Now that The Last Dance has come to an end, many of us have been left jonesing for whatever Michael Jordan content we can get our hands on. The final two episodes added a little extra to what has already been a wellspring of material, prompting Horace Grant to lash out at his former Bulls teammate for what he saw as an unfair depiction in the documentary.

Questions of objectivity are certainly warranted for a film that was produced in part by its primary subject, and it didn’t help that an episode midway through the series acted as little more than a thinly-veiled promotional piece for Nike and their massively popular Jordan Brand line, sales of which skyrocketed as a result.

But if you’re looking for something that takes a deeper — and presumably more impartial — look at the Air Jordan phenomenon, then the upcoming documentary VICE VERSA: One Man and His Shoes, premiering Monday, May 25 on VICE TV might be for you.

Here’s more from their official press release:

Produced by Break Em Films, the two hour-long special takes a deep dive into the social, cultural, and racial significance of the iconic Air Jordan sneaker. The film explores the innovative marketing that built a multi-billion-dollar business and the dark side of greed and conflict around the shoe. Using a mix of archival footage and graphic animation, the documentary returns viewers to the nostalgic 80’s and 90’s hip hop scene to capture America’s dark love affair with consumer capitalism and celebrity culture.

Directed by Yemi Bamiro, it marks the third in the VICE VERSA series and will feature interviews with former Commissioner David Stern, Jordan’s longtime agent David Falk, the original designer of the sneaker Peter Moore, and many others. It will also feature interviews with reporters who covered the tragic killings that occurred during robberies related to Air Jordan shoes.

ESPN’s The Last Dance finished its massively successful five-week run on Sunday, giving us the fitting conclusion to a series that has captivated viewers as fans around the world try to cope with the extended absence of professional sports. The backlash, however, was inevitable.

Given Michael Jordan’s penchant for nurturing lifelong grudges and taking every opportunity to settle old scores, a docuseries produced under his watch was sure to rankle some feathers. For Jordan, no slight was ever too small. Hell, it didn’t even have to be based in reality in some cases. It is perhaps telling that his own teammates were among his biggest targets.

Horace Grant punched back the hardest, once again scoffing at the allegation that he was Sam Smith’s source for the infamous The Jordan Rules expose and taking it a step further to call Jordan a liar and a snitch for his revealing comments about the illicit parties older Bulls players participated in during the early days of his career.

But he wasn’t the only one unhappy with his portrayal. Scottie Pippen reportedly came away from the series harboring strong feelings about what he apparently sees as a lopsided emphasis on the more complicated parts of his tenure in Chicago. Here’s what David Kaplan said in his ESPN 1000 show, Kap & Co.

According to @thekapman, Scottie Pippen is “so angry” at Michael Jordan on how he was portrayed in the Last Dance. “He is beyond livid.”

(Via ESPN 1000’s Kap and Company)

— Daniel Greenberg (@ChiSportUpdates) May 20, 2020

In fairness, the series didn’t shy away from some of Pippen’s less flattering moments, including the time he refused to check back into a playoff game after Phil Jackson called the final shot for Toni Kukoc, the conference finals game he missed against the Pistons because of a migraine, which Jordan was openly skeptical about in the documentary, and how he demanded a trade and underwent ankle surgery during their final season together in 1998 when he could’ve had the procedure earlier in the offseason.

Still, you could argue that Pippen has emerged from the series relatively unscathed, as most of these instances have been discussed ad nauseam over the years and account for mostly minor blemishes on his NBA legacy. Even Pippen himself admitted that he might no do things differently, given another opportunity. Regardless, Pippen is now officially among the ranks of the many aggrieved parties that the series trained its sights on.

View Entire Post ›

The only thing these won’t do is wave a magic wand. But you’ll think they did.

View Entire Post ›

Honesty hour.

View Entire Post ›

Amir Sahragard hoped for safety in Australia but ended up in a brutal offshore camp. He is still dealing with the trauma as he starts a new life.

View Entire Post ›

Welcome to this week’s Wednesday Night Wars open discussion thread. This week it’s the go-home edition of AEW Dynamite for Saturday’s Double or Nothing pay-per-view going up against an episode of NXT featuring Rhea Ripley vs. Io Shirai, the winners of the Interim NXT Cruiserweight Title Tournament groups being named, and more.

On tonight’s cards:

AEW Dynamite

• AEW World Champion Jon Moxley vs. 10, Brodie Lee’s one shirtless henchman
• Matt Hardy vs. Sammy Guevara
• Orange Cassidy vs. Rey Fenix
• MJF vs. Marko Stunt
• Nyla Rose and Dr. Britt Baker DMD vs. Hikaru Shida and Kris Statlander
• a special confrontation between Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts and Arn Anderson

NXT

• Rhea Ripley vs. Io Shirai
• Interim NXT Cruiserweight Title Tournament Match: KUSHIDA vs. Drake Maverick
• Interim NXT Cruiserweight Title Tournament Match: El Hijo del Fantasma vs. Akira Tozawa
• Dexter Lumis vs. Roderick Strong
• Karrion Kross and Scarlett “kicking off the show” with a match

As always, +1 your favorite comments from tonight’s open thread and if we get enough comments, we’ll include 10 of the best in tomorrow’s Best and Worst of NXT and AEW reports. Make sure you flip the comments by selecting “newest” in the drop down menu under discussion, and enjoy the show!

Before contracting the coronavirus, Mike Schultz was a healthy 43-year-old—an avid exerciser with no underlying medical conditions. Eight weeks later, he’s lost 50 pounds and is now on a long journey of recovery.

Schultz, who lives and works as a nurse in California, has shared before and after photos on his Instagram and Facebook accounts, showing an alarming transformation in his body during the 57 days he was hospitalized with COVID-19.

As reported by Buzzfeed News, Schultz was on a trip to Boston in mid-March when he and his boyfriend started feeling ill. The couple had recently attended the a week long Winter Party Festival in Miami, an event attended by thousands. The festival had ended on March 10—the day before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

“We knew it was out there,” Schultz told BuzzFeed News. “There were no real restrictions in place, though. No lockdowns. We just thought, Well, we gotta wash our hands more and be wary of touching our face.”

By March 16, Schultz was sick enough to go to the hospital—but his 103 degree fever and fluid-filled lungs were just the beginning. Within four days, he was taken to New England Sinai Hospital, where he was intubated for four-and-a-half weeks.

“I didn’t think it was as serious as it was until after things started happening,” said Schultz. “I thought I was young enough for it not to affect me, and I know a lot of people think that. I wanted to show it can happen to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, have preexisting conditions or not. It can affect you.”

Schultz told Buzzfeed that the photo on the left was taken about a month before he fell ill. The photo on the right was taken in a recovery ward. He admitted standing up just to take the photo was exhausting.

After weeks of being away from his loved ones, Schultz has finally back home. Today, he and his boyfriend celebrated his birthday with some Boston Market grub. “Nice to get out of the house for a little bit,” he wrote on Instagram. “Able to do more and more every day.”

Schultz explained on Instagram that May 6 was the first day he had really walked since being hospitalized. He mentioned that he still has “months of recovery” ahead of him. He wants people to understand the seriousness of COVID-19, even for people who seem healthy enough to not be affected by it—and he’s not the first recovering COVID-19 patient to share this message.

“This disease is no joke people,” he wrote. “If you think you’re too young to get it, think again.”

Wishing Nurse Schultz the best of luck, strength and resilience as he makes his way back to health.

If the first stop on your vision-board post-lockdown travel itinerary involved jumping on a plane and flying to South America this summer — sorry, they don’t want you. Keep your plans local for another season (at least), as the country of Columbia has joined Argentina in extending their international coronavirus travel bans until August 31st. According to MSN, on Wednesday, May 20th, Columbian officials announced an official extension of the country’s air travel ban, keeping all commercial flights grounded domestically until the end of June and keeping all international flights from landing until August 31st.

Latin America as a whole has implemented some of the strictest travel bans in the world. According to Forbes, in addition to Colombia and Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Panama have all grounded commercial flights and have repeatedly extended their respective travel bans throughout the duration of the pandemic. Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru are set to reopen by the end of May followed soon after by Mexico, which plans on resuming international travel sometime in June or July and currently is still restricting non-essential travel at the U.S. border.

According to MSN, Columbia’s decision to further extend its air travel ban is hitting Avianca Holdings — the country’s largest air carrier — especially hard as the carrier’s entire passenger fleet is unable to fly due to the restrictions of the countries they often serve. This month, Avianca filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. court and had hoped to resume flying in June.

According to Forbes, Greece is aiming to welcome tourists as early as July, though whether they’ll accept travelers from the United States, the current epicenter of the coronavirus spread, remains to be seen. While far-flung travel is fun to dream about, it’s just not realistic right now.

Twenty-one African countries have come together in an attempt to stop the Sahara desert from encroaching further south. Their mission: plant a 4,750-mile-long wall of trees.

When completed, the Great Green Wall will extend from sea to sea and reclaim 247 million acres. It’ll stretch from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, and will be three times the size of the Great Barrier Reef. The massive reforestation project will sequester 250 million tons of carbon.

The countries hope to have the wall completed by 2030.

The Sahara in northern Africa is the world’s largest desert (as large as the U.S.) and renowned for it’s extreme temperatures. A peer-reviewed study by the journal Climate found that between 1920 and 2013, the desert has expanded southward by 10%. The study says its expansion has been caused by man-made climate change as well as natural climate cycles such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.

If the situation is allowed to continue, the desert is likely to expand into the more fertile parts of Africa.

The southern border of the Sahara is an area called the Sahel, an arid transition zone that is a point of demarcation between the desert, and the more lush, fertile savanna to the south. As the Sahara expands, the Sahel retreats, resulting in a mass migration of people, and a major disruption of the region’s fertile grasslands.

via Wikimedia Commons

The initiative began in 2007 and 15% of the trees have been planted.

Ethiopia: 36 million acres of degraded land restored, land tenure security improved

Senegal: 11.4 million trees planted, 6200 acres of degraded land restored

Nigeria: 12 million acres of degraded land restored and 20, 000 jobs created

Sudan: 5,000 acres of land restored

Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger: Approximately 120 communities have come together to plant a green belt over more than 6200 acres of degraded and dry lands. More than two million seeds and seedlings have been planted from fifty native species of trees.

The wall is made with drought-resistant trees that protect the soil from erosion, act as a barrier to the coarse Saharan winds and filter rainwater back into the ground. These newly green areas have created farming land for the indigenous people to plant vegetable gardens.

The Green Wall also safeguards the indigenous people against potential environmental problems. Patches of seedlings can become emergency food for cattle when the rains are late, fruit from the trees can be harvested or sold and trees can be cut for firewood.

The project has also resulted in thousands of jobs for area residents. This has helped to curb the large migration of people from the Sahel.

The Great Green Wall is another project that shows how doing something good for the environment can have a ripple effect that helps an entire region heal economically and culturally.