With the NBA currently locked down due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, players across the league are being forced to find ways to workout from home. While these are professional athletes and they have trainers crafting them at home workouts that can keep them in decent physical shape, there are still some lacking the ability to keep their game sharp. Due to most of the country under national stay at home orders players have been locked out of facilities. Not only does this mean they can’t access their workout equipment, but many of them have also lost the ability to just shoot around.

There are a few players with home gyms or outdoor court set-ups, but the majority of players don’t even own a basketball hoop. Whether it’s from a desire to keep work and basketball separate or just not enough space, players across the league have struggled to find ways to get shots up at home due to simply not having the appropriate setup. One team that will be more ready than most? The Miami Heat.

Jimmy Butler recognized this problem early and has apparently sent rims to all his teammates so they could install them in their homes and get some shots up, via Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel.

Even before the Miami Heat revealed last week that he stood as the lone player on his team with access to a fixed basketball stanchion, backboard and rim, Jimmy Butler was dishing assists.

It turns out that the All-Star forward was ahead of the curve when it came to one-on-none basketball, ordering rims for his entire team at the same time had ordered the one for himself.

A party close to Butler confirmed Sunday to the South Florida Sun Sentinel that Butler already had the gear shipped from a Utah-based supplier at the time the Heat, during a media conference call Friday with strength coach Eric Foran, revealed that only Butler had such equipment in place, with teammate Goran Dragic working with a portable hoop.

This is a very nice gesture from Butler to his teammates. By sending them rims they should be able to find ways to at least get some semblance of shooting in. Now, whether those that live in apartments and condos will be able to get a goal set up remains to be seen, but this is the type of gesture that can set the team up to be in better rhythm if and when the NBA returns this summer.

Butler also ordered these rims for more than just his teammates. He’ll also be sending a shipment to local schools and youth facilities once stay at home orders have been lifted.

“In addition, Butler and his staff ordered an equivalent amount to eventually be distributed to schools or other youth facilities, once clearance for such use is allowing amid this current sheltering in place for the new coronavirus pandemic.”

Jimmy Butler’s borderline insane commitment to working out and working on his game has become a punchline at times — particularly when it gets to being theatrical, like the 3 a.m. workouts this offseason. However, in this case, his concern about his teammates being able to put work in seems genuine and he’s also going above and beyond for the community as well. Ball never stops for Butler and the Heat, even when everyone is stuck at home.

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Tiger King has been the breakout hit of quarantine in a variety of ways, as the Netflix docuseries has already spawned a bonus episode and plenty of parodies and memes since it first hit the internet in March. The latest news surrounding the wildly bizarre and often upsetting series is that it got its own Garbage Pail Kids set of trading cards.

Late last week, the trading card company Topps announced it would make some of the familiar cats and kittens from the series their own corresponding Garbage Pail Kids cards, a special collector’s item for fans of the Netflix series.

Topps tweeted out a preview of the series, including Schmo Exotic, with a tiger preparing to eat expired meat.

Other entrants in the series are Gangsta Garretson, who is fittingly bespectacled and riding a jet ski. Carole Baskin’s Garbage Pail Kid is here, too, as Cool Cat Carole, who blends in with tiger print extremely well. The listing on the Topps website, mind you, has Joe Exotic’s character renamed “Joe Chaotic,” so the 10-card set is actually five designs with two different names for each sticker. But they are available for $20 plus shipping, if you need to get your most Tiger King-obsessed friend or family member a gift that keeps on giving.

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People are spending a lot of time indoors lately, and that means for many watching TV shows. There are plenty of streaming services seeing record numbers and a lot of people are finally sitting down to watch classics they may have missed, such as The Wire or Community.

For those looking for a different kind of nostalgia, though, the MTV Vault on YouTube may have just what you’re looking for. It seems the music video network you probably remember playing more weird reality shows than playing actual videos has quietly uploaded some classic episodes on YouTube from series like the Ashton Kutcher celebrity prank show Punk’d.

Perhaps the most nostalgic, and the show that holds up the best, is the home tour show Cribs, which featured musicians, actors and sometimes athletes letting cameras take a look inside their homes to see where all the magic happens.

While some of these have been uploaded without copyright permission, or maybe clips of them may exist out there, an official full episode sitting on YouTube for easy access is pretty cool. A look at the official MTV Vaults page on YouTube reveals there have been a number of episodes online for a while now, but recent activity has seen some notable uploads and subsequent attention in the online media. Snoop Dogg’s Cribs episode, for example, is absolutely worth the watch.

Another blast from the past is Parental Control, a fairly unique twist on a reality dating show that first aired in 2005. Other full episodes on the page are from Silent Library, a 2009 game show that featured contestants trying to, you guessed it, stay quiet in an increasingly wacky library.

[via Entertainment Weekly]

In addition to wearing masks and washing your hands, social distancing is one of the most important practices to put into action in order to help the eventual plateau and decline of the coronavirus pandemic. While it is an adjustment to make, artists have been doing their part to not only follow through with the practice but encourage and thank their fans for doing the same as Lizzo did last night at the One World: Together At Home festival.

Blueface, on the other hand, isn’t exactly going along with social distancing guidelines based on his recent Instagram stories. According to TMZ, the rapper apparently held a party that quickly got out of hand, with a fight between exotic dancers captured on video.

Videos showed the group of women started fighting at one point while Blueface kept his distance, all while recording the fight on his phone. The women were all at Blueface’s estate to apparently shoot a music video, presumably for a song on his recently released Find The Beat album. Based on what we can see from the video, it seems that video shoot came to an early end as a result of the fight. It’s a very bad idea to skirt social distancing recommendations in general, but this seems to have been done for all the wrong reasons all around.

As artists continue to donate their earnings in order to ease the shortage of masks and other PPE (personal protective equipment) for people, especially healthcare workers all over the country. While supplying the protection of doctors and medical staff is important, keeping ourselves safe and protected without it is also important, something Blue Ivy is stressing in her latest video.

In a video posted to her grandmother Tina Knowles’ Instagram, Blue Ivy conducted a science experiment to show viewers why it is essential to wash your hands. Using a small countertop setup, Blue Ivy presented a small cup filled with a mixture of different soaps and a bowl of water filled with pepper.

“While we’re stuck at home, I have this little DIY experiment that you can do at home too. This is why it’s important to wash your hands,” she said before beginning the experiment. Taking her finger and dipping it into the soap, Blue Ivy then put the same finger into the water with pepper and as soon her hand hit the water, the pepper — or “coronavirus” as she says — rushes to the edge of the bowl. Concluding her PSA, Blue Ivy said, “I hope you guys are staying safe, wash your hands extra, and please stay at home. Love y’all, bye.”

Blue Ivy’s words came after her mom delivered a strong message to those who watched Saturday’s One World: Together At Home festival. Bringing attention to the coronavirus’ disproportionate impact on African Americans, Beyonce said, “Black Americans disproportionately belong to these essential parts of the workforce that do not have the luxury of working from home,” she said. “And African American communities at large have been severely affected in this crisis. Those with pre-existing conditions are at an even higher risk. This virus is killing black people at an alarmingly high rate here in America.”

The music world has done a lot to help those suffering during the COVID-19 pandemic, from donating their talents to charitable efforts such as Saturday’s Together At Home festival or simply hosting performances from the comfort of their own homes for those in quarantine to enjoy. One such event, however, had special meaning for fans of Adam Schlesinger, the Fountains of Wayne bassist who died tragically of coronavirus complications.

On Friday night, the cast of the movie That Thing You Do reunited virtually to watch the movie and share some stories from the formation of the in-movie band, The Wonders (or Oneders if you prefer the pre-Playtone name) and the movie’s filming. The cast had a virtual watch party of the classic 1996 film, which you can watch below.

Before their Music Cares event they talked about the song that serves as the lifeblood of the movie itself. The title track was written by Schlesinger, and in an interview with Variety the band (Ethan Embry, Johnathon Schaech, Tom Everett Scott and Steve Zahn) spoke about just how essential the song’s brilliance was to holding the film together.

EMBRY: Who mentioned the quote that Tom Hanks had said about Adam, that without him, there’d be no Oneders…

SCOTT: There’d be no Playtone. Yeah. It’s true. I mean, that guy threaded the needle on that song, right?

ZAHN: Yeah. I mean, he’s responsible for the entire thing. It’s the heart, the marrow of the whole movie. It’s everything. That had to be it, man! That had to be good enough, but not good enough (to make the band truly stars). It had to walk a really kind of fine line, that song. And not drive you nuts after a while!

The making of the movie itself, and the real-life band practices that were required to make the movie happen, are a fascinating behind-the-scenes about the Tom Hanks written-and-directed project. Their trip to Japan is on YouTube, too, if you need it. And it’s refreshing to hear just how obvious it was to everyone involved that the song would be a real-life hit.

EMBRY: When we started talking about this, it reminded me of a day that we were all sitting in the production office. It was very early once we all got together in Los Angeles, at a conference table, and it was all of us and Liv (Tyler), and I think Gary brought in a small stack of their favorites (from the songs submitted). And we sat there and listened to ‘em, and some varied from like the Who to a Led Zeppelin-y kind of vibe. But the one Adam wrote was just…. [He smacks his hands together.]

The interview also includes the fun times they’ve heard the song in real life as the years passed, including while grocery shopping. It’s hard to make an earworm that doesn’t get tired, and finding one that kept a movie about a one-hit wonder band afloat was essential to That Thing You Do‘s enduring popularity. Its celebration in 2020 is an unfortunate result of Schlesinger’s death, but it’s nice to see it still appreciated decades later.

[via Variety]

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