Category: News

The fallout from the NBA’s four-and-a-half month hiatus will have all sorts of long-term implications for the league and its future. For starters, it might permanently shift the regular-season calendar, as the 2020-2021 campaign will likely be delayed until late December or early January.

Crowning a champion this season will prove problematic to some, as the league is forced to adjust to unfamiliar conditions in the bubble location in Orlando where play will resume later this month. The lack of travel, lack of home-court advantage, empty arenas, the extended time off, and much more will all affect the on-court product in not-insignificant ways.

That is perhaps why the league has wisely decided, per Shams Charania of The Athletics, to base its regular season awards — MVP, DPOY, etc. — on performances up until the March 11 shutdown, excluding the eight-game slate that will kick off the restart in Orlando and determine the final playoff spots in each conference.

The NBA’s annual performance awards (MVP, Rookie of Year, Sixth Man, Defensive Player, Coach of Year, etc.) will be based upon regular season through March 11, when the season suspended, sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 17, 2020

Sources: NBA has informed teams: “The decision to exclude seeding games from awards voting ensures a fair process in which players and coaches from all 30 teams will have the same opportunity to be honored…” League will soon announce voting process and plan to announce winners. https://t.co/lTyO11LtFN

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 17, 2020

The only clear-cut winner here is James Harden, who was leading the league in scoring at 34.4 points per game prior to the hiatus. The MVP Award is likely a two-man race between Giannis Antetokounmpo and LeBron James, while Giannis also has a case for Defensive Player of the Year in a head-to-head matchup with LeBron’s teammate Anthony Davis.

Ja Morant had been the runaway favorite to win Rookie of the Year before Zion Williamson made his season debut for the Pelicans and threw some uncertainty in that debate with his stellar play. Sixth Man and Most Improved each have a trio of contenders, while Coach of the Year and Executive of the Year while likely come down to the teams that have accomplished the most despite their situations, i.e. Nick Nurse in the wake of Kawhi’s departure in Toronto and Sam Presti for his handling of the wild Russell Westbrook/Paul George/Chris Paul deal.

Two young men who weren’t supposed to live past age seven have just graduated from high school, and their story of perseverance and friendship is one that will fill even the hardest heart with hope.

When Odin Frost was born, his Apgar score was so low he had to be on a ventilator to breathe and he spent two weeks in the NICU. Born prematurely, his mother had preeclampsia that caused stress during his birth, he had bleeding on his brain, and a club foot as well. For his first few years of life, he was in and out of hospitals as doctors attempted to treat him. Odin’s parents were told that he was so behind in physical and mental development that he may never catch up. They prepared for him to need a wheelchair full-time as he got older.

At age 3, Odin was accepted into a school that works with special needs kids in his hometown of Tyler, Texas. There he would receive a diagnosis of severe autism with speech and mobility impairment—and also where he would meet his best friend, Jordan Granberry.

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Jordan, too, had a complicated birth. His brain was deprived of oxygen for too long, resulting in permanent brain damage. As a newborn, he was flown to the same hospital that would treat Odin a few weeks later. Like Odin, Jordan spent his first few years of life in and of hospitals, and also meeting with specialists. He was given a life expectancy of seven years, and his parents were told that if he lived longer he would live in a vegetative state. He didn’t receive a proper diagnosis until age 10.

Both boys had hypotonia, meaning muscle tone doesn’t grow the way it’s supposed to. Doctors didn’t expect either of them to ever walk or talk. That’s one reason why watching them walk across the stage and graduate from high school this week felt like a miracle to their parents.

Odin’s dad, Tim Frost, shared the best friends’ story with Upworthy, from their families’ special friendship, to what it meant to see them walk across the stage to receive their diplomas this week.

The boys met as preschoolers, Frost says, when “Jordan initiated Odin into his friend zone by biting his ear, and Odin retaliated by pinching his leg. After that they were inseparable in the classroom.”

“Even though both boys are mostly non-verbal, they have a connection to each other that you can just feel when they are in the same room,” says Frost. Pre-pandemic, Odin and Jordan would see each other every day since their classrooms were just across the hall from one another. Odin would often bring music to school to share with his friend. “Both boys enjoy long car rides listening to music as loud as possible,” says Frost, “and pinching each other, of course.”

“They also both like to pick at their mom and dad and most likely have a secret language that they laugh and joke about doing so in,” he adds.

Frost says that he and his wife have been close to Jordan’s parents for the past 15 years, as the couples raised their kids together. Jordan’s mom has been a hairdresser for 25 years and is “the only one quick and brave enough” to cut Odin’s hair.

Walking his son across the graduation stage was meaningful for Frost in more ways than one. He himself had dropped out of school and was homeless at age 13. He’d never gotten to make that walk to receive a diploma himself, and doing it with his son Odin felt “momentous.”

Jordan’s walk was momentous as well, since he had just started walking for the first time at the end of 2019.

“Yesterday they got to graduate together under a very weird a anxious time we are in,” says Frost, “and honestly, watching and being a part of it gave me so much hope. Seeing and knowing what these two have been through and then getting to experience a high school graduation for both boys with so little expectations put on their lives was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever got to witness.”

Frost hopes that sharing Odin and Jordan’s story helps the boys be seen. “And not seen in a way of wonder or for people to feel bad for them,” says Frost. “I want them to be seen for the miraculous humans that they are.”

“Just because someone can’t speak back to you doesn’t mean they can’t understand you,” Frost adds. “Just because something doesn’t look like ‘the normal’ doesn’t t make it any less than. Both of the boys have more personality, drive, wit, humor, and joy in them to fill anyone’s heart with joy. The determination to live and live fully that both of these amazing humans have should inspire and feed hope to anyone who may be looking for it.”

Frost says that the family has received a flood of positivity from his sharing the boys’ photo and a bit of their story on social media, which has been heartening.

“They are the joy bringers,” he says.

Indeed, they are. Congratulations on your graduation, Odin and Jordan. We wish you the best and brightest future possible.

Tory Lanez is reportedly now under investigation for assault with a deadly weapon after allegedly shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the foot Sunday night, according to TMZ. He was initially arrested for carrying a concealed weapon in a motor vehicle after police were called to a Hollywood Hills party following reports of gunshots near a parked SUV. After tracking down the SUV, it turned out that the occupants were Lanez and Meg, who were ordered out of the car in a dramatic scene involving multiple police cruisers and a helicopter.

Later, Megan revealed that an injury that was previously thought to be a cut from broken glass was actually a gunshot wound, and TMZ reported that witnesses said Tory shot Megan when she tried to exit the vehicle after an argument. Law enforcement now tells TMZ that detectives have opened an investigation into Tory’s actions and why Megan ended up with a pair of gunshot wounds to her foot. Sources connected to Tory say he will claim it was accidental should he be charged for anything, although the fact it’s an assault case rather than attempted murder suggests that detectives at least don’t believe it was intentional.

Megan broke her silence on the case on Twitter today, condemning the outbreak of jokes at her expense while she suffers through the real effects of the traumatizing incident.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Part of what makes Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted a fun watch is being able to see the chef look absolutely uncomfortable in every episode. If you only know Chef Ramsay for his love of profanity and his fierce temper, you’ll be happy to see how his travel show, now wrapping up its second season on National Geographic, manages to ground and humanize him in a way that feels relatable. It’s also often hilarious (there’s a nice jolt of schadenfreude that comes from watching the hyper-skilled chef flail).

While Chef Ramsay is certainly the king of the kitchen, when he’s scouring the waters of Tasmania on the hunt for giant spiny lobsters or harvesting mussels in South Africa or getting his hands dirty scavenging for ingredients in Indonesia, he’s a fish out of water. That’s a refreshing way to see one of the world’s most abrasive celebrity chefs. But location be damned he’s still Gordon Ramsay, so all of that trademark anger and wit is still intact — only instead of being directed at the locals, it’s reserved for criticizing and examining his own shortcomings.

For this week’s finale, we follow Chef Ramsay to the freezing shores of Norway right at the height of winter. If you’ve ever felt like the overly critical chef deserves a little of what he dishes out, you’ll love watching him dive for shellfish in an icy fjord or clumsily wrangling reindeer.

Hijinks aside, it’s the cuisine that’s really the highlight of this episode, as Ramsay learns how to utilize every part of a reindeer while making an epic Christmas feast. When we say “every part” we really mean it — from footwear to the unappetizingly named “blood pancakes” that Ramsay makes in the clip above, no part of the reindeer is wasted.

The finale of Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted airs Sunday on National Geographic at 10/9c.

Megan Thee Stallion, who was reportedly shot during an altercation with fellow rapper Tory Lanez after a Hollywood pool party over the weekend, is not here for the jokes at her expense that have arisen in the aftermath of the shooting.

It’s been a few days since it was reported that Tory Lanez was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon in a motor vehicle on Sunday, but in the days since, the story was revealed in such a piecemeal fashion that it was almost impossible for fans not to speculate. Megan wasn’t particularly fond of seeing her name become water cooler bait as she recovered from gunshot wounds to her foot.

“Black women are so unprotected & we hold so many things in to protect the feelings of others w/o considering our own,” she wrote on Twitter. “It might be funny to y’all on the internet and just another messy topic for you to talk about but this is my real life and I’m real life hurt and traumatized.”

While social media users are quick to speculate and weigh in with jokes, memes, gossip, and rumors in the wake of particularly salacious celebrity news, many often forget that the people at the center of such controversies are human beings themselves, with actual skin in the game. Their pain is often bait for our entertainment, but as Megan pointed out in her impassioned message, it shouldn’t be.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Secretary of Education is the member of the president’s cabinet who oversees the nation’s educational systems. Despite around 90% of U.S. kids attending public schools, the current Secretary, Betsy Devos, has exactly zero personal experience with public education. She’s not a teacher or school administrator, she’s never worked in a public school, she’s never attended a public school, and her own children have never attended a public school.

Her appointment was extraordinarily controversial at the time, and has remained so over the past three and a half years. To say she has a contentious relationship with teachers unions and leading education groups is an understatement. Now, as schools struggle with decisions over reopening in the fall, that divide has widened. with the PTA (Parent Teacher Association) saying the administration has “zero credibility in the minds of educators and parents when it comes to this major decision.”

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Devos has pushed a simplistic “We need schools to reopen fully” message, with no real plan for how to do so safely in the middle of a pandemic. In fact, she’s skirted questions about whether schools should follow the CDC guidelines for reopening. According to Politico, she also called one school district’s spring distance learning efforts a “disaster” in addition to blasting education leaders “who won’t accept risk and ‘gave up and didn’t try’ to launch summer instruction.”

A principal shared some thoughts with Devos in a video shared by Bored Teachers. The two-minute video synopsizes the heroic efforts that teachers took on when the pandemic hit and how she needs to “sit down somewhere” because she is oblivious to what really went on in the spring. It needed to be said.

Awesome Principal Defends Teachers in Response to Betsy DeVos

www.youtube.com

Schitt’s Creek has finished its run on television, so unless you’re waiting for the final season to hit Netflix, the Ontario town the Rose family calls home has run out of new episodes for you to enjoy. If you’re feeling really desperate, though, you could always make your own with the help of 1520 LEGO pieces.

LEGO’s Ideas community is full of innovative ways to make plastic bricks into convincing recreations of real world items and ideas. And some of the most interesting ideas are tributes to TV shows and movies that become impressive collectables in their own right. The Simpsons have had a number of show settings turned into sets, for example, and recently a Seinfeld set made its way into production in honor of the show’s 30th anniversary.

The latest entry in the genre is the Rosebud Motel from Schitt’s Creek, the Canadian television comedy that found a cult following in the United States and abroad and wrapped up its final season earlier in 2020. According to the LEGO Ideas site, more than 8,000 people want to see the company make a LEGO version of the iconic motel the family calls home.

The page cleverly includes a “review” of the motel from Emir Kaplan, a show-famous hotel blogger who gave the locale a visit and found a lot to love. For a little while, at least. The set includes the front desk of the motel as well as the other two main rooms that serve as settings for the show — the twin beds or Alexis and David’s room and the elder Rose’s room featuring Moira’s wigs on the wall.

Right now, the set includes the four members of the Rose family and Stevie, but according to the gang at LEGO Ideas, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities that other minifigures from the show get made. It’s not for sale unless you do your part, though, and support the idea enough that the company makes the set a reality. It’s a great idea, and it’s also a much safer way to visit the show’s set in this current day and age. So get on on it, and make this bay-bay a reality.

Major League Soccer has made it a point to expand in recent years. Expansion teams have popped up frequently, with eight new clubs joining the league since 2015 alone and two expansion sides — Inter Miami CF and Nashville SC — entering MLS for the 2020 campaign. There are plans to grow even more in the not-too-distant future, but some of those plans have hit a little bump in the road, meaning three of the four clubs set to join the league have to delay their arrivals.

The league put out a statement on Friday afternoon regarding its upcoming expansion sides. Austin FC, which has planned on entering the league in 2021, will stay on that timeline, while things have been pushed back for clubs in Charlotte, Sacramento, and St. Louis.

Charlotte, which was supposed to join Austin as an expansion side next year, will now join MLS in 2022. That year was supposed to see the debuts of clubs in Sacramento and St. Louis, but they, too, will be pushed back a year and will take to the pitch in 2023.

“We have always taken a thoughtful and strategic approach to our expansion planning and have delivered successful launches for every new club,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said in the statement. “It is important for each club to take the necessary time to launch their inaugural MLS seasons the way their fans and communities deserve. With the extra year to make up for what has been a challenging 2020, these teams will be well-positioned for their debuts and for long-term success.”

The statement cited the COVID-19 pandemic for the decision to push things back for Charlotte, Sacramento, and St. Louis. Once all four expansion sides enter MLS, the league will have 30 teams.

Teyana Taylor collaborator Mykki Blanco says she wasn’t paid for her contribution to the singer’s 2018 album, KTSE, in a statement on social media to which Taylor has replied: “Keep my pregnant ass out of it.”

Blanco appears on the KSTE standout “WTP,” adding lively ad-libs that highlighted the inspirations the song takes from drag/ballroom culture. On Thursday, Blanco posted to Instagram a screenshot of the song’s video from YouTube claiming that Universal Music Group still hasn’t paid her for her writing and production credits on “WTP” and Kanye West’s rap verse on “Hurry,” which she asserts she also wrote.

“Can you believe it’s been two years and Universal Music has still not paid me my feature fee for this song?” the caption reads. “Can you believe it took 1 year with the help of my lawyer to get credited on the song, because it did. I wrote on and co- produced this track as well as writing the verse that Kanye literally raps on ‘Hurry.’ Is that a big accomplishment to write for other artists NO, this isn’t about clout.” She ask fans to stop streaming “WTP” until she can be properly credited for the work.

Blanco also repeated the sentiment on Twitter, writing, “PLEASE DO NOT STREAM @TEYANATAYLOR ‘WTP,’ THE SONG IS A LIE. After 2 years and during a pandemic her team still act’s like paying me a simple feature fee is a joke. This song and these people do not support Black, Trans & Queer people. It’s a lie I’m done participating in.” This brought Blanco’s complaint to Taylor’s attention — apparently, for the first time, according to the singer herself.

Responding with a Notes screenshot, Taylor asserted the blame falls on West, who put Blanco on the song in the first place. Her statement advises that KTSE was “more of a Kanye album than it was a Teyana Taylor album” and provides context on Blanco’s inclusion, although it also unfortunately misgenders the trans performer, who prefers “they/them” and “she/her” pronouns.

The situation quickly devolved into a back-and-forth between Taylor, Blanco, and their respective supporters/detractors as the two stars battled over some of the perceived disrespectful language in each’s statements and Taylor’s insistence that Blanco’s dispute should be with GOOD Music, Kanye West, and Universal, not her, despite her top billing on the album, as she has since worked to resolve the issue behind-the-scenes.

It’s clear that emotions have run high as a result of the missing money and the power dynamics involved in members of marginalized communities dealing with the muddled politics of the entertainment industry. Hopefully, the situation gets resolved and the two are both able to put the drama behind them.

You know comedian, writer, and actor Esther Povitsky as the creator of Alone Together and from her work on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Dollface but in her new Comedy Central special (which debuts tonight at 11PM ET), Hot For My Name, you get a little more insight into her brand of often self-deprecating humor. This is due, in part, to her regular irregular interactions with her parents, who greatly factor into a special that combines stand-up, the aforementioned parent segments, and a bit of song and dance.

Esther was nice enough to take the time to participate in our Uproxx 20 series, weighing in on her perfect day (a more poignant question nowadays), some pretty valuable advice about preparedness, and a low key brilliant answer to the greatest question of them all: what do you feed Nic Cage besides scenery?
1. You walk into a bar. What do you order from the bartender?

Sparkling water.

2. Who’s your favorite person to follow on Twitter and/or Instagram?

Ron Finley.

3. What’s currently waiting for you on your DVR or in your streaming queue?

A Brittany Murphy documentary.

4. It’s your last meal — what are you going out with?

Fries and a milkshake.

5. What websites do you visit on a regular basis?

My Shopify store for Sleepover by Esther. I check it obsessively. [Ed. Note: The store is listed as coming soon.]

6. What’s the most frequently played song on your mobile device?

“Rainbow” by Kacey Musgraves.

7. If you could go back and give your 18-year-old self one piece of advice what would it be?

“You’re going to shit your pants at Cold Stone, so bring extra underwear.”

8. What’s the last thing you Googled?

Best mascara.

9. Dogs or cats?

Dogs.

10. Best concert of your life was…?

Britney Spears “Dream Within A Dream” tour.

11. What book are you most likely to give as a gift?

“I’ll Be Gone In The Dark” by Michelle McNamara.

12. What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Give me credit for something nice I did.

13. South Park or Family Guy?

Family Guy.

14. You have an entire day to do whatever you want. What would you do?

Drink coffee, take a walk, tie-dye, Facetime friends all day.

15. What movie can you not resist watching if it’s on?

Psycho.

16. The sports team or teams you’re most passionate about?

lol

17. Where did you eat the best meal of your life?

Pizza in Tokyo.

18. The last movie you saw in a theater?

Singin’ In The Rain at the New Beverly.

19. Who was your first celebrity crush?

Jack Dawson, duh.

20. What would you cook if Nic Cage were coming to your house for dinner?

Boston Market.

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