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One of the best wide receivers in college football will miss the remainder of the season. Jaylen Waddle, the superstar pass catcher for the Alabama Crimson Tide, suffered a broken ankle on Saturday afternoon during the first half of the team’s game against Tennessee.

Waddle received the opening kickoff against the Volunteers and came down awkwardly on his right leg. He spent some time on the ground before needing assistance making his way into the back.

While the first half went on and the Tide eventually took a 28-10 lead into the locker room, Waddle had to leave the stadium in an ambulance.

Then, in a bit of news that seemed inevitable given the circumstances under which Waddle left Neyland, Alabama coach Nick Saban told CBS that Waddle will miss the remainder of the year, with the team announcing that the diagnosis is a broken ankle.

Despite the fact that Alabama had a pair of first round picks in its wide receiving corps last season, Waddle was able to stand out, and set the stage for a potentially monster 2020 campaign. Waddle, prior to his injury, caught 25 balls for 557 yards and four scores for the No. 2 team in the sport. While the Crimson Tide always have players capable of filling in, losing a player of Waddle’s caliber is a gigantic loss.

After Khabib Nurmagomedov (29-0) submitted Justin Gaethje (22-3) to retain the UFC lightweight belt in the main event of UFC 254 at The Arena, Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the unbeaten champion retired from professional fighting. Nurmagomedov was emotional after the fight, his first since losing his father back in July.

Nurmagomedov and Gaethje spent much of the first round testing their distance and trading the occasional shot and the challenger firing away at the champ’s legs. Nurmagomedov spent the second half of the opening round walking the challenger down, keeping constant pressure while Gaethje responded with wild, off-target shots. After setting the pace on his feet, Nurmagomedov shot and took Gaethje to the ground, targeting an armbar to close the round.

Nurmagomedov kept the pressure on in the second, but it was Gaethje appearing to hurt the champ with repeated leg kicks. As soon as Gaethje any momentum, Nurmagomedov shot the legs and moved into a triangle choke for the submission win.

Gaethje claimed the interim belt when he stepped in as a late replacement for Nurmagomedov in the main event of UFC 249 against Tony Ferguson. In a wild sequence of events, Nurmagomedov-Ferguson was canceled for a fifth time after he left the United States to travel to the UAE, where it was assumed the event would take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He was eventually re-routed to Russia due to travel restrictions and was forced out of the fight. Gaethje became the first fighter to TKO Ferguson, setting up Saturday afternoon’s main event.

Nurmagomedov’s last championship fight came in September 2019, when he overwhelmed Dustin Poirier and submitted the former interim champ in the third round.

While his eleventh album was filled with a number of highlights, one of the main talking points from T.I.’s The L.I.B.R.A. was a reference to a 2015 incident in which one of the Atlanta rapper’s associates apparently urinated on Drake. The incident was brought to the public eye back in 2015 on Meek Mill’s diss track “Wanna Know.”

He raps, “You let Tip homie piss on you in a movie theater, n****, we ain’t forget.” On “We Did It Big” from The L.I.B.R.A., T.I. raps about the incident while remembering his late friend Terrance “Cap” Beasley, the person apparently behind the dirty deed. “Caught a body, spent millions appealin’ your case / While I’m fightin’ my own somehow got you home,” he raps. “So drunk in LA, end up pissin’ on Drake.”

In a recent sit-down with Apple Music’s Ebro Darden, T.I. explained that the Drake mention was in no way a diss to the Toronto rapper.

“I shut all that sh*t down,” T.I. said around the 7-minute mark of the interview. “I didn’t wanna be part of something that was a harmless incident… I didn’t want it to be weaponized against anybody… I was pissed off at my partner when it happened. The wildest sh*t I’ve ever seen before in my f*cking life. You know what I’m saying? But that sh*t, I ain’t had no malicious intent.” He concluded, “I just don’t see how it could ever be taken as a diss. I don’t see how that could be. That would be someone allowing their emotions to manipulate them, if so.”

You can listen to the full interview in the video above.

Meek Mill is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Earlier this month, Jay Electronica’s long-awaited Act II: Patents Of Nobility leaked online thanks to some hackers who reportedly paid $9,000 to get their hands on the new album and leak it. After initially wanting to get the album removed from the internet, Electronica opted to release Act II on TIDAL. The album dates back to 2007 after the Roc Nation rapper revealed that fans should expect Act II and Act III follow-ups to his to his 2007 debut mixtape, Act I: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge). Despite mentioning numerous release dates for Act II over the years, the project failed to arrive and left fans to believe it was shelved prior to its October 5 release.

Keeping the new music coming, though, Electronica opted to share another track on Saturday via Instagram, one that he says is a leftover track from his A Written Testimony album with Jay Z. Electronica first premiered the track, which is titled “Ruff Sketches,” in a Discord chat for a small group of fans who then pushed him to release the song to the masses. “After sharing this on our discord server, the good ppl over there decided i should share it period,” he said in the Instagram caption.

The song adds to what’s been an unusually active year for Electronica, one that began with his return to the music world thanks to A Written Testimony. He also appeared in the video for Chance The Rapper’s Coloring Book track, “How Great.” The visual was released nearly three years after Chance delivered Coloring Book.

You can hear the track in the Instagram post above.

NLE Choppa is hoping for a new and more positive chapter in his life, with a new project, From Dark To Light, out next month. But for his latest video, the Memphis native went back to his debut album, Top Shotta, specifically to his Lil Baby collaboration, “Narrow Road.” In the video, Choppa hits the road in a clean white Land Rover SUV, eventually making his way to an airport tarmac, where Lil Baby awaits him.

The video arrives after Choppa revealed that From Dark To Light, which will have 11 tracks, would arrive on his birthday, November 1. He also recently revealed that he would no longer rap about violence in his work, making sure to bring more positivity to his work and to his life. “Ion Rap Bout Violence Nomo. If You Hear It From Me It’s A Old Song,” he wrote in a tweet. “I Wanna Spread Positivity And Wake People Up. I’ll Still Drop Them For Y’all Tho But Just Know I’m On To Better I’m Tryna grow I Got More To Talk about Now.”

You can watch the “Narrow Road” video above.

NLE Choppa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Phil Hawes (9-2) had a debut to remember, taking just 18 seconds to knock out Jacob Malkoun (4-1) at UFC 254 at The Arena, Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Hawes showed off the power that earned him his debut early in the fight, walking down Malkoun, backing him against the Octagon cage and letting his hands fly. Hawes caught him behind the right ear, landed a left hook square on the chin and finished the fight with a hammer fist on the ground.

Hawes earned his UFC contract after impressing with a first-round TKO as part of Dana White’s Contender Series back in September. This followed Hawes’ second stint in Dana White’s Contender Series, suffering a knockout via head kick in the second round of a 2017 bout. This time, it would appear Hawes is here to stay. Hawes is now riding a five-fight win streak and has one of the fastest knockouts in UFC middleweight history.

After the fight, Hawes told Jon Anik he’s healthy and ready to go as soon as Saturday, October 31, when the UFC returns to the UFC Apex in Las Vegas.

The loss was the first of Malkoun’s career, who was also making his debut inside the Octagon.

Recently Sacha Baron Cohen has been doing something he’s rarely done before: He’s spoken as himself. Usually he stays in one of his characters, but even when discussing his new sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, he’s played things straight, earnestly discussing the serious issues his comedies bring up. Even when Donald Trump insulted him, he made sure to respond not as Borat but as himself.

On Friday, the president was asked by reporters about the climax of the film, which finds his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in a compromising position with actress Maria Bakalova, whose character is 15 years old. As he often does, Trump played ignorant, saying he didn’t know anything about it, but he did claim that, 15 years back, he was the target of a failed Baron Cohen prank. “That’s a phony guy. And I don’t find him funny,” he said. “To me, he was a creep.”

Baron Cohen wasn’t having it.

“Donald—I appreciate the free publicity for Borat! I admit, I don’t find you funny either. But yet the whole world laughs at you,” Baron Cohen tweeted. “I’m always looking for people to play racist buffoons, and you’ll need a job after Jan. 20. Let’s talk!”

Giuliani isn’t the only member of the Trump administration. Mike Pence plays a key role — and makes an appearance relatively early on — while a deleted scene finds Bakalova’s character, who winds up infiltrating right wing media, worming her way into the White House and shmoozing with Donald Trump Jr. At one point Borat even dons an elaborate Trump costume and gets thrown out of CPAC. If only Baron Cohen had gotten a one-on-one with the infamous Stephen Miller.

You can watch Baron Cohen’s latest film — full title: The Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan — on Amazon Prime now.

(Via Deadline)

The Miami Heat just turned in a surprising run in the NBA’s Orlando Bubble to the Finals, where they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in six games. There were plenty of reasons for optimism out of the Heat, though, and it’s hard not to wonder what the team would have done if a pair of starters — Bam Adebayo and Goran Dragic — stayed healthy for the entirety of the series with L.A.

Miami now finds itself in a strange spot. The team has a number of free agents, and at the same time, they do not want to spend too liberally with an eye on landing a superstar once the potentially power-altering summer of 2021 rolls around and a number of gigantic names become unrestricted free agents.

For the team’s boss, though, that’s a little too far down the road. Pat Riley met with the media on Friday and explained that his No. 1 priority is to take care of the players who helped them make it as far as they did this summer.

“We know what our priorities are,” Riley said, per ESPN. “It is to take care of the players that we have, that we have to make decisions on almost immediately. We know Bam has a decision to make and we do with him. We know the guys that have sacrificed for us that we really like, our free agents, especially Goran.”

Dragic, as he mentioned, is an unrestricted free agent, and a gigantic one at that. His play in the Bubble is a major reason why the Heat were able to exceed expectations, and prior to a foot injury, he looked like an All-Star. Other notable free agents in Miami are Jae Crowder, Solomon Hill, Derrick Jones Jr., and Meyers Leonard, while Kelly Olynyk has a player option. There’s also the matter of Adebayo, who is eligible for an extension and a crucial piece to the puzzle going forward.

Riley did acknowledge that Miami has one eye on the future, saying, “I just think we need to remain fluid. Once we get all the numbers and we get everything down, we get the schedule, we know when the dates are, and what the rules are in everything, once we get all of that, we’re going to remain fluid. And whatever presents itself to us, we’ll look at it.” In the meantime, though, he seems perfectly content for the Heat to run it back next season in some form or fashion.

Ohio State kicked off its 2020 season by playing host to Nebraska on Saturday afternoon in Columbus. As the game was getting out of hand in the fourth quarter of play, the Buckeyes began getting more and more of their younger players run. It was a good decision they did that, because one of the team’s true freshman receivers made one of the plays of the year to secure the team a touchdown.

The team faced a first-and-goal from the Husker 5 early on in the fourth quarter. Signal caller Justin Fields rolled out to his right, surveyed his options, and rifled a pass to Jaxon Smith-Njigba as he got lit up by a defender. Smith-Njigba did his best to reel it in, but appeared to be out of bounds after failing to get a foot in.

While Smith-Njigba and fellow receiver Jameson Williams signaled for a touchdown, the officials said no. Then, they looked again, and realized that the true freshman pulled off a ridiculous toe tap to get a foot inbounds and give the Buckeyes another score.

The body control here is otherworldly — Smith-Njigba’s body is out of bounds, and yet he manages to go way up, pluck the ball out of the air, and somehow get his right foot in for the score. Ohio State has one of the nation’s scariest receiver groups, and if this is any indication, the former five-star prospect is going to fit into that group comfortably.

Even before the New Orleans Pelicans’ disappointing run through the seeding games in Orlando, things weren’t looking good for Alvin Gentry. And after limping through the finish line with a 2-6 record despite enjoying the most conducive schedule for earning a playoff berth of all the teams invited to the Bubble, though, his fate was sealed.

Gentry was never quite able to get his roster to coalesce. He also had the misfortune of being in charge while Zion Williamson struggled through injuries to start his rookie season, which led to him never quite looking right during restart. Zion’s play in Orlando only compounded the perception that Gentry wasn’t the right person for the job.

Once Gentry was out, the Pelicans job quickly became one of the most coveted openings around the NBA. The opportunity to coach a roster with a bevy of young players, a treasure trove of draft picks, and a potential once-in-a-generation talent comes with all sorts of allure, not to mention enormous pressure. In Stan Van Gundy, New Orleans turned to someone with plenty of experience handling both.

Still, the hiring came as something of a surprise, as Van Gundy had settled comfortably into his role as a broadcast analyst for TNT, though his name had started popping up in rumors more and more frequently as the coaching carousel picked up momentum toward the end of the season. It also appeared that Tyronn Lue might be a frontrunner for the job given his previous relationship with general manager David Griffin, although he ultimately stayed in L.A. to take over for Doc Rivers.

Van Gundy’s last coaching gig in Detroit didn’t go particularly well, as the Pistons missed the playoffs in three out of his four seasons there. But Van Gundy was also pulling the ill-advised double duty of acting as both coach and general manager, a scenario that has rarely worked out for NBA coaches. Both Rivers and Tom Thibodeau are recent casualties of those experiments, and while Van Gundy didn’t necessarily do a bad job coaching the Pistons, his work at the team’s top executive made him his own worst enemy and ultimately led to his demise.

That won’t be the case in New Orleans, as Griffin is the one in charge of high-level personnel decisions for the organization as executive VP — a recent episode of ESPN’s “The Hoop Collective” podcast indicated that Van Gundy will be laser-focused on coaching. But the personnel, as it currently stands, will still be one of his biggest conundrums. That is, of course, excluding their superstar duo of Zion and newly-crowned Most Improved Player Brandon Ingram. The goal when looking at the rest of the roster is to view how the team’s various pieces fit around those two tentpoles. While the Pelicans have a nice mix of young talent and battle-tested veterans, the question is how to deploy them around those two?

During his 11 seasons on an NBA bench, SVG staked his claim as a defensive-minded savant, with his teams regularly finishing in the top 10 on that end of the floor. This an area that was sorely lacking in New Orleans this season despite boasting solid individual defenders at various positions, and should the team take a step forward on that end of the floor and go from a bottom-10 bunch to even a middle of the road group, that would pay major dividends.

The renewed focus on that end of the court could signal a resurgence for Jrue Holiday, widely considered one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, not to mention a versatile combo guard who could pair alongside Ball in the backcourt and is more than happy to facilitate for the talented youngsters around him. Perhaps something comes of the fact that his name has been mentioned in trade rumors for some time, but there really is not pressing need to move him as soon as possible. Holiday would help them, and he’s under contract for potentially the next two seasons (his deal has a player option in 2021-22), so there is no pressing need to flip him.

Van Gundy will also reunite with J.J. Redick, whose development in his early years in Orlando under SVG helped salvage a career that was quickly going south and instead transformed him into a deadly catch-and-shoot threat who remains a valuable contributor to this day. Van Gundy will likely lean on Redick for his experience and stability both on the court and as mentor to some of the younger players, while his ability to space the floor will be crucial to free up space for Williamson to attack and Ingram to work off the bounce.

The question of Ball is a little more complicated, and not just because he’s extension eligible this offseason. Van Gundy has offered high praise to Ball in the past for his size, his basketball IQ, and the strides he made as a shooter this season, all of which could factor heavily into the Pelicans’ schemes moving forward. He’ll need someone who can facilitate the offense, get out in transition, defend, and knock down open shots. Things become much easier for New Orleans moving forward if Ball is reliable member of a trio with Ingram and Williamson rather than a role player.

Van Gundy’s Magic teams were actually ahead of the curve for their time, regularly finishing among the top of the league in pace and three-point shooting, both of which are paramount to the modern run-and-gun game and could signal the direction the Pelicans go this season. Given their current roster, New Orleans could opt to go ultra small at times, like the Rockets did this postseason to mixed results, and unleash some configuration of a three or four-guard lineup that features Zion as de facto center, surrounded by a cadre of shooters and play-makers. They do have a very intriguing young center in Jaxson Hayes, while veteran big man Derrick Favors is an unrestricted free agent.

A whole heck of a lot depends on just how creative Van Gundy wants to get and how much he’s willing to trade off on the defensive end. The Lakers exposed the fundamental flaw in hyper small ball when they easily dispatched Houston in the second round. While the best version of Zion is much more dangerous than Houston’s undersized bigs, playing him at the five and casting him in the 2009-Dwight-Howard role isn’t a viable long-term solution.

Figuring out how to best showcase Zion’s many skills is perhaps the biggest lingering question for the Pelicans. He’s proven to be a terror in the open court, as a slasher, and even with his back to the basket this season, and it’ll be fascinating to see what types of situations Van Gundy puts him in to unlock some of those gifts. There is a reason he is viewed as a generational talent, but being a potential game-changer and becoming that sort of player are two different things. His coach will play a major factor in determining the path that Zion’s career follows.

Without the burden of roster construction and other front-office distractions, Van Gundy is free to focus his full attention on the court, building team chemistry, and developing the younger players on his team. The expectations are high, but he’s been here before. What he makes of the opportunity this time around could be the difference between the Pelicans being a group with promise and a group with aspirations of competing for a title.