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The Toronto Raptors are bringing back an old friend. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN and Shams Charania of The Athletic, Toronto’s first move of the 2023 NBA trade deadline involves acquiring Jakob Poeltl from the San Antonio Spurs, with Wojnarowski reporting that the team will send Khem Birch and some draft capital to Texas.

Marc Stein had reported in the lead-up to the deal that the two sides were extensively discussing a Poeltl trade. It’s a reunion between Poeltl and the team that drafted him 16th overall in the 2016 NBA Draft. He spent his first two years with the franchise before getting sent to San Antonio with DeMar DeRozan and a pick for Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green.

Since then, Poeltl has turned into one of the game’s most underrated centers, particularly on the defensive end of the floor. Prior to getting moved this year, the big man averaged 12.1 points, nine rebounds, 3.1 assists, and 1.1 blocks in 26.1 minutes per game while connecting on 61.6 percent of his field goal attempts.

Toronto has been mentioned as a team to watch ahead of Thursday’s trade deadline for weeks, as they had the flexibility to acquire players who help them win, move players in an effort to take a more long-term view, or stand pat. While there is still plenty of time for them to do more, acquiring the 27-year-old Poeltl — an unrestricted free agent at the end of this year — gives them another player who could help them improve on their 26-30 record, which puts Toronto in 10th place in the Eastern Conference.

The Kevin Durant era in Brooklyn came to an end on Thursday. According to multiple reports, the Nets traded Durant and TJ Warren to the Phoenix Suns for a monster package consisting of Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jae Crowder, four unprotected first-round picks, and a pick swap.

It is a gigantic acquisition for Phoenix, which pursued Durant over the summer but finally got a deal over the line now that a new owner is on board. For Brooklyn, this is the second monster trade they’ve made with a Western Conference squad in less than a week, as Kyrie Irving was traded to the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday.

Irving made his Mavs debut on Wednesday, and after the game, he was asked to react to Durant’s trade. After saying that he’s “praying for his happiness, praying for his well-being,” Irving expressed that he’s excited for the two to go head-to-head before saying he’s glad that Durant is getting a change in scenery.

“There’s never been one moment where I felt like he’s been angry at me for decisions I’ve made or I’ve been angry at him,” Irving said. “We just tried to understand each other a lot better and grow as human beings, grow as brothers. This business changes so quickly. He’s getting a little bit older, I’m getting a little bit older. I just love the competition now that we can be in the same conference, and I welcome all that. Get to see him a little bit more, probably playing against Phoenix a lot more. That’s what I’m looking forward to. Everything else in between, I’m just glad that he got out of there.”

Irving went on to say that he was skeptical over whether he viewed Brooklyn as a long-term home, citing “things that happened behind the scenes” like his refusal to comply with New York’s vaccine mandate or the suspension that he received for, as the team put it, a “failure to disavow antisemitism when given a clear opportunity to do so.”

“I would like to say something, too, about the ‘superteam’ of me, James [Harden], and KD that everyone thinks should have worked,” Irving said. “We played very limited time together, a lot of injuries and things that took place, and I would have liked to see that work for the long-term. But there are no mistakes, no coincidences, you gotta move forward. I’m happy that I can look back on that journey and reflect and say I learned a lot of things from those guys, and my teammates in Brooklyn, and just my journey throughout this.”

The Trade Deadline strikes again. Just after 1 am ET the evening before Thursday’s deadline, a serious balance of power shift made its way from the Eastern Conference to the Western Conference as Shams Charania reported that the Phoenix Suns were acquiring superstar Kevin Durant.

The details started trickling in, as the Suns pushed all their chips to the center of the table with this move.

A player like Durant was always going to command a huge haul if and when he was moved out of Brooklyn, but after his first trade demand over the summer, there wasn’t quite a package that GM Sean Marks felt suitable (although the Suns were linked even then). Eventually the two sides reconciled and things were at an equilibrium until Kyrie Irving’s sharing of an antisemitic film and suspension. Even after all that, the Nets were clicking until Durant’s knee injury. In just a couple weeks following him going down, the Nets sputtered, Irving was moved to Dallas, and whispers of whether or not Durant would be in Brooklyn much longer started spreading.

While it always seemed like Brooklyn wanted to do right by KD, Marks also was responsible for putting out the best team possible. If Durant could fetch a haul, moving him always made sense. Four first-rounders, a pick swap, and young talent like Bridges and Johnson are a great start, and Crowder finally gets his wish for playing time (and a change of scenery). For the Suns, this is one more shot at winning it all in an extremely open West, and getting one of the best players on earth to join Chris Paul, Devin Booker, and Deandre Ayton is certainly formidable.

What to even say at this point?

A hundred years ago (August 2022), the recently-minted Warner Bros. Discovery announced the exciting smooshing together of HBO Max and Discovery+ that would combine their respective maleness and femaleness (not kidding) into one gargantuan streaming channel. Turns out they’re changing course more than a bit. According to The Hollywood Reporter, they’re not killing off Discovery+ after all. Instead, it will live on with a bunch of its own content, and HBO Max may have some Discovery+ content, but Discovery+ will hang on as a discount service in case you want MILF Manor but don’t want House of the Dragon.

You’ve read that right. All of the cancellations, disappearing shows, and tax write-offs for HBO Max are now not only tragic, but potentially pointless. It also lays bare the silliness of thinking that these two libraries complement each other in any way outside of MBA fanfic. That’s not to say you can’t love Flip or Flop and The White Lotus (or any other combination of shows), but Warner Bros. Discovery has chosen a profoundly poor moment to pretend like there’s an infinite pool of money out there for streaming services, or that fans will choose whatever HBO Max turns out to be because Chip and Joanna Gaines are also there.

Also, if this kills any hope of making a Fixer Upper: The Last of Us, it could be the worst corporate decision of all time. Stay tuned to see if they reverse this decision, too.

(via The Hollywood Reporter)

The Boston Celtics picked up a big win on Wednesday night at home against the Philadelphia 76ers despite being down their top two centers and Marcus Smart, but the excitement after the win was dampened by a fourth quarter injury suffered by Jaylen Brown.

The All-Star forward went for a rebound on the baseline at the same time as Jayson Tatum, with Tatum’s elbow hitting Brown in the cheek and sending him to the floor.

Brown would leave the game immediately and go to the locker room, where X-rays apparently showed a facial fracture that will keep him out for some time, likely through the All-Star break, per Shams Charania.

The Celtics have four games remaining before the break, facing the Hornets, Grizzlies, Bucks, and Pistons prior to nine days off. Brown’s absence is obviously a blow, particularly given their injury report already being filled up with key players. If there’s any silver lining it’s that the timing of the injury allows him to take over two weeks off to heal and only miss four games. From a broader perspective, this adds yet another player to the growing list of injury replacements NBA commissioner Adam Silver will have to name, with Kevin Durant, Zion Williamson, and Stephen Curry all expected to need replacements due to injuries.

Beyoncé took home three awards from the 2023 Grammys last Sunday, February 5, bringing her career total to an all-time most 32. She won Best Traditional R&B Performance (“Plastic Off The Sofa”), Best Dance/Electronic Recording (“Break My Soul“) and Best Dance/Electronic Music Album (Renaissance). And many people feel strongly that she should have also won Album Of The Year, but that’s a discussion for a different article.

The Best Dance/Electronic Music Album victory broke the record, and because Beyoncé was nominated, the category was televised. On the CBS broadcast, Diplo was seen in the audience saying something after Renaissance was announced as the winner. Some fans speculated that he said, “They bought that.” He was also nominated in the category for his self-titled album.

Diplo set the record straight on Instagram this week. The final slide of the Instagram carousel is the same clip that’s been making the rounds online, except Diplo included a closed-captioning of “I’m glad to be a part of this.”

Diplo’s lengthy caption gushed over Beyoncé. Read it below.

“This is a post to honor the dance music community. Thank your for being my purpose in this life and shaping my career .. and much love to all the wonderful people that worked on my album .. Grammy night was great night for all of us. Dance music has and will be the most Inclusive music of our generation .. I have been in the industry for over 20 years releasing club music ..djing over 1000 different clubs and cities – u can find me everywhere, the slums of Rio, warehouses in North Philly where I started to the fanciest night clubs and yachts in st tropez, ibiza.. Our community has always been gay / straight, but icy , poor.. white black brown purple .. it’s the music that had united the world during my lifetime and i’m glad to just be one part of it you don’t need to be a savant or a great musician to be part of dance music u just have to love to move and have confidence.

“Tonight was the first time the dance / electronic category was televised and it was rightfully so.. between me, rufus beyoncé, odesza bonobo… was one of the strongest years for electronic music. Beyoncé album was legendary (i’m a beyonce a stan remember I produced some classic dance songs for her like ’til the end of time’ and ‘girls run the world.’ what’s important to understand was that her intention was 100%. she did the work found the real producers and she made classics .. so she deserves her flowers . and when she won i was just proud to see my nomination on the screen in the huge arena.. (swipe to the end to see what i said) but the best part was my friends and the other artists in the genre still out raving until sunrise somewhere in La : that’s what’s the music is really about ”

During her acceptance speech, Beyoncé was visibly emotional and paid homage to “the queer community for your love and for inventing the genre.” Watch the historic moment above.

UK’s Squid are back with the announcement of a new album. The band, which is in the same vein as Shame, Fontaines DC, and Idles, will be following up 2021’s Bright Green Field with O Monolith. The lead single “Swing (In A Dream)” is out now.

In a press release, they explained that their tour for Bright Green Field helped inspire the record. “Without that tour, we wouldn’t have any of these tracks,” Ollie Judge said. “People were so looking forward to seeing live music that we thought we could just play anything, even if it was unfinished. In some form or another, we played about 80 percent of O Monolith, mostly without lyrics.”

“There’s a running theme of the relation of people to the environment throughout,” Louis Borlase added. “There are allusions to the world we became so immersed in, environmental emergency, the role of domesticity, and the displacement you feel when you’re away for a long time.”

Listen to “Swing (In A Dream)” above.

Check out the album artwork and tracklist below.

1. “Swing (In A Dream)”
2. “Devil’s Den”
3. “Siphon Song”
4. “Undergrowth”
5. “The Blades”
6. “After The Flash”
7. “Green Light”
8. “If You Had Seen The Bull’s Swimming Attempts You Would Have Stayed Away”

O Monolith arrives 6/9 via Warp Records. Pre-order it here.

The Republican response to President Joe Biden’s second State of the Union address was almost embarrassingly predictable. But “embarrassing,” we mean they embarrassed themselves. The MAGA wing were childish hecklers. Even the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, looked like a miserable robot. Then came the GOP response, conducted by Donald Trump’s second misleading press secretary-turned-Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who now refuses to back her toxic former boss). It was more Republican doom and gloom, so unpleasant even her own town’s paper tore it to shreds.

As per Raw Story, The Arkansas Times, based in Little Rock, where Huckabee and family live, ran a morning-after op-ed by Austin Bailey, who praised Biden for keeping his cool while the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene acted like brats. Biden, Bailey wrote, oozed his “signature empathy.” Then Sanders came to “darken the mood” with her “standard snarling about wokeness and the radical left.”

Bailey went on to describe Sanders’ speech as a “word salad of talking points and name calling, with some attempts at folksy relatability thrown in.” He also torched arguably her most shameless claim: that the left started the culture wars, which the GOP never wanted to fight. Bailey countered that the right launched a “skirmish against transgender people unprovoked.”

Moreover, he was appalled that she brought up that her alma mater, Little Rock Central High, was at the center of “Little Rock Integration Crisis,” in which nine Black students were denied access when the school was being integrated. Cut to 2023, and under Sanders’ rule the state is about to be inundated with an education reform package that will foist conservativism upon students:

This linking of Central High’s history with Sanders’ voucher scheme to funnel tax dollars to public and private schools was another brazen choice, another example of the doublespeak at which Sanders is so shameless and so skilled. The bold education reform she’ll unveil at the Arkansas Capitol this week is all but guaranteed to worsen segregation in Arkansas schools along racial and socioeconomic lines. Calling education the civil rights cause of our time even as she plans to gut public education as we know it is the kind of unapologetic liberal-tears bait that keeps Sanders’ fans coming back for more. This strategy is a proven winner around here.

Sanders probably didn’t read this. After all, we all know what she thinks of reporters.

(Via The Arkansas Times and Raw Story)

The New York Knicks added a player on the wing in the lead-up to the 2023 NBA trade deadline. In a move reported on Wednesday night, New York sent a package of players and a protected first-round pick to the Portland Trail Blazers to acquire the services of the well-traveled Josh Hart.

It’s a nice trade for a Knicks squad with postseason aspirations, and for college basketball fans, it reunites two players from one of the best teams in the last decade, as Hart and fellow Villanova Wildcat Jalen Brunson are now on the same squad. In a fun twist, Brunson was actually back at his alma mater on Wednesday night, as he attended the team’s game against DePaul and saw his jersey get retired. During the game, Brunson got word of the move, and to say he was excited would be an understatement — head to the 18-second mark of the below video to see his reaction.

One of their college teammates, Mikal Bridges, was pretty stoked to see them reunited.

Hart and Brunson overlapped for two years in college, as they were teammates from 2015-17. The pair were members of the 2016 Wildcats squad that won a national championship, and after Hart was a consensus first-team All-American in 2017, Brunson followed in his footsteps, earning that distinction in 2018 as he led the Wildcats to another national title.

After an appetizer in the form of the Kyrie Irving trade to Dallas, the trade deadline kicked off in earnest on Wednesday night with a three-team, eight-player blockbuster involving the Lakers, Timberwolves, and Jazz.

The trade brings D’Angelo Russell back to L.A., along with Jarred Vanderbilt and Malik Beasley, while the Timberwolves get Mike Conley Jr., Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and three future second round picks, and the Jazz get Russell Westbrook, Juan Toscano-Anderson, Damian Jones, and the Lakers’ 2027 first round pick (protected 1-4). Utah is expected to buyout Westbrook, with the Clippers and Bulls reportedly interested in his services on the buyout market once the deadline passes. Otherwise, the seven other players figure to stay in their new homes, and it’s a considerable shakeup to three teams in the middle-to-bottom of the West playoff hunt.

The trade won’t just impact those three squads, as there will be ripple effects sent throughout the West as part of this trade. For one, teams like the Blazers and others who were reportedly pursuing Vanderbilt will now have to shift their attention elsewhere on the market to try and find roster upgrades. The same goes for any teams that were looking into Russell or Conley as a backcourt addition, albeit we don’t have as much information on specific teams that were in the hunt for those two outside L.A. and Minnesota. Here, we’ll take a look at the three teams and the West playoff race as a whole to see what direction everyone is trending after the second big move of trade season.

UTAH JAZZ

On a large scale, the trade signals that Utah is bowing out of the playoff chase barring something unforeseen from the roster that remains. Moving Conley without getting a replacement should make the Jazz considerably worse, and while they currently hold down the 10-seed at 27-28, they are just two games up on the Lakers in 13th, who just got better in a few ways. In an extraordinarily crowded playoff and play-in race, there will be a bit of a sigh of relief from hopefuls (like the Lakers and Blazers) to see one team in the mix selling.

From a team perspective, the Jazz accomplish their goal of acquiring their eighth future first round pick of this league year, having dealt Rudy Gobert for four picks and a swap, Donovan Mitchell for three picks and two swaps, and now Conley, Vanderbilt, and Beasley for an additional first. It’s an impressive restocking of the draft asset cupboard from Danny Ainge, who has managed to almost completely flip this roster in one year, while not having to strip the team down to the studs and bottom out completely. They will get worse without Conley, but that’s by design, as it gives them a chance to evaluate guys like Collin Sexton, Ochai Agbaji, and others in expanded minutes and roles down the stretch.

Given the job Will Hardy has done, I’m not prepared to count them completely out, but it would be fairly shocking (and an indictment of the teams below them) if they hold onto a play-in position.

LOS ANGELES LAKERS

The unquestioned winners of this trade are the Lakers, who managed to unload Westbrook and just one of their picks (while keeping top-4 protections) for three legitimate rotation players. I’m highly skeptical that this trade makes them a legitimate contender, but it undoubtedly makes them better and should give them enough firepower to get into the play-in in the West. That is really all they could hope for, as there was clearly not a trade to get a superstar out there for Westbrook and picks.

Russell’s homecoming will be a big story and may inflate expectations for what he’ll bring them. He has had a terrific last month in Minnesota and, if absolutely nothing else, he will be a massive upgrade in the three-point shooting department having knocked down 39.1 percent of his threes on the year. Russell seemed to grow more comfortable in an off-ball role next to Anthony Edwards over the last month, something that will serve him well slotting into a Lakers lineup alongside LeBron James. Turnovers can be an issue with Russell, so he won’t completely rid the Lakers of that issue they had with Westbrook, but he’s dynamic in a much different way and a more efficient scorer and theoretical fit alongside L.A.’s stars.

Beasley will also provide them with another shooter off the bench, which L.A. can certainly use, while Vanderbilt is an excellent rebounder and versatile defender, who figures to quickly become a favorite of head coach Darvin Ham as part of the Lakers rotation. All told, the Lakers added things they needed while giving up a player that was simply not a fit. For this season, that’s a home run. What that 2027 pick becomes and how much they improve will determine exactly how successful the trade is, but in the immediate, none of the teams involved upgraded more than L.A. — again, with the caveat that this upgrades them from 13th in the West to fighting for maybe a top-8 spot.

MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES

The Timberwolves’ portion of this deal was the one that had some people scratching their heads, but for a team capped out and Russell clearly not happy with his role in Minnesota (even though he was enjoying some of the best ball of his Wolves tenure of late), this deal gets them some stability. Conley isn’t as explosive a scorer as Russell or as good of a shooter at this point, but he is a better defender and gives them a steadying hand at point guard who can settle the team down and get them into their offense late in games, something they desperately need. He also has a rapport with Rudy Gobert that could prove quite helpful for a Wolves team that hasn’t seemed to know quite how to work the big fella into the offense. On top of all of that, Conley is under contract for one more year (partially guaranteed), which at least gives them a two-year window to work with after going all-in on the group they have.

I think from a fit perspective, Conley makes a bit more sense than Russell for this particular Minnesota team. I’m not sure that translates to a considerable uptick in wins, particularly because this is a move made with an eye on a fully healthy roster. Once Towns is back, Conley’s skillset as a facilitator should help them even more, particularly given the leap Anthony Edwards has made as a scorer, which made Russell’s skills as a self-creator something of a redundancy. This isn’t a deal that vaults Minnesota into the top-6 conversation, but I do think it will help them solidify a play-in spot, with the hope that it improves some on-court chemistry, particularly in late-game situations.