Category: Viral

Giannis Antetokounmpo laid out in no uncertain terms that he has no plans on requesting a trade from the Bucks after their latest early playoff exit at the hands of the Miami Heat on Wednesday.

The Bucks have become one of the league’s most dominant regular season teams, but have yet to get over the hump come playoff time in the East, losing a year ago to the Raptors in the conference finals after taking a 2-0 series lead on the eventual champs. This year, they fell in rather stunning fashion in five games to the Heat. Antetokounmpo, who was injured in Game 4 and was unable to play in Game 5 of Milwaukee’s series with Miami, is the focal point of the offseason discourse already in the NBA, as the reigning MVP and DPOY has just one year left on his contract.

It’s possible Antetokounmpo could re-sign with the Bucks this offseason on a supermax extension, putting to rest any notion of his impending departure. However, it’s possible that he lets things play out in Milwaukee for one more year before determining his future with the club, applying pressure on the Bucks front office and ownership to build a championship team around him.

There are a number of decisions to make this offseason to try and build the best possible team around Antetokounmpo for next year, starting with whether Mike Budenholzer — whose playoff rotations continued to be the talk of the series as he limited Giannis and Khris Middleton’s minutes in the first three games, while playing a full 10-man rotation when most teams extend star minutes and tighten their rotation — should stick around. The Bud decision will come down to whether Giannis gives him a thumbs up or thumbs down, and until that is known, it wouldn’t be stunning if the top coaches on the market, namely Ty Lue, hold off on accepting other jobs because the Bucks gig is immediately the most coveted in the league should it open up.

From there, it’s clear that roster changes are necessary. The Bucks desperately need another playmaker and someone capable of creating for themselves alongside Giannis and Middleton. Eric Bledsoe was supposed to be that player, but we now have three years of data saying he’s simply not capable of doing so in the playoffs. The Bucks surely have some regrets about picking Bledsoe over Malcolm Brogdon as their point guard going forward, but now must move on and find a way to address that issue.

The name at the top of everyone’s list of Bucks targets this offseason is Chris Paul, who just led the Oklahoma City Thunder to a stunning playoff berth in the West and pushed Houston to seven games in the first round. It appears, given the departure of Billy Donovan, that the Thunder are now ready to fully embrace a rebuild with their draft assets acquired from the Paul George and Russell Westbrook trade, and that likely means trading Paul and letting Danilo Gallinari walk in free agency.

The fit in Milwaukee would be snug and Paul makes so much sense on and off the court for a Bucks team that could desperately use someone with his skill set, mentality, and leadership at the point guard position. However, a player making a ton of sense for a team doesn’t mean a trade can happen, and it doesn’t take long to find the difficulty in getting CP3 to Wisconsin.

Paul is set to make $41.3 million next season, meaning the Bucks have to cobble together some serious money to make a trade legal. If we (correctly) assume they are not willing to part ways with Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez, the latter of whom also would make no sense for the Thunder to want to acquire, things get very difficult. Here is my best effort at a two-team deal that works financially.

Bucks get: Chris Paul
Thunder get: Eric Bledsoe, George Hill, Ersan Ilyasova, D.J. Wilson, 2020 Indiana first-round pick

I’ll be honest, I have no idea if that’s worth it for the Thunder, who already have a ton of first round picks and don’t need to be adding Bledsoe to a roster when they want to turn things over to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Dennis Schroder. As such, a third team likely needs to be in the mix here to take on Bledsoe and send OKC a younger player with upside for their frontcourt.

Enter, the Orlando Magic.

Bucks get: Chris Paul
Thunder get: Aaron Gordon, George Hill, Khem Birch, D.J. Wilson, 2020 Indiana first-round pick
Magic get: Eric Bledsoe, Ersan Ilyasova, 2021 Milwaukee second-round pick

I’m not totally sure what Aaron Gordon is as a player, which isn’t great six years into a guy’s career, but getting him out of Orlando where I’m pretty confident they have never once maximized his talents is a good start. He’s closer to the timeline OKC is looking to play on and maybe finally playing consistently at the 4-spot in a new place with actual backcourt pieces that can get him the ball he can take a leap. Worst case, he’s only on a deal for two more years and is half as expensive as Paul.

George Hill is a nice, steady hand at backup point guard and also is on a deal that would be pretty easy to move once again when a contender is inevitably looking for backcourt help. Khem Birch is an intriguing young center with some defensive upside who Orlando likely isn’t going to want to invest in once he becomes a free agent, and I’m still a believer in D.J. Wilson as a valuable rotation player given his abilities as a shooter. They add another first round pick for this year, but I really don’t think Presti is too worried about adding picks given they have 24(!!!) draft picks compiled through 2026.

The party here that I’m most worried about is the Magic, but you can make a case that this helps them too. Orlando gets more backcourt help, and for Bledsoe’s postseason problems, he’s been very good in the regular season and is an excellent defender, so he fits right in with what the Magic are doing. He’d be an upgrade from the departing D.J. Augustin at just a tick over the same price tag. He’s also a nice mentor on the floor for Markelle Fultz as a non-shooter who impacts the game in other ways from the point guard position, and the Magic have been rumored to want to deal Gordon for years. Ilyasova is a non-guaranteed contract, so that lets them waive him to save a little money. You take out some of the frontcourt clutter they’ve been dealing with for years and can go forward looking for some wing help that can shoot this offseason.

The list of teams that would make sense to add Bledsoe this offseason is pretty short — Orlando, Detroit, New York, and Chicago, maybe — and aside from the Magic, the other three don’t have a lot to offer in return to make anything work. Paul to Milwaukee makes all the basketball sense in the world, but it is a nightmare to make happen with trying to make a deal that works financially that OKC (and a possible third team) would be interested in. Still, it could happen and the Bucks should do everything in their power to do so, because they still have to sell Giannis on staying and there’d be no doubt Paul would make a huge impact on that and their championship aspirations.

Back in February, when the idea of being stuck indoors for six months was unfathomable, President Trump was publicly saying America was in “good shape” to defend itself from COVID-19. But privately, he was calling the coronavirus “deadly stuff.”

191,000-plus deaths later…

In a series of recorded interviews with journalist Bob Woodward, Trump admitted that he knew weeks before the first recorded American death from COVID-19 that the virus is “more deadly” than the flu. “Just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older. Young people too, plenty of young people… I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic,” he confessed on March 19, days after declaring a national emergency. But it was already too late.

Trump’s taped conversations quotes made the late-night rounds on Wednesday, with The Daily Show‘s Trevor Noah asking, “You didn’t want to create a panic? You didn’t want to create a panic? So what did you want, for people to be very calmly dying in the streets?!” and The Late Late Show‘s James Corden joking, “Thank God none of us panicked. You know, I might have freaked out and stayed inside for six months.” But the funniest quote came from lapdog Tucker Carlson, who came to the president’s defense:

“What is surprising is that Donald Trump participated in making the book. The president sat for repeated interviews with Bob Woodward. Why in the world would he do that? It was Lindsey Graham who helped convince Donald Trump to talk to Bob Woodward. Lindsey Graham brokered that meeting. Lindsey Graham even sat in on the first interview between Bob Woodward and the president. How’d that turn out?”

Carlson continued, “Lindsey Graham is supposed to be a Republican, so why would he do something like that? You would have to ask him.” Nah, I’m good. I’d rather stay focused on the president downplaying the threat of a deadly virus that’s killed nearly 200,000 Americans because he didn’t want to create a Panic! At the Trump Rally.

Here’s the clip, if you can muster the energy.

(Via Newsweek)

Members of One Direction spent some time a couple months ago reflecting on the group’s tenth anniversary. That was essentially all that came of that, as there was no announcement of new music, reunion performances, or any sort of new activity from the group. There are seemingly some fans who are desperate to see that happen, though, as they have taken some drastic measures.

The Late Late Show host James Corden, who has a good working relationship with the group and has had them and their members on his show multiple times, has apparently been receiving a lot of pleas from fans for him to kidnap the group and force them to reunite. This has been a big enough trend, it would seem, for Corden to address it on his show.

He began by saying he makes it a point to not read comments about himself or the show online, but that he couldn’t ignore the torrent of kidnap-requesting comments he received on various platforms. Corden said, in fact, that the show gets about 300 YouTube comments per week on its videos about him kidnapping One Direction.

The host laid out the logistical challenges of such a kidnapping (especially during a pandemic), and said the begging isn’t helping at all: “The more people ask me to kidnap the boys, the less likely I am to do it. You’re killing any element of surprise, and surprise is a major factor when kidnapping someone. In the history of kidnapping, I don’t think any of them have originated from a fan account suggesting that a crime take place.”

He continues to make his case and shares a highlight reel of the band’s visits to the show, so watch the video above.

Filming Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” video seemed like a relatively low-stakes affair (especially since Cardi spent about $100,000 on coronavirus tests). That said, it wasn’t without its scary moments. There’s a scene in the video where Cardi and Meg are surrounded by snakes, and understandably, that can be an unsettling situation for some. The two definitely had their apprehensions about it, as is shown in a new behind-the-scenes video of the “WAP” shoot.

In the nine-minute clip, Cardi and Offset have a snake handler show them the reptiles, and there’s certainly some discomfort. “That’s a girl? That is a bad b*tch,” Cardi noted. Before that fateful meeting, Cardi and Meg talked about it, with Meg expressing her apprehension: “It was scary. The snake’s big as sh*t. What are we gonna do? When you see how big these snakes is, you’re not about to be doing all that.”

Cardi B previously spoke about a snake moment from the shoot that didn’t make this behind-the-scenes video: One of the snakes peed on her. She said in a recent interview, “One of the scariest parts was the snake scene. I was naked and one of them peed all over me.”

Watch the video above.

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

During the second of three livestreams that UK post-punk quintet Idles were undertaking from London’s famed Abbey Road Studios to help stoke the fires of anticipation for their third full-length Ultra Mono, vocalist Joe Talbot looked each of his bandmates in the eyes and recited a single word.

“Logician. Mediator. Defender. Entertainer,” he intoned. “You ready?”

From there, the group set their collective teeth and claws into a rough, yet rollicking version of “Love Song,” a track found on their 2018 breakthrough album Joy As An Act Of Resistance. But I missed the first minute or so of the song trying to suss out what and why Talbot said that about his friends and collaborators. Nicknames? An inside joke?

“It’s all from Carl Jung’s 16 personality types,” Talbot explained a few days later, speaking over the phone from a rented flat in London. “We all did the test to see what kind of personality we were. I am an Advocate. It’s like reading a mirror. I discovered with the test that I’m introverted. I always projected that onto myself, growing up, that I was selfish. But now I realize I need a lot of time on my own to process certain things to fit among other people.”

This is the way conversations with the members of Idles tend to go. Talbot and his bandmates — guitarists Mark Bowen (Logician) and Lee Kiernan (Mediator), bassist Adam Devonshire (Entertainer), and drummer Jon Beavis (Defender) — would just as soon relay the details of how they create their blunt, scabrous rock as they would their experiences with cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation. Every word, whether that’s shouted in a microphone on stage, shared with one another, or told to a sleepy journalist dealing with an eight-hour time difference, is carefully and deeply considered.

Take, for example, how the group landed on the core concept of their new album. As with the previous two full-lengths Idles has released to date (2017’s Brutalism and 2018’s Joy), they began with a title: Ultra Mono. It was a phrase Talbot dropped as the band drove to Blackpool for a gig during the long promotional campaign they undertook for Joy. In the van, the five men were wrestling with how their next record would sound. “Would it be natural sounding, going down the routes of ’70s rock?” Bowen remembers. “Or we would head to a more heavy, industrial hip-hop kind of thing?” Talbot turned around in his seat and settled the issue with that two word phrase: ultra mono.

“It set the path forward for the creative process,” Bowen continues. “I think we work so much better when things get narrowed down. If we know we’re working toward a title, if we know we’re working toward these strict concepts, then anything we do, we can go, ‘Is this ultra mono?’”

Prior to Ultra Mono, the connection between title and content is pretty easy to suss out. Their debut is as rigid and imposing as the architectural movement its named for — and as violent and thrashing as its double meaning. And for all the fury and frustration found in its songs about toxic masculinity and the band’s critics, the follow-up feels like the endorphin high that comes after a good cry or a particularly impactful therapy session.

Ultra Mono is a little more difficult to explain. In part, it refers to the singularity of purpose of any band — various talents and personalities joining forces to create a unified sound. But it’s also, according to Bowen, distilling the music down to its essence. “Everything was written around one part,” he says, “so we can make that part as loud as possible. It changed what we do. If you listen to Brutalism or Joy, the guitars are all over the place. It gives it a kind of power and energy and presence. Whereas this new way, where we’re all locked in is a new form of power. We’re all unified. We’re this one engine that’s pounding on the door.” Or as Talbot sings on the album’s second single, “Grounds,” “Do you hear that thunder? / That’s the sound of strength in numbers.”

There’s also a lot of open space within Ultra Mono. Guitars and drums lock in for short controlled bursts rather than the slashing and pounding of previous recordings. That allows Devonshire’s bass to pull focus throughout, riding an upward trajectory on the vicious opener “War” or giving “Reigns” its Killing Joke-like pulse.

Though the band sounds entirely comfortable in this new mode, it took some time for them to get there. Working around their packed touring schedule last year, Idles stumbled at first to cohere around this ultra mono concept. It wasn’t until two weeks before the group was set to go into the studio that it all cohered. From there, the songs came in a flurry, with Talbot writing most of his lyrics moments before he was set to record them.

That first thought/best thought approach does help explain some of the more awkward lyrical turns on Ultra Mono, like “I wanna cater for the haters / eat shit” in “The Lovers” or the pop culture references that run through “Mr. Motivator” (“Like Kathleen Hanna with bear claws grabbing Trump by the pussy”). But it fits in well with the immediacy and discourteous quality of the music.

“I was questioning myself about this,” Talbot says of his writing style. “‘Why do I do that? What is it about that that works so well?’ And I realized it’s the momentary flow of it. I allow the song to write itself really. My subconscious is listening to it until it becomes a part of me. ‘War,’ to me, sounds like inner conflict. So, it’s called ‘War.’ Of course it is. And everything around it is written.”

As he’s proven over the band’s three albums, Talbot has a lot to shout about. His country is pulling itself apart in the wake of Brexit. Other bands and some critics have responded to Idles’ success by poking suspiciously at their sincerity and their middle-class backgrounds. Racism and sexism and homophobia are still running rampant around the globe. He sings about it all through gritted teeth and with clenched fists.

But while the band is part of a wave of other volatile British post-punk acts like Shame and Fontaines DC, what truly distinguishes Idles are those songs where Talbot is at his most revealing. “June,” a centerpiece of Joy, dealt with the stillborn death of the singer’s daughter Agatha. And on the closing two tracks of Ultra Mono, Talbot is unabashedly gentle. While the band fumes and spits behind him on “Danke,” he returns again and again to this couplet: “True love will find you in the end / You will find out just who was your friend.”

To see this duality in action, dial up the clip of Idles performing “Never Fight A Man With A Perm” at last year’s Mercury Prize award ceremony. As it begins, Talbot is stalking the lip of the stage, stomping down his right foot as if trying to crush the entire building under his boot. But he quickly stops and, with a small hand wave, quietly says, “Congratulations, everyone.” It’s a dramatic and amazing switch flip, and one that Talbot is entirely aware of.

“If you look at the most tender moments in your life,” he says, “when you’ve been the most sincere and loving to someone, they’re the most violent, potent, and memorable moments. People confuse tenderness with softness. Tenderness can be something that cuts through everything else like an explosion. Stamping my feet comes from love and empathy as much as it does anger and shame. I’m definitely violent on stage but that comes from all sorts of emotions. Sadness, loss, love, lust. Sometimes I’m just hungry.”

Talbot is certainly itching to stomp around a stage again — something he might not be able to do until next May when Idles set off for an already sold-out run of shows in the UK and Ireland — but he’s embracing this surplus of downtime with grace. Sure, there’s preliminary discussions about album No. 4, but more importantly, he gets more hours to spend with his daughter. And, true to his personality type, it gives him the chance to process how Idles spent nearly a decade building their collective muscles so they could weather the whirlwind of the past three years.

“That meant we weren’t making loads of mistakes under the microscope,” Talbot says. “We had room to breathe and to learn about what we wanted to do and who we were as a band. We just plowed through and worked really hard for our own sake. We only did it because we loved it and because we wanted to.”

Ultra Mono is out on September 25 via Partisan. Get it here.

If you’re anything like us, you probably spent most of the summer drinking IPAs, lagers, pale ales, and wheat beers. These lighter beers are well-suited for hot, hazy summer days. But fall is barreling towards us in a tornado of dried leaves and pumpkin spice. So it’s time to start thinking about transitioning to darker, heavier beers. But you don’t have to go from a juicy, hazy IPA right to a rich, malty stout. There are steps in between.

An easier transition is found by spending the few remaining summer days drinking double IPAs. These higher ABV, pungent, flavorful brews are the perfect beers to bridge the gap between light summer beers and heavy, dark cold-weather brews. But with heavily hopped beers like these, it’s easy to go wrong — so we don’t want you to grab the first six-pack you see at your local grocery store.

Instead, we decided to ask the professionals for help — hitting up a handful of our favorite bartenders to tell us their favorite end of summer double IPAs.

Sweetwater 420 Strain Trainwreck

Nicholas Wyatt, bar manager at Teddy’s Bourbon Bar in Prattville, Alabama

Sweetwater’s 420 Strain Trainwreck. It’s bright and citrus-forward with notes of vanilla that round out the mid-palate before an oddly familiar, herbaceous finish.

La Cumbre Full Nelson

Timmie Hoffman, bartender at Salt7 in Delray Beach, Florida

My all-time favorite double IPA is La Cumbre Full Nelson. It is jam-packed with hops (over ten pounds) a little bitter and also is juicy so it quenches your thirst. It’s everything that a double IPA drinker would want to sip on.

Toppling Goliath King Sue

Nico Diaz, owner of CRFT Cocktail Catering Service in New Hope, Pennsylvania

My favorite Double IPA is King Sue by Toppling Goliath. It’s hazy and juicy with a mean grapefruit bite at the end. It’s definitely hard to beat.

Russian River Pliny the Younger

Anthony Aviles, general manager of Jack Dusty in Sarasota, Florida

You won’t find it in Florida, and they’re very picky about who/where they ship to, but if you can get your hands on Pliny the Younger, you won’t regret it. For as light and crisp as it drinks (even at 11% abv), it packs some surprisingly well-crafted flavors and pairs well with just about anything you eat.

While in Napa, California, I drank PTY while eating Spanish tapas dishes one night and burgers the next, and it didn’t disappoint in either sitting. Pliny the Elder was also very good, but “The Younger” takes the cake in my personal opinion.

Fiddlehead Second Fiddle

Drew Reid, bartender at W Aspen in Aspen, Colorado

Fiddlehead’s Second Fiddle. Vermont beer is in my blood, and I always revert to a handful of Vermont breweries. Second Fiddle is everything you want in a double, with tropical fruit smells and tastes and big pine notes. It is far too easy to drink too many of these.

Pipeworks Ninja VS Unicorn

Meredith Barry, executive beverage chef at Angad Arts Hotel in St. Louis

Ninja VS Unicorn from Pipeworks. Pineapple and pine. For a double/imperial IPA the bitter hop is real chill, with a perfect balance of tropical sweetness. Be careful, though — that 8% ABV will sneak up on you!.

Bell’s Hopslam

Benjamin Burch, bartender at The Nolen in San Diego

Bell’s Hopslam. It is just so hard to beat. Beer drinkers have been so lucky for so long because the market simply blew up and supply reached a point of total saturation. You can walk into any corner store in a lot of cities and grab a phenomenal beer off the shelf that you’ve never heard of before. They’re everywhere and widely available. On the flip side of that, that means it’s also not too hard to end up with a mediocre beer, either.

Cigar City Florida Man

Eva Al-Gharaballi, bartender at Datz in St. Petersburg, Florida

Florida Man Double IPA from Tampa Bay’s Cigar City Brewing Co. is my go-to DIPA. Extra hoppy with flavors of grapefruit, mango, and passion fruit.

Boulevard The Calling

Stephen Potter, lead bartender at The Kitchen by Wolfgang Puck in Grand Rapids, Michigan

My favorite double has to be Boulevard Brewing Co.’s The Calling IPA. I love the full body of this IPA. The strong malt balance of this beer rounds it off really nicely. There isn’t that in-your-face bitterness many go for. The biggest thing for me with this beer is the low ABV. At only 8.5%, I can actually enjoy more than one.

Bell’s Double Two-Hearted

Tommy Ergle, bar manager at Dr. BBQ in St. Petersburg, Florida

One of the best double IPA’s on the market has to be Bell’s Double Two-Hearted. Bell’s took their classic Two-Hearted IPA and added two-and-a-half times the amount of Centennial hops — which really brings out some serious pine and citrus notes that make this such a smooth-drinking DIPA.

Institution Into the Wishing Well

Mig Feliciano, head bartender at Hollywood Roosevelt in Los Angeles

I’m not a routine DIPA drinker but on occasion, I pick one out. It had been a while, so I got mixed six to take a flight of beer and the winner was Into the Wishing Well DIPA by Institution Ale Company out of Camarillo California. It felt like a pleasure and privilege to drink this 8.7% ABV big beer. It smells like fresh-cut grass and has lingering stone fruit with a crisp finish. Very nice.

M. Special Lazy Eye DIPA

Jeremy Allen, bartender at MiniBar in Los Angeles

We’ve been drinking a ton of M. Special Brewing Company’s Lazy Eye DIPA. Love it ‘cuz it’s not too sweet, ultimately pair-able and versatile, and gets the job done. Tiny little brewery with a bunch of personalities out of Goleta on the coast of California.

Alchemist Heady Topper

Damian Langarica, head bartender at a.bar in Philadelphia

My favorite Double IPA is definitely Heady Topper from The Alchemist, an awesome craft brewery from Vermont. It’s a great Double IPA, perfect balance of bitterness and fruitiness for those really into strong, bitter IPAs or DIPAs and for those are new to the game.

Against The Grain Citra Ass Down

Emmanuelle Massicot, beverage director of Kata Robata in Houston

Against the Grain’s Citra Ass Down – good beer and puns! Citra is one of my favorite hops for IPAs because it gives them a juicy quality that mitigates a lot of the hoppy bitterness and also sneakily masks the booze.

Modern Times Alien Radio

Dannika Underhill, bartender at Kindred in San Diego

Modern Times Alien Radio. It features a couple of my favorite styles of hops (Citra and Simcoe) for a truly in-your-face aromatic experience. Juicy tropical fruits and pungent pine intermingle for a truly ethereal drinking experience.

After the Clippers cruised to a win in Game 3, the Nuggets were looking to even the series on Wednesday night, but suffocating defense on the part of L.A. made it nearly impossible for Denver to get it going offensively, and now they find themselves in the unenviable position of trying to climb back from a 3-1 series deficit for the second time this postseason.

Neither team could get it going early, as they combined for the lowest-scoring quarter of the series, although L.A. was able to convert that to an early 17-point lead. The Nuggets went on a couple of runs in the second half to make it interesting, which coincided with some untimely foul trouble for Paul George and the Clippers, but the Clippers were ultimately able to hang on for 96-85 win and put Denver on the brink of elimination.

Here’s what else we learned from Game 4:

The Clippers’ Defense Is Dominant When Locked In

The Nuggets shot just 41 percent from the field overall and were 8-of-28 from behind the arc as the Clippers’ defense badgered them into their worst shooting outing of the series. Of course, this always starts with Kawhi Leonard, who was phenomenal on both ends of the court on Wednesday night, leading L.A. with 30 points, 11 rebounds, and nine assists, while also making a case for why he maybe should’ve made First Team All-Defense as he came up with four steals and a pair of blocks on the night.

.@kawhileonard with the steal, and @TeamLou23 seals the deal.

@espn pic.twitter.com/B4ghTWPNNT

— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) September 10, 2020

Kawhi got five on it. pic.twitter.com/lCzMBomvsT

— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) September 10, 2020

Jokic was just about the only Nugget who was able to find something of a rhythm in this one, leading his team with 26 points, 11 rebounds, and six assists. But overall, the Clippers’ defensive prowess on Wednesday night was a reminder of just how dominant they can be on that end and should serve as a wakeup call to any other would-be championship contenders.

Paul George noted after the game that the Clippers themselves seem to be coming to a realization of the importance of consistent defensive effort to making them a dominant team.

Jamal Murray Has To Be Better

Murray had just three field goal attempts by midway through the second quarter and had just four points in the first half. Murray left the bench after checking out midway through the third quarter and went back into the tunnel, presumably to gather himself, but he was never able to find his rhythm in Game 4, finishing with 18 points on 6-of-15 shooting. Murray got it going a bit late in the fourth to make things interesting for a minute, but it was too little too late.

Much of the credit goes to the Clippers’ aforementioned defense, which targeted Murray early and took him out of his comfort zone. Still, Murray has to find a way to make an impact. He’s been spectacular this postseason, putting up some of the best performances we’ve seen in Orlando, and Denver will need him back to playing at the top of his game if they want any chance of overcoming a 3-1 deficit to the Clippers.

The Whirlwind Experience That Is Michael Porter Jr.

Despite the loss, Michael Porter Jr. showed more flashes of why he was once considered the top player in the 2018 Draft class before a back injury caused him to nearly drop out of the lottery entirely. The stakes were low when the Nuggets took a chance on him, and its paying dividends now and should continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

He’s 6’10” and doing this. pic.twitter.com/7Qmi2yrHEw

— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) September 10, 2020

Natural born scorer. pic.twitter.com/FP4SL86Xy9

— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) September 10, 2020

However, he was mostly neutralized in the second half, as were most of the Nuggets as the Clippers clamped down on defense. Porter also showed that he still has plenty of work to do defensively. The Clippers caught him sleeping on several occasions and took full advantage of his lagging response time in the pick-and-roll.

But inexplicably, that didn’t stop him from voicing his opinion on Mike Malone’s play-calling in the second half. Porter Jr. finished with 15 points on 5-of-8 shooting, including 3-of-4 from three, and after the game, he was openly unhappy that he didn’t get more opportunities as the Nuggets struggled to manufacture points.

MPJ: “I just didn’t touch the ball.”

Said it’s up to the play calls the coaches make.

— Mike Singer (@msinger) September 10, 2020

It’s not a good look for a young player who is still trying to find his place on his team, but then again, Porter Jr. has never been shy about expressing unpopular (or unrealistic) opinions. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out as the series continues.

The Clippers will try to close out the Nuggets in a potentially series-deciding Game 5 on Friday night at 6:30 ET on TNT.

The Nuggets fell to 3-1 in their series with the L.A. Clippers on Wednesday night in a 96-85 loss, as they continue to struggle creating offense in the second half.

Denver was able to cut the L.A. lead to as few as two in the early third quarter, thanks in part to a run at the end of the first half spurred by Michael Porter Jr. off the bench in a 15-point effort. However, as the game wore on, Porter Jr. became less involved in the offense and the Nuggets’ two stars, Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic were not able to produce efficiently or effectively enough to keep pace with the Clippers. Whether Porter Jr. would’ve been able to fix all of their woes is far from a certainty, as the rookie has a tendency to fall in love with isolation and can be wildly inefficient himself.

That said, of everyone else on this Denver team, he’s the player most likely to create some offense outside of Murray and Jokic, and it might behoove the Nuggets to give him some more responsibility later in the game. After the game, Porter Jr. was not in the mood to brush aside questions of his involvement in the Nuggets’ late game offense, calling out coach Mike Malone for play-calling that went exclusively to Jokic and Murray and didn’t do enough to involve him and others.

These quotes came after Mike Malone said the Clippers keyed in on Porter more in the second half on defense, which MPJ seemed to fervently push back against.

His frustration was evident in his body language during his press conference, and that came out in his quotes as well. It’ll be interesting how this goes with Malone and the Nuggets’ locker room, because while Porter has become an important piece, he is a rookie and still has plenty in his game to work on to reach the level of star that his offensive ceiling shows he’s capable of.

There’s certainly something to be said for the Nuggets getting more creative offensively, particularly in trying to attack with different pieces than just Murray and Jokic. However, critiquing the coach publicly like this isn’t often something that goes over well for rookies, and his comment about how he’ll talk to the coaching staff soon likely should’ve happened before throwing him under the bus in front of a camera.

It’s been quite the day of offense in Major League Baseball, as the Brewers beat the Tigers by a score of 19-0 on Wednesday afternoon, but that was a defensive battle compared to what happened in Atlanta later in the evening.

The Braves took on the Marlins in an NL East matchup and proceeded to bludgeon the poor Miami pitching staff to the tune of 29 runs on 23 hits, including seven home runs. Adam Duvall accounted for three of those, with a grand slam capping off his sensational night in the seventh inning, as Atlanta teed off in an historic night at Truist Park.

Travis d’Arnoud, Ronald Acuna Jr., Ozzie Albies, and Freddie Freeman all also got in on the act with big flies, and Atlanta’s 29 runs set a new National League record for runs scored in a game. Some of the stat lines from the game are hilarious, with Duvall going 3-for-4 with five runs scored, nine runs batted in, three home runs, and two walks. Freeman was 3-for-6 at the plate with six RBI while Acuna was 3-for-4 with five RBI and three walks.

The poor Marlins managed nine runs on 13 hits and still got beat by 20 as it was a terrible night for pitcher’s ERA that will skew their numbers for the entire season given it’s shortened length.

The Houston Rockets fell just short in Game 3 as the Lakers shut them down in the fourth quarter to rally to a win and a 2-1 series lead over Houston. Rockets forward Danuel House, who has become an integral part of Houston’s rotation, missed that game for “personal reasons,” but was ruled out once again on Wednesday for Game 4.

That House was not playing but was remaining in the Bubble was a head-scratcher for many, and on Wednesday word broke of the reason for his continued absence from the team. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Tim MacMahon, House is under investigation from the NBA for a break of Bubble protocol that has his status for the remainder of the series in jeopardy.

As noted by Woj, House denies any wrongdoing, but until the matter is resolved, whatever it is, he will not be allowed to play. His absence is significant, particularly for a team that already runs a shortened rotation, with Ben McLemore and Austin Rivers having to step more into his minutes. What House did is unknown, but he wouldn’t be the first player to have to go under quarantine again for breaking Bubble protocol, as we saw Richaun Holmes of the Kings have to quarantine a second time after ordering delivery food that was not approved.

Per Woj and MacMahon, House did not leave the NBA campus, but is under investigation for “activity within the team hotel.”

House, the Rockets’ sixth man, has denied any violation on a matter that has the league probing House’s activity within the team hotel, sources said.

House did not leave the perimeter of the campus, sources said.

We’ll surely learn more as the situation develops, but for now the Rockets must move forward without a key piece as they try to claw back into their series with the Lakers.