Category: News

The New York Knicks almost completed an incredible comeback in Brooklyn on Monday night, as they clawed back from a 12-point deficit entering the fourth quarter against the Nets to make it a three-point game with the ball and just under six seconds to play.

They got to that point by playing what may very well be the best sequence of inbounds defense the league has seen in decades, as they forced two Nets timeouts and two jump balls on four consecutive Brooklyn inbound attempts to secure a shot at tying the game and forcing overtime. On that final play, Alec Burks inbounded the ball to Julius Randle, who had 33 points and 12 rebounds, including a few key buckets late during the Knicks rally.

Randle went up for a three after faking a handoff back to Burks, and Kyrie Irving reached a hand in and clearly got the ball as Randle went up. The All-Star forward came back down, dribbled, and tried to go back up, and Scott Foster, who as positioned behind Randle with an awkward angle, called a traveling violation on Randle.

What should have been a jump ball turned into the Nets ball, as New York had used its challenge to overturn a foul call when they got their last tie-up on Joe Harris the play prior. It was an unfortunate and anti-climactic ending to what had otherwise been a thrilling fourth quarter, and after the game Randle was hot and had to be pushed away from Foster by Obi Toppin and other teammates.

It was a clear missed call and Randle would have almost assuredly won a jump with Irving to give New York a chance at a bit of a scramble drill three to tie. You can tell how much this game meant to the Knicks, as they rose to the challenge against the Nets and to feel like their efforts late were thwarted not by great play from their opponents but a missed call makes it an extra bitter pill to swallow.

This year was Chika‘s first time being nominated for a Grammy. She was up for Best New Artist, meaning she turned up to the awards show in style. She was dressed head-to-toe in a pastel Nike sweatsuit, complete with a trench coat and matching mask. After fans swooned over her outfit, the rapper shared a closer look at how Nike custom-made her clothes.

Detailing the process in a series of tweets, Chika shared a few mock-up images the designer had sketched for her. The trench coat was also made of sweatshirt material and was hand tie-dyed alongside the other pieces. “Nike LA & @iCONtips made a 1 of 1 track suit and hand dyed coat for me with colors i picked, i found the perfect bag, and we pulled this all off over iMessage convos,” she explained. “and made the custom mask less than a day before the show. they went the hell off.”

While she didn’t end up winning the Best New Artist nod, Chika did put her own spin on a cover of a previous Best New Artist’s track. Ahead of her appearance at the awards show, she took on Billie Eilish’s 2020 track “My Future” for Spotify, infusing it with her own style. About the cover, Chika said: “I picked ‘My Future’ by Billie Eilish as my [Best New Artist] cover for Spotify because the song is beautiful and presents an interesting opportunity to talk about where I am as an artist, especially on the heels of this nomination. My present is moving so fast that each passing moment is practically the future already. And I’m in love with the ride I’m on.”

Check out Chika’s 2021 Grammys outfit above.

Chika is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Rich The Kid has had his fair share of legal trouble this past year, and it looks like his run-ins with the law aren’t letting up anytime soon. This time, he’s gotten into trouble with the TSA: The rapper was arrested at an airport Monday afternoon when he was caught carrying a gun through security.

According to a report from TMZ, Rich The Kid was making his way through security at LAX when TSA staff saw a concealed weapon in his carry-on bag. Upon further inspection, they found it was a loaded gun and apprehended him on site. The report states that it’s unclear if police have processed his case, or if he’s currently being detained somewhere.

Ahead of getting busted at LAX, Rich The Kid faced a handful of lawsuits in 2020. He apparently inked a deal with the brand Fashion Nova back in 2018 and was given a $100,000 advance, but he took the money without holding up his end of the promotional deal. Then, Fashion Nova responded last October by hitting him with a $2.1 million lawsuit to cover their damages. Before that, Rich was ordered to pay $1.1 million to his former managers, who claim they had not been paid in three years. He was also hit with a lawsuit over a quarter-million-dollar unpaid jewelry tab, as well as $300K for failing to pay rent on a mansion in Holywood Hills.

You know the drill: You have no idea what to watch, so you scroll and scroll and scroll through some streamer’s endless wares, and minutes later you’re nowhere closer to an answer than you were before. Last year Netflix had a solution that seemed at once useful and kind of surreal: They added a shuffle option. You click on the button — if you’re one of the subscribers who even has it — and voilá! An algorithim picks something, anything for you to watch, based on your perhaps questionable viewing history.

Now Amazon Prime has basically the same idea. As per /Film, the streaming wing of the commerce behemoth is testing out a similar function on their Android app. One major difference: It only pertains to TV shows. So you have to find a TV show you want to watch and then let fate, or some brainiac computer that knows you better than you know yourself, do the rest.

It’s not a terrible idea, though it really only helps if said show is either a particularly episodic comedy or a drama pre-today’s Golden Age. You probably don’t want to jump into a random point in some ongoing story. That said, it’s perfect if it’s, say, Columbo (which Prime does have, with ads), where each episode is a self-contained masterpiece with a different guest killer each go. Maybe you’ll wind up with the one where Peter Falk’s nosy lieutenant squares off against Johnny Cash. Or we could recommend the British cult show Peep Show, which is pretty much uniformly excellent and therefore a great way to kill time that could always be better off reading some enormous doorstop.

(Via /Film)

Fox News poked the sleeping tiger known as Gen X and got the generation known for slacking and sarcasm to muster, a collective “whatever.”

The news network aired a segment on “cancel culture” where it urged “Generation X to lead the charge to save America from the social media mob. Can they do it?” Short answer: Who knows, but they aren’t interested either way.

Right-wing media has been apoplectic recently over a rash of incidents where iconic pieces of pop culture from The Washington Redskins to “Gone with the Wind” to Dr. Seuss have been reevaluated by younger “woke” progressives.

While there is value in a movement that holds people accountable for propagating racist and sexist ideas, the Fox News crowd dismisses it simply as “cancel culture.”

The Fox News target demographic is firmly in camp Baby Boomer, with the average viewer being around 65-years-old. According to Kasasa, “If you go by raw numbers, of the 3.3 million households taking in Sean Hannity’s show on a nightly basis in 2018, just south of 2 million would have been senior citizens.”

Baby Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964 and are currently between 57-75 years old.

So as Boomer authority over the nation’s youth wanes by the day, Fox News made an appeal to Gen X to protect older, conservative people from the ravages of cancel culture. But according to reactions on Twitter, Gen X, aka “The Coolest Generation,” couldn’t care less.

The generation that’s currently between the ages of 41 to 56 remembers a time when their Baby Boomer and Greatest Generation parents tried to cancel everything in their childhood.

But these calls weren’t from liberals in the ’80s, they were from pearl-clutching conservatives (and even some high-profile Democrats like Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman), evangelical Christians, and paranoid suburbanites.

Whether it was the “Satanic Panic” surrounding heavy metal and “Dungeons and Dragons,” the Parents Music Resource Center labeling hip-hop music, or the endless crusade against video games, the Boomer version of cancel culture was aimed squarely at Gen X.

In fact, Gen Xers lost one of their greatest childhood heroes in Pee-Wee Herman who got canceled for falling short of Bush 1-era moral norms.

Fox’s appeal resulted in a slew of hilarious tweets from Gen Xers who could care less about the Boomer obsession with cancel culture. But, to be fair, it’s not like Gen X was known for giving an F about much in the first place.

First of all, they just don’t have the time.

They reminded Fox News of everything the Boomers tried to cancel back in the ’80s.

Another huge reason not to get involved: “Whatever.”

Gen X, the forgotten generation stuck beneath two of the most populous, was canceled long ago. It’s almost like the parents of latchkey kids just realized they had children and now they want them to come to their rescue.

Like, we totally care. Seriously.

Could it be that they’re harping on cancel culture because they have nothing else to complain about?

We have a winner.

There were a lot of vampires in the aughts — you may recall four whole Twilight movies, for one thing — but real heads know there’s one that towers above them all: Let the Right One In, the eccentric Swedish import about a bloodsucker permanently trapped in a tween girl’s body, who befriends a bullied mortal boy. It’s so beloved that even the requisite American remake failed to outperform the original. And now it’s coming back, again, this time as a TV show.

As per Deadline, Showtime has just greenlit a small screen version of the wintry chiller. Moreover, they’ve already cast one of the main three roles: Demián Bichir, Oscar-nominee and always welcome supporting player, will take the role of the middle aged caretaker of the 12-year-old-looking vampire, who must commit heinous acts to keep his charge alive.

Bichir’s not the first esteemed thespian to take that role. In Let Me In, the aforementioned remake, he’s played by no less than Richard Jenkins, who gave his sometimes tragically bumbling attempts real gravitas. That redo, incidentally, is a lot better than it had to be. Directed by Matt Reeves, before his Apes films and The Batman, it manages to be just different enough, even coming up with a couple all-timer set pieces that even the original couldn’t conjure up. Then again, Reeves didn’t have to stretch it out into an entire TV show.

(Via Deadline)

On Monday night, the 2021 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament bracket was revealed on ESPN, as the 64-team field was locked in for the Madness in San Antonio, which will be the single site as all games will be held in the surrounding area, as the men’s tournament is doing in Indianapolis.

The top seeds for the tournament are NC State, South Carolina, Stanford, and UConn, with Louisville, Texas A&M, Baylor, and Maryland on the two-line. For the Huskies in particular, they will enter the tournament with a serious absence as legendary head coach Geno Auriemma will miss the first weekend of the tournament at least after testing positive for COVID-19 on Monday. He is currently asymptomatic, but would not be able to join the team in San Antonio until he clears protocols next week at the earliest.

The full bracket, with San Antonio themed regions, can be found in full below:

ALAMO
1. Stanford vs. 16. Utah Valley
8. Oklahoma St vs. 9. Wake Forest

5. Missouri St vs. 12. UC Davis
4. Arkansas vs. 13. Wright St

6. Oregon vs. 11. South Dakota
3. Georgia vs. 14. Drexel

7. Northwestern vs. 10. UCF
2. Louisville vs. 15. Marist

MERCADO
1. NC State vs. 16. North Carolina A&T
8. South Florida vs. 9. Washington St

5. Gonzaga vs. 12. Belmont
4. Indiana vs. VCU

6. Rutgers vs. 11. BYU
3. Arizona vs. 14. Stony Brook

7. Iowa St vs. Michigan St
2. Texas A&M vs. Troy

RIVER WALK
1. UConn vs. 16. High Point
8. Syracuse vs. 9. South Dakota St

5. Iowa vs. 12. Central Michigan
4. Kentucky vs. 13. Idaho St

6. Michigan vs. 11. FGCU
3. Tennessee vs. 14. Middle Tennessee

7. Virginia Tech vs. 10. Marquette
2. Baylor vs. 15. Jackson St

HEMISFAIR
1. South Carolina vs. 16. Mercer
8. Oregon St vs. 9. Florida St

5. Georgia Tech vs. 12. Stephen F. Austin
4. West Virginia vs. 13. Lehigh

6. Texas vs. 11. Bradley
3. UCLA vs. 14. Wyoming

7. Alabama vs. 10. UNC
2. Maryland vs. 15. Mount St. Mary’s

It’s safe to say that Nicki Minaj hasn’t had the easiest start to 2021. Just last month, her father was tragically killed in a hit-and-run car accident in Long Island, New York. Now comedian Tiffany Haddish, who just one a Grammy for her comedy album Black Mitzvah, has taken aim at her for being, as she sees it, disrespectful.

Haddish was a speaker on the Clubhouse app when a fan applauded her for “killing the game,” naming her the “Nicki Minaj of comedy.” Someone chimed in by saying, “But unlike Nicki, she shows up on time.” Haddish responded: “Unlike Nicki, I treat everybody with respect and dignity.”

After the clip leaked, the Barbz, Minaj’s fandom, rushed to the rapper’s defense. They questioned Haddish’s comment while mostly saying that they don’t find the comedian funny.

This isn’t the first time Minaj and Haddish have exchanged jabs, as the Barbz were quick to point out. At the 2018 VMAs ceremony, Haddish made an on stage joke about Fifth Harmony shortly after the girl group had disbanded to focus on solo careers. While accepting her award, Minaj responded to Haddish’s comment and stood up for Normani, a former Fifth Harmony member. “Tif, don’t be coming for Fifth Harmony because Normani is that b*tch,” she had said.

See the Barbz respond to Haddish’s comment above.

Since they first launched in 1994, Rap Snacks have been giving nods to today’s biggest hip-hop artists on their chip bags. Rappers like Rick Ross, Cardi B, Migos, and Lil Yachty have their own flavors, but now, Rap Snacks is expanding their enterprise. For a new line of beverages, Rap Snacks tapped Lil Baby to be the face of their product.

Rap Snacks unveiled their line of Lil Baby Oowee Lemonade products Monday. The drink comes in five flavors: Fruit Punch, Strawberry Watermelon, Mango Pineapple, Blueberry, and Sweet Tea. Along with featuring Lil Baby on the wrapper, a portion of the proceeds from Oowee Lemonade will be donated to the organizations Atlanta Children’s Center and Covenant House in Atlanta.

About his endeavor, Lil Baby called the Rap Snacks partnership “life-changing.” “I know my fans are going to love this line of Oowee Lemonades,” he said. “Rap Snacks are about hip-hop culture, I’m about the culture, and I’m excited that proceeds from every purchase are a ‘give back’ to help our communities. It’s exciting to be a part of something that will lift people from my hometown and nationally through the BossUp Foundation. It’s life-changing—I’ve never been a part of anything like this before.”

Echoing the rapper’s statement, CEO of Rap Snacks James Lindsay said: “We’re so excited to make this announcement after Lil Baby’s show stopping appearance at the Grammys. This extension of his partnership with us will connect with his growing fanbase the world over. We are the only company to feature hip-hop icons in association with our products. Our lemonade is a great-tasting product. We’ve combined flavors that haven’t been done before, and we’re expanding our market.”

Check out the new products above.

The 2021 NCAA Tournament is scheduled to begin on Thursday with the First Four matchups in Indianapolis. However, the college basketball world is holding its collective breath when it comes to COVID-19 protocols, and the NCAA instituted strict measures in an effort to ensure the event can happen and the organization’s member institutions can deposit the enormous check from CBS and Turner. With that in mind, most of the focus has been on teams like Virginia and Kansas, both of which are spending the week quarantining after battling COVID-19 issues in their conference tournaments. On Monday, though, word broke from Jeff Goodman of Stadium that the first, and hopefully last, COVID-19 problem in Indianapolis occurred with officials.

Goodman reports that six officials scheduled to work the tournament “have been removed” and there is one positive test, with contact tracing putting the others in the crosshairs. The six-person group includes famous officials like John Higgins and Ted Valentine, and the NCAA reportedly has only 60 officials in Indianapolis.

Stadium’s reporting indicates that the referees visited a steakhouse in Indianapolis after arriving to the hotel and finding that rooms were not prepared and food was not available. That decision caused a ripple effect, as one of the officials reportedly tested positive upon return and, due to the meal shared together, all six were ruled out due to contact tracing.

This is a familiar tale to those paying close attention to the sports world in the last 12 months, with contact tracing affecting many players, coaches and teams along the way. However, this could have wide-ranging implications, as the NCAA now has a smaller pool of referees to utilize in Indianapolis. Hopefully, this kind of issue won’t pop up again with any of the teams quarantining in their hotel rooms before taking the floor this week, but this certainly won’t assuage any lingering fears about how quickly things can spiral in the NCAA’s pseudo-bubble.