Category: News

The death of John Lewis and C.T. Vivian on Friday, both legendary civil rights leaders in the United States, drew a variety of tributes to their contributions to justice and equality. Not all of those tributes were well received, mind you, but many in the NBA community paid their respects to Lewis in particular, starting with LeBron James.

James, preparing for the NBA’s postseason in the bubble, tweeted both about justice for Breonna Taylor and paid respects to Lewis, who died at age 80 of pancreatic cancer.

Oklahoma City Thunder guard Chris Paul was particularly eloquent in his words on the subject of Lewis and Vivian’s passing, speaking of the impact the men had on equality in America and the continued struggle for equity today.

via The Oklahoman:

“Today is a sad day in that we lost two of the most powerful activists that we’ve ever had in C.T. Vivian and John Lewis,” Paul said. “The impact that they had on America I think is unbelievable. And for me as a Black man, I think it’s more important for me to do my job better as a parent. I think a lot of times people look at us athletes as heroes, what we can do as far as dunking a basketball or throwing a touchdown, but the things that they did as human beings … John Lewis was one of the original 13 freedom riders, was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington, did the walk from Selma to Montgomery, and all of these things I don’t think we do enough learning and teaching about.

“I know that’s a lot, but that’s my truth. I think that’s more important than any of the stuff that’s going on down here.”

Paul tweeted a tribute as well.

Paul is the latest NBA player to minimize the league’s bubble and a return to play amid coronavirus in favor of addressing racial equality and injustice, and a number of other people throughout the league also honored Lewis in the wake of his death. Bill Russell, a civil rights icon in his own right, tweeted his thoughts as well.

They were certainly not alone in honoring the legacy of Lewis on Saturday, something that will continue for many as various members of the league have given significant attention to the struggle for civil rights in recent months.

Baseball is nearly back, or at least it will be next week when Major League Baseball’s abridged 60-game season gets underway in earnest. We still don’t know where the Blue Jays will play their home games, as Toronto is now out of the question. But we do know that at least some of the league’s players will be wearing masks when they take the field.

New York Yankees outfielder Clint Frazier had been vocal about mask wearing all summer, even when on the field. And he had been pretty eloquent as to why he would wear it even with Yankees and other MLB players routinely getting tested for COVID-19.

But on Saturday, the visuals were pretty stunning when he not only wore several kinds of masks, but smashed a home run into the second deck of Citi Field in an exhibition game against the Mets.

Frazier isn’t the only masked slugger who went yard on Saturday night. His former teammate and current Philadelphia Phillies infielder Didi Gregorious launched one to right field against Max Scherzer while covering his face.

Wearing a mask is both for an individual’s safety and the safety of others, which is something that needs to be stressed as much as possible, especially following CDC director Robert Redfield saying the United States can get a handle on things if people masked up for 4-8 weeks. Regardless, it is a nice moment to see two players do the coolest thing you can in baseball while being responsible for the health and safety of those around them.

The United States lost a hero on Friday when John Lewis, US House of Representatives member from Georgia, died. His office announced in December that the Representative had Stage IV pancreatic cancer, and despite a false report earlier in the month that he had died, it was confirmed Friday that the civil rights stalwart had died at age 80.

Lewis was an instrumental member of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and his beating at the hands of a state trooper in Selma in 1965 was one of the shocking images that helped push through support for the Civil Rights Act. He was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, and his long list of accomplishments has made him one of the most celebrated congressmen of the modern era.

His death, along with news of fellow civil rights leader C.T. Vivian’s passing on Friday as well, drew an outpouring of grief and tributes for Lewis and Vivian from across the political spectrum and the world at large. But one tribute was a complete disaster, and it came from Florida’s Marco Rubio. The state senator from Florida was one of two Republican lawmakers who tweeted a “tribute” to John Lewis that actually included an image of another Black lawmaker, former Maryland congressman Elijah Cummings, who died in 2019.

Those particularly of Rubio made the implication of Rubio’s apparent confusion very clear.

The tweet and the blatant error got a lot of reaction on Twitter.

The other lawmaker who made the same gaffe, Dan Sullivan, was also criticized for posting a picture of Cummings. But Rubio certainly took the brunt of the criticism, especially because the photo he shared was of him standing next to Cummings. If there is a defense of Rubio to be had, apparently the photographer who took the image also got the lawmaker’s name wrong.

Still, it was an embarrassing tribute that even Rubio’s “apology” did little to correct.

After successfully fending off Yoel Romero in his first UFC middleweight title defense, the unbeaten Israel Adesanya (19-0) has agreed to fight the returning Paulo Costa on September 19, per ESPN.

Costa (13-0) suffered a torn left biceps in a separate decision win over Romero, but the top contender for the belt isn’t waiting around for a tuneup bout before taking on the champ in a fight scheduled for UFC 253. Costa’s decision victory ended a stretch of five-consecutive knockout victories for the heavy-handed Brazilian.

Adesanya’s move to fight Costa presents one of the toughest fights to date. While he’s not exactly unchallenged, having wrapped up an impressive 2019 that saw him knock off Anderson Silva, Kelvin Gastellum and Robert Whittaker, the champ’s only real test against someone with the sheer strength of Costa is against Romero.

What the timing of this fight means for Khabib Nurmagomedov’s planned showdown with Justin Gaethje is unknown at this time. But ESPN’s Ariel Helwani reports the plan is to push that fight to later in the fall.

UFC 253 does not have an announced location yet, but Helwani reports is will “likely” take place in either Las Vegas or Fight Island in Abu Dhabi as the coronavirus pandemic continues on. This undisputed title fight will be just the second to take place between two unbeaten men.

The Renegade is a dance that took over Tik Tok and also NBA All-Star Weekend in the before times. And now it’s in Fortnite, perhaps marking a notable turning point in the battle royale title’s use of dances in the process.

On Friday, Fortnite‘s officially Twitter account announced that the Renegade dance would be added to the game as a purchasable emote. Importantly, Fortnite credited the dance’s creator, Jalaiah Harmon, on Twitter and showed a Fortnite character doing the dance in the tweet promoting the addition.

This dance getting added to Fortnite is much different than some of the other ones that have made it into the game. Crediting Harmon, first and foremost, is a significant step, as other dances invented by others haven’t initially been credited to their creators in the past. With the Renegade itself, that’s been a problem as well. The dance’s ubiquity on social media initially saw other more popular social media stars credited for and asked to perform it, including at NBA All-Star Weekend in Chicago before a social media outcry saw Harmon’s performance of the dance at the All-Star Game itself.

Copyrighted material in video games is still a field that’s getting sorted out in real time. In March, a judge dismissed a lawsuit involving tattoos in games like NBA 2K, specifically from the tattoo artist who designed works on players like LeBron James. Earlier lawsuits about dances in Fortnite saw Epic claim that you can’t own a dance. And despite the apparent legal agreement from the U.S. copyright office when it comes to dances like The Carlton, Fortnite apparently avoided any issues here and gave Hanson credit where it was most certainly due.

Travel plans have been scuttled for many by COVID-19, as the American passport has become as useful in leaving the country as a receipt from the airport food court. There’s still some adventure to be had staying away from large groups of people in hiking, heading to the beach and exploring forgotten places nearby, but what America really needs in these trying times is a kayak-fueled million-dollar Michigan treasure hunt.

Which perhaps is why a retiring jeweler has apparently dug holes all over America’s Great Lakes Glove to bury treasure for a statewide gold and gem hunt. According to Fox 2 Detroit, a retiring jeweler named Johnny Perri decided to close up J&M Jewelers for good in Michigan’s Macomb County. But instead of liquidating his stock, he and his wife Amy hid it all over the greater Detroit and Upper Peninsula area and soon he intends to hand out clues about where everything might be found.

“I said Amy, we can take everything out and retire or we can bury it across the state of Michigan,” said according to Fox 2. Though he hasn’t revealed where all the treasure is, he said the project started out of boredom and dropped some hints about where to look and what tools they’ll need to hunt. Namely, a kayak.

“We went through waterfalls, streams, we kayaked everywhere,” he said.

“As soon as I release the clues the race is on,” he said.

It won’t be a free-for-all, though. The retiree is selling tickets for $49 for the first hunt, the prizes of which he estimated are worth about $4,000. And there’s a GPS in the prize itself — two 100-ounce bars of pure .999 silver hidden somewhere in Oakland County — so he’ll know if it gets moved.

“You follow the riddle, you got a little wit, a little adventure in you, you’ll find it quick,” Perri said. “I don’t expect it to go more than a week.”

It’s certainly a fun distraction if you live in the Michigan area, and the first hunt is set to kick off on August 1. Just be mindful about getting too close to others as you try to strike it rich in Michigan.

[via Fox 2 Detroit]

The world of English soccer got a huge bit of news on Friday afternoon. Leeds United, once regarded as one of the top clubs in all of European football, completed a 16-year journey back to the Premier League on Friday afternoon. Thanks to West Brom failing to get a result against Huddersfield Town, Leeds secured a top-2 finish in the EFL Championship, which means they earned automatic promotion to the English top flight.

Leeds is quite the story — the gist of it is that due to financial issues that led to an all-out implosion, they fell all the way down to the English third division, League One, and have spent 16 years trying to get back to the Prem. The club opted to hire Marcelo Bielsa, viewed as one of the most innovative and influential minds in all of football, as manager in 2018, and after coming excruciatingly close in 2018-19, managed to get over the hump this year.

The club also has some of the most proud and passionate supporters in the world, so the reaction to Leeds’ promotion was a sight to behold. Among these supporters is former Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who recorded a video for BBC in which he thanked Bielsa — who Coster-Waldau says became “immortal” with the accomplishment — and celebrated the club’s promotion with a quick poem.

Coster-Waldau also retweeted a video from an appearance he did on Jimmy Kimmel Live! ahead of the Game of Thrones finale in which he said the chosen one is not Jon Snow, but rather, “a guy called Bielsa.”

We still need to figure out who will join Leeds in the top flight, which should happen sometime soon. Regardless, Friday was a day Leeds supporters have been counting down the days until, and while we do not know when next season will begin or whether fans will be allowed into stadiums or not, it is probably safe to assume that Coster-Waldau will make his way to the club’s revered ground, Elland Road, for a Premier League match as soon as he can get in.

This November will mark two years since JID released his sophomore album, DiCaprio 2. The album served as the sequel to his 2015 EP and arrived just a year and some change after his debut album The Never Story. Despite going the entirety of 2019 without a solo single or project, JID was anything but quiet that year as he made plenty of noise with his guest appearances on Dreamville’s Revenge Of The Dreamers III. Continuing work on his upcoming album, JID hopped on Instagram Live to give fans a preview of what’s to come.

Enjoying himself in what looks like his home studio, JID didn’t hold back with the previews. Playing a number of songs, one of the tracks featured his quickfire flow over bouncy production as he boastfully flaunted his track record with music saying, “When I miss, it’s a hit out the park.”

Another track found him in a more reflective state putting aside the upbeat production for a more mellow beat. Lastly, a third track he previewed was very dark in its nature as JID detailed some of the hardships of his youth, using a very toned-down voice effect on his voice as he rapped. The track previews got the attention of Dreamville co-founder, Ibrahim “Ib” Hamad, who tweeted, “My n**** @JIDsv just built different with that pen.”

JID previously revealed the struggles of attempting to release a project in the middle of quarantine, citing the inability to “see u guys and celebrate” as a reason why he’s been holding off on any releases. While a release for any of his own work remains unknown, fans can hear him in Amine’s upcoming Limbo.

NBA players have to come up with ways to kill time while they’re in the league’s Disney bubble. While the league has put forth a number of things for players to do in the bubble, there’s only so much ping pong a person can play in a day and so many times you can go fishing before things start to get a bit repetitive.

Portland Trail Blazers star Damian Lillard has decided to use this time to explore his off-court passion, music. Lillard is, of course, revered in the worlds of basketball and music for his proficiency as a rapper, as he’s released three albums and a number of singles under the moniker Dame D.O.L.L.A. The Associated Press (via ESPN) brings word that Lillard will set up a recording studio in his suite, although it’s hardly a gigantic, professional-grade operation.

Lillard’s room is equipped with a microphone perched on a stand, headphones, laptop with recording software and audio interface to control everything. He said the thick carpet in his room should help the sound quality.

He said the setup is “simple,” but it’s good enough for him to create music in a room where he can isolate himself.

As Lillard said, his room — which, thanks to C.J. McCollum, we know is a presidential suite — is set up in such a way that he does not believe anyone will hear him as he records. It’s unclear exactly what Lillard is going to work on, but his third album, Big D.O.L.L.A., came out last August, and he released a track titled “Home Team” on July 16.

Twenty-nine of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball are based in the United States, which is dealing with the world’s worst outbreak during the COVID-19 pandemic. This presents some problems when dealing with the 30th team, the Toronto Blue Jays, which are located in Canada and are in a province (Ontario) that has had a little more than 39,000 identified cases. For reference, nearly 76,000 cases were identified in the U.S. on Friday alone.

As such, our neighbors to the north made the decision that the Blue Jays cannot play their home games in their home city this season. The news was first reported by the Associated Press, and soon after, Canadian Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino issued a statement, citing the fact that teams would come and go from the United States.

Soon after, the Toronto Star reported that the franchise is headed just over the border for this season, indicating that Buffalo, N.Y. will serve as the Jays’ home this season. Buffalo is the home of the team’s triple-A affiliate, and while the Star notes the facility isn’t perfect, it is able to host high-level baseball.

The Star reported that the other proposed option was heading to the club’s spring training home of Dunedin, Fla., but of course, there is an inherent risk in heading to a place that has been a COVID-19 hotspot. The Blue Jays’ season begins on July 24, when they head to Tampa Bay to take on the Rays, and their first home tilt is on July 31 against the Philadelphia Phillies.