Category: News

As the Philadelphia 76ers get ready for their first game at the Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando on Friday night against the Indiana Pacers, Joel Embiid is running a giveaway in Philadelphia in which fans can win Mountain Dew/Process-themed Under Armour sneakers.

The bright-green sneakers, adorned with Embiid’s signature phrase, “PROCESS,” will be given away through riddles post on Embiid’s social media accounts that will lead fans to different spots in Philadelphia. Three winners will be selected who find each secret location, where they will scan a QR code to claim their potential prize.

The giveaway will give fans an opportunity to interact with Embiid from a distance as the NBA tips off from its clean site in Orlando.

If they win, fans will receive a pair of HOVR Havoc 2 sneakers, designed specifically around the Mountain Dew brand as well as Embiid’s trust for The Process. The design was done by Texas-based Dank and Co. and certainly will be unique for the winners to wear around Philadelphia during the 2020 NBA season.

Embiid and the Sixers begin the seeding round of games on Saturday at 7 p.m. ET as they take on the Pacers in a game with potentially big seeding implications for the NBA playoffs.

Masks have become more important in everyday life this year than they’ve been in recent memory. Wearing a mask in public is a safety measure, yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t look cool while doing it, too. A bunch of artists started selling their own masks towards the beginning of the pandemic as part of a Universal Music Group/Bravado initiative, and now Travis Scott is getting in on it, too.

He’s going at it on his own, though. Through his Cactus Jack brand, he has started offering a collection of new coronavirus-related merch. His web store was updated today to add branded hand sanitizer for $12, face masks for $25, and SafeTouch tools for $30.

The masks have the Cactus Jack logo embroidered on one side. Meanwhile, the hand sanitizer comes in a spray bottle, is 72 percent alcohol, and is agave-scented. Then there’s the touch tool, which reads, “I ain’t touching that sh*t.”

It is not clear if, like has frequently been the case with sales of masks and similar products during the pandemic, any portion of proceeds will go towards a charitable cause.

All items are available on Scott’s shop, and can only be shipped to the continental US. Check them out here.

Sam Smith delivered their last album in 2017 with The Thrill Of It All, an effort that would go on to give them their first No. 1 album in the US. Standing as their sophomore effort, The Thrill Of It All arrived three years after Smith’s debut album In The Lonely Hour, so in the name of consistency one could expect Smith’s third album to arrive at some point this year. But, has been the case recently in the industry, it’s probable the coronavirus threw those plans off, if they were even in motion in the first place.

Nonetheless, Smith returned with new music earlier this year with their Demi Lovato-featured single, “I’m Ready.” Now, Smith drops their second single of the year alongside another popular name.

Cruising through with Burna Boy, the two connect for their first-ever collaboration, “My Oasis.” Serving as the follow-up to their “I’m Ready” single, Smith’s second release of 2020 should be a more promising sign that their third album will arrive this year. The track also arrives after Smith shared their thoughts on the coronavirus. “I didn’t get tested but I know I had it. 100% had it,” they said. “Everything I read completely pointed to that. So, yeah. I definitely had it.” The track also arrives exactly one month after he delivered a joyful video for his “Wonderful” video.

Listen to “My Oasis” above.

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

Before hearing it, there’s an understanding of what the voice will be like. Because there have been 15 years worth of press conferences, fifteen years worth. There’s been the voice ratcheted to its breaking point, screaming hoarse and vaguely architectural instructions with the kind of vehement, austere assurance even Rem Koolhaas couldn’t hope to muster. And most recently, there’s been the voice superimposed over basketball games he’s not coaching, explaining with punch and luster exactly what you’re seeing on a court and why it matters.

Still, when Stan Van Gundy sails over speakerphone with a breezy, “Hel-lo,” there is a suspended second of disbelief that the inventor of all of it — the career, the triumphs and wincing wrecks, the personality, the occasionally fuming lodestar — is simply calling from his home in Tampa.

This is the nucleus of Van Gundy’s career: excelling in the self-possession of showing up. He did it in Miami, when he coached the team out of the swampy dregs of the bottom East and made them shine enough for Pat Riley to want them back. He did it in Orlando, a near-Sisyphean set-up with Dwight Howard as the boulder. He did it in Detroit, all-in as head coach and president of basketball operations with a roster on the edge of almost. And with coaching reluctantly behind him, Van Gundy gamely sat where ESPN might want him as a sub for a season before landing, this past fall, a multi-year contract with Turner as a game and studio analyst. Between every stop there was a year or so off, as if he had simply taken a scenic route, but he always arrived.

This sense of pacing was partially set by opportunity, and for a coach as tenured as Van Gundy, the rhythm of its knocking may never be absent for too long. But whatever you think of his coaching record, his history, even his personality, it’s always been the tungsten of tenacity at his core that has cast the most enticing light. In his determination, even when it hurt him, there’s resolve and a lasting quality that feels so largely absent from the world at hand.

“I think honestly I’ve been pretty adaptable,” Van Gundy says, a vocal shrug, when we start in on his coaching trajectory. “I’ve done things differently in all three situations both on the court and the way that I felt with my superiors and my relationships with players. Everything’s evolved for me over the years. I’ve been different in all three stops and I think I’ve been willing to adapt.”

Van Gundy, in stark contrast to coaches of his era, didn’t arrive as a prototype. Unlike Phil Jackson’s Type-A Bohemian tycoonery, or Pat Riley’s gritty-wise-guy-gone-south swagger, Van Gundy arrived as-is. There was no brand. He was loud, could be gruff on court and in pressers, tipped occasionally close to frantic, but was almost sprightly in how agile he could be game planning. As a coach he gave as good as he got, but he also listened, adapted.

The mismatch in Miami, now with over a decade of distance, could be chalked up to optics. Van Gundy was never going to be the slick, Vice Nights coach Riley seemed destined to be. He was short and blustery, but he also helped create the regimented system for which the Heat are infamous, working closely with its earliest prototype, Dwyane Wade, in his formative years.

The offer from the Magic came after Van Gundy had declined the Pacers, and after Orlando had already offered the gig to Billy Donovan, who’d accepted and backed out. There was something in that team Van Gundy waited for, and whether it was a fresh start or autonomy, nearly everything on the team ramped up. Their offensive rating climbed from 22nd to seventh, pace from 26th to ninth, defensive rating eventually hit first in the league along with the team’s record, and the Magic made their second-ever appearance in the NBA Finals against Jackson’s Lakers. Orlando saw the postseason every year under Van Gundy, but despite it, he was fired in 2012 after the Pacers, the team he’d turned down, beat the Magic four out of five in the first round.

When asked if, retrospectively, there was a time when his desire for autonomy as a coach overrode what could have been a better decision in the long run, he digs in.

“In those moments, I mean I’m not afraid of conflict. I don’t think conflict is a bad thing,” Van Gundy says. “I think you’re gonna have disagreements with players and other people that you work with and you can have those conflicts and be respectful, find answers, find solutions, find things like that. But you do have to be wiling to stand your ground at certain times.”

He had every right to stand it in Orlando, even facing a rebuild. But if the fabled presser, since doubled-down on by Howard, was any indication, the franchise had already decided to dismantle the ground under him. It was an early sign of trends to come league-wide, coaches flipped for someone more “aligned” with a franchise.

Stubbornness is a quality that has shortened or stalled out careers of coaches and players both, but without it there’d be no magic, no double-takes of “Did he?” as a player comes loose from gravity, no guts. Like most things worth working hard for, sustainable nerve takes balance and composure.

“I think finding that balance is a lot the same as what goes on with players. Players need to be coachable, but the best players I’ve been around also have a level of stubbornness. I think that’s part of what makes you who you are, those major things, you’ve gotta stick to your guns on those,” Van Gundy says on finding the midpoint between staying true to yourself and seeing the larger picture. “I think that’s true of high performers in any field. There is a level of stubbornness involved in things that you really believe in, are musts for team success, for winning games. You’ve gotta be willing to stick to your guns.”

It’s when entrusted with other people’s livelihoods Van Gundy yields, “I don’t think that you can be stubborn as an NBA coach and have your style of play, your system, and that’s the only way you can play. Because I think you have to develop your system to the talents of the players that you have and you have to be adaptable in that regard. The way we played in Orlando was a lot different than the way we played in Miami, and then we had to play a lot differently in Detroit. I think those are just necessities.”

In Detroit, a team and civic ethos that felt in many ways better shaped for the work ethic of its incoming coach, Van Gundy never got the full runway, partially because of inhabiting two roles simultaneously. Coaches look at what a team needs and presidents balance that with what a team can, or should, get. As president of basketball operations and head coach, Van Gundy shuffled and upgraded where he could, sacrificing, in some cases, the short-term for the long. Leveraging the future for a star like Blake Griffin backfired, but it was the most aspirational move the franchise had in years. What felt like the forward impulsion the team needed to get out of a decade long rebuild turned into a further hobbling by salary.

Griffin’s swapping conferences and Van Gundy’s eventual departure from Detroit feel like decades ago instead of 16 months. The pace of the league, along with the rest of the world, is accelerating. Team overhauls, playing style and player development are happening faster, the pressure on players to transcend any one position feels like a new kind of insurance, or future-proofing when looking ahead at the league’s next evolutions.

Did Van Gundy have to deal with this?

“I wouldn’t say that it was a matter of actually ‘future-proofing,’” Van Gundy says. “I think two things. I think the main thing you’re doing is you’re taking the team you have and you’re trying to figure out the best way to play that gives them their best chance to be successful and win games. But I do think also, you have to look around and see, always sort of see, where the game is headed. And be prepared to be able to be successful in that realm and so you’ve got to be able to, you know.”

When he begins to get into specifics, there is the sense that he’s seeing these things from the sidelines, his voice taking on the lilt and rise of a coach calling out instructions. “Adjust your defensive schemes as teams went smaller and shot more threes, played smaller guys, things like that, your defensive schemes, your system, that has to change,” he says. “You certainly don’t want to be behind the curve, you’d love to be ahead of it, but you certainly don’t want to be behind it and have things happening on the floor that you’re not prepared for.”

It’s the last sentence of his answer, as straightforward as it sounds, that reveals what unsettles a coach — to be without a plan on the floor, to watch the game unfold as if you were a spectator, could be the first step toward losing a team, a job, a career. Your brain lives in basketball instead of your body.

“Coaching is,” Van Gundy sighs, “you’re going at it long days all the time. Even in the offseason your mind never turns off. You’re thinking about it all the time.”

When it comes time for a coach to transplant their brain back inside their own head, especially a brain like Van Gundy’s that has witnessed coaching firsthand since he was a kid (his father coached in high schools and colleges across the U.S., family in tow), there’s bound to be an adjustment. In an interview Van Gundy did the summer after the Pistons let him go, he admitted to feeling “really lost right now,” that he had planned to coach the next season and was unsure on what to do next. So much of the business of basketball is done behind closed doors with authorized leaks to insiders, the truth coming out a little at a time in interviews the years after, if at all. Coaches are changing, many are vocal on political and social issues, but it is a job that requires a certain remove. To hear Van Gundy admit to feeling untethered in losing what so much of his identity had become tied up in was relatable, if a little heartbreaking.

Asked if he’s let himself slow down since then, he’s loose: “Oh, there’s no question.”

“I think about the game a lot, in broadcasting, I certainly watch a lot of games, but it’s a whole different level of … you know, I’m trying to look for a better word than ‘pressure,’ because I didn’t really ever feel pressure as a coach,” Van Gundy notes. “I guess there’s not the sense of urgency, would be the word that I would use. Where you’ve got the next game to get ready for and everything else. And so I’ve had a lot more time to spend with my wife, we’ve been able to do a lot more things — well, until the pandemic. And then you can’t do anything.”

Van Gundy says he’s been reading and spending more time with family. At the same time, there’s also the small point of his starting an entirely new career.

When his ESPN contract was up, his criteria for a new job was a more well-defined role, less hopping around and filling in, and the opportunity to call games. TNT’s analysis team consists mainly of former players, so when they approached Van Gundy, he admitted feeling surprised. Since he started with the network in earnest this season, it’s been a role he’s approached with modesty.

“I’ve had a lot of experience coaching, thought I was pretty good at it, the broadcasting’s a whole new thing,” Van Gundy says. “I’m trying to learn something new. I’m a beginner, and I need a lot of help. And that challenge has been good for me too. Trying to gain confidence in an entirely new endeavor.”

That help has come from veterans like Ian Eagle, who Van Gundy says he is “really, really lucky” to be paired with for eight games in the Orlando bubble and who has “mentored” him and offered feedback. It’s a trait he realizes is not typical. “A lot of times somebody might be good at their job but they just do their job and expect you to do yours.”

Van Gundy’s excitement is apparent in his on-air commentary. He is joyful, sharp, proximally enlivened by being back alongside a sport he’s spent most of his life dissecting. His voice adds an additional element to games where he deviates from the traditional birds-eye approach, grappling in real-time with the urge to get in close that makes for an animated, two-fold experience: watching the game and watching Stan Van Gundy watch the game. When asked to stylistically compare himself to his brother, who has been a color commentator with ESPN since 2007, he balks almost instantly.

“This will be his 13th, 14th straight year of doing the NBA Finals,” Jeff’s older brother says. “He’s been at this a long time, after his coaching career, he’s one of the best in the business, if not the best. So there’s no comparison.”

Aside from being a job that allows him, as he says, to have his “mind back in the game,” broadcasting gives Van Gundy the outlet to showcase what made him such an impassioned coach: communication. One of the things that made him so fascinating to watch was his press for getting his message out, loud and clear, even when he’d lost the voice to do it. He could be a desperate communicator only in the sense that he needed you to hear what he was saying, not that he was in any way unclear of what he wanted to say. With broadcasting, he gains a new platform from which to build the widest bridge he’s had yet for translating what happens on court via the fierce interpreter of his brain.

That makes the fact that it’s so surprising he’s only recently joined Twitter, the platform that’s become the largest conduit for communication — fraught, frantic, sincere, absolute trash, heartbreaking, a quagmire of everything all the time. There was no a-ha moment when it came to getting an account now. Van Gundy has always been political, but he had more time on his hands, was looking for a way to tap into a larger, local community, and his wife suggested he do it.

“My wife and I have always been pretty involved politically,” Van Gundy says. “[But] I think when you’re not coaching you have more time to really follow what’s going and to get involved in campaigns and things like that. And then the pandemic obviously brought that to a new level, I had a lot more time. So we were actually on a call with a candidate for State Attorney, down here in Orlando, Monique Worrell, and we were on with her and her advisors and some of her key supporters. And they were talking, you know, strategy for the campaign and several of them were talking about things on social media, and I just asked my wife, ‘Do you think I should get on social media to be able to promote some of these candidates and issues?’ And she thought that I should, and that was really the impetus behind it. So I dunno, I’ve been on a couple of weeks.”

In those couple weeks he’s amassed more than 65,000 followers, a slight uptick from “a few more people” that he said he was hoping to reach by creating an account. And even if for him there was no strategic motivation behind his timing, that like much of his career he arrived at this point by taking his own route, he acknowledges that we’re in a critical time.

“I think 2020 — I think every year is really important — but I think where we are, it’s really an important time,” Van Gundy notes. “This election’s important. But also I think because of the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd and then the resulting protests, and COVID and everything else, what’s going on in the world, I think everybody’s engaging a little bit more, and wanting to learn about these issues, talk about these issues. So, I think it’s a good time to be engaged right now. And hopefully if I can get just a couple of people who will maybe tune into a campaign or listen to a candidate or think about an issue that they haven’t before, then it’s worth my time.”

Earnest without pandering, sharp, and smarm-free, scrolling through his timeline is a balm. When I tell him a friend of mine said his feed has been giving her life, he laughs. You can spend five minutes in Van Gundy’s feed — mass incarceration, education reform, equal representation in politics, racial injustice, voter registration, local community engagement, student loan relief, pandemic response — and feel better informed and more balanced from it than the news alerts Apple pushes into the palm of your hand.

This full roster of causes and issues deserving of attention can quickly turn overwhelming, but in Van Gundy’s thumbs hands, there’s a thoughtful pacing that avoids the dreaded doom scroll and its resulting fatigue. Unlike vocal coaches we know to be political via soundbite, like Gregg Popovich or Steve Kerr, Van Gundy’s dissemination of issues on his radar isn’t solely reactionary or radicalized, just a steady, well-informed stream. There’s relief, especially on Twitter, of not having to get worked up anew with every post. Even the frequency that Van Gundy shares to the platform isn’t overwhelming to keep up with. If anything he’s a lighthouse, a steady pulse in the storm of information and vitriol.

“I think being around athletes in coaching has solidified views I already had, and really solidified views in terms of racial justice. It’s been more of an evolution than a one moment thing,” Van Gundy says when asked if there was a moment that shifted his perspective and subsequent politics.

But there was a jolt, “It was the election of 2016,” he recalls, “I would say to [my wife and I], both of us, our major issue is equality. Gender equality. LGBTQ equality. Racial equality. And when we elected President Trump and some of the other people that we elected in 2016, it was a wake-up, if not a wake-up because I already knew, certainly a heightened sense of alert that this can’t be going on.”

To watch Van Gundy coach is to have seen galvanizing bursts of fury in action. It’s this anger of forward impulsion, and what’s spilling out now from pent up pain and frustration in the form of civil unrest in the streets, that I reference when I ask if he thinks people could stand to be angrier given everything that’s on the line. But with this he’s more measured.

“Anger, like you say, sometimes it can be good,” Van Gundy says. “I think hopefully it will lead to a greater commitment to changing things. I think we’ve seen that with some of the protests. I think the question is how sustainable all this will be? Are people willing to do the not so noticeable work that it takes? To get out and vote, to contribute to campaigns, to promote candidates, to learn the candidates, to learn the issues. We need a heightened level of engagement from a lot people.”

It was this kind of actionable work Van Gundy was doing with his family “pretty much every day this year, in 2020, knowing what we’re leading into.” Whether looking for races he views as competitive that could use time and money, or getting behind issues he finds important, it was committing, and re-committing, to an engaged civic role he saw as most imperative, and what he cautions is going to take the most sustained energy once the anger burns out.

“I think it’s commitment more than anger,” Van Gundy says, “and a lot of perseverance. Because these things should be, but they’re not going to be, changed overnight. And it’s not going be just even a straight line upward of things being solved. You’ll get some wins, you’ll get some losses, just like you do in a basketball season and you’ve got to keep moving forward.

The advice to dig in might seem disingenuous if it was coming from someone who had not made a career from their natural inclination toward it. It is difficult, and potentially dangerous, to be stubborn in the real world depending where you are and what you look like. But Van Gundy’s approach, as always, is to get there through sustainable pace and push.

“We’ve seen that lesson from some of the great leaders — John Lewis who just passed away,” Van Gundy says. “If you look at all he had to go through in the Civil Rights movement and even since then, it’s been a lot of times two steps forward and a step back, and then two more steps forward, maybe two steps back, and you just keep going. That’s what it’s going to take. That’s what I hope people will have, the resolve to just continue the fight until we have a much more equal society than what we have right now.”

What is comforting about Van Gundy’s reemergence into the frame now is that it feels as much like a fresh voice to rally around as it does familiar. He was new to the platform, gamely holding up a piece of lined paper with his name as proof, but there was no need to catch him up because he’d been on his way here all along. Perseverance, whether in the NBA or the course of a coach’s career, is rarely the thing that gets written about or lauded. We want the big, instant, resounding force, the splash and flash.

Van Gundy has stayed evergreen because he’s never been elegiac about his career, the choices he made or where he ended up because of them. And he’s never been prepared to mourn any of it because it wasn’t over, he was still moving forward. The fluke of his arrival when we collectively need his kind of sustained, rational, won’t-back-down-able energy most could be serendipitous, or it could just be the next, self-possessed step in a career of showing up.

Since his latest release, Action Bronson has undergone many lifestyle changes. Not only did the rapper impressively shed 80 pounds over the course of a few months, but he also welcomed a newborn baby. With all the new changes, the rapper is putting energy into new music. On Thursday, Bronson returned with “Latin Grammys,” his first new song of 2020.

Directed by Video Connection, Bronson’s “Latin Grammys” video is filmed to emulate a 1995 World’s Strongest Man competition. Bronson effortlessly lifts up a car with two passengers, bench-presses giant logs, pulls a firetruck, and is eventually crowned the World’s Strongest Man.

About the single, Bronson says the song is a coming-of-age anthem: “It’s all about metamorphosing, this song is about coming of age. I love a good latin-jazz, upbeat vibe. It’s got that funk, you know? You can do all kinds of dances to this song. You know a song is good when you can do all different types of dances to it, and you’re still on rhythm.”

Bronson has yet to reveal whether or not the single is arriving on a larger project. Seeing as the rapper has been adding yearly projects to his catalog since 2017, it’s likely Bronson has something larger in store.

Watch Bronson’s “Latin Grammys” video above.

As more and more of entertainment media moved online over the past few years, some of that media’s more prominent members have increasingly run afoul of the subjects they cover thanks to social media and the like blurring the lines that once separated them. Besides foregoing some of the tenets of journalistic objectivity, many of these new media members have risen to prominence because of their relationships to the public figures they “cover.”

One example is DJ Akademiks, who is neither a DJ nor a journalist, but is one of the most popular figures for hip-hop news — for better or worse — thanks to his tendency to post inside scoops on the doings of controversial figures like his friend Tekashi 69 on Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch. However, that close connection also tends to bring him into conflict with … well, just about everyone in hip-hop. So far, he’s been threatened by members of Migos and Vic Mensa, and ruthlessly roasted by Erykah Badu in an elaborate flame that built up for most of an entire episode of Complex’s Everyday Struggle, on which Akademiks is a co-host.

Add to that list Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill, who has carried a longstanding feud with Tekashi 69 that has spilled over to include adjacent figures like Nicki Minaj and Akademiks. When Meek demanded for Akademiks to stop posting about him on Instagram, Akademiks instead needled him by posting him yet again with a snide reply.

Akademiks also referred to Meek as a “hypocrite” for his anti-snitch crusade against Tekashi, saying, “Just remember that Meek Mill is nothing but a hypocrite. I don’t know if you have issues with 6ix9ine, you clearly don’t wanna address it. You got issues with Nicki’s man, you don’t wanna address him. You got issues with Nicki, you don’t wanna address that. Cool, I get it. Ak is supposed to be the dude who you can get everything off on. I’m just trying to tell you that I’m just not into being bullied.”

However, for all that tough talk, Akademiks seems to genuinely be worried about retaliation from Meek, as he revealed during a recent livestream with Tekashi that he heard Meek Mill had put a “green light” on him — essentially ordering associates in the street to attack Akademiks on sight — and he immediately contacted the authorities.

Given Tekashi’s own propensity for inciting animosity and then turning tail to avoid consequences, it seems Akademiks may be letting the celebrity of his position go to his head. Meanwhile, Meek Mill seems disinterested in addressing Akademiks any further; he hasn’t commented about the video as yet, instead focusing his attention on recently restarted NBA season.

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

In an appearance on the beloved Sixers podcast Rights to Ricky Sanchez, cohosts Spike Eskin and Michael Levin got Joel Embiid to open up about his teammate Ben Simmons and the pair’s unconventional fit on and off the court. There has been some buzz in recent days about Simmons’ newfound willingness to take threes when he’s open, and Embiid praised Simmons’ willingness to get out of his comfort zone and do something that will heighten the ceiling of this Sixers squad.

A h/t to Liberty Ballers for the quote:

“I’m so happy that he finally now understands [how to improve spacing] and I think that’s what it takes for us to win a championship,” Embiid said. “And when you think about it, we’ve only played, this is what, our third year together playing? I mean, a lot of people always, you know, they expect [more]. Like, we’ve only played for three years. The potential that we have. I love him, and I wanna be with him for the rest of my career, because I think he still has a lot of potential and me too. Like, we can get so much better than we are right now, and I don’t see the point of ever playing with somebody else. So, that’s someone that I would love to be playing with for the rest of my career.”

Simmons took two triples in the Sixers’ first scrimmage but has not taken any in the two games since. Over the course of his career, Simmons has attempted 23 threes total. It makes the fit difficult with Embiid, a bruising post play-maker who does the most damage inside.

Embiid touched on much more in a wide-ranging interview with the two biggest Sixers fans on the internet, including his memories of finally getting onto the court; Embiid’s connection with Sixers fans; and a game of “Which is weirder?” going through the entire history of the Process Sixers that features a lot of Embiid abstaining from answering questions.

In his first press conference as the new head coach of the Knicks, Tom Thibodeau predictably had a lot of good things to say about the franchise hiring him for his third opportunity as head coach in the NBA. Still, it was surprising to see Thibodeau proclaim that the Big Apple is “synonymous with winning and championships.” The Knicks have not won an NBA title since 1973, when current color analyst Clyde Frazier was on the court leading the team, and of the major sports teams that have “New York” in their names, the last one to win a title was the New York Giants in 2012.

New York did not hire Thibodeau to win a championship in the near-term. They are a rebuilding team who will likely hope Thibodeau can do exactly what he’s done during stops in Chicago and Minnesota: Get his players to compete hard and develop on-court chemistry. Thibodeau was the front-runner in the search all along, according to reports, and though names like Jason Kidd and Spurs assistant Will Hardy came up during the interview process, Thibodeau was indeed the man to land one of the highest-profile jobs in the NBA.

New lead executive Leon Rose doesn’t want any assumptions to be made about the legitimacy of the search, however, especially because Thibodeau is represented by CAA, the agency where Rose used to run the arm that managed NBA coaches.

From Thibodeau’s perspective, it was also his relationships with Rose and fellow former CAA coach rep William “Worldwide Wes” Wesley that stood out, in addition to the young roster and ample cap space. Young players like Mitchell Robinson, Julius Randle and R.J. Barrett do seem to fit the hard-nosed style Thibodeau prefers.

The last bit of news from Thibodeau’s introductory press conference was reported just before Thibodeau logged onto his Zoom call with the media, but has not been confirmed by the team.

According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, Thibodeau’s hiring will coincide with the return of Mike Woodson, who coached the Knicks from 2011-14 and interviewed for the top gig this summer. Woodson has not coached in the NBA since 2018.

The Thibodeau era in New York is already off to an interesting start.

It’s an exciting time for Hannibal fans. With the show now streaming on Netflix, and during a time when audiences are still predominantly stuck at home, there’s a palpable sense of renewed interest in the psycho-thriller food-porn series that was abruptly axed by NBC back in 2015 after its third season.

While fielding questions from Collider on what it would take to make a fourth season happen, Hannibal creator and showrunner Bryan Fuller spoke candidly about his efforts to jump start the show again. While revealing that the rights to the Hannibal characters is somewhat of an issue, the biggest struggle has been getting another network to bite on reviving the show. According to fuller, the cast (including stars Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy) is ready to go, so it’s just a matter of scoring that green light. However, Fuller seems particularly optimistic now that the series is streaming on Netflix, which he hopes sparks enough interest to bring the show back:

I’ve knocked on every door and rang every bell. Martha [De Laurentis] and I, every couple of years, pick up our bags and go door to door and see if anybody’s interested in revisiting. The biggest hurdle is that we were somebody else’s show. What I love about Netflix platforming the show now is there’s an opportunity for it to be seen as a Netflix show and maybe that will reconfigure their appetite, so to speak. But nobody has said anything to me, and believe me, like the nickel hooker on the red light district I am hanging out the window, waving my legs. They know I’m ready.

Of course, Hannibal fans should be aware that Fuller has been talking about his season four hopes for several years. The showrunner also has a reputation for signing onto new series only to abandon them over “creative differences.” He made an ugly exit from American Gods, and he walked away from Star Trek: Discovery before production on the first season even began. But if Hannibal is proving to be an audience draw on Netflix, which is known for giving its creators plenty of creative space, that could be just the right recipe for the long-awaited revival.

(Via Collider)

A dozen foreign language films have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, including Babel and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but only one has won: Parasite, earlier this year (even if it feels like nine years ago). It was the second consecutive year that a non-English-language movie was nominated for the Academy’s biggest prize after Roma, and according to Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos, Parasite wouldn’t have won without Alfonso Cuarón’s black-and-white stunner paving the way.

“I think Roma had a lot to do with that for Parasite this year. I think the idea that a foreign-language film had 10 Oscar nominations and won three, and the crossover awards categories for foreign-language film, I think really opened the door for Parasite to be as successful as it was,” Sarandos told Variety. He also believes that Netflix’s Okja, from Parasite director-writer Bong Joon-ho, made people “more receptive” to Korean films:

In this year’s second quarter, the share of non-English content viewing rose 33% in the U.S. from the previous year, per Netflix, a metric that controls for factors such as subscriber growth and higher viewing during the pandemic.

Sarandos is making a big claim here, that Netflix played a key role in raising the profile of foreign-language films (looking forward to Criterion’s response!). But I think we can all agree on one thing: Polish erotic thriller 365 Days is going to win Best Picture next year.

(Via Variety)