Category: News

If there’s one thing that holds true in every NBA Draft, no matter how good it is from top to bottom, it’s that someone will surprise you. Whether it’s a super popular five-star prospect turning into a pumpkin or a relative nobody bursting into the lottery picture, there will never be a mock draft that looks the same in May as it does in the previous November.

Sometimes, these players are like Zhaire Smith, Rashad Vaughn, Chris McCullough, or Ndudi Ebi, athletic freshmen who catch a team’s eye during workouts. More dependably, they’re second or even third year college stars who nevertheless flew under the mainstream NBA radar. Tyrese Haliburton is probably the best recent example of this, an advanced stats darling who filled in every possible role on a good tournament team as a freshman before breaking out as a national star the next year. To find such a potential player so far this year, you don’t have to look any farther than Texas sophomore big man Kai Jones.

I wouldn’t say Jones, a 6’11 big man from The Bahamas, was a complete unknown coming into college (he was a four-star and rated as the No. 51 recruit in the country, per his 247Sports Composite rating), but his production, such as it was, mostly flew under the radar. I’d go as far as to call him a mild disappointment, logging only 15 or so minutes per game and shooting exactly 50 percent from the field. The physical talent, which I’ll get into, was obvious even in his high school tape, but he just couldn’t stay on the floor for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons — foul trouble — is still apparent through nine games this year, but now, the overall production is so high and the flashes so great that Shaka Smart almost has to play him, even at the expense of five-star prospect and potential first-round pick Greg Brown.

Through those nine games, Jones is putting up per-40 averages of 16.5 points, 9.2 rebounds, 1.2 assists, 1.6 steals, and one block, with the eye-popping shooting splits of 62.7 percent from the field, 43.8 percent from three, and 72 percent from the line. These numbers have come against teams like Davidson, North Carolina, Villanova, Indiana, Oklahoma State, and Kansas, so it’s not like he’s feasting on small schools that inflate his numbers. Jones leads Texas in BPM (Box Plus-Minus), True Shooting, Effective Field Goal Percentage, and Offensive Rating, and true to those numbers, his shot profile is something to behold. Jones is shooting 27-for-38 around the rim (including 20 dunks), 30-for-43 on all twos, and 7-for-16 from three. That last numbers separates him a bit from someone like Jaxson Hayes, who Jones will inevitably be compared to as a 6’11 thin dunker from Texas.

The main appeal of Jones as a prospect is his intersection of elite mobility, length, and scoring touch. Here, against Oklahoma State, he attacks a closeout like a guard and scores on a sweet looking eurostep, then showcases his great lateral movement skills to smother a drive.

Here he dribble drives into the paint and pump fakes Trayce Jackson-Davis, an NBA athlete in his own right, completely out of his shoes and finishes with some impressive burst out of a standstill. Not very many 6’11 players in the NBA right now can do this consistently.

His shooting seems fairly legitimate thus far, too. With this jab step against UNC…

…and a pass fake into a long range bomb against Oklahoma State to accounting for two of his five makes thus far.

Finally, while his defense is probably his weakest overall skill right now (too many fouls, generally inconsistent body control, lack of strength), those same movement skills can provide some absolutely terrific flashes at times.

The list of 6’10 or taller college players to shoot 70 percent at the rim and 40 percent from three (with 15 dunks at least 3.5 threes attempted per 100) is littered with guys like Frank Kaminsky, Dean Wade, Markieff Morris, Killian Tillie, Aric Holman, and Justin Harper, and while those guys have all mostly shot well as pros, it would be hard to argue any of them is in the same galaxy as Jones athletically. That potential upside alone, as a legitimate pull-up shooter, multi-level dunker, and occasional ball-handler will likely get Jones drafted in the first round, if not the late lottery. Even if his defensive discipline and physical strength doesn’t improve at all from now until whenever the next Draft is, it’ll hard to pass up on the flashes.

Julien Baker’s upcoming album Little Oblivions opens with the song “Hardline,” which Baker has shared today. Like the singles that preceded it, the new song shows Baker taking leaps with her arrangements, working dramatic organ hits and other new-to-her sounds into the hugely climactic, sometimes post-rock-like track.

Baker says of the video she also released for the song:

“A few years ago I started collecting travel ephemera again with a loose idea of making a piece of art with it. I had been touring pretty consistently since 2015 and had been traveling so much that items like plane tickets and hotel keycards didn’t have much novelty anymore. So I saved all my travel stuff and made a little collage of a house and a van out of it. I wanted to incorporate it into the record and when we were brainstorming ideas for videos we came across Joe Baughman and really liked his work so we reached out with the idea of making a stop-motion video that had similar aesthetic qualities as the house I built did. I don’t know why I have the impulse to write songs or make tiny sculptures out of plane tickets. But here it is anyway: a bunch of things I’ve collected and carried with me that I’ve re-organized into a new shape.”

Baughman also notes of the visual, “Even after having spent 600 hours immersed in ‘Hardline’ and having listened to it thousands of times, I am still moved by it. It was a fun and ambitious challenge creating something that could accompany such a compelling song. The style of the set design, inspired by a sculpture that Julien created, was especially fun to work in. I loved sifting through magazines, maps, and newspapers from the 60s and 70s and finding the right colors, shapes, and quotes to cover almost every surface in the video.”

Watch the “Hardline” video above.

Little Oblivions is out 2/26 via Matador Records. Pre-order it here.

Later this week, Kathryn Hahn makes her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut when WandaVision starts streaming on Disney+, and for the first time, the actress is opening up about her mysterious character “Agnes” and what it’s like joining the ambitious project that will bend reality as it hurtles through decades of classic TV. While not much is known about Hahn’s Agnes, some Marvel fans are convinced that she’s secretly Agatha Harkness, an ancient sorceress from the comics who’s both mentored the Scarlet Witch and been her adversary. In short, the two characters have a history together, and in a new interview, Hahn reveals that WandaVision will go deep into the Scarlet Witch’s “dark” and “traumatic” backstory, which is what drew Hahn to the project.

Unlike the Marvel films, WandaVision can take its time really exploring the characters including Hahn’s Agnes who will play a central role in the story. “I couldn’t have dreamt a cooler part, honestly,” Hahn said. “I was thrilled.” It also doesn’t hurt that while the Marvel films are notoriously secret, Hahn was tipped off to the mysteries of WandaVision while the show was filming. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

So I did have the luxury of knowing where everybody was headed; I got to know the whole thing. As the decades hurdled by, the trick was to hold steady to something in the center, and that became really fun. Agnes’ role, especially in a classic sitcom sense, is that neighbor who’s always flopping over uninvited and offering advice. We know nothing about her own homelife, and she’s always complaining while at their house. There’s such a legacy of those characters from so many shows, and it was really fun to research that trope.

Ahead of WandaVision’s premiere, the series official Twitter account released a character poster featuring Hahn’s Agnes, which you can see below:

WandaVision starts streaming January 15 on Disney+.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

The voice cast for Avatar: The Last Airbender virtually reunited over the weekend to discuss Nickelodeon’s beloved animated series that saw a massive surge in popularity last year after being added to Netflix. Those in attendance included Dee Bradley Baker, the voice of Appa and Momo, and Olivia Hack, the voice of Ty Lee, and they shared their thoughts on the streaming service’s upcoming live-action remake.

“I just don’t know how you fulfill that any better than this show did. I’m open to whatever they do with the live-action series, which I know nothing about, but it’s like, ‘Well, how do you do this better than the way that it was rendered on this show?’ I don’t know how you do that! I hope you can,” Bradley Baker said. Hack added, “Especially when you’re doing the exact same series, but as a live-action. You’re not adding onto it or expanding the universe. You’re doing the same thing, which feels redundant, but I don’t know.”

I will watch the live-action The Last Airbender remake partially because the original series is one of the greatest animated shows of all-time, and partially out of morbid curiosity. But Bradley Baker and Hack make a good point: why mess with perfection? We all know what happened the last time someone made a live-action The Last Airbender…

Speaking of, the show’s voice director Andrea Romano also took part of the reunion, and she called M. Night Shyamalan’s film “very disappointing. It’s not good, I’m sorry. The first thing is: we were so good with what we set up. That’s it. Because it was animation and because we were setting the bar… I believe there was an ego involved about, ‘This is mine and I’m doing it this way. I don’t care that you two guys [creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko] created this incredibly successful series and have all this information you could give me. I’m pretty much not gonna listen to you and do what I wanna do.’ Which is fine, that’s his prerogative, but that’s why [it didn’t work].”

Also this:

Dante DiMartino and Konietzko departed the remake over “creative direction.”

(Via Winter is Coming)

My theory, disputed by many doctors, is that the human brain has tiny fishing hooks inside it. Not a lot of them, maybe half a dozen. They just kind of sit there hanging out into the open thoroughfares that our thoughts pass through. Most thoughts, especially the important ones (“hey, remember to pay your credit card bill”; “this person looks like a Mike but his name is actually Greg and he will get mad if you screw it up”), zip right on by undisturbed, sometimes gathering the escape velocity to shoot straight out of your head completely. Sometimes, though, a thought gets stuck on one of those hooks, and then it just stays there, wriggling around, refusing to leave no matter how hard you shake and jostle it. They’re usually useless ones, too, like facts you have no need to remember (“Liam Gallagher owns over 2000 tambourines”) or song lyrics that haunt you for decades (“Man, it’s a hot one…”). Every now and then, though, an idea will get snagged. A really good one. One that someone else might have tossed out as a joke and forgotten about but stays on the hook in your brain for weeks, shouting at the other thoughts passing through, altering each of them, and consuming you completely.

This is happening to me. It started on December 21, when I saw this tweet:

It is so true and so obvious in hindsight that I’m angry no one thought of it years ago, especially me. I would watch that movie every weekend. Danny McBride and Walton Goggins are perfect together, as we’ve seen, multiple times, with evidence, and yes, this is me talking about Vice Principles and The Righteous Gemstones again, two mostly perfect little shows that highlight each actor’s strengths. So they’ve already been in things together. They can be in more things together going forward. Like, for example, that Prestige remake, or, for many other examples, the other movie remakes my brain has been cranking away on since that tweet got stuck on one of its hooks.

Yes, I’m sorry (but also you are welcome), we are doing this. Here is an incomplete list of movies that I would like to see remade with Danny McBride and Walton Goggins. Any or all will be acceptable.

The Fugitive

The key to this one is that McBride has to play the Harrison Ford character and Goggins has to play the Tommy Lee Jones character. I don’t think anyone will have any objections to this, but for those who may be questioning it, consider:

• Walton Goggins giving the “warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse” speech
• Danny McBride storming into a crowded ballroom and shouting “This corrupt motherfucker switched the samples!”

I know there’s no cussing in the original version of that line. But get a good picture in your brain of Danny McBride saying that. I think you’ll agree that it plays.

Face/Off

Goggins as Travolta, McBride as Cage, also for two important reasons:

• I really want to see Walton Goggins’ take on John Travolta’s take on Nicolas Cage, right down to the deranged smirking and eyes flooded with chaos
• I really want to see Danny McBride brandish two solid gold handguns as he leaps out of an airplane

I consider these requests to be reasonable in every way.

Batman

Any Batman movie will do, honestly, but the obvious choice here is one that features Joker, just for the historic rivalry. The Dark Knight, yes, sure, fine, but also the original Batman with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. That one might be preferable, now that I think about it, in part because it’s not the second film in a trilogy and will be somewhat less confusing (I said somewhat), and in part, because I love a big cartoony Joker in big cartoony suits. So, let’s do that one.

The tricky part of this one is who plays who. And it’s extra frustrating for me because I’m the guy who wrote a whole thing about how every actor is either a Batman or a Joker and how it’s kind of obvious once you think about it. But even then I admitted that these two are confusing, saying, apologies for quoting myself, “Danny McBride is such a Joker that he might be a Batman as a prank” and “Walton Goggins is, at present, a Joker, but is one perspective-shifting supporting role away from becoming the most fascinating Batman of all.” Do you see the problem here? I, the self-appointed expert on the subject, couldn’t decide back then when I had tasked myself with deciding. It’s a conundrum. It might keep me awake for a week. That’s why I propose a compromise, one I think you will agree is fair and equitable…

We make two Batman remakes, one with Goggins as Batman and McBride as Joker, one with McBride as Batman and Goggins as Joker, and we let the public decide. Democracy in action. Plus, I want to see both of these. Not a losing side to be found anywhere.

Good Will Hunting

This one requires some cheating, to the extent that any of this contains rules that can be broken, which it does not. Here’s how we do it: Goggins plays the Matt Damon character, aged down a few decades with the Benjamin Button machine; McBride plays BOTH the Ben Affleck and Robin Williams roles, also via the Benjamin Button machine. God, I want to see this. I want to see Goggins doing a thick Boston accent. I want to see McBride give the “The best part of my day speech,” I REALLY want to see the “It’s not your fault” speech, with Goggins acting his heart and crying and McBride twisting the whole thing by complaining that there’s snot on his sweater or something.

This is a pretty bad idea. I stand by it completely.

All the President’s Men

Goggins as Redford/Woodward, McBride as Hoffman/Bernstein. Neither of these is perfect, I’ll admit that right up front. But I’ll tell you how I got there: hair. Robert Redford has had perfect shampoo commercial hair for almost a full century now (he still does today, Google it). Walton Goggins had an incredible hair situation on Justified. His hair seemed to get more spiky and unkempt as his character became more unhinged, kind of like a follicle mood ring. The two men are similar in the way they are opposites: one a blonde Adonis with the hair of a teen pop star; one a menacing brunette whose hair appears to be running away from his face. It’s so wrong it’s right.

As far as the other half of this one… I don’t know. I just want to see Danny McBride and Walton Goggins take down Nixon. I shouldn’t have to explain any of this beyond that. And the hair.

Fight Club

I have five words for you and I want you to think about them for the rest of the day. Are you ready?

Okay, here we go…

Danny McBride as Tyler Durden.

Thank you. Moving on.

Tombstone

This is another tricky one because there are a bunch of characters in Tombstone and a fair amount of them could go either way. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and here’s what I’ve settled on:

• Danny McBride as Wyatt Earp because I want to see him with a luxurious mustache like the one Kurt Russell sported
• Walton Goggins as Doc Holiday because I pictured him saying “I’m your Huckleberry” just now and it felt delightful
• Sam Elliott reprises his role over two decades later with no explanation
• Chalamet as Johnny Ringo

Get them all cowboy hats and start production.

Gladiator

I’m very sorry, truly, but if you don’t want to see an alternate version of Gladiator that stars Danny McBride as Maximus and Walton Goggins as Commodus, I don’t know what I can do to help you. You’re a lost soul. You just have to make this journey on your own, a solitary search for what ails your broken spirit, as soon as you can. Just picture Walton Goggins stabbing Danny McBride and whispering “Smile for me now, brother,” and then picture Danny McBride screaming “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?” That could help. Maybe rewatch the whole movie tonight to get a better feel for it. I feel pretty certain that you don’t have anything better to do.

Toy Story

The first Toy Story, exactly the same, not a single frame of animation changed or a fraction of the plot altered, with the exception of three things:

• Walton Goggins as Woody
• Danny McBride as Buzz Lightyear
• Rated R due to the addition of 100+ swear words

I’ll still cry at the end. There’s no getting around it.

The First Season of True Detective

Technically cheating again because this is a television show instead of a movie, but consider this: Danny McBride sitting in an interview room with a Lone Star pounder on the table in front of him and a lit cigarette —wait, no, definitely a joint — in his hand that he lifts to his mouth and takes a long drag from before saying “Time’s a flat circle, hombre” and exhaling a thick cloud in the stale room. That’s pretty good. And doing this also allows me to type the phrase “Walton Goggins as Woody Harrelson,” which is both a fun collection of words and a biopic I kind of want to see now.

So, let’s get to work on that one, too. After these. Priorities, etc.

After years away, The Antlers began their return last year with some new music. Those new singles didn’t come with official news of a new album, but now that reveal has finally arrived: Green To Gold will be released on March 26. Today, they also shared a new song called “Solstice,” a relaxing number that sounds like a natural continuation of Peter Silberman’s sparse 2017 solo album Impermanence.

Silberman says of the track, “‘Solstice’ is a flashback to the infinite days of peak childhood summer, innocent barefoot hikes, staying outside all afternoon and late into the evening, well past it being too dark to see. But it’s remembered from the vantage of a present day that feels unbearably long rather than joyously endless. It’s an invocation of those simpler times, an attempt to conjure the lightness of youth, before life got so damn complicated.”

He also says of the album more broadly:

“I set out to make Sunday morning music. […] Most of the songs on Green To Gold are culled from conversations with my friends and my partner. It’s less ambiguous about who’s speaking and who’s listening. I think the shift in tone is the result of getting older. It doesn’t make sense for me to try to tap into the same energy that I did ten or fifteen years ago, because I continue to grow as a person, as I’m sure our audience does too. Green To Gold is about this idea of gradual change. People changing over time, struggling to accept change in those they love, and struggling to change themselves. And yet despite all our difficulty with this, nature somehow makes it look easy.”

Watch the “Solstice” video above and check out the Green To Gold art and tracklist below.

1. “Strawflower”
2. “Wheels Roll Home”
3. “Solstice”
4. “Stubborn Man”
5. “Just One Sec”
6. “It Is What It Is”
7. “Volunteer”
8. “Green To Gold”
9. “Porchlight”
10. “Equinox”

Green To Gold is out 3/26 via Anti-. Pre-order it here.

The effects of the failed MAGA coup on the U.S. Capitol are somewhat ironic, given that some GOP lawmakers who were in the process of objecting to the Electoral College vote (and helped to incite the insurrection) are now also upset about increased security measures on Capitol Hill. It’s mind-boggling that members of Congress weren’t already required to go through metal detectors, given that it’s a requirement for people who work in most federal buildings already. Well, some lawmakers like freshman Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) actually threw a hissy fit and refused to reveal what was in her bag.

So, what was in Boebert’s bag? It’s not too hard to guess what she wished to hide (or wanted people to think she was hiding), since Boebert’s viral-semi-famous for her “I will carry a Glock” video, in which she brags that she will carry a firearm into the Capitol. What a mess, and incoming Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) has some harsh words for Boebert and the rest of her colleagues who don’t want to comply with the requirements of their job: find another one.

“For those that did that, first of all, we’re talking about your job,” Bush said to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. “Let’s just look at it from the most basic level: If you work at McDonald’s you have to wear the uniform, or you’re not working today.” She wasn’t done yet. “Have they ever had a job before? Also, how do you get on a plane? Do you rush through and not go through the detector? That’s a bunch of bullcrap.” And then came the kicker. “If they won’t abide for the simple things this job calls for, then go find another one!”

Chris Hayes busted out laughing at round the 1:30 min mark in this clip.

On a related note, Rep. Bush is also pushing for lawmakers who helped to incite last week’s Capitol violence to be expelled. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, you may have met your match.

With over 100,000 people watching on Instagram Live, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) detailed the “close encounter” she had with the MAGA rioters during last week’s failed coup at the Capitol building. “Wednesday was an extremely traumatizing event. And it was not an exaggeration to say that many members of the House were nearly assassinated,” she said. “I didn’t even feel safe going to that extraction point because there were QAnon and white supremacist members of Congress who I felt would disclose my location and create opportunities to allow me to be hurt.” AOC, who “didn’t feel safe around other members of Congress,” thought she “was going to die.”

The rioters brought pitchforks and zip-ties and Confederate flags to the U.S. Capitol; a wooden gallows was erected on the lawn; and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), one of the members of “The Squad” (AOC is also part of the group), told the Boston Globe that “every panic button in my office had been torn out — the whole unit.”

Ocasio-Cortez was “unable to provide further details about the January 6 incident due to security concerns,” according to the Huffington Post, but she did later senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) for their role in the riot. “Ted Cruz, you do not belong in the United States Senate. Josh Hawley, you do not belong in the United States Senate, so get out,” she said. More generally, Ocasio-Cortez told any Republican who supported President Trump’s efforts to overturn the election that “you will never be president. You will never command the respect of this country, never… And you should resign, and so should every member of congress who voted to overturn the election results because they would rather cling to power instead of respect our democracy.”

Here’s a thread of her Instagram Live talk, along with reactions:

(Via the Huffington Post)

Last summer, Cardi B revealed that while making her monumental “WAP” video, she spent $100,000 just on COVID-19 testing to ensure a safe set. It turns out that was just a small portion of the video’s overall cost, as Cardi has revealed she spent a million dollars on the whole production.

Cardi decided to bless her Twitter followers last night with a random “Bodak Yellow” fact, writing, “Fun fact : Bodak yellow music video cost me 15 thousand dollars .I was in Dubai and I said ….I gotta fly picture (videographer) out here …BOOM BOOM BANG ! Ya know the rest.” A fan responded by noting, “girl that’s a lot,” and Cardi replied, “Naaaa honey ….Money cost 400K ,Please me Cost 900K ,Wap Cost a M !”

This got fans curious about how much Cardi’s other videos cost, and Cardi offered a lot of answers to their questions: “Be Careful” cost “not much …Probably like 200K,” “Bartier Cardi” “was like 150K,” and “Lick” ran her “I think like 15K.”

Cardi also offered some behind-the-scenes info on what it was like to shoot some of her visuals. She said of “I Like It,” “I was extremely annoyed that day .I was pregnant and hot and paparazzi was being so annoying and rude.” She also said of the “Lick” video with Offset, “Offset had a 40K wardrobe fee for videos so I had to pay it out my pocket cause I didn’t wanna look like a small artist with a tiny ass music video budget …..I told him like a year later.” She later expanded on “Lick,” writing, “Ugh it was very [expressionless face emoji] .We shot the video at a casino in a Holiday Inn in Jersey and I was embarrassed cause it look so low budget and Set was about to pull up and I barely knew him so I was so shy and when he kissed me on camera my heart sinked [heart eyes emoji] Every1 was like [shocked emoji].”

She also said of her “Taki Taki” video with DJ Snake, “TAKI TAKI I had fun but I was alil off .It was my first music video after giving birth and my body was so skinny.I felt like it was my first day back at school but DJ SNAKE made sure I felt like a comfy princess.” Cardi also noted of “Bartier Cardi,” “I was pregnant so I was trying my best to conceal my tiny belly .I felt uncomfortable in the car cause I really wanted to be sexy with offset but I was looking very pregnant so I didn’t felt sexy I was looking fat .”

Check out Cardi’s tweets about her videos below.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

After a lopsided defeat at the hands of the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday evening, Houston Rockets guard James Harden sent shockwaves through the NBA landscape with candid comments on the podium. The superstar said “this situation is crazy, it’s something that I don’t think can be fixed” when referring to the Rockets and, given previous rumblings about Harden’s desire to find a new team via trade, things seem to be reaching a peak of sorts in Houston.

Moments later, John Wall addressed the media and, at first, he offered a swift sidestep when prompted with what Harden said.

From there, however, Wall referred to “certain guys in the mix who don’t want to buy in” and expounded on his current viewpoint.

Wall was also candid in saying his new pairing with Harden has been “a little rocky” since he arrived in the trade that sent Russell Westbrook to the Washington Wizards.

Finally, Wall did credit Harden for competing and coming to practice, even if the statement of support wasn’t overwhelming.

In some ways, Harden’s unhappiness isn’t a surprise, but this is not the kind of public sentiment usually expressed in the aftermath of a regular season game in January. As such, Wall was put in an interesting and difficult position in having to speak right after it, especially on a new team. Still, this is a situation that has far-ranging effects, and Wall didn’t run and hide from the turmoil, perhaps creating even more discussion and intrigue along the way.