Back Of My Mind, and in the process, she earned Grammy and Oscar wins which brought her halfway towards the coveted EGOT. As for Migos, the Atlanta-based trio is also readying an album with Culture III locked in for a June 11 release date. They also shared the project’s latest single with “Straightenin.”

You can watch a clip from DJ Khaled, HER, and Migos’ performance in the video above.

Khaled Kahled is out now via Epic Records. Get it here.

After winning a thriller in the play-in against the Warriors, the Lakers made their playoff debut on Sunday in Game 1 against the Suns, and if anyone looked rusty, it was the Lakers. L.A. had a dismal shooting afternoon as a team, posting a rather awful 43.4/26/9/60.7 shooting split as a team in a 99-90 loss to the Suns, who got massive contributions from playoff debutants Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton in a 99-90 win.

While few on the Lakers played well, the performance that stood out as especially poor came from Anthony Davis, who had just 13 points and seven rebounds in 39 minutes of play. Davis was 5-of-16 from the field, including going 0-for-2 from deep, and just generally looked disengaged from the action for most of his time on the court. Afterwards, Davis took the blame for the Lakers loss, noting that he can’t play like that if they’re going to win games, much less a series.

Davis is right, and it’s not the first time he’s had a game where he all but disappears. Last year, once he got it going in the playoffs he was the unstoppable force the Lakers needed him to be, and we’ll just have to see if he can find that gear soon enough in this series. The good news for L.A. is that they’ve done this before, coming out flat in a Game 1 before making the requisite adjustments to steamroll through a series. That said, doing so against this Suns team will be more difficult than, say, last year’s Portland squad, and Phoenix wasn’t exactly operating at full strength in this one after Chris Paul suffered the shoulder injury that caused him to almost completely avoid shooting for the final three quarters.

On Sunday afternoon at the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, Phil Mickelson made history as the oldest major winner in the history of golf, as the 50-year-old stared down Brooks Koepka in the final pairing to win the 2021 PGA Championship, his sixth major title and first since the 2013 Open Championship.

Mickelson entered the final round with a one stroke lead on Koepka and the two traded blows early in what was a nervy start for both. After the first hole, the two had swapped places following a Phil bogey and Brooks birdie. Phil then birdied the second while Koepka made his first double of the week with a 7 on the par 5, giving Mickelson a two shot advantage. Mickelson then found himself back up just one after a bogey on three and the sloppy start from the leaders had suddenly brought a bunch of others into the mix.

On the sixth, Mickelson earned his first massive roar of the day with a vintage make from the sandy area short of the green for birdie, causing an eruption at Kiawah.

On 10, he extended his lead to four and it would eventually reach five as it looked like a runaway was on the way.

He would hit some hiccups with a pair of bogeys in the middle of his back nine to see his lead cut to two, but down the stretch, Phil put on a show as only he can. He hit the longest drive of anybody all week on 16 at 366 yards — besting Koepka’s 361-yard effort — and then hitting a masterful chip shot from over the green to set up a birdie to extend his lead to three.

On 17, Mickelson played it safe on the long par-3 over water, launching an iron over the back of the green and while he was unable to get up and down for par, his bogey was perfectly fine to keep a two-shot advantage going to the last. There, he put a drive once again in the place of least danger, sending it way up into the crowd left of the fairway and hit a beauty of an iron from there to officially begin the coronation walk up the 18th, with a sea of humanity behind him.

Phil had three putts to win and only needed two, cozying the first putt right up to the hole and then tapping it in for a final round 73 and a history-making win. Mickelson entered as a 200-1 longshot, having not won a tournament on the PGA Tour since 2019 and having not finished in the top 10 of a major since 2016. Still, he passed Julius Boros, winner of the 1968 PGA, as the oldest winner at a major in golf history and created an unforgettable scene at Kiawah in the process.

For three years, fans of J. Cole patiently waited for a new solo album. In those years, the rapper delivered an impressive guest feature run, even spearheading Dreamville’s compilation album Revenge Of The Dreamers III. At long last, the wait ended earlier this month, when the North Carolina rapper shared his sixth album, The Off-Season, which saw Bas, Morray, Lil Baby, and 21 Savage contribute to Cole’s latest hip-hop chapter. Now, the album is Cole’s sixth chart-topper, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

The Off-Season achieved the feat thanks to a total of 282,000 album units, the most for a hip-hop release this year. This number is comprised of 243,000 streaming equivalent album units and 37,000 album sales. The former is a result of 325.05 million on-demand streams of the album’s tracks, making for the most from any full-length effort that was released this year. The previous record holder was Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album, which posted 240.18 million streams in its first week.

With the debut of The Off-Season at No. 1, all six of J. Cole’s official albums have now held the top spot on the Billboard 200. The rapper’s 2013 release, Born Sinner was the only release that failed to debut at No. 1. The rapper’s only full-length project that failed to reach No. 1 at any point was 2016’s Forest Hills Drive: Live, which peaked at No. 71.

The Off-Season is out now via Dreamville/Roc Nation. Get it here.

From the opening tip, the Phoenix Suns played with an incredible amount of energy and effort in Game 1 of their first round series against the Lakers. It was a series that looked on paper more like a conference finals matchup than a first round matchup, and the opening game delivered in the drama category, for sure.

After a hellacious start, the Suns saw Chris Paul go down with a shoulder injury that he would return from but never look like his normal self. Paul had just seven points and eight assists on 3-of-8 shooting as he was clearly unable to shoot right after the injury, but he was still a +6 on the afternoon, guiding the team with his craftiness and intelligence rather than his ability to score himself.

Luckily for Paul and the Suns, their two young stars were more than up for the challenge of taking on that scoring load, as Devin Booker made his long-awaited playoff debut with a remarkable 34-point performance, going 13-of-26 from the field, to go along with eight assists and seven rebounds, and absolutely took over down the stretch in what became a 99-90 Suns win.

Alongside Booker was Deandre Ayton, who the Lakers had no answers for in the paint. The big man had 21 points and 16 rebounds, eight of which came on the offensive end, and he was monstrous and efficient, getting his 21 points on 10-of-11 shooting.

Across from Phoenix was a near no-show from the Lakers, as Anthony Davis had a dismal outing with just 13 points and seven rebounds, as there were long stretches of action where you could completely forget he was on the floor. Andre Drummond had 12 points and nine rebounds, but was attacked consistently by the Suns in pick-and-roll and was a net negative. LeBron James had 18 points, 10 assists, and seven rebounds, but was just 6-of-13 from the field and didn’t assert himself as we are accustomed to. All told, the Lakers shot just 43.4 percent from the field, 26.9 percent from three, and a horrific 60.4 percent from the free throw line, which was the one area they held an advantage on Sunday, getting 28 attempts compared to just 12 from Phoenix.

There were a few signs of life at various points as the Lakers would make a brief push, but each time they did the Suns had the answer with key stops and big buckets. Emotions were high even if neither team shot as well as they’d like to, and we even got our first kerfuffle of the playoffs with Cam Payne getting tossed for throwing the ball at Alex Caruso.

As we have all learned in watching LeBron James-led teams over the years, Game 1 isn’t indicative of anything, as they looked flat against the Blazers in Game 1 last year as well before steamrolling Portland. That said, this Phoenix team is better than that Portland squad and will likewise feel like they have more to give, particularly if Chris Paul can shake off his shoulder issue for Game 2. The Lakers, meanwhile, will have plenty of adjustments to make and one would expect a different look from them, both in effort and in their rotations.

Game 1 between the Lakers and Suns was a physical contest all night and got testy down the stretch. In the second quarter, Chris Paul left with a shoulder injury but returned shortly after, albeit clearly not his normal self. In the fourth quarter, there was a lot going on after a missed LeBron James free throw, as he and Paul got tangled up, with James falling to the ground and grabbing at his own shoulder.

25 feet away, Cam Payne and Alex Caruso were jawing at each other, with Payne launching the ball at Caruso leading to Montrezl Harrell sprinting in from the other side of the court and trucking Payne.

You can tell Harrell wasn’t trying to actually fight and ran into Payne accidentally because he immediately tries to hold Payne up, but he got a technical for his actions. Payne got ejected as his actions in firing the ball at Caruso earned him an early exit, per the NBA’s rules. LeBron would shake out his shoulder injury during the kerfuffle and ensuing review and not miss any time, and now the Suns are without their top backup point guard while Chris Paul is still clearly dealing with his shoulder contusion/stinger issue.

The Utah Jazz will begin their playoff campaign on Sunday night when they play host to the 8-seeded Memphis Grizzlies in their first round matchup. Given the way Memphis played in their play-in finale to beat the Warriors, Utah has to be expecting a stern test from Ja Morant and company, and to take Game 1, they’ll have to do play once again without one of their top stars.

Donovan Mitchell hasn’t played in Utah’s last 16 games due to a sprained ankle but had recently returned to practice in hopes of a return for the postseason. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski — and confirmed shortly after by just about every Jazz reporter — he will unfortunately not play in Game 1 against Memphis.

It’s obviously a blow to the Jazz, but they remain an 8-point favorite in Game 1 over the Grizzlies even in his absence. Utah went 10-6 in the 16 games Mitchell missed to close the season — which sometimes coincided with rest for their other stars — so they have experience in navigating games without him. It will put more of the creative load on Mike Conley as he faces his longtime team, and a bigger scoring burden on Bojan Bogdanovic, Joe Ingles, and the presumptive Sixth Man of the Year in Jordan Clarkson. It also shifts how Memphis will deploy their best perimeter defender, as Dillon Brooks will be able to focus his attention on Clarkson and Bogdanovic, one would assume.

Morgan Wallen has had as much success this year as he’s had controversy. It began when he was caught on camera using a racial slur around friends and since then. Since then Wallen has kept a rather low profile. Despite this, his sophomore record, Dangerous: The Double Album, ruled the charts for nearly three months, spending its first ten weeks at No. 1 — the most ever for an album. Nearly two months after that streak came to an end, Wallen took to Instagram to debut his first song since his offennding incident.

The new track is titled “Thought You Should Know,” and it finds the singer addressing the “bad decisions” he’s made in his life. “I wrote this song for my mom a while ago, seemed like an appropriate time to share it,” he said before performing the song. “What’s going on mama?/ Something’s just dawned on me/ I ain’t been home in some months,” Wallen sings on the soft track. “Been chasing songs and women/ Making some bad decisions/ God knows I’m drinking too much/ Yeah, I know you’ve been worrying ’bout me/ You’ve been losing sleep since ’93.”

The song arrives after Wallen performed at Kid Rock’s Nashville bar for his first live set since his controversy.

You can listen to the song in the video above.