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Donte DiVincenzo was always going to hit free agency this offseason. The catch: Thanks to a decision made by the Sacramento Kings to not extend him a qualifying offer, DiVincenzo will hit the free agent market without any restrictions and is free to sign with whatever team he so chooses.

The news of DiVincenzo not getting a qualifying offer from Sacramento and thereby becoming an unrestricted free agent comes via James Ham of ESPN 1320 in Sacramento.

DiVincenzo, the No. 17 pick in the 2018 NBA Draft out of Villanova, established himself in the league in the Milwaukee Bucks’ backcourt. He started every game in which he appeared during the team’s championship-winning 2020-21 campaign, but he suffered an ankle injury early on in their playoff campaign that kept him sidelined for much of their run to a title.

While he returned to the team last season, DiVincenzo was moved to Sacramento right before the trade deadline in a move that saw Serge Ibaka go to the Bucks. DiVincenzo appeared in 25 games in a Kings uniform with one of them coming as a start, and averaged 10.3 points, 4.4 rebounds, 3.6 assists, and 1.5 steals in 26.6 games for the team while connecting on just a hair under 37 percent of his attempts from three.

James Harden’s tenure with the Philadelphia 76ers couldn’t have gotten off to a much better start, but the honeymoon period was fleeting and ultimately his first season in Philly ended in an all-too familiar disappointing second round exit — with Harden’s struggles at the center of the conversation this time around.

Entering this offseason, the Sixers were once again faced with questions about their ability to be real contenders with their team as currently constructed. After Harden failed to pick up his $47 million player option in time after he was traded to Philly, he had initially indicated he still planned on tacking that year on before the deadline this summer, but recently there’s been buzz that a longer term extension — at a lesser annual figure — was expected to get worked out between the Sixers and Harden.

As Wednesday’s 5 p.m. ET deadline arrived, a new deal was not in place just yet but Harden still declined to pick up his option, with rumblings that this was the plan to give Philadelphia added flexibility to sign free agents and then bring Harden back on a new deal.

This could be a way for the Sixers to add PJ Tucker on the reported 3-year, $30 million deal they want to offer without having to move Matisse Thybulle in a trade first, sliding Tucker into the full mid-level. The relationship between Harden and Daryl Morey goes a long way in this kind of situation, as it’s rare for a player and executive to have the level of trust in each other not to screw the other in a plan like this, but if they can pull it off, Harden’s willingness to take a little less money might be huge in the Sixers chances of making meaningful upgrades to the roster.

As for what that new deal looks like, Zach Lowe reports that if the Sixers use the full mid-level and the bi-annual exception ($4.5 million), they can start Harden’s new deal at $35-38 million.

While the Milwaukee Bucks’ core of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jrue Holiday, and Khris Middleton isn’t going anywhere any time soon, the 2022 offseason has the potential to see some of their top role players seek greener pastures. Perhaps atop that list is Bobby Portis, who entered the summer with a decision to make on his contract’s player option worth about $4.6 million.

Ultimately, Portis declined his player option, which comes as little surprise as the Bucks can now sign him to a long-term contract worth just north of $10 million annually with early Bird rights.

Portis joined the Bucks as a free agent during the 2020 offseason and immediately turned into a fan favorite due to his hard-nosed style of play and penchant for hitting shots in big moments. While he largely came off the bench, the veteran frontcourt player who has affectionately been nicknamed the Mayor of Milwaukee played a major role in the Bucks’ run to a championship during the 2021 postseason, which included a 16-point performance in the team’s Game 6 win over the Phoenix Suns to secure a title.

Since joining the Bucks, Portis has averaged 13.1 points and 8.1 rebounds in 24.6 minutes per game while connecting on 41.8 percent of his attempts from three. While he’s now technically an unrestricted free agent, Jake Fischer reported on Wednesday that the expectation is for Portis to stay with Milwaukee on a 4-year deal worth just over $40 million.

The South Park producers have been busy churning out a massive amount of content from your favorite fictional Colorado suburb. Not only have they been releasing various COVD specials, but they also have over a dozen (really) upcoming specials slated to come out this year alone. Is there such thing as too much South Park?

The trailer for South Park The Streaming Wars Part 2 dropped today, featuring a horrifying version of Stan’s father who has now evolved into “Full Karen Mode” which consists of asking for the manager at a water park and threatening to TikTok inside of a supermarket. The internet is a scary place. The movie is a follow-up to Streaming Wars Part One which debuted on June 1st.

According to the official synopsis, a drought has brought the town of South Park to the brink of disaster. What will happen next?! Will these kids ever go off to college?!

South Park’s specials Post Covid and Post Covid: Covid Returns aired last year, tackling the future of the COVID pandemic in the fictional land of South Park. The series has been on air since 1997 and just wrapped up its 25th season earlier this year with virtually no end in sight, as the creators have mapped out a series of 14 movies in the coming year.

South Park The Streaming Wars Part 2 drops on July 13th on Paramount Plus. Check out the trailer above.

One of my favorite questions to ask friends is: what movies have you walked out of? For me, it’s only been two films, Baby’s Day Out and Miracle on 34th Street, both of which came out in 1994 when I was a bored seven-year-old with no attention span, apparently.

I haven’t left the theater early for any movie as an adult, but god knows I’ve been tempted. I’m pretty sure I was on my phone for most of Transformers: The Last Knight. (Don’t worry, it was an empty theater, which, in retrospect, should have been clue number one that it was going to be a stinker.) Stephen King also didn’t enjoy a Transformers movie-going experience, but he made the smart call and walked out.

In response to crime novelist Linwood Barclay tweeting that “Jurassic World Dominion has the distinction of being the first movie I’ve walked out on in years,” King replied, “I have walked out of only one movie as an adult: TRANSFORMERS. Would like to know what other movies people have walked out on.”

Inquiring minds had to know: did he mean the animated Transformers movie or Michael Bay’s Transformers? “Michael Bay. The first one,” the horror maestro replied.

Wow. Someone hates the Strokes.

If Bay was on Twitter, there is a 95 percent chance he would respond to King with something like, “I walked out of Maximum Overdrive, more like Maximum Crappy Movie,” followed by six explosion emojis. Instead, he’s busy making Ambulance 2 (hopefully).

James Bond did not have time to die, but you’ll have to have time to wait for the next James Bond movie. A Daniel Craig-less James Bond is not returning to a movie theater near you anytime soon.

Deadline reports that James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli (which might be an even better name than James Bond) says the next film in the historic franchise is “at least two years” away. She also confirmed that there are absolutely no actors in the running for the role as the next series of films will be a “reinvention” of Bond following the Craig Era, which was itself a very dark and very serious reinvention of Bond.

“Nobody’s in the running,” Broccoli told Deadline. “We’re working out where to go with him, we’re talking that through. There isn’t a script and we can’t come up with one until we decide how we’re going to approach the next film because, really, it’s a reinvention of Bond. We’re reinventing who he is and that takes time. I’d say that filming is at least two years away.”

While we wait and see if Idris Elba will ever be James Bond, I might as well contemplate and insert my top five Bond films into the blog because being mad at me about my personal taste is a great use of your time. Here are my top five Bond films, ranked in no particular order with the exception of Skyfall, which is the best for its cinematography from Roger Deakins and chaotic good performance from Javier Bardem: Skyfall, Casino Royale, Goldeneye, No Time To Die, Tomorrow Never Dies. You might say I have a recency bias, and that would be true, although you should know that I feel this very deeply in my heart.

One can argue that the best genre of offseason basketball videos is the one that involves professional basketball players hanging out with children and reminding them that they are nowhere near as good as they are. A recent example came when Boban Marjanovic went to a camp and kindly invited kids to try and score on him, only to send their sh*t to another county because he is very tall.

Are you ready for a new one? Well, my assumption is you are because you clicked on this post, but, whatever: Here is a video of Zion Williamson, a physical marvel by basically any way you cut it, going to a gym and challenging a bunch of kids to play 1-on-1 against him. The children try to play some level of defense against the New Orleans Pelicans star, but instead, they learn the hard way that Zion is better at basketball than they are.

The cool thing with this video — namely that second clip — is that Zion is probably going at, like, 1.5 percent of his max effort. This is way more than most athletes do in these videos, because they tend to kinda just stand there and wait for something to happen before humbling some kids. But not Zion, and for that reason, this is a good video.

When it comes to COVID-19 conspiracy theories, Joe Rogan is a name that pops up often. It was a whole thing earlier in the year when Neil Young and David Crosby pulled their catalogs off Spotify because of Rogan spreading misinformation about the vaccines. So it’s pretty notable when Gina Carano stopped by Rogan’s podcast and got shut down while trying to voice her own controversial opinion on the pandemic.

Carano, who famously got fired from The Mandalorian following a series of controversial social media posts, has skewed even further to the right since being let go by Disney. However, Rogan pushed back when the actress said that the COVID-19 lockdowns purposefully affected people’s mental health and addictions by forcing them to stay home. Via Mediaite:

“I find it really hard to believe that they — the people that shut us down, you know, some of the most intelligent people — far more intelligent than I could ever imagine, didn’t know by taking people’s jobs away from them, taking their consistency, taking their livelihoods and saying ‘We’re gonna pay you and keep you home,’ wasn’t gonna affect people’s addictions. Wasn’t gonna affect people’s suicides, purpose, you know, because I’m my best felt — I’m my best self when I’m working,” she said.

“It’s like a responsibility that you just, you just took away their structure,” Carano continued. “So I just really find it hard to believe that this wasn’t on purpose.”

Despite endorsing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for president and praising his hands-off pandemic measures, Rogan did not agree with Carano’s theory that the government intentionally set out to harm people with the lockdowns.

“I don’t think it was on purpose,” Rogan said. “I think you’re dealing with Monday morning quarterbacking. And I think people are looking at it and going ‘How’d they not know this and how’d they not know that.’”

After a back and forth with Carano, Rogan stuck to his guns. ““I don’t think they knew. I think they were in a panic and I think they shut everyone down,” he said. When Carano expressed shock at Rogan’s “positive outlook,” he explained that he tries to remain “objective” and he looks at “the actual facts.” So it’s time to be shocked because this is the guy who fell for a fake news story about Steven Seagal personally helping Russian troops invade Ukraine.

(Via Mediaite)

Calvin Harris’ first Funk Wav Bounces album, which was released in June 2017, has become something of a cult favorite among dance music fans, who’ve agitated for a follow-up ever since. Harris recently began the rollout for Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2, dropping its first single, “Potion” featuring Dua Lipa and Young Thug, in May. Today, he finally shared the project’s long-awaited release date: August 5. He also teased the guestlist via a short video of waves crashing on a sunny shore with the names flashing across the screen.

Those names include 21 Savage, 6lack, Charlie Puth, Chloe, Halsey, Jorja Smith, Justin Timberlake, Latto, Lil Durk, Normani, Offset, Pharrell, Pusha T, Shenseea, Snoop Dogg, Stefflon Don, and Tinashe.

Ironically, there couldn’t be a better time for Harris to return with Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2, as a new wave of dance music — particularly dance music crafted by some of the world’s biggest entertainers — appears to be cresting. Just weeks ago, Drake surprise-dropped his club-influenced new album, Honestly, Nevermind, prompting a renewed interest and discussion of Black musicians in the art form, then Beyonce followed up with her new single “Break My Soul,” which even had national news programs looking up vocal house legend Robin S. to get her take on the out-of-nowhere revival of Black house music.

You can pre-save Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2, out 8/5 via Columbia Records, here

Emoni Bates is headed back to his home state of Michigan. Bates, the former No. 1 recruit in America who spent his freshman year of college playing for the Memphis Tigers before entering the transfer portal, told Joe Tipton of On3 that he’s made up his mind, but it comes with a pretty big twist: Instead of suiting up for Tom Izzo’s Michigan State Spartans or Juwan Howard’s Michigan Wolverines, Bates is going to his hometown of Ypsilanti to play for Eastern Michigan.

“People probably look at me crazy because I’m considering Eastern,” Bates told On3. “But if I went there, I would be like the neighborhood hero. I used to play at Eastern during my high school games when I was at Lincoln, and we used to pack it out every time. That would be crazy for me to be able to bring love to the city.”

Bates played his high school ball at Lincoln before transferring to Ypsi Prep Academy. He established himself as the top player in the class of 2022 before reclassifying and committing to Penny Hardaway’s Tigers as a top-10 recruit.

That first year at Memphis featured some bumps in the road, as he appeared in 18 games due to injuries and averaged 9.7 points a night. Because of his age, Bates was not able to make the jump to the NBA at the conclusion of his first year out of high school. Now, he’ll join an Eagles team coached by former Arkansas coach Stan Heath. The team plays in the MAC and went 10-21 during the 2021-22 campaign.