Category: Viral

Over a period from 1992 through 2019, the men’s USA Basketball team won 54 out of 56 exhibition games while deploying NBA players. On Monday evening, Team USA lost its second exhibition game in three days, following up a shocking loss to Nigeria with a close-fought defeat at the hands of Australia. In the aftermath, many were quick to lament the team’s recent play but, in the post-game press conference, Team USA and San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich had a relatively heated exchange with a reporter over whether the United States had a history of blowing out opponents in this setting.

The specifics of the disagreement may be a bit fuzzy, but Popovich and the reporter, Joe Vardon of The Athletic, clearly don’t see eye to eye in this instance. Popovich dug his heels in by insisting blowouts are less frequent at the highest levels of international competition, while Vardon was seemingly focusing on the United States’ lofty average margin of victory when using NBA players.

As a result, the exchange was certainly tense, with Popovich insisting that he finish his statement and Vardon continue to interject. This certainly isn’t the first time that Popovich has had a viral-level moment in an exchange with a media member, but the frustration of back-to-back losses may be boiling over in advance of Team USA heading to Tokyo for the Olympics. On the floor, the United States can take solace in having the most talented roster, but the early returns are not particularly strong, and many will be asking whether Popovich, his staff and this particular group of high-level players can right the ship.

Over the weekend, the men’s USA Basketball squad got beaten in a shocking upset by Nigeria — who went on to beat Argentina on Monday and prove they may just be for real — in exhibition action in Las Vegas. It was a stunner, but one Team USA suggested could be a needed wake-up call before they head to Tokyo for the Olympics.

On Monday, they had a chance to right the ship against Australia, a team that beat them in exhibition action back in 2019 before the FIBA World Cup, the first signal of potential major issues that ended up seeing the U.S. bounced early in China. However, the bounce back performance from Team USA was not to be, as they struggled once again offensively in a 91-83 loss to the Boomers, who were led by Patty Mills (22 points) and Joe Ingles (17 points) as they look to find the podium for the first time in the nation’s Olympic history in a month’s time.

Ingles did much of his damage early, hitting his first three attempts from long range to keep the Boomers within striking distance of a similarly hot start for Team USA.

Damian Lillard was the one who got it going early for the Americans, finishing with a team-high 22 points himself.

Kevin Durant had 17 for Team USA and Bradley Beal added 12, but for a team that boasts so many scorers, they have clearly not figured out how to all coexist on offense, particularly late in games. Jayson Tatum’s struggles continue as he had eight points on 4-of-12 shooting, and no one seems to know quite what to do to create good offense in the halfcourt as they are currently constructed. Adding the three players they’re currently missing due to the Finals figures to help that some, but they’ll have even less time to work those three into the rotation and build that cohesion that is so clearly missing right now for the squad.

For Australia, there was no doubt who they were going to down the stretch, as Mills took over as he so often does for the Boomers. He carved up the U.S and, while he didn’t need to produce late heroics like against Argentina, he was relentless in attacking and poking holes in the USA defense to keep them at bay.

On defense, Matisse Thybulle’s length bothered the Americans, as he got a rare block on a KD jumper and stuffed the stat sheet for the night with 12 points, three assists, two rebounds, two blocks, and three steals — including a big three during Australia’s late third quarter run to take a five point lead into the fourth.

If the loss to Nigeria was a wake-up call, then this loss to Australia has to ring at least a few real alarm bells for Team USA. There’s certainly still time and ample talent to figure things out, but if nothing else these exhibition games are showing the world this U.S. team is more than vulnerable and any fear factor the All-Star roster creates seems likely to be almost completely worn away. There was a time where the USA men never lost in exhibition games, and have now equaled their exhibition loss number over the past 30 years in one week.

As for Australia, it further builds their confidence that this can be the year they win a medal, even without Ben Simmons playing, as Mills and Ingles give them some serious offensive firepower, and they have a lot of length elsewhere on defense to make life difficult for other squads. Nigeria, fresh off its win over Argentina, took to Twitter to welcome Australia to the “beat the USA in Vegas” club.

Team USA will have one final game tomorrow night against Argentina (6 p.m. ET) to try and get that first win and build at least a bit of confidence going into Tokyo.

Los Angeles Angels star Shohei Ohtani has been the biggest story of the 2021 Major League Baseball season. The 27-year-old is a unique figure in the game, excelling as both a pitcher and hitter, and Ohtani entered the All-Star break as MLB’s leader in myriad offensive categories. Included in that is a league-best 33 home runs in only 84 games and, as the Home Run Derby arrived on Monday evening, many were intrigued with the show Ohtani might be able to put on as the betting favorite to claim the title. Ultimately, though, Ohtani wasn’t able to win the event, but he did provide all kinds of fireworks alongside Washington Nationals star Juan Soto in the opening round.

Fittingly, the Ohtani-Soto battle was the final matchup of the first round, and Soto posted 22 home runs in his opening run. Ohtani struggled a bit early but, on cue, he fired things up and was able to tie Soto in the final seconds.

That forced a swing-off, with each player having a minute to add to the previous scores. Soto knocked six baseballs over the wall, reaching 28 in total, and Ohtani answered by matching him swing for swing.

To break the second tie, both players were given exactly three untimed swings and Soto did the unthinkable in blasting all three for home runs.

That put the pressure firmly on Ohtani and, when he missed a home run on his first swing, the favorite went down.

While it would’ve been a fun story to see Ohtani win the whole thing, this was a wild back-and-forth and Soto is a beloved figure in his own right. The 22-year-old superstar moved on to the semifinals with the win, but the Derby is heavily about vibes, and this matchup had all the drama one would want. Ohtani didn’t win, but he gave the people what they came for which was to see mammoth blasts, as he put a ridiculous six home runs over the 500 foot mark, while Soto wasn’t hitting cheap ones himself, with the longest blast of the night at 520 feet.

Vince Staples has been back lately in a big way, even though he never left. The Long Beach-raised rapper is brutally honest enough to talk about the way the music industry monetizes people’s struggles, and on the heels of releasing his latest full-length album, Vince Staples, he’s shared another new video for “Are You With That?” The video follows up earlier singles like “Law Of Averages,” oh and an explosive LA Leakers freestyle, giving fans more of what they were hoping for in the lead up to the new project.

In the first half of the clip, Vince is portrayed under glaring spotlight in a number of mundane situations, doubling down on the unsettling nature of surveillance, and the way Black people are scrutinized in a specific way, especially those who grew up in neighborhoods like Vince did. In the second half, Vince portrays the process of burying and holding vigils for his friends in an even more explicit way, showing himself deeper and deeper in a grave each scene. Vince Staples came out last Friday, but it’s only one of several projects Vince is working on lately. He’s also previewed his graphic novel Limbo Beach and teased yet another new musical project, Ramona Park Broke My Heart to follow up this record. Check out the new video above and stream his new record here.

The baseball world turned its attention to Coors Field on Monday for the annual tradition of the Home Run Derby. While the “main event” for the week takes place on Tuesday with the 2021 MLB All-Star Game, the Derby often lends itself to high-end entertainment and, with the thin air in Denver, expectations were sky-high for moonshot after moonshot from some of the game’s best sluggers. In the early stages of evening, though, one of the more action-packed moments came when Oakland Athletics first baseman Matt Olson throttled a baseball into the stands.

In short, a fan took quite a tumble over a railing into the tunnel while doing his best to snag the ball. Twitter then took notice of the video and it made the rounds.

First, let’s hope that the fan is okay and healthy. That seems to be the case in that he popped up after the hard landing, but it’s always important to note.

From there, this was objectively amusing in that he didn’t hold back in the slightest. It takes a certain type of effort to really let it go and dive in this fashion and, even with a barrage of baseballs set to fly into the crowd on this particular night, this baseball was the one that he simply had to have.

Sometimes one little piece of advice can be so powerful it transforms our lives for the better. Many years ago, someone told me that “you can’t change other people, you can only change how you react to them.”

That piece of advice taught me that instead of trying to forcibly change others, I can get them to act differently by changing how I react to them. For example, sometimes ignoring someone’s behavior instead of calling attention to it can get them to change.

Simple psychological hacks are no way to treat serious psychological issues such as anxiety or depression. But they can help us break free from negative patterns, create stronger personal boundaries, and improve our mindfulness.

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Certified Coaching Practitioner Elisabeth Donatella has earned over 500,000 followers and four million likes on TikTok for her simple, but practical self-help videos.

Donatella, who goes by the name Coach Lisy, became interested in coaching after fighting her own internal battles and then deciding to use what she learned to help others.

“As a former self-loathing, people-pleasing perfectionist living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, I focused so much of my time and energy obsessing over everything,” she wrote on her website. “I struggled with an eating disorder, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and worst of all, I had severe self-doubt.”

“Four years ago, after I had hit my own personal rock bottom, I decided to make a change,” she continues. “I decided to dedicate my time and energy on learning how to love myself…and, most importantly, accept myself.”

Since, she has completed countless trainings and seminars, including the Robbins-Madanes Training, the official Coach Training School of Tony Robbins.

These days she provides advice on relationships, mindfulness, mental hygiene, and self-awareness on TikTok. Here are 10 of her most powerful self-help tips.

How to stop procrastinating, tip 1: Plan out your day

How to stop procrastinating, tip 2: List the reasons why your activities are important

How to break a bad habit

Your thoughts shape your life

A fixed mindset versus a growth mindset

Witness your thoughts

How to set a boundary

How to deal with unwanted thoughts

Money management tricks

“Because I don’t want to” is a valid reason to say no to anything.

The New Orleans Pelicans are one of two teams currently still with a head coaching vacancy, along with the Washington Wizards, but that will apparently be changing soon.

There has been some steady reporting in the last week-plus that the Pelicans were focusing their search on Suns assistant Willie Green and Bucks assistant Charles Lee, both of whom are, of course, busy with the NBA Finals currently and, as such, the Pelicans can’t make much official until that ends. However, it seems they have made their selection between the two of them, as Fletcher Mackel of WDSU in New Orleans reported Sunday that Green was the choice, although a deal is not yet finalized.

That was confirmed on Monday by conspicuously closely timed tweets from Woj and Shams, who offered the same reporting that Green was the frontrunner and the job would be his so long as he still wants it.

Green, who had a lengthy NBA career with the Sixers, Hawks, Clippers, Magic, and Pelicans, spent time on the Warriors coaching staff from 2016-19 before joining Monty Williams on the bench in Phoenix, where he’s been credited with helping construct the Suns defense. Green was always a well liked and respected player in the locker room, and that ability to connect with players is likely something the Pelicans are banking on with their roster of young stars like Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram, mixed with a number of veterans with the hopes of winning sooner than later.

The fallout from the failed January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol will be felt for years to come. The upside is we’ve gotten a very official glimpse into the far-right conspiracy theories and ideology that Donald Trump’s rhetoric helped stoke in recent years.

The latest example comes from courtsey a MAGA rioter who was caught on camera entering the Capitol and threatening at least one member of congress. According to The Daily Beast, a Pennsylvania pizza shop owner named Pauline Bauer is accused of multiple crimes during the attack, including several counts of violent entry, disruptive conduct, and obstruction of Congress. According to the charges, Bauer tried to organize buses to transport people to Washington for the rally and told police inside the Capitol that she wanted to kill Nancy Pelosi.

“Bring Nancy Pelosi out here now,” Bauer reportedly said. “We want to hang that f*cking bitch.”

All of that is disturbing enough, but in her legal filings Bauer is using what experts called “an inadvisable legal strategy”: She recently said she has chosen to represent herself in court while going on on a wild rant about sovereign citizenship.

But in what experts describe as an inadvisable legal strategy, Bauer has demanded to represent herself in court, appeared to threaten a court clerk with prison time, and declared herself a “self-governed individual” with special legal privileges.

Bauer does not simply appear in court, she clarified during a June 11 proceeding via Zoom. “I am here by special divine appearance, a living soul,” she told a judge that day, while stating that she did not want an attorney.

“I do not stand under the law,” she said. “Under Genesis 1, God gave man dominion over the law.”

The sovereign citizen movement is complicated, but it’s essentially an anti-government belief that says they are above any laws and also, of course, should not pay taxes. Which is why actually being arrested and tried for crimes has, well, not exactly jived with her whole deal.

In one document, filed last week, Bauer listed a series of strange alternative spellings of her name in a document that she (incorrectly) claimed freed her from some government control.

…

Bauer appears to have attempted multiple avenues of sovereign legal strategy. In one recent filing, she appeared to threaten a court clerk with prison time, noting that it would be the penalty for failing to properly log her filings.

In another new filling, she offered a document that “serves as Proof that my living DNA existed on this Land before there was a UNITED STATES of America or Any STATE Thereof.” The attached document was a family tree showing what Bauer said were ancestors born in Virginia and Pennsylvania before 1776. (Even if accurate, this has no bearing on U.S. law.)

Alas, this is probably unlikely to actually work in her favor. There’s reportedly plenty of evidence that she went to DC, threatened political leaders, and was inside the Capitol. And there’s (of course) evidence on Facebook that she organized transportation to DC through her pizza business. So despite what she may believe, reality isn’t exactly something that can be warped here in her favor.

[via The Daily Beast]

Earlier this month, America missed a goal that should have been easily achieved: President Joe Biden wanted 70% of the nation to have at least one vaccination shot. Republicans, however, think that’s just great — just as reports show that the vast majority of COVID-19 infections and related deaths are happening in places that voted Trump last November. It’s tragic but it’s not surprising. After all, a recent Newsmax segment is only slightly more dangerous than many others beamed across conservative media.

As per The Daily Beast, on Friday, Rob Schmitt, an anchor on the Trump-friendly network, hosted a segment in which he didn’t just call into question the efficacy of vaccines that have been saving lives everywhere they’ve been widely adopted. He also thinks they’re a middle finger to Mother Nature. Or something.

“Obviously, I’m not a doctor,” Schmitt told one Dr. Peter McCullough, a Fox News regular who in the past has spread vaccine misinformation. He then went on to prove what was already clear. On the subject of vaccines, Schmitt said, “I always think about just nature, and the way everything works, and I feel like a vaccination in a weird way is just generally kind of going against nature.”

He then went further. “Like, I mean, if there is some disease out there—maybe there’s just an ebb and flow to life where something’s supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people, and that’s just kind of the way evolution goes,” Schmitt said. “Vaccines kind of stand in the way of that.”

His guest spouted only slightly more rational things, claiming vaccines should only be used by “highest-risk individuals,” not a “young person” like Schmitt, who’s pushing 40.

Schmitt seemed to agree with that. “Again, it’s like if you’ve got this big risk, I think it might be worth whatever it is,” he said. “But if you don’t have a risk, I just, I can’t comprehend why you would take something—they start learning about the heart inflammation and stuff like that. I just don’t understand why it’s being pushed so hard on people that are very young.”

Upon learning of Schmitt’s next-level attempts at demonizing a public health measure, people on social media were horrified. Some took issue with his policework.

Some pointed out that it’s odd to decry vaccinations when the disease it targets is currently targeting Newsmax viewers by a wide margin.

Some even thought it sounded a bit too close to comfort like eugenics.

And some accused the pro-Trump network of taking “own the libs” to a deadly extreme.

Just so we’re all clear of this: Please get vaccinated. There’s no reason to put your life at risk, or those who might contract COVID from you, just because a guy on a channel where they compare a failed blogger to Batman told you so.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Sometimes one little piece of advice can be so powerful it transforms our lives for the better. Many years ago, someone told me that “you can’t change other people, you can only change how you react to them.”

That piece of advice taught me that instead of trying to forcibly change others, I can get them to act differently by changing how I react to them. For example, sometimes ignoring someone’s behavior instead of calling attention to it can get them to change.

Simple psychological hacks are no way to treat serious psychological issues such as anxiety or depression. But they can help us break free from negative patterns, create stronger personal boundaries, and improve our mindfulness.

---

Certified Coaching Practitioner Elisabeth Donatella has earned over 500,000 followers and four million likes on TikTok for her simple, but practical self-help videos.

Donatella, who goes by the name Coach Lisy, became interested in coaching after fighting her own internal battles and then deciding to use what she learned to help others.

“As a former self-loathing, people-pleasing perfectionist living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, I focused so much of my time and energy obsessing over everything,” she wrote on her website. “I struggled with an eating disorder, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and worst of all, I had severe self-doubt.”

“Four years ago, after I had hit my own personal rock bottom, I decided to make a change,” she continues. “I decided to dedicate my time and energy on learning how to love myself…and, most importantly, accept myself.”

Since, she has completed countless trainings and seminars, including the Robbins-Madanes Training, the official Coach Training School of Tony Robbins.

These days she provides advice on relationships, mindfulness, mental hygiene, and self-awareness on TikTok. Here are 10 of her most powerful self-help tips.

How to stop procrastinating, tip 1: Plan out your day

How to stop procrastinating, tip 2: List the reasons why your activities are important

How to break a bad habit

Your thoughts shape your life

A fixed mindset versus a growth mindset

Witness your thoughts

How to set a boundary

How to deal with unwanted thoughts

Money management tricks

“Because I don’t want to” is a valid reason to say no to anything.