Category: Trending

The Los Angeles Lakers’ to-do list this summer includes figuring out what the future holds for Russell Westbrook. Despite the fact that new head coach Darvin Ham said that he knows how he plans on using Westbrook during the 2022-23 campaign, the polarizing point guard has seen his name pop up in trade rumors one year after the team acquired him from the Washington Wizards.

In a new piece by Dave McMenamin of ESPN, we learned that the Lakers have been trying to figure out a potential new landing spot for Westbrook. While McMenamin confirmed a previous report from Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports that the Lakers have spoke to the Brooklyn Nets, he also revealed that another team viewed as a contender to acquire Westbrook is on the table: the Indiana Pacers.

With the Lakers engaged in trade talks with the Brooklyn Nets and the Indiana Pacers in the last week — with sources telling ESPN that both scenarios involve sending Westbrook out — the positioning of James and Westbrook was notable.

Much was made of Westbrook’s appearance at the Lakers’ Summer League game on Friday evening, as he and LeBron James sat on opposite sides of the court from one another but did not publicly interact. James has, per reports, been adamant about his desire for the Lakers to acquire Kyrie Irving from the Nets, which would require sending Westbrook to Brooklyn.

As for the Pacers, their presumed deal for Westbrook would send Myles Turner and Buddy Hield — the latter of whom the team nearly acquired before pivoting to picking up Westbrook — to Los Angeles. The catch, according to Marc Stein’s latest newsletter, is that there is skepticism that the Lakers would be able to meet Indiana’s asking price.

A second source I spoke to expressed pessimism that the Lakers would have the required assets to assemble a trade in which they acquire both Hield and Myles Turner from Indiana. Various reports have described the two Pacers as prime targets for L.A. if it is unable to assemble an Irving trade construction that Brooklyn is prepared to accept.

One would assume that any sort of deal would require Westbrook and the Lakers’ two prized future first-round draft picks in 2027 and 2029, with the 9-time All-Star’s expiring contract serving more as a way to make the salaries work. There’s no word on whether or not Los Angeles could attempt to sweeten the pot by including players like Talen Horton-Tucker or Kendrick Nunn.

Chris Evans hasn’t been Captain America for a few years now, and he seems fine with that. It means he doesn’t have to hit the gym as often as he once did. In fact, he’d rather return to Human Torch than good ol’ Cap. (Though he probably won’t be coming back as the other Buzz Lightyear anytime soon.) When a director on the fourth Captain America film was announced, there was some speculation about whether he’d return, even though the reins (which is to say the shield) have been passed onto Anthony Mackie. But Evans managed to shoot that one down.

The Hollywood Reporter reported on the as-yet-untitled fourth film landing its director, namely The Cloverfield Paradox’s Julius Onah. In a tweet promoting the article, the publication said it was “unclear” whether Evans would return to the role, arguing that “stacked casts,” even in solo outings, have become a “key ingredient” of Marvel movies.

But, as caught by Vulture, Evans had a five-word response. “Sam Wilson is Captain America,” he wrote on Twitter.

Avengers: Endgame ended with a much older Steve Rogers passing his shield onto Mackie’s Sam Wilson, who was then still the Falcon. But at the conclusion of the Disney+ spin-off The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Wilson officially switched alter egos, taking on the role of the new Cap.

In other words, no, Mackie won’t have to share his lead role with another actor. Then again, Evans said nothing about filing a fun little cameo.

(Via THR and Vulture)

The case can be made that no player needed Summer League more than Portland Trail Blazers lottery pick Shaedon Sharpe. After not playing a minute during the 2021-22 college basketball season as a member of the Kentucky Wildcats, Summer League presented a chance for Sharpe — a 5-star shooting guard prospect in the class of 2021 — to show off his tantalizing skill set.

Unfortunately for Sharpe and the Blazers, his stint in the desert came to an end after a little more than five minutes. Sharpe left Portland’s first game in Las Vegas with a shoulder injury, and on Saturday afternoon, the team released a statement and announced that he will not be able to take the floor again.

An MRI taken yesterday revealed Trail Blazers guard Shaedon Sharpe with a small labral tear in his left shoulder, the team announced today.

Sharpe will begin immediate rest and rehabilitation. He will miss the remainder of Summer League and will be reevaluated in 10-14 days.

A 6’5, 19-year-old Canadian guard, Sharpe went seventh overall in the 2022 draft. The silver lining to this is that the team did not say he needed surgery, so here’s to hoping that rest and rehab will work out well and Sharpe will be able to take the floor by the time training camp opens up.

On Friday night, The Strokes brought their talents to Lancashire’s Lytham Festival. The showcase kicked off last weekend and it has or will invite artists like Diana Ross, Nile Rodgers & Chic, Snow Patrol, Tears For Fears, and more to perform. During their set on Friday night, The Strokes took it upon themselves to invite a fan onto the stage to sing “Ode To The Mets” from their 2020 album, The New Abnormal. It came after the fan was spotted holding a sign that read, “Can I sing ‘Ode To The Mets’ with you?” The Strokes’ lead vocalist Julian Casablancas invited her up and said, “I’m gonna be peeved if she sings it better than I do.”

After the fan got onstage, Casablancas joked that he was “gonna go do some blow” and left. The fan then sang the entirety of “Ode To The Mets,” and when Casablancas returned, he asked his bandmates what they thought of the fans’ performance. “It’s alright,” Albert Hammond Jr. said while laughing. Nick Valensi added, “No comment” and “I’m the Simon Cowell of the group, obviously.” Bassist Nikolai Fraiture chimed in saying, “She gets an E for effort” while drummer Fabrizio Moretti yelled, “She was f*ckin’ awesome!” Casablancas then congrulated the fan for “tremendous effort” and added the moment was a “really great memory and a great journey for you.” However, Casablancas didn’t let the fan off the hook without some jokes.

“Should I mention that she’s German?” he said. “Does that make a difference? Unfortunately she doesn’t make it, she doesn’t make it, but we love her forever, and we will have the memory… Now, what’s the next song?”

You can watch the moment between the fan and The Strokes in the video above.

Back in May, The Black Keys released their eleventh album Dropout Boogie. The project arrived a year after their tenth effort Delta Kream which earned a Grammy nomination at this year’s award show for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Dropout Boogie arrived with ten songs and a lone guest appearance from Billy F Gibbons, and soon, The Black Keys will bring the project, and Delta Kream, along for their first-ever amphitheater tour. Ahead of those string of shows, the duo that is Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney stopped by CBS Mornings’ Saturday Sessions to perform songs from Dropout Boogie.

During their time on Saturday Sessions, The Black Keys performed “Wild Child” and “It Ain’t Over” from Dropout Boogie before taking a trip back in time to play “Gold On The Ceiling,” the double Platinum record from their 2011 Grammy-winning album El Camino. In addition to the performances, Auerbach and Carney also took a moment to look back and their careers during an interview with CBS’ Anthony Mason.

“We communicate now more than we did even when we were 22,” Carney said. “We turned into old farts.” Auerbach added, “We’ve only got each other to talk to, we might as well go back in the van. Especially with the 20th anniversary, it’s made us put some things in perspective. I’m always reminded when I get with Pat how easy it is to just make music. We don’t even talk about, it’s a magical gift we were given.”

You can watch The Black Keys perform “Wild Child,” “It Ain’t Over,” and “Gold On The Ceiling” on CBS Mornings’ Saturday Sessions above.

The Black Keys is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s been a couple weekends since Canadian “intellectual”/windbag Jordan Peterson has tweeted, and there’s a good reason for that: The social media service has suspended him. The blubbery psychologist and author is really mad that Elliot Page is trans, and a tweet in which he misgendered him got him booted. He’s refused to delete it, and instead recorded a 15-minute video in which he defied his critics. But those critics have responded by turning him into a meme.

Peterson’s video — which is, again, 15 minutes long — features a number of ridiculous moments, but most people seized upon a moment where he sneers, “Up yours, woke moralists. We’ll see who cancels who.” His delivery would be over-the-top even for a Bond villain, with strong “I’ll get you, my pretty” vibes.

But some Twitter users didn’t cancel Peterson. Instead, as caught by Kotaku, they took that clip and dropped it into video games, including Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, Metal Gear, Half-Life, and Remedy’s Control. And so the guy who in May got triggered when people mocked his thoughtless comments about a swimsuit model into an over-the-top villain.

And just for good measure, here’s Jordan Peterson as embodied by Kermit the Frog, which does admittedly feel like a rude thing to do to a perfectly good Muppet.

Meanwhile, we hope Elliot Page is having a very nice day.

(Via Kotaku)

Amber Heard has not been silent. Since a jury found her guilty of defaming her ex-husband Johnny Depp, the actress’ lawyers have vowed to fight it, either by appealing or asking that it be thrown out entirely. Now they’re calling for a mistrial, citing the fact that one of the jurors should not have been there.

As per Variety, Heard’s attorneys have discovered one of the jurors was never received a summons. Instead, it went to another person in the same household, someone who is 25 years older. It’s not yet been made public what relationship they had, and their names were redacted from the filing.

“As the Court no doubt agrees, it is deeply troubling for an individual not summoned for jury duty nonetheless to appear for jury duty and serve on a jury, especially in a case such as this,” Heard’s attorneys wrote. “This was a high-profile case, where the fact and date of the jury trial were highly publicized prior to and after the issuance of the juror summonses.”

The defamation trial — Depp’s second, after he unsuccessfully sued The Sun — was a wild one, filled with shocking revelations and stories about jurors falling asleep during presentations. Depp himself has been taking baby steps back into the spotlight, even lining up a project with Netflix. But one thing he won’t do is play Jack Sparrow ever again. Probably.

(Via Variety)

What a fun few months it’s been since Elon Musk threatened to buy Twitter! But all good things must come to an end, and this one, well, isn’t quite over. As per CNN, the Tesla and SpaceX honcho is officially doing what he’s been threatening to, which is worm his way out of the $44 billion deal to acquire the social media giant. This will probably lead to a court battle, but for now, people have jokes.

The rollercoaster ride began in January, when Musk quietly built up his Twitter shares. By March he was using his own account to launch polls to see if people thought the service should change. In early April he became its biggest shareholder, joined its board, left the board, then openly wondered if he should just buy it. Later that month he lined up the funds for the sale, and revealed some of his intentions, such as maybe reinstating the account for disgraced former president Donald J. Trump.

Alas, it was not to be. By mid-May, the sale was put on hold as Musk seemed to have buyer’s remorse even before he officially became a buyer. He was also called out for breaking the NDA in a tweet.

Now he wants out. A lawyer representing Musk claimed Twitter is “in material breach of multiple provisions” from the original deal. He himself has claimed, without evidence, that the service is overrun with bots and spam accounts. He also appears to want to avoid the $1 billion break-up fee as part of the original deal. Throughout the ordeal, Musk has tried to tweet through it.

Twitter, meanwhile, is planning to take him to court to force him to comply with the original offer.

Appropriately, news of Musk’s latest Twitter move was roasted on, of course, Twitter.

Some made jokes about his multiple secret children.

Others used the occasion to demand Musk and other billionaires be appropriately taxed.

There were plenty of other yuks as well.

(Via CNN)

On Friday, it was reported that Tony Sirico, best known as Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri on The Sopranos, had passed away in an assisted living facility. He was 79 years old. He was one of the more colorful members of an already colorful cast on a show that changed TV history, kicking off what has been widely considered a Second Golden Age. As such, his passing was met with an avalanche of tributes, many of them incredible clips from the show that made him a star.

Sirico spent decades typecast as a gangster in film and TV, and for a good reason: He used to be a criminal, and he led a colorful life before he was ever on-screen. Growing up in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, he was surrounded by what he later called “mob-type people,” and he soon started a life of crime. He was arrested 28 times but only convicted twice. While serving 20 months of a four-year stint in Sing Sing, he fell into acting when a group of reformed convicts visited the facility. He was convinced he could do that, too.

And so he did. He appeared as an uncredited extra in The Godfather: Part II, and eventually became regulars for filmmakers like James Toback (Fingers, The Pick-Up Artist) and Woody Allen, for whom he acted seven times. He became part of what his future Sopranos colleague Vincent Pastore jokingly dubbed the “Gangsters Acting Guild.”

But it was The Sopranos that made him a household fixture. From 1999 through 2007, he could be seen on Sunday nights as the simultaneously silly, eccentric, and terrifying Paulie, a mafia lifer with fascinating hair, a fear of germs, hatred of cats, and a love of track suits. Paulie avoided the grim fate that met most characters, because who could ever want to whack Paulie Walnuts?

Upon word of his passing, tributes poured in. Some were from fellow Sopranos alumni.

But really, everyone was gutted by the loss.

Earlier this week, Carlos Santana left many worried after the legendary guitarist passed out during a show in Michigan. Santana is currently on the Miraculous Supernatural 2022 tour with Earth, Wind & Fire, and they were all performing at the Pine Knob Music Theatre in Clarkston, Michigan when Santana took the fall. Luckily, he was able to get up and walk away under his own power, but now, it will be a little while until fans see him rocking out on stage. That’s because according to NME, a press release recently announced that Santana has postponed the next six dates of his tour to ensure that he recovers fully.

In the statement, Santana’s manager Michael Vrionis said the guitarist was “doing well and is anxious to be back on stage soon.” He added that Santana’s doctors “have recommended that [he] gets rest to recuperate fully.” The statement arrives after Santana’s wife hopped on social media to tell fans that “he’ll be as good as new soon” while also thanking them for their “prayers, love, care [and] concern.”

The day after Santana passed out on stage, he took to Facebook to explain what happened and assure fans that he was okay. “To one and all,” he wrote. “Cindy and I, we are good just taking it easy. Forgot to eat and drink water, so i was dehydrated and passed out. Blessings and miracles to you all.”