Category: News

One of the weirder moments of the NBA’s Orlando Bubble occurred on Saturday evening during Game 5 between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Houston Rockets. While the Lakers came out on top and sent the Rockets home en route to their first Western Conference Finals berth since 2010, the first person to leave the arena was there on behalf of the purple and gold.

Rajon Rondo’s brother, William, jawed with Rockets guard Russell Westbrook in the fourth quarter. Westbrook had to be held back by an official, while Rondo was escorted out by arena officials. After the game, the two players told the media what went down, with Westbrook saying that Rondo was chirping at him, which he believes led to Rondo’s brother getting in on the act.

Rondo, as you might be surprised to learn, had a different read on things. As he explained, both to the media and to Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated, William called Westbrook “trash,” then waved at him in a similar manner to how Damian Lillard waved after he bounced Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder from the playoffs last year.

Additionally, Rondo went on to say that he wants security to ask those around his brother about what happened.

Players going back-and-forth with fans is, obviously, a pretty common thing, but this is a new one for the Bubble, which has been careful to make sure that tensions don’t boil over at a time when players are usually more on edge than usual due to the stakes of the postseason.

For the first time since 2010, the Los Angeles Lakers are headed to the Western Conference Finals. The team put forth one of its best two-way efforts that we’ve seen during its stints in the NBA’s Orlando Bubble, picking up a 119-96 win over the Houston Rockets to secure a 4-1 series win.

The Lakers will now have a few days off, waiting to figure out whether or not their opponent in the next round will be another team that calls the Staples Center home. But before then, let’s look back on what the Lakers did to win Game 5, and some of the questions that face the Rockets as they enter an offseason with more questions than answers.

1. The Lakers will win a title if they can shoot like this

The Lakers are not a particularly good shooting team. They’ve hung their hat all year on defense and being very good inside the three-point line, but during the regular season, L.A. was 23rd in threes made and attempted and 21st in three-point field goal percentage. In a league that is increasingly emphasizing hitting triples, the Lakers have decided to go in the other direction, and they’ve won a ton because of it.

Having said all of this, the Lakers ran the Rockets off the court in Game 5 because they got thermonuclear hot from behind the arc. The team hit 19 of their 37 attempts from deep, good for a 51.4 percent success rate. Markieff Morris went 4-for-4, Danny Green went 4-for-6, Kyle Kuzma went 3-for-6, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope went 4-for-6. Even LeBron James hit three of his eight triples.

The big thing with hitting threes for L.A. is it frees up space for James, Anthony Davis, and whatever big men they have on the floor at a given time to go to work in the paint. As a result, Los Angeles went 20-for-34 (54.5 percent) on twos. James and Davis combined to go 10-for-19 on twos and shot 16 combined free throws.

While the Lakers aren’t going to connect on more than 50 percent of their threes on a given night, hitting a bunch of them is something that has worked out well for them. They were 5-0 during the regular season when connecting on more than 15 triples and are 7-1 this postseason when they make at least 10. Shooting is still a valuable commodity in basketball, even for a team like Los Angeles that didn’t build its team around that.

2. Balance helps, too

L.A.’s formula is basically that James and Davis will do so much on a given night that everyone around them will just need to do enough to get them over the hump. Saturday’s game saw part of that equation come true — James had 29 points, 11 rebounds, and seven assists — while Davis was relatively quiet, scoring 13 points, pulling down 11 boards, and dishing out four assists.

The good news for Davis was that a number of other players did exactly what we needed to do. The shooting that all of the previously mentioned dudes led to nice evenings for Kuzma (17 points, four rebounds), Morris (16 points, three rebounds, three assists), Green (14 points, four rebounds), and Caldwell-Pope (10 points). As is the case with their shooting, if those four dudes — or any of their additional role players — can combined to score 57 points, Los Angeles is going to win a bunch of games. And of course, they defended quite well as a team, holding Houston to 37.1 percent shooting from the field and 26.5 percent shooting from three.

3. Houston, woof

The Houston Rockets went all-in on a concept. Their bet: If we build a team that lets it fly from three, does not let you get anything easy on defense, and ramps up the pace of the game, we will have more good days than bad, and we will be able to make a run this postseason. It took seven games to barely beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round, then in a fashion that has unfortunately become this team’s reputation, got waxed in the series-deciding game against the Lakers.

Now, Houston enters a bizarre offseason, one in which it is hard to see a clear-cut answer for whatever they need to do, in large part because they really can’t. Look at this.

Goodness gracious. The fact that these two are owed so much is a problem, but the fact that they are two guys on the wrong side of 30 is really concerning. Add in the fact that Houston basically gave up all its draft capital to acquire Westbrook, and they built a team in a very specific way that is oftentimes dependent on finding diamonds in the rough who fit their system, and it’s hard to find a path out. This is before we consider that their head coach, Mike D’Antoni, is a free agent, and while general manager Daryl Morey said he wants to bring him back, who knows how this series will impact that.

There’s a famous Draymond Green quote about how some guys are 82 game players, while others are 16 game players. It’s an interesting one, and it’s one I found myself thinking about a lot during this series. It is possible that the Rockets have a bunch of outstanding 82 game players, but when you need to win 16 games to get a ring, trusting them seems like a risky proposition. Maybe there’s a way out of this that does not involve blowing this experiment all the way up, but it does feel like something needs to change in Houston, even if there aren’t a whole lot of things they can really do that aren’t drastic.

It took a few games, but a “fan” has finally been kicked out of a game during the NBA’s Orlando Bubble. During Game 5 of the Los Angeles Lakers’ series against the Houston Rockets, a strange moment during a free throw led to Russell Westbrook being held back as he jawed with someone sitting in the Lakers’ family section.

LeBron James was at the charity stripe for a pair of free throws. As he was taking his first shot, Westbrook turned around and looked visibly annoyed with someone. He began to approach them, at which point he was escorted away by the official.

It’s unclear exactly what was being said, but it eventually came out that the person with whom Russ was jawing was William Rondo, the brother of Lakers guard Rajon Rondo. Per those in the Bubble, security went up to Rondo’s brother, asked him to leave, and he departed from the area near the court.

Westbrook, following Rondo’s departure, did seem to be a bit upset that Rondo wasn’t sticking around.

The sideline camera does give a slightly better look at the incident, as it looks like Kyle Kuzma heard whatever was being said and Rondo was promptly met and escorted out.

The league has made it clear that these sorts of interactions between players and family members would be policed strictly during the Bubble, and so far, things have been pretty good on this front. Westbrook and Rondo will assuredly be asked about this after the game, and it will be fascinating to hear exactly what got Westbrook so heated.

While one Chris from the Marvel Cinematic Universe dealt with an, um, leak on Saturday, Chris Hemsworth was careful not to spoil anything about the forthcoming Thor: Love and Thunder in an interview with polish outlet Elle Man. But as Variety noted, Hemsworth made it clear we shouldn’t expect to say goodbye to the god of thunder anytime soon.

Hemsworth may not be returning to the fourth Thor movie as his heftier self, but the more comedic Chris of the MCU noted that he does not expect Love And Thunder to be the last Thor movie he makes.

When asked if Thor would retire after the upcoming movie, Hemsworth asserted that it wouldn’t be the end for his character.

“Are you crazy?! I’m not going into any retirement period. Thor is far too young for that. He’s only 1,500 years old,” he said. “It’s definitely not a film that I say goodbye to this brand. At least I hope so.”

The speculation that Hemsworth may pass the hammer to a new Thor is certainly warranted, especially given the current changes happening elsewhere in the MCU. And as Variety noted, we already know that Love And Thunder will see Natalie Portman return as Jane, a character who has taken the Thor mantle for a time in the comics. But Hemsworth, while not committing to a fifth standalone movie in particular, seems keen to return as Thor in at least some form or another.

He also teased a bit about what will actually happen in the movie, though it wasn’t much more than the fact that he had more fun reading this script than the much-beloved Ragnarok, which certainly set the bar for Marvel silliness.

“After reading the script, I can say that I am very excited. In this production, there will for sure be a lot of love and a lot of lightning,” he said. “I’m glad that after all that happened in ‘Avengers: Endgame,’ I’m still part of the Marvel Universe and we can continue the story of Thor. Of course, I can’t reveal anything about the plot. But to satisfy your curiosity, I will say that reading the script, I had a lot more fun than on ‘Thor Ragnarok,’ and that shows something because that movie was brilliant.”

Thanks to a pandemic, we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see whether Love and Thunder will at least match the fun Ragnarok had in store for Marvel fans. But there’s at least some relief in the idea that it won’t be the last we see of the big guy.

The Milwaukee Bucks entered a monumental offseason a little earlier than anyone anticipated. The team fell in five games to the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, and now, the team is faced with the uncertainty surrounding the future of Giannis Antetokounmpo. While they can put a supermax contract in front of the reigning league MVP this offseason, and Antetokounmpo has made it clear he will not request a trade, he can still turn down the contract, play out next year, and become an unrestricted free agent in 2021.

While there’s still a little bit of time before the Bucks can officially offer up that deal, that is going to hang over the franchise for the coming days and weeks. And before we get to that point, Antetokounmpo apparently decided to meet up with ownership to talk about what the future holds.

According to Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports, Antetokounmpo and co-owner Marc Lasry met up on Saturday on the heels of Antetokounmpo unfollowing a number of people — including the Bucks and his teammates — on social media. It is unclear what the specifics were about the meeting, but according to Haynes, “rival teams are closely monitoring the situation,” which, of course, rival teams should be doing anyway, because it isn’t every day that a player of his caliber’s future is uncertain.

The playoffs are the biggest story in basketball, but away from the court, there isn’t anything quite as big as what ends up happening with Antetokounmpo. There are plenty of huge names who can see a change in scenery next summer, and all of them are worth monitoring up until free agency begins. For now, though, all eyes are on Milwaukee.

College football is back, and in the year 2020 it comes with stadiums catching on fire and a lot of wonky play from under-practiced and understaffed teams getting live action for the first time. The result has been a lot of helter skelter and funny videos circulating on social media, but none have topped what happened between The Citadel and South Florida on Saturday evening.

Midway through the second quarter, with The Citadel trailing 7-0 and backed up in their own end zone, a punt went about as poorly as it could possibly go. It’s been a while since we’ve all watched football, so let’s go through all the bad things that can possibly happen here and what they’re worth. The punter can fumble, or maybe the snap goes over his head and the ball goes out of the end zone for a safety. That’s only two points, though, and things could be worse if South Florida gets their hands on the ball or recovers it in the end zone.

But none of that happened, in fact. What did happen, though, is the punter bobbled the snap, panicked, tried to evade tacklers and managed to get off a punt in name only, which was immediately caught for a South Florida touchdown. If that sounds improbable, fine. But it happened, and we have the video proof you’re going to need to be a believer. Let’s first visit this on the macro level, with the truly dystopian view of an empty Raymond James Stadium and a mask-wearing official watching all this go down.

And now we need to zoom in a bit and really focus on the fine details. The look of absolute panic on the face of the punter. The defender’s joyous reaction to a punt that traveled a few short yard in the air but, on the stat sheet, carried a total -10 yards and was immediately returned for a zero-yard touchdown.

It’s glorious, and in what will almost certainly be a messy, chaotic year of college football it still seems improbable that a punting disaster tops this one. There’s plenty of time, but the bar is officially sky high.

The Boys is back and more brutal than ever, but for some fans there simply isn’t enough of the Amazon Prime show to go around. Season 2 of the dark and cynical superhero show hit the streaming service earlier in the month, with its first three episodes available and new episodes coming on Fridays. But the rare streaming show not putting its entire season out at once for binge-watching potential seems to have irked a large number of The Boys fans.

As The Wrap pointed out, the show is in the 90 percent range on a review site like Rotten Tomatoes, but its average score on Amazon Prime Video is barely above half of its 5-star potential rating. And the reason for that appears to be fans review bombing the show with bad ratings because of its release schedule.

“OKAY SERIOUSLY!!!… NO FULL SEASON AVAILABLE?!?!?!?!?!?! I give up, where is my Netflix!” one person wrote in their 1-star review.

“This is 2020…. we don’t want staggered releases of episodes !! what a shame, I was looking forward in watching it.. now I’ll just skip it and wait for it to be cancelled, then I can watch them all without any interruptions,” another 1-star giver said.

A brief browse of the show’s Amazon page online or through the app can find similar reviews, which would explain the average sagging despite the general consensus about the show’s quality being much higher. And according to an interview with showrunner Eric Kripke, there’s certainly disappointment among the show’s creative team for the fan frustration. Kripke said the show should have done more to make it clear to fans that episodes would follow a more television-like schedule this fall, but they also wanted to make it clear this isn’t Amazon forcing their hand.

“So I get that people are disappointed, but I think one thing they need to understand is, this is not like a corporate, Amazon money grab — this was from the producers. We wanted this. It was a creative choice. So they may like it or not like it, but they have to at least respect that the people who are making the show wanted it to be released this way because we wanted to have time to sort of slow down a little bit and have conversations about everything. So they at least have to appreciate that it was a creative choice.”

The review bombing has certainly been a disappointing reaction from fans, who are clearly mad enough to make a show they apparently enjoy look bad just because they didn’t release a whole season all at once.

Kripke continued: “And then second, like, why you would harm something you love because you’re disappointed with how it’s being released is not awesome to me. We’re fine, and it’ll be fine, but it’s not fun to see bad reviews on a thing people actually love. Like, that doesn’t make the people who make the show feel good. I’ll say that.”

Kripke certainly has a good point to make here: it’s not a great way for fans to treat those involved with the show, especially when it was the producers who decided how it would be rolled out. But fans are definitely getting their point across and those in charge have taken notice. Whether it’s enough to change how a third season of the show hits the streaming service, though, is unclear right now.

[via The Wrap]

The college football season, at least in whatever form it is taken in the face of a global pandemic that has led to two major conferences opting to postpone things altogether, continued on Saturday afternoon, with a pair of Power 5 programs, Iowa State and Kansas State, losing to Louisiana Lafayette and Arkansas State, respectively. While those were going on, a fire broke out at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, the home of the Florida Gators football program.

Videos from Gainesville showed black smoke billowing from the stadium, where the Gators are slated to begin their 2019-20 campaign in two weeks.

It was a pretty scary visual, in large part because it was not clear exactly what caused the fire to break out. Eventually, the fire was dealt with, and it was announced that the culprit was a maintenance tractor that caught on fire. Fortunately, the university announced that there was no damage caused to the stadium.

Still, despite the fact that this is a legitimately scary visual, Florida football coach Dan Mullen, along with quarterbacks coach Brian Johnson, made a few jokes in the face of the whole ordeal.

Of course, the important thing here is that anyone who might have been in the stadium while this happened is ok. Florida’s season is currently schedule kick off on Sept. 26 against Mississippi.

One could make a strong argument that Hit-Boy deserves to be named 2020’s producer of the year thanks to his placements on a number of strong albums, including Jay Electronica’s A Written Testimony, Polo G’s The Goat, Nas’ King’s Disease, and Big Sean’s Detroit 2. But he’s still aiming to reach new heights in his career, and Hit-Boy revealed what other artists he wants to work with on a recent interview on The Bootleg Kev Podcast.

“I’ve already worked with these people, but if I can get an album with Kendrick or get an album with Jay-Z that would be lovely,” Hit-Boy said on the podcast. His past work with Kendrick Lamar includes “Backstreet Freestyle” and his “Wow Freestyle” with Jay Rock. On the other hand, Hit-Boy has produced “Somewhereinamerica” and “N****s In Paris” for Jay-Z.

Chances for a fully-produced Kendrick Lamar album may have to wait a few years as the TDE rapper is finishing up his fifth album and has been seen reportedly shooting a music video for the upcoming release. A collaboration with Jay-Z may be possible if he decides to release another solo full-length album, which would be his first since 2017’s 4:44. Hit-Boy also released his City On Lock EP earlier this year which boasted features from Nas and Dom Kennedy.

It’s a good day to be a running back who wants to get paid. The New Orleans Saints came to terms on a contract extension with standout back Alvin Kamara on Saturday after several days of talks, giving the Pro Bowl back a deal that will give him the second-most money on an annual basis among everyone at his position. Elsewhere in the NFC, the Minnesota Vikings made it a point to make sure their star ball carrier went into the 2020 season with financial peace of mind.

According to multiple reports, Dalvin Cook and the Vikings came to terms on a five-year deal that will pay him $63 million, with $28.2 million of that being guaranteed money. Soon after, the team announced the news on its Twitter account and posted a video in which Cook signed his deal before addressing Vikings fans.

Adam Schefter of ESPN brings word that one of Cook’s teammates, linebacker Eric Kendricks, had his deal restructured by turning $6 million in base salary into a signing bonus.

Cook, a Pro Bowl selection in 2019, ran for 1,135 yards and 13 touchdown last season. He was also an effective option in the passing game, catching 53 balls for 519 yards. The news comes one day before the Vikings kick off the 2020 season with an NFC North matchup against one of their rivals, the Green Bay Packers.