Dig in!

View Entire Post ›

The NBA and ESPN are teaming up to bring hoops fans a collection of virtual games of basketball. On Monday, it was reported that the league would hold an NBA 2K tournament involving 16 players from 16 different teams, with all of the games broadcasted on the Worldwide Leader in Sports. We learned a little bit earlier today that a few big names, like Kevin Durant and Donovan Mitchell, are slated to participate.

Now, the entire bracket is out, and it’s slated to be an absolutely loaded event with some of the best players in the league, both in real life and within the virtual world created by 2K Sports. The bracket was announced on the social media accounts for The Boardroom, Durant’s show on ESPN+.

Durant and Young as the 1 and 2 seeds makes plenty of sense, as both players were basically put on earth to torch opponents in video games with how they’re able to shoot and handle the ball. In terms of upsets, my eyebrows are raised at the 3-14 game, which has the potential to get hairy if Beverley is able to repeatedly pick Whiteside’s pockets. If that cannot happen and virtual Whiteside is able to essentially virtually manhandle Beverley, it’s hard to point out any major potential upsets.

For the finals, I’m inclined to go with KD making it there, although Booker potentially getting him before the championship game made me raise my eyebrows, because he’s the exact sort of player who can get thermonuclear hot in 2K and hit everything. On the other, Young seems like an easy pick to make it to the end, but getting LaVine in the second round could be treacherous, and if he runs into a big who sticks with him like Ayton, maybe he’ll run into some issues.

I have to go with Durant in the end, though, because picking against a healthy Kevin Durant in a 1-on-1 competition of any sort — whether it be in real life or a virtual tournament — seems foolish. But maybe I’ll be wrong, and maybe DJJ is able to take him down from the get-go. We’ll just have to see what happens when things get underway on Friday.

If there was a story that encapsulates the tragedy and beauty that humanity is experiencing right now, this one is it.

Less than a week ago, Alyssa Burks shared a photo of her physician husband Jared touching hands with their toddler through a glass door. Dr. Burks had been isolated from his family for two weeks to keep the safe from possible exposure as he treats patients who have become infected with the coronavirus. The heart-wrenching image captured the sacrifice our healthcare workers and their families are making to save lives and keep one another safe and healthy.

The photo went viral with more than 88,000 shares, and people praised Dr. Burks and his colleagues for their work on the front lines of this pandemic.

Three a few days later, a tornado ripped through the Burks’ hometown of Jonesboro, Arkansas, and their home was completely destroyed. Unbelievable.

Adding the stress of losing your home in a sudden natural disaster to the challenges a doctor’s family already faces with this pandemic is just too much.

This is where the generosity of strangers comes in, reminding us that even in the darkest times the light of human kindness continues to shine.

Alyssa Burks’ friend Evan Clower set up a GoFundMe for the Burks family, writing:

“After the Coronavirus and having to be separated for weeks due to his residency, a tornado hit the Burks family home and destroyed it. They are going to need help picking up the pieces so that they can find another place to live, collect their items, rebuild, all while Jared is working and fighting for those who health may be compromised.”

Clower set the goal for $2,500. Two days later, more than $113,000 has been raised, largely by strangers who found out about the tragedy from the news.

“I don’t know this family but the story touched me very personally,” wrote one donor. “In 1967, my family had our home destroyed by a tornado. I am donating with that memory in mind, in hopes that they can rebuild their lives soon and also in thanks for all their family is sacrificing during this time.”

“The picture and story of Jared/his son just touched my heart,” wrote another. “Not only is Jared putting himself at risk every day treating patients at the hospital, but to lose his home to the tornado is simply unfathomable. I felt it was my duty and an honor to donate to the Burke’s Go Fund Me. God Bless You.”

Donations have flooded in from around the world, with nearly 3,000 people donating. What a beautiful outpouring of support for one of our medical soldiers and his family at a time when many are struggling financially themselves.

Times are tough and people are amazing. Let’s keep remembering that as we make our way through this pandemic together.

The sports world remains on pause in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as the days pass our expectations regarding social distancing begin to stretch further into spring and, in some places, summer. That creates an interesting problems for sports organizations like the NBA, which may still attempt to squeeze in the remainder of the league’s playoffs and the rest of its offseason while not altering next season and potential inclusion of its players in the now-rescheduled Tokyo Summer Olympics.

Other leagues are still optimistic that they will not be impacted by the virus that has stopped much of traditional life for large portions of the world’s population. The NFL, for example, feels their September schedule will not be impacted. The league held a conference call with reporters on Tuesday and said that, despite death tolls rising and uncertainty about when people will be able to gather in crowds and attempt to go about life as usual, the league doesn’t feel that its schedule will have to change.

Per The Los Angeles Times:

“All of our discussions, all of our focus has been on a normal, traditional season, starting on time, playing in front of fans, in our regular stadiums,” said NFL executive vice president and general counsel Jeff Pash, in a conference call with reporters.

Asked what gives the league that confidence, Pash said: “I think what the doctors are looking at are models that address the effectiveness of different kinds of interventions, on how the curve has trended down and tailed off in other countries, and what they believe will be the result based on the modeling that’s been done in this country.

There are a lot of factors at play here and the very thought of the month of September feels light years away right now, but it’s interesting that the league hasn’t felt it necessary to consider things may not be back to normal come fall.

Pash noted that things remain fluid and could certainly be altered by further complications, but that the league is focused on playing in its current stadiums and with crowds of fans in attendance.

Hopefully the models they’re shown will include the flattening of the COVID-19 outbreak that social distancing is designed to produce, but we really won’t know how effective those measures have been for weeks and months to come. The larger issues of testing and a vaccine are not even far along enough to really consider here, but the NFL remains confident they’ll be playing football this fall.

This week marked the one-year anniversary of Nipsey Hussle’s tragic death. Fans and celebrities alike celebrated his life and music on Tuesday, ensuring that his legacy would live on forever. Since his passing, fans have had to rely on artists who collaborated with Nipsey before his death to share new music, but they have all longed for a posthumous release from the rapper.

And now we know that release may actually happen. Speaking with Revolt TV for a special episode of their Tour Tales series, DJ VIP, Nipsey’s tour DJ, spoke on Nipsey’s unreleased music, revealing that he left “a ton” of tracks in the vault.

“First of all, if any music ever comes out, it’s going to be with the blessing of Sam [Asghedom] (Nipsey’s brother) and the family,” he said. “So, at this point, that’s something they would have to answer. Right now, there’s a ton of Nipsey music that hasn’t been released that is original Nipsey music. But, that’s up to them. At this point, there are no plans for anything to come out in the immediate future.”

In response to a question that asked if there was an unreleased record that he hopes will be released, DJ VIP spoke on the quality of the music that sits in the vault.

“There are a couple that is sickly chilling. To hear them in the context of now, it sounds like he knew his future,” he said. “He wasn’t saying a bunch of stuff in every song just to say every situation is applicable to him. He was painting very clear pictures. There’s a couple of songs that are really eerie to hear because of the context of the situation now.”

DJ VIP also spoke on plans for a tribute show in honor of Nipsey, but the concerns with the coronavirus pandemic prevented the idea from moving past the discussion stage.

“I would’ve loved to have us come together to put on a show,” he said. “But before we could even start discussing it, everything with the corona[virus] stuff started happening.”

Nipsey Hussle is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Movie theaters across the country are currently shuttered due to social distancing measures brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, but one very notable theater is using its website to post movie reviews from one of the biggest directors in the world.

Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema has quietly posted reviews of classic movies from the director. Happy Mag spotted the reviews on the cinema’s website, and apparently the director has quietly written about movies like Escape From Alcatraz and A Man Called Tiger for months.

Tarantino bought the New Beverly Cinema in 2007 and last year’s release of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood made it very popular over the summer. This part of his work with the theater is not a direct result of coronavirus boredom, as he started posting reviews on December 22 with six entries, including Escape and The Image of Bruce Lee. Still, things certainly have picked up in recent weeks: there were just two posted in February but March saw 10 reviews including Gunsmoke, Sometimes A Great Notion and Daisy Miller. And as to be expected, Tarantino is far from an easy critic.

The reviews are a treasure trove of insight into the famed director’s mind. One of them likens a film script to “one hot f*ckin’ potato”, whilst another calls Prophecy (1979) “pretty much a piece of sh*t from the word go.”

There are some very positive reviews, though, and many are less like a review and more a reflection on the time and place where Tarantino first saw the film.

“I’ve loved this movie since I was a child, and the older I’ve got, the more my affection grows. For the uninitiated it might seem like dumb crazy ass sh*t. But for a martial art film expert, and Wang Yu fan, it’s like a fine vintage wine only a connoisseur can appreciate.”

Tarantino has always had plenty to say about movies, and in the past he’s said he hopes to write books about cinema when he officially retires from filmmaking. So perhaps this is just a warmup to the role he hopes to play once his current career ends. In the mean time, we certainly can learn a lot from what he’s putting out online, and maybe pick up a few classics to watch along the way.

Lindsay Lohan has been in the public eye for most of her life, and like lots of child stars, has had her fair share of ups and downs in the spotlight. But for as much as everyone knows her for star-making roles in movies like The Parent Trap and Mean Girls, not everyone is as familiar with her stint as a recording artist in the early 2000s. In 2004 and 2005 Lohan released her debut album Speak and A Little More Personal (Raw) via Casablanca Records, a major label subdivision under UMG and Republic Records.

Since then, Lohan hasn’t done much in the way of official music releases, but that’s all about to change, apparently. Earlier today the actress released a thirty second video filled with clips of people saying her name and short videos of social media posts of her that have gone viral. At the end of the video, the TV showing the video explodes and Lohan’s voice drops two simple words: “I’m back.”

It’s a dramatic and over-the-top return from a woman who is more than happy to self-describe as those two things, herself. No snippets of music have been teased yet, but fans can pre-save the new single here. Considering its been fifteen years since her last album dropped, this comeback should be very interesting.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter today to announce he has extra ventilators and will send them for free to anywhere in the world he ships cars.

Ventilators are in short supply across the globe as the COVID-19 virus spreads from country to country. Ventilators are breathing machines that can be the difference between life and death for the sickest patients.

As the numbers of patients in the U.S. escalates, many healthcare officials are afraid there won’t be enough to take care of everyone who needs them.

“This is a disease that people are dying of because of respiratory illness. They’re not dying because their heart fails. They’re not dying of shock,” Dr. Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer at the American Lung Association, told NBC.

“They’re dying because they just can’t get oxygen to their bloodstream, and that makes other organs fail, as well,” he continued.

Musk says the ventilators are FDA- approved and were purchased from China then airlifted to the states. He purchased over 1200 last week and had them shipped to Los Angeles. Many of them have already made their way to New York, the state hardest hit by the virus.

“China had an oversupply, so we bought 1,255 FDA-approved ResMed, Philips & Medtronic ventilators on Friday night and air-shipped them to LA. If you want a free ventilator installed, please let us know!” he said.

Tesla had extra ventilators so now it’s making them available for free as long as they’re used “immediately for patients, not stored in a warehouse.”

Musk isn’t only buying ventilators to help with the crisis, he has also started producing them. Last week, he announced that his closed factory in Buffalo, New York would reopen to produce more ventilators.

He said the factory will open “as soon as humanly possible.”

Tech Crunch says that there are currently 160,000 ventilators in the United states and the federal government has an another 12,700 in the National Strategic Supply.

via Virgin Orbit

Tesla isn’t the only car company stepping up to produce ventilators to help combat the pandemic. General Motors, Ford, and FCA have all pledged to either donate supplies or offer resources to manufacture more breathing machines.

Billionaire Richard Brandon’s rocket-launch company, Virgin Orbit, has also joined the big push to produce more ventilators at its factory in Long Beach, California. it aims to produce a simple type of medical ventilator starting in April at a rate of several hundred a week.

The world isn’t going to get through the pandemic without an all-hands-on-deck approach. That’s why it’s wonderful that private industry is stepping up to do its part to help care for those stricken by COVID-19.

Let’s remember everyone that helped out during the crisis so we know who to give our business to when life returns to normal.

View Entire Post ›

Since the NBA shut down earlier this month amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, it’s put the whole 2019-2020 season in jeopardy. And depending on how long the hiatus lasts, the implications could extend well into the future as the league examines its options for eventually moving forward.

Initially, it was Rudy Gobert’s positive diagnosis that prompted Adam Silver to put the season on pause indefinitely. Since then, several other players, including Gobert’s teammate Donovan Mitchell, have contracted the virus as well, though both Jazz players have been cleared within the past week.

On the other side of the country, Kevin Durant was among four total Nets players who tested positive, which subsequently resulted in the Lakers, who played Brooklyn just before the league pressed pause on the campaign, all getting tested. Two of their players came back positive as well, though the team did not specify who. On Tuesday, they finally got some good news, announcing that all players had been free of symptoms following a 14-day quarantine.

Via Dave McMenamin of ESPN:

Two weeks after two unnamed Los Angeles Lakers players tested positive for COVID-19, the team announced Tuesday that all of its players are currently symptom free.

***

The Lakers had to wait two days for test results and then all of their players were placed in a 14-day home isolation prescribed by the team. Fourteen players out of the Lakers’ 17-man roster (including two-way contracts) were tested at the time, league sources told ESPN.

Commissioner Adam Silver has said previously that he will revisit things on April 10, but with the virus still spreading rapidly, it seems unlikely we’ll have a return to sports anytime soon. In the meantime, we’ll just have to try to contain our excitement as we wait another three weeks for the 10-part Michael Jordan documentary, the premier of which has been moved up from June to April.

(Via ESPN)