Jayson Tatum has been a famous basketball player for a long time. Dating back to his days at Chaminade, basketball fans have known Tatum’s name, anxiously awaiting his NBA career. So while it’s an extraordinary feat to develop into an NBA superstar, many were hardly surprised when Tatum made that leap this season, scoring nearly 24 points per game on impressive efficiency.

At age 22, in just his third season, Tatum was going toe-to-toe with the NBA’s best players, scoring 39 in a nationally televised victory over Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers just before his first All-Star game. Out of the break, Tatum kept spewing fire, peaking in one of the best games of the NBA season on February 23 against LeBron James and the Lakers. Though the Lakers won and James outplayed Tatum, the young Celtic’s performance was enough to earn praise from the King.

In an Instagram post after the game, Tatum received incredibly nice praise from James, who is never one to be unnecessarily flowery to his competitors.

Though Tatum has been famous since he was a teenager and memorably dominated the Eastern Conference playoffs as a rookie, 2019-20 was a culmination of his hard work. This is the Tatum basketball fans thought they were getting when they hit YouTube for highlights shot at a rural Missouri gym a half-decade ago.

After Tatum and other members of the Gatorade team came together to announce on Twitter that Ypsilanti sophomore Emoni Bates won the Gatorade Player of the Year award, the significance of being on the other side of that moment was not lost on Tatum. For years, Tatum looked up to legendary pros, posing for pictures and clinging to their advice. Now, he’s one of the NBA stars lending a hand to a new generation.

“Talking about the NBA, it is a brotherhood,” Tatum told Dime over the phone. “It’s cool, I remember coming up through high school, any time I got to meet or talk to an NBA player, whether it was quick or if I saw them in person and got to ask for a picture. I remember talking to Kevin Durant on the phone, I remember meeting LeBron, then you fast forward and you’re playing against these guys your rookie year and they remember you and they say what’s up before the game. That’s really, really cool, because by the time you get to the NBA, you’re 18, 19 years old. So you’re still a kid and you’re still looking up to all these guys, but now you’re competing against them. That feeling is really special.”

Growing up in St. Louis, his first connection with a star was Bradley Beal, someone he watched excel at the high school level and then was able to get advice from while he was going through the same process

“Yeah, I think Brad Beal, he’s like my big brother. When I was in seventh grade, he won this award at my high school and I remember the day that he was (so) surprised. They gave him the award in front of the entire school and I remember that day like it was yesterday, and I remember telling myself, ‘I want to win that some day.’

“Me and him talked about it many times, and going through high school, he always gave me advice and he would come watch me play, and I eventually won it my senior year. It was just cool for me because I remember being in the gym as a seventh-grader watching him win, then five years later, fast forward at the same school and I was able to win.”

Now, he gets that chance with Bates, who he’s been able to see up close and personal a few times.

“The first time I met him, he was in L.A. working out in the gym that I was working out in [after my rookie season],” said Tatum. “That was the first time, but I had seen his highlights on Twitter and Instagram, that’s when I first was aware of him. Then a year ago around this time, I was down in Dallas with my former AAU team and my dad was down there. We went to go watch (Bates) play in the same tournament, so that’s how that came about.”

Bates is a special talent, as evidenced by him winning Gatorade Player of the Year as just a sophomore, and he figures to follow in the footsteps of guys like Tatum that go from high school star to challenging his idols in the NBA in a few years. Having already been welcomed in by that brotherhood will only help him navigate that path.

After the events of Avengers: Endgame, there’s been a large question mark around the future of Mark Ruffalo‘s Hulk as members of the original Avengers team began exiting the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans are both done as Iron Man and Captain America, respectively, while Scarlett Johansson’s time in the MCU will conclude after Black Widow (eventually) hits theaters.

But not all of the original team has left. Chris Hemsworth will be back in Thor: Love and Thunder, and Jeremy Renner is expected to appear in the Hawkeye series for Disney+. In a new interview with Variety, Ruffalo reveals he’s hoping to do a bit of both. Unfortunately, the actor also revealed that, currently, there are no official plans for the Hulk except for a possible cameo in the upcoming She-Hulk series, and even that isn’t fully locked down.

“If we come up with something good, that would be really interesting,” he tells Variety. “Right now that’s about it. That’s all there is on the table.”

While the actor could be pulling off some of that infamous MCU secrecy by not tipping his hand on upcoming projects before Marvel is ready to announce them, he doesn’t hold back by expressing his interest in a solo Hulk movie, which has always just been out of his reach.

“There’s an idea that I think could be really interesting,” Ruffalo said. “We’ve never really followed him into his life. He’s always kind of off on the side. He’s like the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the Avengers. It’d be interesting to fill in all the blanks about what happened to him in between all these movies.”

As if the thought of a solo film isn’t enough to get Hulk fans excited, Ruffalo took things a step further by teasing one particular character who has a long comic book history of battling the green giant, which Ruffalo devoured as a child. “Maybe Hulk and Wolverine could hook up,” he suggested. As X-Men fans know, Wolverine made his first appearance in an issue of “The Incredible Hulk” where the two rage-filled heroes exchanged blows in the woods of Canada. Could the MCU be planning a similar debut for its new version of the clawed mutant? Maybe, if Ruffalo has his say.

(Via Variety)

The bad news for WWE keeps coming, and it doesn’t look like there’s an end in sight.

WWE followed up Wednesday’s conference call warning of roster cuts, furloughs, and decreased salaries by immediately releasing numerous Superstars, including former Cruiserweight Champion Lio Rush, former Tag Team Champions and Boneyard Match participants Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, and Heath Slater, who has kids.

The latest announced cuts are nine WWE producers, including a number of recognizable names from the company’s history. Per Pro Wrestling Sheet, the producers have been furloughed and not outright released.

So far, the confirmed list of producers furloughed by the company on Wednesday afternoon includes:

• Billy Kidman
• Mike Rotunda
• Dave ‘Fit’ Finlay
• Scott Armstrong
• Sarah Stock
• Shane ‘Hurricane’ Helms
• Lance Storm
• Shawn Daivari
• Pat Buck

How can you do this to Mike Rotunda, the former Irwin R. Schyster on Tax Day? It’s also notable that Lance Storm closed his wrestling school back in November of 2019 to take the position with WWE, and is furloughed a mere five months later. Such a shame to see a number of legends who have been instrumental in the creation and development of WWE talent over the past several years losing their positions, even temporarily, due to cost-cutting measures.

As always, we’ll keep you updated on any additional names whose releases are announced today.

Vince McMahon made it clear earlier today in that big conference call that cuts were coming, including to talent. Once the employees were warned, it didn’t take long for the names to start coming out. Per an announcement on WWE.com, they’ve announced the release of eight Superstars as of this writing:

WWE has come to terms on the release of Drake Maverick (James Curtin), Curt Hawkins (Brian Myers), Karl Anderson (Chad Allegra), Luke Gallows (Drew Hankinson), Heath Slater (Heath Miller), Eric Young (Jeremy Fritz), EC3 (Michael Hutter) and Lio Rush (Lionel Green). We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

None of these are exactly shocking, as they haven’t been pushed as big stars in WWE (and some like EC3 haven’t even been on TV in months), but that’s a lot of people to let go at one time, as opposed to their usual release announcements that come in ones and twos. Also, Drake Maverick was announced as a competitor in the NXT Cruiserweight Tournament, where he’ll now need to be replaced.

When this news story was first posted on WWE.com, it only listed Maverick, Hawkins, Maverick, EC3, and Rush, but it was edited within a few minutes to add Gallows, Slater, and Young. That may mean more names are on the way, presumably as they’re informed personally so they don’t learn they’ve lost their jobs via the website.

Update: Aiden English, who has most recently been working on commentary, has now been added to the list, as well as WWE Hall Of Famer Kurt Angle.

Update 2: Sarah Logan, formerly of the Riott Squad, has now been released, as has referee Mike Chioda, who has been with WWE since 1989.

Dwayne Johnson doesn’t strike me as a guy who hears “no” often. He was (and still occasionally is) an extremely popular wrestler who transitioned into an extremely popular actor with multiple franchises to his name. Also, people call him “The Rock” like that’s totally normal. But one of his biggest career what-ifs is the franchise that he’s not part of.

When asked on Instagram if there was a movie role that he “wanted but lost to another actor,” Johnson replied, “In Hollywood, actors are kind of like in-a-box. There are actors that can vie for a particular role because it allows for them to have a certain look, skin color, size, etc. Fortunately, for me, there aren’t a lot of guys at all who look like me. So, all of my roles, from the beginning of my career, I’ve been a lucky son of a b*tch that they’ve been created and designed for me — except Jack Reacher.” Yup, Johnson wanted to play Jack Reacher, a role that went to Tom Cruise, despite Cruise being 5′ 7″ and Jack Reacher, the book character, being 6′ 5″. The same height as the Rock.

He added, “Now, this was ten years ago, and I was in a much different place, I recognize that. Tom was the biggest movie star in the world, and I was not… I’m positive that the role of Jack Reacher, because it was an established character, an IP that was well known and beloved around the world, that I wouldn’t have had the creative space to do what I wanted with the character. I look back in gratitude that I didn’t get Jack Reacher.”

This worked out well for everyone: Tom Cruise got to star in Jack Reacher and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, two fun movies in a “lazy afternoon on TNT” kind of way, and because the Rock’s availability was open, he received a phone call from Universal to make a cameo in Fast Five. Eventually leading to this great moment in cinema history.

(Via Collider)

Most festivals and concerts have either been postponed or canceled entirely for weeks now, and there’s really no word yet on when some of them might come back. Generally, it looks like most events are rescheduling for the fall, like Coachella, which was pushed back from April to October. It remains to be seen if that will be enough of a delay. California Governor Gavin Newsom seems to think it’s not necessarily a matter of time, but that it’s more about one important thing happening.

Newsom answered questions during a press event yesterday (April 14), and he was asked about when he thinks life in California can return to normal (or closer to it). He suggested that mass gatherings (like concerts) likely won’t come back until a coronavirus vaccine is widely available, saying, “The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best until we get to herd immunity and we get to a vaccine. So large-scale events that bring in hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of strangers, all together across every conceivable difference, health and otherwise, is not in the cards based upon our current guidelines and current expectations. […] When you suggest June, July, August: it is unlikely.”

This comes after Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases, said earlier this month that a vaccine could be a year to 18 months away.

Watch Newsom’s explanation above.

I miss sports a lot, and if you are reading our sports website, odds are high you miss sports, too. I miss buzzer-beaters in basketball games, world-class goals in soccer games, and considering the point of the normal sports calendar we are in, I really miss baseball teams hitting moonshot home runs that constantly leave me in awe of how a human being can mash a baseball hundreds of feet into the air and have it land in the outstretched palm of some random guy who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Unfortunately, we do not have that in the United States right now as part of a preventative measure to try and slow the spread of COVID-19. What we do have, however, are some sports leagues in other corners of the world, and fortunately for us, they are playing real, live games. An example of this came via the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taiwan, where Chu Yu-Hsien of the Rakuten Monkeys hit a walk-off dinger against the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions.

Getting the obvious out of the way here, it is very strange to see this sort of thing happen in a venue that does not have fans, something that Dr. Anthony Fauci said we will need to see in the United States if we are going to get sports any time soon. The mannequins in the stands and the piped-in noise are a nice touch, even if they are going to take some time to get used to — also it’s very funny that despite having no actual fans the TV broadcast still cuts to the mannequin crowd reaction as the guy rounds the bases.

Having said that, holy crap! It’s a live baseball game ending with someone hitting a baseball to the moon to win! This is like standing under a waterfall after spending a month in the desert, man. And what a homer this was! The pitcher missed his spot completely and left a meatball over the middle of the plate, and the batter made him pay, turning on the pitch and dropping it right into the seats that are usually occupied by fans who decide at the last minute they wanted to go check out a ballgame.

It stinks, but we’re not getting live sports on our shores for a while. It’ll be tough for fans, sure, but fortunately, we have other ways to consume baseball, and basketball, and football, and everything else that we miss. At the very least, I have never been so invested in a walk-off that did not involve my team.

As a resident of Washington state, where voters have been able to vote by mail for all elections for nearly a decade, I’ve been watching recent debates over voting systems with fascination.

People tend to forget that Washington is even up here in the corner of the country, so it’s a little weird to suddenly be getting so much attention for the way we vote. But what’s funny is that our system is getting attention only on a surface level. Like, people are paying attention to the idea of mail-in voting—with some totally freaking out over it—but most are not actually paying attention to any of the details of our voting system or election results.

Since the President started harping on mail-in voting being “RIPE for FRAUD,” here’s the gist of conversations I’ve been seeing:

“Mail-in voting is a good option for upcoming elections since we don’t know if it will be safe to send people to the polls.”

“What?! No! There’s too much opportunity for widespread fraud with mail-in ballots!”

“But what about the states who have done all mail-in voting for years without widespread fraud?”

“Those are all ‘blue’ states! Clearly mail-in voting is a big Democrat conspiracy to win elections!”

The total jump over logic aside, there’s some simple proof up here in the Northwest that the Democrats-cheat-by-mail argument bears no weight. Let’s look at Washington and our neighbor to the south, Oregon—two states with all mail-in voting. Most would consider these states pretty solidly “blue,” right? (They’re not solid blue, but that’s another discussion. Just stick with me here.)

On a state level, elections are run by the Secretary of State. These elected officials control and oversee the running of elections—local, state, and national. They are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the election, the privacy and validity of ballots, and voter registration. They are in charge of election security, and by extension, voter fraud.

So who is Washington’s Secretary of State? Her name is Kim Wyman. She was elected by the people of Washington state in 2012 and 2016.

Who cares, you ask? Well, Kim Wyman is a Republican.

Oregon’s Secretary of State is named Bev Clarno. She’s been serving since March 31, 2019—and she’s also a Republican. She was appointed to the position after her predecessor, Dennis Richardson, passed away while in office. He had been elected by the people of Oregon in 2016.

And yep. He was also a Republican. How about that.

Riddle me this: If mail-in voting is some big conspiracy by Democrats to steal elections, how is it that both of these predominantly blue states elected Republicans to oversee their elections? I mean, if there’s really fraud here that’s actually impacting election results, wouldn’t those sneaky, conniving Democrats at least make sure to elect a Democrat to the position charged with election integrity and validity?

Oh oh oh and—if there was really was widespread voter fraud among Democrats in these states, don’t you think the Republicans who are in charge of the elections would be sounding the alarm?

Yes, of course they would. But they’re not. Because it’s not happening.

Kim Wyman—again, Washington’s Republican Secretary of State who oversees elections—has said that the idea that widespread voter fraud is rampant in the U.S. is “ludicrous on its face.” And Washington, with it’s decade-long experience with mail-in voting, ranks #2 in Harvard University’s Electoral Integrity Project—an ongoing study that surveys hundreds of election experts how each state fares in its electoral processes.

Does this mean that voter fraud doesn’t exist at all? Of course not. But it does mean that there’s nothing inherently favorable to Democrats in a mail-in system. Washington and Oregon have spent many years improving the process and the security of the process of voting this way, implementing hundreds of safeguards at various levels to make sure voting happens as it should.

No system or safeguard is 100% foolproof. Voter ID laws can be gamed with fake IDs. Signatures can be forged if someone practices hard. Electronic voting machines can be hacked. Election officials can be bribed. Pollsters can “lose” ballots.

Any number of things can happen in an election, and they very occasionally do. There is evidence of voter fraud, but it’s by no means rampant or widespread. Even if you look at the conservative Heritage Foundation’s voter fraud website, you’ll find around 1200 incidents of voter fraud. But that’s for the entire country, and over a 20-year period, which includes billions of voting instances. They state that it’s not an exhaustive list, but if they’re trying to make the point that voter fraud is a concern, they’d surely list just about every instance they can find. Even if it’s twice or three times what they list, that’s still a teensy-tiny, bunch-of-zeroes-after-the-decimal-point, fraction of of a percent of total votes—by no definition “rampant.”

Not to mention, voter fraud and election tampering are actual crimes, punishable by law, and I personally don’t believe that there’s a huge, widespread swath of Americans chomping at the bit to criminally cheat in an election. This deep distrust of our fellow Americans due to partisanship is gross and needs to stop.

Bottom line: The fact that voters in both of these predominantly blue states elected—by mail—Republican officials to be in charge of their elections seems like more than adequate proof that well-orchestrated mail-in ballot systems can work beautifully and fairly, regardless of party loyalties.

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Video games are, for many, the cure to boredom as they stay put and wait for the worst of our current reality to pass by. The gaming industry is a life raft for a number of people, including gamblers who need something to lose money on.

They’re also a World Health Organization-sanctioned good way to pass the time during the COVID-19 pandemic as people hunker down, make bells on the virtual Animal Crossing market, and just generally try to endure one of the weirdest moments in recent existence.

If you’re still looking for a more of-the-moment game, however, it’s hard to do better than a title inspired by coronavirus and the subsequent social distancing that’s followed. Enter COVID-19: Coronavirus Quarantine, a game from first-time game maker Derrick Rossignol (who happens to be a music editor at Uproxx), with illustrations from Kjetil Rossignol. The duo wanted to make the most of the pandemic by creating a game that works on Game Boy ROMs.

The game’s look is certainly Pokemon-inspired, referencing the series and the current environment we exist in, where toilet paper is inexplicably scarce and our fridges might be starting to look a little bare. The title is quick, and though it may remind you of Stardew Valley, there isn’t much of a grind to it, which is exactly the point.

“I think somebody who isn’t patient enough for the relaxed pace of a Stardew Valley-type game but still wants a life sim could get into this. It’s not even necessarily a game to “get into,” though: In less than five minutes, you can see everything there is to see,” Rossignol said. “It’s a dumb game, and that’s the point. Mainly, the goal for making this was to get a quick laugh, raise some money for a good cause, and get a simple message across: It’s important we do our part and stay inside as much as we can, even if it’s really boring sometimes.”

Even better, the game costs a dollar and proceeds will go to charity. It also comes with a fun illustrated instruction booklet with simple instructions like, well, stay home. Which is good advice! And a good cause, to boot.