Category: News

The Hawks and Mavs have one of the strangest “rivalries” in the NBA, as there isn’t much in the way of animosity on the court between any of the players, but the fans of the two teams regularly get into it because their two stars, Trae Young and Luka Doncic, were famously traded for each other on Draft night in 2018.

Both players have become All-Stars early in their careers, and the matchups between the two teams have been terrific when Young and Doncic go head-to-head. The two burgeoning stars have become friends and are highly respectful of the other, but when they play the other they certainly seem to enjoy putting on a show. On Wednesday, that was the case once again as the two met in Dallas and each had big nights. Young had 25 points, 15 assists, and 7 rebounds, while Doncic piled up another triple-double with 28 points, 10 boards, and 10 assists in what ended up being a 118-117 comeback win for Dallas.

The Hawks had a shot to win it late, but a Danilo Gallinari fading shot clanged off the iron at the buzzer. The play designed by Lloyd Pierce was not for Gallinari, who started on the weakside wing away from the play, but rotated to the ball after the initial action, where Young set a backscreen for John Collins on a rim run, got blown up. It got blown up because Willie Cauley-Stein, turning to chase Collins, ran through the smaller Young — who seemed to sell the contact by going to the ground — and the referees had it as a play on. Young was incensed by the no-call and after the game ended, ran up to the referee closest to him and blew up at him in his face.

You can at once understand why there was no call and why Young might’ve felt there should’ve been. Young definitely did take a shoulder to his grill, which will make anyone upset, but there was nothing intentional on the part of Cauley-Stein who simply turned into the screen as he went to chase Collins. Just simply by virtue of being a 6’1 guard setting a backscreen on a 7’1 center, you’re going to run the risk of getting a shoulder to your face without the center doing anything illegal.

The play, I assume, was initially for Collins — which Huerter probably could’ve tossed the lob to, but Tim Hardaway Jr. did a good job of digging and showing at the rim to make him think twice — and then if it wasn’t there, Young was going to pop out to get the ball and isolate. Instead, when Young went to the ground on the screen and Huerter didn’t throw it to Collins, it went to Plan C, which was Gallinari coming over and trying to create a game-winning shot.

Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce stuck up for Young after the game and felt there should’ve been a foul called and said he set a great screen on the play.

As for the man who ran Young over, Cauley-Stein said he never saw Young and applauded his “sneaky” effort at trying to draw a foul.

Cara Dune may still exist in the Star Wars universe, but according to a report it won’t be Gina Carano playing the role in The Mandalorian moving forward. According to i09, Carano will no longer work for Lucasfilm and there are “no plans” for her to return to the Star Wars universe.

In a statement obtained by io9, a Lucasfilm spokesperson said the following:

“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”

The statement, which made clear Carano is not working for Disney, also condemns the tweets that make her employment newsworthy in the first place. The report comes on the same day Carano drew new outrage over various social media posts in recent months and days about a variety of subjects that shocked fans of the Star Wars franchise. Earlier in the week, Carano shared an anti-Semitic story on Instagram that drew immediate outrage from fans. That sparked other people sharing past tweets about cancel culture and other topics, and the #FireGinaCarano hashtag trended on Twitter throughout the day.

Other speculation about Carano surrounded fellow Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal issuing enthusiastic support for his sister, Lux, coming out as transgender. In past social media messages, Carano had posted transphobic messages, among other problematic statements about coronavirus mask policies and other right-wing talking points.

Despite that, Dune remains an important part of The Mandalorian and was likely to appear in other Star Wars shows as the universe expanded on Disney+. Those plans, at least involving Carano, appear to have changed abruptly this week.

It’s never a great idea for celebrities to become Reply Guys on Twitter, but sometimes you just can’t resist if the perfect comeback falls into your lap. That appears to be the case with Mindy Kaling, who replied to a critical tweet by pointing out a bit of The Office history that certainly topped the initial insult she endured.

Wednesday brought word that HBO Max is expanding the number of animated shows it offers in a big way, starting with a reboot of a cult MTV hit Clone High. But another series that got some attention is a cartoon focused on the origin story of Velma from Scooby Doo.

As The Hollywood Reporter laid out, Mindy Kaling will voice Velma in an “adult-focused comedy” that she will also executive produce. As the news circulated online, one fan on Twitter was upset to hear Kaling was involved in the show. They replied with a GIF version of Michael Scott yelling “no” over and over again, which came from the cold open of Frame Toby, an episode from Season 5 when Scott learns that Toby, his nemesis from HR, has returned to Dunder Mifflin.

Normally it’s not a great idea for a celebrity with more than 11 million followers on Twitter to reply to someone with double digit followers, but there was a particular reason Kaling couldn’t resist: she wrote the episode that GIF came from.

The tweet was soon deleted, though you can see video of the GIF that was used here, if you need it. But beyond that tweet, Kaling certainly seemed to appreciate the excitement she saw from others.

While Phoebe Bridgers may have assumed her guitar-smashing moment on her recent Saturday Night Live performance would receive a big reaction, she may not have thought it would carry on for so long. For the past few days, the singer has seen a lingering mixed response to her SNL set, with some showing support for the highlight moment and others, like David Crosby, denouncing her for it. During a recent appearance on CNN, Phoebe spoke about the guitar-smashing moment and what it meant to her.

“I’ve always wanted to do it, and when I mentioned it to the show, they built me this whole monitor that would look like it was exploding even if I wasn’t hitting it that hard,” she said CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “So yeah, [it was] just a bucket list thing.”

Regardless of the response from others, Phoebe seems happy and satisfied that she was able to cross off an item from the bucket list. Hours after the CNN interview, the singer took another shot at Crosby in a post to Twitter where she shared a link to Mariah Carey’s 2007 video for “Obsessed” with the caption, “me @ david crosby.”

Elsewhere in the interview, she elaborated on her recent comments against Marilyn Manson. “I think it’s very funny that Marilyn Manson’s label decided to drop him right when the story went public, and people have just known about it for so long,” she said. “I find that very annoying. I think it’s a lot of performative activism, basically. I think people should take more responsibility internally. It doesn’t matter how many people know about it. You should look into people like you’re the FBI.” She added, “But when people make people money it’s really hard to walk away from that. But I think more people should.”

You can watch her full 14-minute appearance on CNN here.

When it comes to the most clutch shots in recent NBA history, there are two that immediately spring to mind. The first, of course, is Kyrie Irving’s dagger three-pointer in Steph Curry’s face to help seal the Cavs’ 2016 championship and put the punctuation mark on their miraculous comeback from a 3-1 series deficit against the Warriors. The other is Ray Allen’s title-saving three at the end of Game 6 of the 2013 Finals between the Heat and Spurs.

LeBron, ironically enough, had front-row tickets to each of these. Now, there’s a right way and a wrong way to interpret this, the wrong way being to cast ludicrous aspersions about LeBron not having the clutch gene or some other such nonsense, and the right way being to give him the credit he deserves for trusting his teammates. After all, the results speak for themselves.

And it’s a safe bet that LeBron is eternally grateful to each of them. In Allen’s case, we know this for a fact. During a recent interview, Allen was asked whether LeBron and/or Erik Spoelstra still call him to thank him for hitting that shot, and the answer was an emphatic yes.

Via Macklin Stern of CBS Sports:

Do LeBron or Coach Spo [Erik Spoelstra] ever call you out of the blue to thank you for knocking down that shot?

Oh yeah, they do. They definitely do. And I owe them a debt of gratitude for accepting me into the fold. They already had a championship environment, and to welcome me in to help them get to the next level, that’s what true winners do. They always continue to find ways to win by any means necessary. They’re always willing to learn and get better. There hasn’t been a year that’s gone by where either one of them hasn’t mentioned 2013 to me. They’re always grateful for my input.

Just how he expresses that gratitude to Kyrie is probably a trickier question, but that’s neither here nor there. Allen’s full interview is well worth the read, as he talks about, among other things, how he failed to convince Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo, and Paul Pierce to join him for pedicures and the importance of foot care for NBA longevity. Given that he boasts one of the longest and most successful careers of all-time, young players would do well to take heed of that advice and make an appointment at the nearest salon soon as safely possible.

(CBS Sports)

Jay-Z is set to release his first song in a few months thanks to his “What It Feels Like” collaboration with Nipsey Hussle. The song appears on the upcoming Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack, which will be made available to fans on Friday. With that being said, it’s not the only project dropping on Friday involving the 2021 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame nominee. According to Robin Thicke, he also helped to finalize, On Earth, And In Heaven, his first album in over six years.

“Because I didn’t have Andre [Harrell] to help me with the final tracklisting, I reached out to Jay,” Thicke said during an interview on Zane Lowe’s Apple Music radio show. “And I said, ‘Hey, I don’t have Andre. Would you mind stepping in this time to help me with the tracklisting?’ And Jay gave me the greatest A&R advice. Went through each track, sent me a little note about each track.”

He added that he sent Jay a few tracks that he felt would not appear on the final album. It resulted in the rapper telling him to follow his heart on the decision.

“That kinda sealed it for me,” he said. “‘Cause I needed one other opinion that I respected that much to give me that last sign that I wasn’t crazy.”

Earlier this year, Thicke shared the meaning behind the album’s title after sharing a trailer for it with fans. “When I saw the phrase On Earth, and in Heaven, I realized that’s what I’m singing about,” he said. “The people who aren’t here and the people who are here that made me who I am.”

You can watch the clip from the interview.

Bella Ramsey stole scenes in the later seasons of Game of Thrones, but her next gig will put her front and center of another major HBO project. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lyanna Mormont herself will play Ellie in HBO’s adaptation of The Last Of Us video game series.

Ramsey, who played the young Stark ally in one of HBO’s biggest ever hits, has reportedly been cast to play one of the two major roles in the survival series based on the video game from Naughty Dog. The second Last Of Us game hit consoles in 2020, and later in the year word that HBO was adapting the franchise with the help of Chernobyl showrunner Craig Mazin

The story also has a brief explanation of the role, in case you’re much more well-versed on the world of Bear Island and not the post-apocalyptic gaming world Ramsey will explore next.

The story set 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed and centers on the relationship between Joel, a smuggler in this new world, and Ellie, a teenager who may be key to a cure for a deadly pandemic. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle the 14-year-old girl out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey as they traverse the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.

Ramsey will play Ellie, a 14-year-old orphan who has never known anything but a ravaged planet who struggles to balance her instinct for anger and defiance with her need for connection and belonging … as well as the newfound reality that she may be the key to saving the world.

Ramsey’s nine episodes on Game of Thrones certainly are her most widely-recognized work, but she also voices the titular role in the Netflix animated series Hilda, which is just delightful. But be forewarned, The Last Of Us will be a very different show. One much more in the vein of Game of Thrones when it comes to bleak storytelling and grit.

[via THR]

Flopping in the NBA is a tricky subject. A few years back, the league implemented a new “respect the game” initiative, one of the tenets being a supposed crackdown on blatant flopping, with a series of fines handed down to serial offenders. But anyone who watches the game regularly knows that some players still do their best to oversell the contact on a fairly regular basis.

It’s hard to eradicate something that had become so insidious over the years, as players grew increasingly savvy about how to toe that careful line between selling contact and putting on an Oscar-worthy performance. Gary Trent Jr., for instance, recently joined the latter ranks with his Hall-of-Fame-level flop against the Thunder, one that was the textbook definition of a fine-able offense.

On Tuesday, Jimmy Butler submitted his own entry into the cannon late in the fourth quarter against the Knicks, although the obvious meta-nature of this one puts it in a category of its own.

Jimmy Butler deserves an Oscar for trying to sell this flagrant foul.

pic.twitter.com/JPI2Fu1XX8

— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) February 10, 2021

After the game, Butler told reporters that he was inspired by his close friend, and star of stage and screen, Mark Wahlberg. Via Yahoo Sports:

“I’ve studied Mark Wahlberg and how he acts so incredibly well,” Butler told reporters. “I’ve taken a few pointers.”

The pair have been close pals since his early days in Chicago, with Butler saying that Wahlberg was something of a mentor to him as his own career was starting to take flight. When it comes to work ethic, Butler and Wahlberg are certainly cut from similar cloth. But Butler’s acting chops probably still need a bit more refinement if he wants to more effectively convince the refs to give him the type of calls he’s searching for.

G-Eazy has apparently been dealing with a stalker at his Hollywood Hills home for the past several months. Thankfully, the bay Area rapper has just secured a restraining order against the woman who he alleges is creating the problems at home.

According to legal documents obtained by TMZ, G-Eazy filed for a temporary restraining order last week against Monika Andrody, who allegedly comes to his home to ring the doorbell and pace back and forth at his front door. When she does this, he calls the police, but he says she always leaves by the time authorities arrive. He added that the situation got worse back in November after she appeared at his house ringing the doorbell at all hours of the night, something that Andrody apparently did as recently as January 15.

The rapper said he fears that Andrody will appear at a public event and attempt to make physical contact with him. He also claims the rampant doorbell ringing from her has ruined the peace of mind he hoped to have at his home. While he was able to secure a restraining order for himself, he was unable to do the same for his now ex-girlfriend Ashley Benson. When he filed for the order last week, G-Eazy asked the judge to extend it to Benson, but the judge did not comply with his request. Despite this, a future hearing could reverse this decision.

The decision from the court comes after G-Eazy ended his 2020 with a deluxe reissue of his 2017 album, The Beautiful & Damned.

(via TMZ)

In quite possibly the best example of the worst instance of bad timing, news that rock legend Bruce Springsteen had been arrested in his native New Jersey last November on charges of driving while under the influence. Unfortunately for him, he had just starred in Jeep’s likely million-dollar Super Bowl ad “The Middle,” encouraging increasingly polarized Americans to find common ground.

Jeep didn’t quite appreciate the irony, pulling the ad from YouTube after TMZ reported the arrest earlier today. Clearly, the company thought it’d be a bad look for its spokesman to be facing charges of drunk driving so soon after the controversial commercial officially aired. As a Jeep spokesperson told Adweek, “It would be inappropriate for us to comment on the details of a matter we have only read about and we cannot substantiate. But it’s also right that we pause our Big Game commercial until the actual facts can be established. Its message of community and unity is as relevant as ever. As is the message that drinking and driving can never be condoned.”

For what it’s worth, the ad only seemed to confirm the division it condemned; Adweek reports that polls of social media drew some markedly contrary results, with Instagram responders split 50/50 on whether they hated or loved it and Twitter responders also split evenly along loving, hating, and being lukewarm on it, with a slight majority for “hate.” As for The Boss, TMZ reports he’ll have a court appearance in a few weeks, but we find it hard to imagine the living New Jersey state treasure getting anything worse than a slap on the wrist.