Category: News

You’ve undoubtedly noticed that Texas has been in the headlines lately. That’s an understatement, but of course, the power catastrophe happened first, and in the midst of all that, Ted Cruz departed for a Cancun vacation, and then Ted also inserted himself in the whole situation by beefing with Michael Moore after Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that he’d roll back COVID-19 restrictions. Now, there’s a new Texas-based controversy brewing that has nothing to do with Ted, but stay tuned because he might hop into this mess, too.

At issue (and as pointed out by Above The Law, Texas Attorney Ken Paxton got his feathers ruffled by the San Antonio chief of police because he declined to allow his deputies to be deputized for ICE in service of the Trump administration. Paxton filed a lawsuit to remove the chief while arguing that the office should have prioritized helping ICE if there was any reason to suspect that detained individuals were undocumented, and now, Houston Police Chief Ace Acevedo is defending his fellow lawman to Paxton.

Acevedo went in hard on Twitter while aiming straight toward Paxton: “How much longer are Texans going to tolerate @KenPaxtonTX shenanigans? Suing police a police chief for difficult operational decisions? I hope the court quickly leaves Paxton in the cold like he did his fellow Texans last week during a historic freeze.”

Paxton responded by stating that the real danger is the “call to let loose illegal aliens in violation of TX law.” He also advised Acevedo to watch his own city’s crime rates.

Acevedo wasn’t ruffled and pointed toward the state’s shortcomings with criminal justice reform. He added that Paxton should “spend more time in the state during times of crisis instead of Utah and Florida.”

Paxton responded by basically accusing Acevedo of being an ineffective leader: “Your idea of reform is letting dangerous felons back on to the streets to reoffend. That’s why murders in Houston are up 44%. Maybe you being the chief of police is the problem.”

That didn’t work out too well for Paxton: “As AG, you should know police chiefs have little to zero to do with who gets out of jail,” Acevedo tweeted. “You know, first hand, I have led the charge against letting violent offenders out on PR and low bond, and as a defendant with pending felony charges, you know how easy it is to get PR bonds.”

No further response from Paxton has been forthcoming. Well, it sure looks like we have a winner.

(Via Above The Law)

Inglewood native Rucci sums up his relatable mission statement on this week’s installment of UPROXX Sessions, imploring listeners to “Believe In Me” with a performance of his M*dget track sans guest rapper Mozzy. Rucci, a mainstay of LA’s post-G-funk circuit for years now, experienced his first taste of national recognition with the confessional Tako’s Son in 2019, following up with two projects in 2020: an EP, I’m Still Me, and M*dget, a full-length featuring all sorts of California rappers from AllBlack to AzChike to White John.

Rucci joins AzChike, Drakeo The Ruler, and Almighty Suspect as the latest member of this bubbling underground fraternity to grace the UPROXX Sessions stage. He’s also in prime position to receive just as much — if not more — attention, thanks to recent collaborations with well-known West Coast standouts like Mozzy and Vince Staples. With his honest, heartfelt style and plainspoken witticisms, he’s the perfect rep for the latest wave of Los Angeles artists lining up to take the city’s hip-hop into the next decade.

Watch Rucci’s heartfelt performance of “Believe In Me” above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

Frank Grillo has become a very busy man in Hollywood, as the 55-year-old actor carved out quite the niche for himself in the world of action movies. Following a run in the MCU as Crossbones and as the lead in The Purge franchise, Grillo partnered with director Joe Carnahan on a production company, War Party Films, with one mission in mind: bring back the short, fun, and relatively cheap to make action movie genre that dominated in the 80s.

The latest from them is Boss Level, starring Grillo, Mel Gibson, and Naomi Watts, and his love of sports and fighting comes in with some of the supporting cast, which includes Rob Gronkowski, Rampage Jackson, and Rashad Evans. Ahead of the movie’s release on Hulu on March 5, Grillo spoke with Uproxx about the long journey to get this movie out, his love of boxing and how it’s guided his career, why sometimes it’s important to make a fun action movie that doesn’t make total sense, playing with Hollywood toys like “Car Shooters,” and discussions for him to return to The Purge.

How did you get into boxing when you were younger and how has that been a part of your life, really throughout this journey into the acting world?

I got into boxing when I was a little kid. I first got into boxing at the CYO at the church, when I was like 12 or 13 years old. And really liked it, but didn’t like getting punched in the face.

Sure.

And then you know I wrestled in school, and that got me into martial arts. I started doing Muay Thai a bit, and then I got back into boxing about 17 and I never stopped. Look for me boxing, I hate to say this, it’s a terrible cliche, but it really is a metaphor for life. I mean, it really is for me. I box every day. Sometimes I take my boxing trainer on movie sets with me. If I don’t, I find the best boxing trainers through my friends. The good thing about my life now is I have a lot of access. So, you know, boxing to me is as important as breathing.

You mentioned you do martial arts and stuff like that, but why do you always come back to boxing?

I think there’s something about boxing, which to me is like — and Jiu Jitsu for me it was a little bit like this but boxing, much more so — it’s like chess. It’s as intellectual as it is physical. And, you know, it’s also a little bit like golf, one day you get up there you’re throwing up beautiful left hook, and the next day, I’m sparring and I feel like I’m boxing the wrong way. And so that element of constantly trying to perfect is what gets me excited.

It’s interesting you mention that because I golf as well, and I’ve never really thought of the parallels there but it is, because it’s this constant quest of … perfection can never come in either sport, you’re never going to be able to do it, but you get that taste of it that one time and you’re like “I can replicate this.”

You know, I often say to my sons and to younger people, it’s not about achieving perfection. It’s the pursuit of perfection. And that’s where you learn so much about yourself, about life, about other people, and then about what you’re doing, obviously.

And I think there’s a parallel there with making any kind of art, is you’re also doing the same thing, right? When you make a movie, you’re always chasing that perfect take, but like it’s it’s never going to be maybe exactly there but when you get that feeling, it’s kind of the same thing, right?

Absolutely the same. That’s a great analogy and, you know, it’s also the discipline of never giving up, of not quitting, sports or fighting. You know, I box with a lot of Mexicans. They don’t quit. They don’t even like to step backwards. You know so many people that I came up with an acting, at my age, are gone. They never made it because they left. It wasn’t that they weren’t talented, it’s that they didn’t have the wherewithal to stay in it. I think through boxing and martial arts, that discipline has given me the discipline to continue in this career, and it’s … look, I’ve carved out a bit of a niche for myself and it’s worked.

I read an interview you did, I think back in 2016, with one of my colleagues Mike Ryan, where you talked about that. Where you were 50 and you were finally kind of finding this level of fame that you hadn’t been in before. And that doesn’t happen for a lot of guys, but it is that discipline, that willing to grind for 20 years to get to this point, right?

Exactly. And you know it’s sweet. Victory is sweet when you’re old, and you’re like, “Wow, this happened.” By the way, I don’t even know if what I’m professing is bullshit. It’s like, maybe what I’m saying is wrong. Maybe you should quit and go do something else. You know what I mean, like, “I actually was right!” for once.

Even this movie here with Boss Level having gone through some delays in the studio change and all of that. What is it like finally getting to see this come out after the labor of love that you’ve had to put into this to finally get to see this coming out on Hulu next month?

Yeah, I mean, to me, it could not have had a better ending. Given the circumstances that we’ve been in over the last year — this is a movie we tried to make nine, ten years ago, and then we thought, aw, we can’t get a break. Then finally we did make the movie and it went from 43 days to 27 days we had to make it. So we’re like, we can’t get a break. And then we sometimes didn’t have enough money to finish something, and, we can’t get a break. And then COVID happens and we lose our distribution, we can’t get a break right?!

Guess what. Now, we’re partnering with Hulu. Hulu buys the movie. They’re distributing the movie all over the United States and North America. They’re putting billboards up, they’re doing great advertising. Because of COVID, there are no more movie theaters. We’re gonna have more eyes on this movie than we would ever have had. So guess what, we did get a break. But if you give up along that way, this movie could have been in the trash bin somewhere. I don’t know, right? It could have just as easily fallen apart, but [Joe] Carnahan and I did not quit. We knew we had something that was watchable, you know? And it turned out like the movie gods were on our side from the beginning.

Something that I really enjoyed, I think this is gonna be really good from the streaming aspect. Because when I’m looking for something to watch, I don’t often have two and a half hours for like a Tenet, or whatever. Like if I’m trying to watch a movie at 9 p.m on a weeknight, I don’t want something that’s ending at midnight. And I love these action movies that are in that 90 to 100 minute window. They’re fun, they’re to the point. Is that something that y’all were going for with this?

Yeah. So we started our company with a movie called Wheelman, which is basically me in a car for 88 minutes. It’s nonstop from beginning to end. And it was a big hit for Netflix. It was our first movie we made as our company, War Party. And that’s when the light went off. And our mission statement is to make these kind of movies, elevated action genre, and make them for a reasonable budget. And just put people at rest for 80-90 minutes, so we’re … you know in Tenet, I was watching Tenet, brilliant movie, but I got lost! I’m like, you know what, I don’t want to think this much! It’s too much! I want something a little mindless.

Right and there’s sometimes you just want that. Like it’s one of the reasons you go back and you watch the same sitcom that you’ve watched before. It’s kind of the same idea.

How many times would Die Hard come on, that you watch from where it is, man? It’s because I can sit back, I could stop thinking, and it entertains me.

When you’re putting a movie like that together obviously you have things that you have to kind of tell the audience but you also have to trust your audience to get what you’re doing, right? Because you’re gonna tell the story, you’re gonna give them snippets of like, for five minutes we’re gonna explain the Osiris thing, but you don’t need 40 minutes of storytelling necessarily.

No and, you know, look it’s over the top in every aspect. In the storytelling aspect, in the action aspect, it’s all over the top by design. It’s supposed to be that right and and you got to — the audience, from the minute you see me, you got to suspend disbelief. You just have to. You just gotta get on the roller coaster, and you gotta know, as dangerous as it looks, you’re going to be able to get back to this place and get off the roller coaster. I mean, that’s what this movie is. I’m gonna sit down. I’m gonna watch it. It’s not going to make sense in places, I’m gonna laugh, and maybe I’ll even cry a little bit, and then I’ll get off of it. You know what I mean? That’s what this is.

I don’t think this is really a spoiler, but you die a lot in this movie.

Yeah.

Many times.

Many times.

Was there a favorite one to shoot, a favorite death in the movie that like you particularly enjoyed? Because I know there’s a couple for me.

Yeah, a lot of them were fun but when I got harpooned [laughs], I was like wow we’re really pulling out all the stops here. But Joe Carnahan is a maniac, so.

I like how y’all steered into some of the absurd and also, there would be times where you think you’re gonna get to this place and then you run your car into a concrete wall.

Right. [laughs]

Like I appreciated that. I really do.

How about, you know when the car went flying over the fence? So, there was actually an apparatus in the movie business called a Car Shooter, and you put it in this apparatus —

Like a Hot Wheels.

Yeah and as soon as we saw it, we were like, we got to use this! This is amazing! [laughs]

You’re just like finding toys to play with. That’s awesome. It’s a fun movie, it’s one that you can just kind of like pop in and watch in 90 minutes. You mentioned this has been the mission statement. Was there a point where you, you realize like there’s a there’s a niche for these movies and we can really kind of tap into this and carve out this space for ourselves?

Yeah, that’s a great question and and without knowing — a lot of people don’t know a lot about the business – big studios, they’re in the theatrical film business. So your film has to be theatrical. In other words, they want to spend a lot of money. They do. And our mission statement is to make movies under $20 million, but that looked like they’re $50 million. And there’s not a lot of people doing it. And so, what we learned is, as we became more successful with each film, people were coming to us and saying, “do you want to be in business?” Like, people that are very established because, like, “we’re not in this business, but we want to be in this business, do you want to work with us? Do you want to produce this with us? Do you want to make this for us?”

And so we’re like, wait a minute we accidentally stumbled on something, because this whole genre that was big in the 80s, it’s gone. And I have a partner in Joe Carnahan that is brilliant at making them. He did the movie Smoking Aces and A-Team, and he knows how to execute this at a reasonable budget. That’s when people aren’t used to anymore.

What are things that you’re looking for in the future. Do you have ideas for kind of where you can continue to take this and expand it? Would you be interested in maybe expanding this into like the sport genre and fight movies?

You know absolutely we consider the sports genre, which I think is very tricky. I don’t see a lot of good sports movies.

No, it’s hard to do right.

My buddy Gavin O’Connor made Warrior and also made Miracle, which I thought was amazing film. But we’re now in the process of, we have we just finished a movie called Cop Shop that Joe Carnahan directed that stars Gerard Butler and myself. So we just finished that, so we have that coming out after Boss Level. But now we’re like, now we’re looking at what to do and how to expand what we do, into maybe, the sport genre, and even some horror. If we can find some cool horror, and we can do it right. Like I did the a bunch of those Purge movies, we made those for 9 million bucks.

And those were also in that same vein of fun, 90-100 minutes movies. I remember they came out — I go to NBA Summer League in Las Vegas each year — and I remember Anarchy and Election Year both came out while we were there. We would go to the theater like in the middle of the day because we were tired of watching shitty basketball and we were also tired of losing money, and like the matinee price in Vegas like $5.25 so a bunch of us would just go and watch the Purge movies.

I love it! I mean, again, you know what it is. You sit there, it starts immediately, and it doesn’t end until the credits come on. And it’s like, wait a minute, that was great. Okay, I’m good. Me and James DeMonaco, we’re talking about Purge 6. Because he wasn’t involved in the last two, he just was producing on ’em. And we’re thinking about bringing my character back for Purge 6 and doing a whole kind of Avengers: Endgame-ish thing in the Purge world.

Oh! Well, I’ll be there, trust me.

[laughs] I love it.

Virtually no one does good comedy sequels, especially decades after the fact. Super Troopers, Zoolander, Dumb and Dumber, Ghostbusters, Bill & Ted (sorry) — all tried to get their respective bands back together, and all turned in, to varying degrees, uneven rehashes of old jokes. Of all the people to finally get it right, who would’ve expected it to be Eddie Murphy, the guy who seemingly spent an entire decade doing bad kids movies?

Maybe it helps that Coming To America (1988) wasn’t the world’s funniest movie. Mostly it was charming, didn’t have the reek of desperation that comes from trying too hard, and was funny enough when it had to be. Murphy doesn’t get enough credit for his choice to play Prince Akeem believably. Murphy played an African prince, where virtually anyone else in his situation then and now would have played him as famous-comedian-comedically-playing-African-Prince. Murphy wisely played it straight, letting the humor come naturally from the situations Akeem was in. The funniest part of Eddie Murphy getting hit with an entire vanilla shake was him not reacting to it. Meanwhile, playing all the side characters in heavy make-up gave Murphy an outlet for his inner ham and channeled that energy where it best served the story.

In that way, Coming To America felt a little like a Muppet movie — two sort of straight men on an odyssey through a fantastical world full of wonder and puppets (or at least, actors in so much makeup that they might as well be puppets). Muppet puppeteer Frank Oz even gets a shout-out in the airport scene, when the PA pages “Frank Oznowicz.”

Coming 2 America, this 30+-years-late sequel directed by Craig Brewer (Hustle And Flow) captures that same fantastical odyssey quality beautifully. It’s as much a musical costume party extravaganza as it is movie. It didn’t always make me laugh (though I laughed plenty) but it always made me smile. Above all, everyone seems to be having fun, and not in a needy way. Even when it’s not laugh-out-loud funny Coming 2 America is still fun to look at. I’m not exaggerating when I say that costume designer Ruth E. Carter deserves an (other) Oscar.

In this update, Prince Akeem (Murphy) is living happily in his kingdom of Zamunda, though he has one big problem: his father (played again by the thankfully-still-alive James Earl Jones) is on his deathbed and Akeem, who has sired three daughters, doesn’t have a male heir. Luckily, as related to us by a snaggle-toothed, hilariously outfitted witch doctor played by Arsenio Hall (seriously, this costume is a perfect sight gag and would be worth the price of admission alone, if there was one), it turns out that Akeem sired a bastard child on his original sojourn to Queens — Lavelle Junson, played by Jermaine Fowler, an underachieving 30-year-old who scalps tickets outside Madison Square Garden.

With that, Prince Akeem has to travel to America, bring back his bastard heir and his bastard’s mother and uncle, played by Leslie Jones and Tracy Morgan, and hopefully get his line of succession sorted. All this so he can neutralize a potential geopolitical conflict with his restive neighbors in the kingdom of Nextdooria, led by General Izzi. A charming-but-scary Idi Amin-inspired warlord type played by a perfectly cast Wesley Snipes, General Izzi enters every room with choreographed dance routines and a herald announcing his fanciful self-given titles (Amin famously went by “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.”).

Every scene seems to incorporate elaborate, comedic song and dance routines like this and they’re always a joy to watch. Ruth E. Carter won her last Oscar for Black Panther, and both that movie and this one draw heavily on this thoroughly enchanting idea of a mythical, modern yet pre-colonial Africa where beautiful, vividly-attired Black people live sumptuously alongside unspoiled natural wonders, like elephants, zebras, leafy green trees, rolling plains, and roaring rivers. This gloriously realized conception of advanced African abundance is an emphatic rejection of the usual Western view of Africa, as a place defined by scarcity and poverty and lack. Carter outfits her Zamundan princesses in brilliantly colored dresses combining nature-inspired patterns with brand logos like Fila and Puma. It’s smart, hip, and, well, kind of believable. Above all Zamunda is a place you’d want to visit.

This is an idea only hinted at in the original Coming To America, but it fits with it perfectly. After all, what was Zamunda if not a pre-Wakanda Wakanda? Watching the original nowadays, it’s striking how much it feels like a showcase for uncompromisingly Black humor, with observational characters like the horny preacher and the garrulous barbers, who were probably sort of in-jokes to Black people, that didn’t try to translate them to or define them through, the lens of white audiences. That was rare then and nearly as rare now.

It’s always better when you don’t try to explain the joke too much. The passion of the delivery and specificity of the writing are what make it translate, regardless of whether you have a real Randy Watson or Miss Black Awareness Pageant in your own life. (Similarly but in reverse, I imagine Kyle Mooney’s series of Inside SoCal sketches work even if you don’t know the real-life version of all those characters from going to college in San Diego like I do).

It’s true, I do sort of miss the foul-mouthed, nudity-infused R-rated aspects of the original, which were a nice squeeze of lemon against the story’s natural fairytale sweetness. There’s a gender-swapped version of the Royal Bathers scene in this PG-13 sequel that absolutely would’ve benefited from going whole hog and hanging some dong. Bang a gong… hang some dong… get it on…

But overall, there’s very little to complain about in Coming 2 America, a worthy sequel that does justice to the original without trying to recreate everything about it. It’s a winning, maximalist musical extravaganza.

‘Coming 2 America’ hits Amazon Prime this Friday, March 5th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Nick Cave is a man of many interest and goings-on. He just dropped a new album called Carnage, he made some erotic wallpaper (but sold none of it), and now, he is set to voice a bunch of trees in an online theater production called Dream, a 50-minute show that is set to run between March 12 and 20.

The plot is described on the show’s website, “A dreamlike journey into a forest: a story of transformation. Inspired by Shakespeare’s iconic play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Puck invites you on a magical journey between dusk and dawn. With a cloud of fireflies lighting the way, you explore the forest and encounter four sprites, Moth, Peaseblossom, Cobweb and Mustardseed. But storm clouds gather on the horizon, threatening destruction.” Press materials also describe Cave’s character, the Voice Of The Forest, as a “strange and mystical character who accompanies the audience as they explore the rivers, flowers and trees of a virtual midsummer forest.”

Jane Beese, head of music at Manchester International Festival, says in a press release, “Music is an integral part of the Dream experience and we’re thrilled that Nick Cave’s voice will sit alongside Jesper Nordin and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s living, dynamic score. With his mystical voice and dark vocal tones, Cave is the perfect person to represent the forest helping audiences traverse the otherworldly land of Dream.”

Learn more about Dream here.

In a lengthy new profile from The Los Angeles Times, Dua Lipa reflects back on her pre-fame life, what moving to LA right before the pandemic was like, and how becoming a pop star felt like her destiny. But one of the most interesting and timely subjects she discusses is the treatment of Britney Spears by paparazzi and the media in the early 2000s, and what it feels like to be under the microscope in that way as captured in the new documentary Framing Britney Spears.

Even though her second album, Future Nostalgia, helped cement Lipa as one of the most prominent new stars in the genre, she’s still not a massive icon like Britney was back in 2008 when her paparazzi run-ins were reaching a peak. Still, the level of scrutiny that Dua has received so far makes it easy for her to pinpoint what was going on with Britney, and how jarring it can be to experience that kind of scrutiny.

“The feeling of going down the street and they’re trying to catch you in this very awkward picture — it can be anxiety-inducing, honestly,” she told the Times. “And Britney’s time was pre-Instagram when everything was purely about the tabloids, and there were no laws in place about what paparazzi were allowed to do. She was being harassed — that’s exactly what it was.”

Read the full profile here.

Entertainment Weekly has released the first images from the long-in-the-works Space Jam: A New Legacy. There’s LeBron James in his Tune Squad jersey dunking an electric basketball with the Eiffel Tower and a waterfall behind him (this movie is going to be wild); there’s a slim Big Chungus, a.k.a. Bugs Bunny, looking nervous about something; and there’s the image that has most caught the internet’s attention, Lola Bunny with a different uniform style than in the original Space Jam starring Michael Jordan.

Director Malcolm D. Lee told EW that after watching 1996’s Space Jam for the first time in 2019, he was caught off guard by the “very sexualized” depiction of the Tune Squad’s only female athlete. “This is 2021. It’s important to reflect the authenticity of strong, capable female characters,” he said. Lola was “reworked” for A New Legacy to make her less the object of Bugs’ “Doll” affection and more “the team’s best non-LeBron player.”

This is the only safe for work reaction to the news:

As for the plot… Remember when I said this movie is going to be wild? Well:

Playing a heightened version of himself, [LeBron] James struggles to relate to his son Dom [played by 16-year-old Cedric Joe], who’s much more interested in creating games than playing them. When Dom’s tech skills draw the attention of a CGI humanoid named Al G Rhythm (Don Cheadle), the father-son duo get sucked into the Warner 3000 entertainment “Server-verse,” with the A.I. kidnapping Dom in the hopes of stealing some of the King’s followers (IRL he has about 80 million on Instagram). Cheadle doesn’t consider Al G a bad guy (what bad guy does?), but rather “an A.I. with a chip on his shoulder,” says the MCU veteran.

There’s no word on whether Bill Murray will be back for the sequel. Space Jam: A New Legacy, the first Looney Tunes movie since 2003’s underrated Looney Tunes: Back in Action, is scheduled to be released theatrically and on HBO Max on July 16.

(Via EW)

The past three years have been a sprint for Arike Ogunbowale, even by her standards. A maniacally hard worker who can’t help but put too much on her own plate, she’s a glutton for being busy, even if she makes sure to cherish the ride. Less than three years ago she hit two of the most famous shots in the history of college basketball to claim a national championship at Notre Dame, and now she’s well on her way to, well, whatever she wants.

As an activist, creator, and hoops star, Arike has enough talent, hunger, and credibility to make those in her tight inner circle hesitant to even speak into existence a ceiling on what she can accomplish. Just this year, she is set to represent the U.S. at the Olympics, grow a distinctive fashion line, and potentially get the Dallas Wings to the postseason for the first time since they made her the sixth overall pick in 2019. But for now, she’s biding her time overseas while playing for Dynamo Kursk, the Russian team she’s led to the EuroLeague quarterfinals.

That’s where she is when she sits down with Dime for a Zoom call to talk about her career so far and what’s next. Considering the attention she’s gotten and all the ways in which her life has changed since she made two iconic buzzer-beaters in the 2018 Final Four, as well as how high she’s set her sights in the years since, one question naturally comes up: is it overwhelming?

Hardly a blink passes before her response, which doesn’t even take words to express. Just laughter, then finally a “no.” She loves it. Not the fame or glamour of being a high-profile athlete (indeed that path is admittedly harder to come by for women), but the attention. The opportunity to show more people how special she is, and the higher level still she knows she will reach. Hitting big shots was the inevitable byproduct of a passion for the game that burns as brightly as her smile, and the casual killer instinct that’s necessary to be comfortable in a moment like that. When you dominate, of course people will pay attention.

“That doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all,” she says.

She embraces it. Why do any of this if not for people to get excited? As we watch what happens when one of the most impressive players ever to come out of college basketball finally joins the WNBA, Arike is in many ways redefining the career a women’s basketball player can have.

—

Growing up, the Ogunbowale kids competed any way they could.

In their Milwaukee backyard, older brothers Dare and Mario cobbled together scrimmages in everything from soccer to tackle football to basketball, often inviting their cousin, Diamond, over to get in on the fun. The boys would roll around on the grass and take the “football” out of tackle football, but always made sure not to hurt the youngest, their sister Arike, lest they get an earful or worse from their father. Despite being the youngest Arike never backed down, taking part in all of the “ridiculous” challenges Dare concocted and, for the most part, dominating. They all got their athletic edge from their parents, with dad a rugby player in Europe and mom a highly-regarded softball player at DePaul.

Still, it was clear early that there was something special about Arike.

“I knew we’d have different paths,” Dare says. “It’s been like that since the beginning.”

As Arike grew into her outsized competitive spirit, she developed a work ethic to match and a tenacity on the basketball court that made her a state champion, a three-time Gatorade Player of the Year, and a top recruit. Being in a high school gym where Arike was playing was evidence enough of the type of star she was going to be, and schools from across the nation competed for her talent.

“When you see highlights of her in college or what she’s doing now in the pros, that’s how she was in high school,” says Notre Dame head women’s basketball coach Niele Ivey, who back then was an assistant coach and the program’s recruiting coordinator. “Everyone packed in and came to see her play; she was just exciting and fun to watch.”

Arike was just developing her poised and forceful style, which would become her trademark as a player and entertainer. That made Notre Dame a peculiar match, with the program renowned for shaping players through a strict system and collaborative program. Teammates doubted she would choose South Bend, and Arike admits she strongly considered programs like Ohio State and UCLA.

Paradoxically, the ways in which Notre Dame would force Arike — with all her flair, confidence, and dreams — to adjust were also what made the Fighting Irish a great match.

“It was just a perfect fit for me,” Arike says. “Three and a half hours away from home, academics was important, I’ve been in religious schools my whole life, and I (studied) business, so they have a top-five business school and top five in athletics every year. Then Coach (Muffet) McGraw and Niele really cared about me as a person, made it like a home away from home.”

Having coached several big personalities and towering talents in the years leading up to Arike’s recruitment, a basketball traditionalist like McGraw felt ready to coach Arike in a way she may not have when she took over the program in the late 1980s. The path paved by Skylar Diggins, Kayla McBride, and Jewell Loyd allowed Arike to thrive, and gave McGraw the confidence to hand her the reins.

“I think her confidence was contagious,” McGraw says. “I think it infected the entire team. I think her mindset of ‘we’re going to win this game’ was something that wore off onto all the other players. And she backed it up.”

But Arike’s growth into a leader and the player who would add another trophy to Notre Dame’s collection was slower than expected. She joined a veteran team, and despite earning playing time and All-Freshman accolades, she didn’t traipse up the pecking order like she expected. McGraw made her earn it. By conference play, Arike was more comfortable, but it was hard to stomach the idea of accepting a small role for the betterment of the group.

Growing up, Arike had never had to think much about how to lead or what it means to be in peak physical shape. Greatness, being the best to ever play, that was all firmly in her line of sight even as a high schooler. Playing a role? That was a shock to the system.

“It was hard for me,” Arike says. “I didn’t get the playing time that I envisioned and it was easy to point the finger like why is (McGraw) not playing me? I could be at any school playing 40 minutes, averaging 20-something points, but I’m here subbing. After that, I just had to look at myself and (realize) maybe I wasn’t as ready for college basketball as I thought.”

During the summer after her freshman season, Arike dedicated herself to slimming down and becoming a more vocal leader. That’s also when she began training and working out with Durrell Johnson, who was introduced through Diamond Stone (Arike’s cousin and a former NBA draft pick) and would become part of her small inner circle of confidantes. They worked hard all summer, and despite the grind of school come fall, Johnson was surprised by how quickly Arike would finish assignments he gave her, whether physical or skill-based. The work continued through her sophomore season and into the next summer, when even Ivey noticed Arike came back 20 pounds lighter heading into year three at Notre Dame.

The team needed it. Four players, including All-American forward Brianna Turner, missed all or part of the year due to all of them suffering ACL tears. But the group rounded into form around Arike, went 35-3, and marched through the first two weekends of the NCAA Tournament to set up a Final Four showdown with four-time defending champion UConn.

Friends, family, and alumni all came to watch as Arike and her teammates tried to lock down the program’s first championship in nearly two decades. Notre Dame came into the weekend with the worst odds to claim the title and had lost to UConn earlier in the season, but managed to force overtime this time around.

With less than a minute to go in the extra period, Arike missed a free throw, which quickly turned into a game-tying three on the other end. McGraw called a timeout, then drew up a play for post scorer Jessica Shepard. The Huskies denied it, the ball found Arike’s hands, she drifted to the right corner, a step inside the three-point line, and patiently swished in the shot.

“I’ve seen her do that 100 times where she crosses somebody and then pulls up, and it just so happens to be at the buzzer,” Dare remembers.

“She’s a shot-maker,” adds Ivey. “She lives for those moments. When she steps on the court, she thinks she’s the best player on the court. That’s an intangible that not a lot of players have, and she has that.”

That shot made her famous, but the next one made her a college hoops legend. With the score tied at the end of regulation and three seconds left in the title game against Mississippi State, the Irish skipped a full-on set play and gave the ball to their star. Arike got to the same spot, only with far less time to get her balance, which ended up meaning she took a three without needing to. The hurried, one-legged shot, one of the most iconic in the sport’s history, was pure.

Somewhere in the lower bowl, Dare leapt up in exhilaration. His phone fell to the floor, screen shattering, as he celebrated with his father and his best friend and Wisconsin teammate Austin Traylor. With the long build toward an NCAA title complete for the “princess” of the family, April 1, 2017 became for Dare one of the “happier days of my life and our family’s lives.”

For Arike, it isn’t so much the statuesque image or even the gratification that sticks with her a few years later. Rather, it was seeing the dozens of alumni who joined the title team in the locker room postgame.

“It just felt like this is exactly what I wanted from a school, the type of environment and relationships you build in college, so it was a good feeling to be around everybody,” she says.

—

That process at Notre Dame is similar to the challenge that she faces early in her WNBA career with the Dallas Wings, who haven’t had a bevy of postseason success. Arike has still yet to taste the WNBA playoffs, coming one game short in the abbreviated 2020 Bubble season despite leading the league in scoring and being named to the All-WNBA first team.

“I don’t honestly think it’s even a (specific) goal that she has,” Dare says. “Yeah, she wins first-team All-WNBA and that’s great, but that didn’t mean that she was the best, you know?”

Nobody around Arike is surprised at her rise, or that she’s still not satisfied.

As Arike’s position coach in South Bend, Ivey constantly had to bring her A-game as well, knowing Arike would quickly accomplish whatever was put in front of her. “We tried to bring out the best in her while also allowing her to be a star,” says Ivey. Arike would often invite Ivey’s son, Jaden, now a freshman at Purdue, to work out with her, knowing the boy was a dedicated hooper as well. Ivey was surprised when those invitations would come as late as 11 p.m. or midnight, even on practice days. Johnson has observed it as a trainer when Arike demands to work with the men in the facility and never complains about the grind.

And at Notre Dame, she became a leader, which should serve her well on a young Dallas squad.

“She knew when it was her time to speak and when it was not, and how she could get people to listen to her, and what she could say and how she could say it,” McGraw remembers. “Some people can be kind of abrupt, (but) she was a little more gentle.”

Arike has learned how to accept criticism and be coached. She can absorb a scolding without flinching, then go out and dominate like it never happened. Sometimes, as McGraw jokes, that includes taking the court and making the same flashy play that got her yelled at in the first place, but more often than not, it has worked.

In the near-term, Arike is shooting for a WNBA championship. She speaks of it almost as a formality, the inevitable result of hard work. Beyond that, she’s not sure what shape her career will take. On one hand, she has helped shepherd in a new era of women’s basketball, one with new opportunities for athletes and a larger spotlight on the game. But she’s also the type to never be satisfied.

“Even though this situation is tough (in Dallas) with two losing seasons, this is where I want to be and I want to be in that legacy of helping win a championship for a team,” Arike says. “I for sure won’t be 100 percent satisfied at that point, but in my near future, that’s the biggest thing right now.”

If history tells us anything, Arike can will the Wings toward a title, but the challenge for any female athlete is to expand their influence and stardom beyond the limitations of women’s sports. Increased investment and coverage give many in the game a sense that this generation can have it better. By being herself, Arike can benefit from those trends — and continue to propel them.

After graduation from Notre Dame, Arike became connected with her agency and financial advisor through Dare, but as she met with Erin Kane, who would go on to represent her, it was Arike who did most of the talking. Kane represents many of the top athletes in the WNBA and understands the obstacles to growing the profile of someone in Arike’s shoes, but was impressed with Arike’s depth of knowledge, even as a teenager. Arike knew what she wanted out of her career but also how hard it would be to achieve. Arike trusted her own hustle, but only wanted people in her corner who could match it.

Now that her career is established, Arike is taking time to figure out, with her family, agent and close friends like Ivey and Marina Mabrey, a teammate at Notre Dame and in Dallas, how to give back to all the communities she’s part of. That includes Milwaukee and Dallas, but also Nigeria, where her father was born. Careful not to get ahead of herself with promises, Arike admits that’s where her heart lies right now.

Impact can be circular, in that you need some to affect some. For instance, fashion and clothing were interesting and creatively fulfilling for Arike and Dare long before they had the resources to do anything with that passion. Getting to actually design products and launch a brand is a thrill for the siblings, even in this early stage. Dare isn’t sure what will come of it, but Arike is more optimistic.

Since she was a child, dressing up her friends and family has been a favorite way to express herself. During chilly seasons overseas, it’s an easy way to pass the time and have fun. In addition to getting tattoos every chance she gets, Arike hopes to continue showing her sense of style with her fans. She’s a Nike athlete, but sneaker brands have been slow to fully embrace women’s basketball, so Arike is taking it into her own hands.

She also loves interacting with fans on social media, despite the ugliness that gets sent female athletes’ way from time to time. Amidst travel to and from Russia and a lot of time alone, it’s a lot of Netflix bingeing and fawning over her dogs — typical 20-something stuff. After all, there’s room in the grind for some fun stuff, too. But there’s also a lot of time to improve as a player and think about what comes next.

—

Despite finishing as the runner-up for Rookie of the Year in 2019 (behind Napheesa Collier, over whose outstretched arms she hit the Final Four dagger), Arike did lead the WNBA in scoring in 2020 and make the All-WNBA First Team as Dallas finally cracked the top half of the league in offense. This offseason, after a couple months off to decompress and let her body recover, Arike started putting together counter-moves and off-ball techniques to score despite the defensive hounding she deals with every night. She can get a shot off no matter how many hands are in her face, but as she rediscovers chemistry with Mabrey and becomes a leader for the young Wings, her game has to grow.

The same can be said for her impact as a global citizen. Arike is proud of the impact WNBA players made from the Bubble and is still considering how they can keep it up. She incorporates Black icons into her fashion presence and has earned the trust of Dare as a guiding light in the activism space, but wants to be careful how she wields influence. She is eager to get out in Dallas as the COVID shutdown comes to an end, and wants to help young disadvantaged people in Milwaukee. Her focus is largely local, and personal to her experiences.

And through her involvement in the More Than A Vote campaign and her efforts to help turn Notre Dame’s Edmund P. Joyce Center into a voting center last fall, Arike is not shirking the optional and challenging parts of being a female pro athlete in this moment. She even recently took time to speak with a group of young female athletes from her father’s home country of Nigeria, discussing her schooling, career and heritage.

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“To see her expand that role, to see her impact the world more, to watch her understand her impact and her reach, that’s the part that I am so proud of,” says Ivey, who helped develop a culture of outspokenness and activism at Notre Dame. “The fact that she realizes her power, she’s walking in her power every day, and she’s doing so much more than just sticking to sports, I love that about her.”

Of course, it’s heavy to place upon a player the weight of growing an entire sport, league and movement. Some run away from it. And while Arike doesn’t need to sweat the path forward for the WNBA financially or how to knock down the social impediments to the growth of the game, she’s confident things will keep improving.

“Everybody has that responsibility to try to grow the game because it’s come a long way but it still has a long way to go, but that just comes with being true to yourself and doing what you do,” Arike says. “Going out there and playing, showing your personality and showing the game is fun to watch, that it’s exciting.”

Mentors like Sylvia Fowles, the veteran center and three-time champion who Arike met during a USA Basketball event in 2019, share an easygoing persona that is instructive of how Arike could handle herself over time. Having a teammate like Mabrey who knows Arike and her passions should help her flourish in Dallas. The groundwork is there.

Because organized basketball is still relatively young on both the men’s and women’s side, eras can be measured by the players who dominated within them. Those around her take it seriously when she aspires to be the greatest to ever walk on the court.

“She’s definitely helped change the face of the women’s game,” Ivey says. “You have Pat Summitt, Candace Parker, all these powerful women, even Cheryl Miller back in the day, I think Arike’s one we will talk about someday and say she paved the way, she moved the game forward.”

It almost seems immaterial now to peg possible achievements to someone whose potential is as boundless and whose personality is as laid-back as Arike’s. She says she has no idols, no specific players she measures herself against. Her greatness is internal, something known when it’s seen.

When she considers what someone who has somehow missed those Final Four shots or her infectious on-court swagger ought to know about her, Arike chuckles. Why would she worry about that, when all it takes to get educated on all that makes her great is to turn on a TV, or buy a ticket to a game?

“They should just check me out and see if they like me,” she says.

Well, if it isn’t the consequences of our own actions.

MAGA rioter Richard Barnett is learning a hard lesson in taking responsibility for one’s bad behavior and he’s just not coping with his punishment well. Barnett, who stormed the Capitol with his fellow insurrectionists on Jan. 6th and infamously posted photos of himself sitting with his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, is currently being held on charges related to the riot. Though a federal judge granted Barnett’s release on “strict conditions,” Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell overruled that decision meaning Barnett has been stuck behind bars while awaiting trial.

According to Newsweek, Barnett showed up to his virtual hearing on Thursday and threw a temper tantrum after the judge set his next court appearance for early May.

“I’ve been here a long time,” Barnett yelled. “Another month … It’s not fair … You’re letting everyone else out. I need help.”

Barnett has pled not guilty to all charges pending against him, despite sharing images and videos of himself on social media. In one, he has his feet propped on Speaker Pelosi’s desk, her ransacked office in the background, as he sports a stun gun on his hip. In another, Barnett can be seen displaying a piece of mail he stole from Pelosi’s office for media outlets covering the riots. When asked about the envelope, Barnett replies that he “left a quarter” in exchange for it and left Pelosi a note that read, “Nancy, Bigo was here you b*tch.”

Though Barnett seemingly lost it at the prospect of more jail time, his lawyers were able to calm him down after the judge granted him a “time out” during the hearing to explain that the next scheduled court date did not reflect his upcoming bond hearing. Barnett’s lawyers said they plan to address the issue of his bond earlier than the hearing in May.

(Via Newsweek)

This one’s for the nerds who have been clamoring for the ultimate in baseball customization for years — a stadium creator attached to MLB: The Show. And with the game’s first step into the next-gen (and onto consoles other than those made by Sony, who produces the game), it’s finally coming (to the next-gen version of the game). And as one of those nerds, I’m giddy over the news of something whose absence I’ve bemoaned for years.

I’m also fully aware that such enthusiasm leaves me vulnerable to heartbreak should the Stadium Creator fall short of my admittedly unrealistic expectations. But the release of a new, mode-specific tease from MLB: The Show starring Puppet Fernando Tatis Jr. and Puppet Coach makes it a little safer to get excited. Not as excited as Puppet Tatis likely is over his cut of Human Tatis’ new mega-contract, but pretty close!

Trumpeting over 1,000 unique customizable features and packs that pull from modern architecture (with what seems like the ability to pull in some iconic features from existing stadiums, like the Coke bottle slide at Oracle Park in San Francisco) to fantasy themes (not sure what’s up with those sky pods!), the Stadium Creator shows real promise. Imagine the time you’ll sink into this and the bunch of different looks and weirdo dimensions you can bring to life. Ponder all the dingers when infield pop-ups become game-breakers. Useable in Diamond Dynasty and Franchise, there’s a real chance to both please the eye and affect the action in a meaningful way if that’s your aim.

The real big takeaway from the video, besides getting a somewhat extended look at the Creator in action, is the reveal that community shares are going to be a thing. As we’ve touched on before, the community is what really takes any sports game worth a damn to a close to maximum level. From expanded rosters to logos and jerseys, there’s a whole group of damn artists who sink a bunch of time into perfecting these things. And so that’s what I’m personally counting on with the Stadium Creator. From inspired choices that bring the weirdness to builds that come close to looking like some classic stadiums that haven’t made it into the game (the OG Yankee Stadium, Tiger Stadium, Ebbets, the Astrodome), there’s real potential to go beyond our own limits with the creator tool and experience what others are putting out. Welcome back, unrealistic expectations!

There are, of course, all kinds of questions still. Primarily, how high we can fly with the creator and the ease of use that is directly connected to that question. It’s also an open question if we can bring those builds into online play (my guess is no, but I am open to a pleasant surprise). But for now, this is something to get excited about ahead of the April 20 release of MLB: The Show 21.