Category: Viral

Each year as training camp begins, NBA.com’s John Schuhmann sends out a survey to all 30 general managers in the league asking them a variety of questions about the upcoming season. This year, the GM survey features 50 questions, ranging from who will win the title to who the best passer in the league is, and while a lot of them are unsurprising (spoiler: the Celtics get 25 of the 30 votes for who will win it all), there are always some intriguing insights into how the most powerful front office personnel view the league.

Here, we will highlight the three most interesting things we learned from the GM survey, starting with how Boston views the East thanks to the process of elimination.

Who does Brad Stevens see as the biggest threat in the East?

The expectation from GMs is that the Finals will be a Celtics-Thunder series, as Boston got 97 percent of the votes (29 of 30) to win the East. Given the rules of the survey are you can’t vote for your own team/player, that means the lone other first place vote belonged to Brad Stevens, who, perhaps surprisingly, picked the Cleveland Cavaliers as the team most likely to win the East other than his Boston squad. That Stevens’ pick is the Cavs over the Knicks or Sixers, who were the most frequent picks for second and third, is pretty interesting, and you could look at it one of two ways. It is either a pretty strong vote of confidence that Kenny Atkinson is going to get this Cavs team all on the same page this coming year to hit their full potential, or a little jab at the two teams most consider the closest to Boston in the East after busy offseasons.

The rest of the league is very high on the Thunder

The Thunder come up a lot in the survey, as it’s clear other GMs believe OKC’s run to the 1-seed and the second round last year was only the beginning. In the West, OKC got 80 percent of the votes (24 votes), with Denver, Dallas, and Phoenix all getting two votes each, and they got 4 votes to win it all. Going along with the expectation they’ll be the best in the West, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander earned the most votes (12) for MVP honors, beating out Luka Doncic (9) for the status as the front office favorite for the award. Jalen Williams narrowly led the selections for breakout player this year (4 votes), while Alex Caruso was picked as the most underrated addition this summer (7 votes) and the Thunder topped the Knicks and Sixers in voting for who had the best offseason (11 votes). That last point is particularly interesting as New York and Philly made huge splash moves, with Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges heading to the Knicks via trade and Paul George signing with the Sixers. Even so, the Thunder being able to add Isaiah Hartenstein and Alex Caruso without giving up a single rotation player to do so earned OKC the majority of the votes for best offseason.

Reed Sheppard is the rookie the rest of the league believes in

This was not a particularly well-regarded rookie class at the top, but the name that stood out from this year’s polling of the league is Houston’s pick at No. 3 overall, Reed Sheppard. Sheppard got 50 percent of the vote (15 votes) for Rookie of the Year and 43 percent of the vote (13 votes) for who will be the best player from this rookie class in five years. That’s a pretty significant margin for a guy who went third in the Draft, and I’m sure most all of these GMs saw Sheppard in person at Summer League where he looked phenomenal. It also, for me, adds to the intrigue of Houston who has the deepest roster of interesting rookie contract guys in the league but finding minutes and roles for all of them isn’t obvious. That said, clearly the rest of the NBA figures Sheppard will find pretty firm footing in Houston’s rotation and do so quickly, as that’s a must if he’s going to win Rookie of the Year.

The women’s basketball boom shows no signs of slowing down any time soon, as the popularity of the WNBA and women’s college hoops is at an all-time high, and the stars at both levels are starting to get the kind of endorsement opportunities off the court that have often been reserved for their male counterparts.

Sneaker deals, in particular, are on the rise in women’s hoops. Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu have popular signature sneaker lines with Puma and Nike respectively, and Nike is soon to add signature sneakers for A’ja Wilson and Caitlin Clark as they expand their women’s basketball footprint. The competition in the sneaker space and the race to sign stars of the future has given some serious leverage to stars like Clark and Wilson, as other brands like adidas (now led by Candace Parker) and Curry Brand have chased hard to try and get a new face of their brand’s women’s line.

The next stars up are Paige Bueckers and Juju Watkins, who both have Nike deals, with Bueckers getting the first college PEs for any Nike women’s athlete this upcoming season. The question has been whether Nike would be willing to invest enough to keep all of their women’s stars, and on Tuesday we got an early answer when they signed Watkins to a long-term contract extension that, per Shams Charania of ESPN, will give her “one of the richest sneaker deals in women’s basketball.” The details of the deal, in terms of both money and promises for a future signature sneaker, are unknown, but given Caitlin Clark’s deal is worth a reported $28 million over 8 years, to be “one of the richest” it would stand to reason that this is worth seven figures per year.

Watkins is getting set to begin her sophomore season at USC, which means she still has a few years before even reaching the WNBA, but she’s now able to take advantage of NIL rules that allow her to cash in on her status as a star in the sport years before she would have previously. As a freshman, Watkins was sensational and she certainly looks like she is going to be one of the faces of the sport for years to come. Nike recognized that and made sure to lock her in to a sneaker deal early that keeps other brands from trying to poach her away.

The 20th anniversary of MF DOOM‘s fifth album MM..FOOD is right around the corner, and there’s a whole ton of new merch coming to celebrate — including, apparently, a popcorn bucket…?

Okay, so AMC isn’t really releasing one of its infamous custom concession containers to commemorate DOOM’s high-concept, edible-inspired album… but you can pretend it is with the bucket for Gladiator 2, which fans have noted bears a distinctive resemblance to the rap supervillain’s trademark mask.

Of course, there’s an obvious reason for the MF DOOM vibes coming from the Gladiator 2 bucket: DOOM’s mask was a modified prop from the first Gladiator film worn by the titular protagonist played by Russell Crowe. It just so happens that in the intervening 24 years since the first film, the design has become much more associated with DOOM in pop culture, leading to similar, very funny misunderstandings such as the time actress Sharon Stone posted a photo on social media wearing the mask, generating a slew of jokes about her actually being the iconic underground rapper.

In reality, DOOM was the not-so-secret identity of Daniel Dumile, formerly known as Zev Love X from the early ’90s rap group KMD. However, he still did manage to keep one aspect of his civilian identity out of the public record: His birthday, which rap fans mistook for decades before his death in 2020.

When the Green Bay Packers drafted Jordan Love in 2020, the organization had a long-term vision for how their eventual star quarterback would blossom. Love sat behind Aaron Rodgers during an MVP season, and for two years, he was able to learn on the job. He observed his footwork, how he practiced, and how he approached simply being a professional.

That last bit is key, and it’s relatively interchangeable across sports.

In AEW, Wheeler Yuta joined the Blackpool Combat Club more than two years ago, and has had the luxury of learning from all three original members of the group win a world championship. The lessons have been invaluable, Yuta says, to work with guys the caliber of Bryan Danielson, Jon Moxley, and Claudio Castagnoli.

“They’ve all taught me, in different ways,” Yuta tells Uproxx Sports. “Jon has obviously taught me just unbridled violence and passion in the ring. Bryan has shown me that as well, but also with a technical nastiness. Claudio has shown me so much — team wrestling and how to present myself and how to act outside the ring, just diet and nutrition, things like that, as well.”

At some point, young stars reach a point where they have to carve their own path and apply everything that they’ve learned. For Love, that came when the Packers finally handed things over to him. For Yuta, that came when it was time for him to take the next step in his career.

“I think they’ve really shown me how to be a professional,” Yuta says. “Now, I can carry myself. I don’t necessarily need those guys to baby me and hold my hand anymore. I’ve learned how to be a professional and I think it’s because of their guidance. But now I can take it and run with it by myself.”

Whether he was necessarily ready to carve his own path or not, Yuta’s hand was forced in recent weeks as the onscreen dynamic of the BCC shifted and the foundation of the group started to collapse. With PAC’s addition and Moxley’s new demeanor, the current Trios Champion was moved to action to protect Danielson. And the latest move has set up a showdown between Yuta, Danielson, and his Trios Championship partners, Castagnoli and PAC, on Wednesday night Dynamite.

“It’s very, very foreign to me. I’ve wrestled PAC before, like long before I was even in the Blackpool Combat Club. But I’ve never wrestled Claudio, so it’s a new challenge. It’s definitely interesting to be on the other side of the ring from them, considering how much I know about what they do from being on their team as the Trios Champions,” Yuta says. “So it’s very familiar in some senses, but in others, it’s very foreign. So I’m excited for the challenge.”

Yuta holds his relationship with Danielson near and dear to his heart. He looked up to The American Dragon before he broke into wrestling, and believes that his fellow BCC member is “probably the greatest wrestler of all time.”

“He’s done it as such a high level in so many different places for so long in so many different styles and against so many different opponents. I think he has an incredibly compelling argument to be the best of all time,” Yuta continues. “The fact that he would take an interest in me and he would provide mentorship, not only in the ring, but out of the ring with different things regarding my health and just who I am as a human being. The fact that he’s done all that and taken such an interest in me has really meant the world to me.”

Moxley and Danielson are alike in some regards — both have the same goal in bringing wrestling forward, where the sport grows and thrives, especially in AEW. At the same time, Yuta says, they have very different visions for how to make that happen.

“I’ve experienced a lot of tough love from both of them. But I think, deep down, there’s a lot more empathy and tact, I will say, in Bryan’s approach versus Jon’s, sort of, by any means necessary, pick it up or get left behind mentality. I think that you can clearly see that. In this rivalry right now, the way that the two of them are interacting on TV, that’s very similar to how they approach things,” Yuta says.

“So it’s been a lot of tough love, but there’s certainly a softer side sometimes to Bryan. You can see it when he’s in the ring at all, in with his kids and stuff like that. But I think Jon is very focused on just by any means necessary, getting the job done.”

We’ll see what plays out on television over the next few weeks to understand where Yuta goes in his career. He’s not sure what the future holds, but wants to take strides and agency over how he evolves.

But regardless of what happens next, Yuta says his experiences as part of the BCC are part of him.

“All I can do is continue to focus on learning, and growing, and taking every opportunity by the horns that I’m given. And just continuing to move forward in that sense because, even going back to everything I did on the independents, all the traveling I did around to different countries, the different cities and states, that’s all part of me. All of the time I spent with the Best Friends, that’s all a part of me. All the time I spent with the BCC, that’s all a part of me,” Yuta says.

“So now it’s just continuing to move forward and drawing upon the correct lessons at the correct time and making sure that I never stopped learning.”

If this is how you find it’s not the real Sydney Sweeney trying to sell you crypto, I’m sorry for your loss (of money).

McAfee has released the list of the 10 celebrities whose names were “most frequently fabricated this year for online scams,” according to The Hollywood Reporter, including fake advertisements, phony giveaways, and sham weight loss gummies. (Learn how you can avoid getting scammed here.)

Number one is Scarlett Johansson (“advertisements and endorsements” is what she’s falsely being associated with), followed by Kylie Jenner (“social media giveaway scams and fake Kylie Cosmetics products and websites”), Taylor Swift (“celebrity endorsements, ticket scams, and product giveaway scams”), and Anya Taylor-Joy (“a giveaway scam”).

Sabrina Carpenter (“an app for creating sexually explicit images”) and Sydney Sweeney (“crypto scams”) are #6 and #7, while the only guys on the list are #5 Tom Hanks (“miracle cures and wonder drugs”) and #9 Johnny Depp (“giveaway, crypto, and fundraising scams”). Not to victim blame, but if you’re looking for crypto from Jack Sparrow, maybe you deserve to get scammed?

Here’s the full top 10:

1. Scarlett Johansson
2. Kylie Jenner
3. Taylor Swift
4. Anya Taylor-Joy
5. Tom Hanks
6. Sabrina Carpenter
7. Sydney Sweeney
8. Blake Lively
9. Johnny Depp
10. Addison Rae

Notice how Jason Statham isn’t on the list. Scammers are terrified of The Beekeeper.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Fast food brands f*cking love Halloween. There isn’t another holiday that activates fast food brands quite like Halloween does, and we’re here for it. We can’t blame the big brands for wanting to dress up their menu for the holiday; we certainly love to do it too, and if it means new food for us, we can’t get mad at what is essentially a blatant cash grab.

Because let’s face it, none of this food is sticking around after the holiday, but this traditionally spooky time of year gives brands a chance to do something out there and weird. And that can be a lot of fun. If it tastes good, we don’t care how much food coloring they use to make it spooky (see the Burger King Ghost Pepper Whopper).

First up in what is sure to be a month full of Halloween fast food reviews, we’ve got Jack in the Box, who is dropping two new spooky menu items: The Mummy Wrapped Monster Taco and the cheekily-named Witch Please milkshake. We’ve tasted both, so you don’t have to. Here are our thoughts.

Mummy Wrapped Monster Taco

Thoughts & Tasting Notes:

What is Jack in the Box to do when the menu already contains a Monster Taco? Wrap the taco in another tortilla, add a few ingredients, and call it “Mummy Wrapped” I guess. I suppose that’s better than dying the whole thing green and calling it “Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster Taco,” though the latter certainly sounds cooler.

The Mummy Wrapped Monster Taco features the same build as a regular Monster Taco: weird soy-based “meat,” shredded lettuce, taco sauce, and *shudder* American cheese, wrapped in a flour tortilla and melded together with bacon bits and melty cheese sauce. The result is a salt bomb of zesty flavor with a sweet and smokey finish.

It’s not terrible, but if you already find JiB’s tacos off-putting, this isn’t exactly going to win you over. If you do however have a soft spot for JiB’s tacos, this does feel like an elevation of the menu staple.

The Bottom Line:

Add this to the menu permanently, Jack in the Box! This would certainly slap under the right circumstances (buzzed or high), but if you already hate JiB’s tacos, you’re going to hate this too.

Witch Please Shake

Thoughts & Tasting Notes:

I hate the Witch Please Shake because of its name. I just don’t like saying to a fast food employee, “Can I get a Witch Please?” It feels ridiculous. And I have a sneaking suspicion that they don’t like hearing it either.

Name aside, the Witch Please Shake is pretty damn good, but — and this is a big but — I feel the quality control needs work. JiB advertises this shake as being purple with swirls of Oreo cookie crumbles throughout.

What I received was a white vanilla shake with pools of purple goop along the sides of the cup and at the bottom with a sprinkling of Oreo cookies on the whipped cream. I didn’t realize at first the shake wasn’t supposed to look like this, so I drank it, and the intense sweetness from the purple goop was so sweet it burned my throat. Maybe that’s on me, but be warned that when you get this shake, you’re going to have to mix it up with a few straw stabs to distribute the purple flavoring.

Mixing it up vastly improves the experience, the Witch Please Shake features a rich, sweet, slightly floral semi-nutty ube flavor. If you’re unfamiliar with ube, it’s a sweet purple yam flavor that is extremely popular and common at boba shops. JiB has taken a lot of influence from boba shops for its dessert drinks recently, and we’re here for it! The Witch Please is the best boba-influenced drink JiB has ever dropped.

The Bottom Line:

Overall, I love this shake and like the Mummy Wrapped Monster Taco, I think it deserves a permanent spot on the JiB menu.

(Yellowjackets spoilers will be found below.)

Showtime’s Yellowjackets isn’t done with the soccer team’s hellish experience in the Canadian woods and their also-bad adult lives. The survival horror-thriller series (starring Sophie Thatcher, Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, and Christina Ricci) concluded its second season after cannibalism officially went on display and the show said tragic goodbye to Juliette Lewis’ older Nat.

The latest finale episode aired in August 2023, and at that time, multiple Hollywood strikes were in effect, but the ambiguity over a return date persists.

When Will Yellowjackets Season 3 Arrive?

Showtime has not released an exact Sunday night premiere date for Yellowjackets but has pinpointed Winter 2025 as the return window. So, January through March is fair game for us to find out whether Lottie will remain in a mental institute. We should also see the in-the-woods followup from Nat being crowned the new Antler Queen along with the “present day” handling of Nat’s death, which was already misinterpreted by authorities as a drug overdose.

On an even more curious note, we must wait until the show debuts to hear the Season 3 soundtrack, and it will be hard for the show to top the inclusion of Tori Amos’ “Cornflake Girl.” Not even the newfound addition of Hilary Swank will make people stop wondering about the music.

Hopefully, Showtime realizes that hints would be appreciated [cough].

In August, Faye Webster wrapped up the US leg of her tour in support of her latest album, Underdressed At The Symphony. For those who didn’t get a chance to see her on that run, good news: Today (October 8), Webster has announced new North American tour dates, for 2025.

The run starts in February and goes until March, and it includes stops in Louisville, Connecticut, New York City (Radio City Music Hall, at that), Maine, Montreal, Toronto, Columbus, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Mexico City. Tickets for the new shows are set to go on sale on October 11 at 10 a.m. local time. Find more information on Webster’s website.

This news comes after a busy past few weeks for Webster. On September 28, she hosted the inaugural Faye Webster YoYo Invitational. Last week, she dropped a new song, “After The First Kiss.”

Find Webster’s 2025 tour dates below.

Faye Webster 2025 Tour Dates: Underdressed At The Symphony Tour 2025

02/23/2025 — Louisville, KY @ Paristown Hall
02/25/2025 — New Haven, CT @ College Street Music Hall
02/26/2025 — New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall
02/28/2025 — Portland, ME @ State Theatre
03/01/2025 — Montreal, QC @ MTELUS
03/03/2025 — Toronto, ON @ Queen Elizabeth Theatre
03/06/2025 — Columbus, OH @ Kemba Live!
03/07/2025 — Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theatre
03/08/2025 — Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room at Old National Theatre
03/10/2025 — Milwaukee, WI @ Riverside Theatre
03/11/2025 — Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed
03/15/2025 — Mexico City, MX @ Auditorio BB

The day before kicking off her inaugural arena tour, Maggie Rogers has shared a new song, her first since the release of Don’t Forget Me.

“In The Living Room” was written in March 2023, when Rogers and her co-writer/co-producer Ian Fitchuk “were back in the studio and decided to try for one more song,” she explained in a statement. “Like so much of the album, it’s a song about the beauty and pain of memory, and the way that interweaves with reality when you’re processing the exit of a person in your life. Ultimately, Don’t Forget Me as an album is about how we remember people, and the stories we tell ourselves in the process of creating new realities.”

You can watch the video for the stirring song above. Also, be sure to check out the dates for Rogers’ The Don’t Forget Me Tour Part 2 below.

Maggie Rogers 2024 Tour Dates: The Don’t Forget Me Tour Part 2

10/09 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center
10/15 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
10/17 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden
10/19 — New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
10/22 — Toronto, ON @ Coca-Cola Coliseum
10/24 — Chicago, IL @ United Center
10/25 — Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center
10/29 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
10/30 — Portland, OR @ Moda Center
11/01 — San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
11/02 — Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum

The late MF DOOM may not have been the best known hip-hop artist during his life, but while he was still around, he dropped some undisputed underground classics. One of those classics was 2004’s MM..FOOD, his fifth studio album. A concept album revolving around double entendre references to comestibles, MM..FOOD is widely held as one of rap’s most creative projects of the backpack era, expanding on the idea of what rap could and should be.

On November 15th, Rhymesayers will reissue the album in honor of its 20th anniversary with special-edition apparel, toys (of course), and vinyl records featuring all new artwork by artist Sam Rodriguez. Here’s everything that will be included:

– A limited deluxe edition double LP, which will come with a bonus 7″ featuring the rare original version of “Kookies” and its Just Blaze-produced remix.

– A reissue of the “Hoe Cakes” 12″, which has been out-of-print for some years, pressed on a “bug juice blend” colored vinyl with its original artwork.

– A digital deluxe version of MM..FOOD with rare remixes of “One Beer” and “Hoe Cakes” by Madlib, Jake One, and Ant. The Madlib “One Beer” remix is up top.

– A Super7 action figure inspired by the album cover. It’ll come with a 33 oz. cereal bowl and matching spoon. MMMM, cereal.

– The apparel collection, which has shirts, hoodies, hats, and aprons. Additionally, there’s some cool accessories like tote bags, lighters, and record slipmats.

You can see the full range of the collection below and find more info at gasdrawls.com or rhymesayers.com.