Category: Worldwide

Offense gets the attention in the NBA and, in the modern era, it could be argued that offense is more important than ever. Defense still separates contenders from pretenders, though, and the best defenders in the world leave their mark on the floor each night. To reward the top tier, the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year award is in play again in 2021-22 without a clear and dominant frontrunner. While injury-related absences are, unfortunately, part of the reason for the jumbled group, that doesn’t take away from the elite performance on display from the top candidates.

Today, we will take a look at which players are the current leaders in the race with a sprinkling of honorable mentions, all of whom will arrive in alphabetical order.

Giannis Antetokounmpo

Antetokounmpo is a clear MVP candidate, and he has won that award twice. He is also a former Defensive Player of the Year. Why, then, is he not always mentioned in this particular race? Well, unless it is voter fatigue, the reasoning is unclear. Antetokounmpo is tremendous at the rim, versatile enough to guard in space, a fantastic weakside rim protector, a high-end rebounder, and basically the total package. He gets an extra bump for carrying Milwaukee’s backline defense without Brook Lopez, and he is certainly on the short list for the top spot.

Rudy Gobert

Gobert is a three-winner of this award, and he is the best regular season defender in the league over a half-decade or so. He is also near the top this year, even while missing 14 of 58 games, and Gobert has the obvious counting stats in averaging 14.8 rebounds and 2.3 blocked shots per game to lead the NBA in both categories. Simply put, Utah’s craters anytime Gobert leaves the floor, either for injury or rest. The Jazz have built the entire ship around his defense, for better or worse, and Gobert is the best rim protector in the league. For good measure, he leads the NBA in defensive RAPTOR (by FiveThirtyEight) and Gobert’s defensive metrics are always pristine.

Draymond Green

When Green last played on Jan. 5, he was the clear leader in the Defensive Player of the Year race. The Warriors were lapping the field from a team perspective, and Green was the undeniable centerpiece of that success. Since he has not played in more than a month, Green’s candidacy is not in the same position, just due to the numbers game. Fortunately, Gobert also missed considerable time, and Golden State’s team results, coupled with Green’s reputation, can buoy his candidacy in the coming days. He will need to return pretty quickly after the All-Star break, though, or it is going to be an uphill battle from a cumulative perspective.

Honorable Mentions

Mikal Bridges – The Suns are in the top three on defense with an ensemble cast. Bridges is the team’s best defender pretty easily, and he does show up in the top ten in the betting market for the award. It is tough to see him winning it unless Phoenix gets even better in the next two months, but he is a fast-rising impact player on the wing, and Bridges can simply take away an opposing option each night.

Joel Embiid – Embiid has three All-Defense teams on his profile and might make another one. He is also a legitimate MVP candidate, but the Sixers’ overall defense might keep him away from the top three (or even the top five) here. There is no shame in simply being awesome, but Embiid does not profile quite as well as Gobert for the award and there are candidates with better seasons going on defense.

Jaren Jackson Jr. – Memphis, like Phoenix, is enjoying a heck of a season without a single dominant defender. Jackson Jr. is on the radar in the betting market, however, and would likely be the guy if the Grizzlies got more attention. He has made “the leap” on defense this season, returning some of the pre-draft hype about what he could be on that end of the floor.

Evan Mobley – If we are being honest, this is probably a year or two early for the rookie big man. However, Mobley is in the top ten in the betting market and he is been the best defender on a top-five defense in the NBA. The future is unbelievably bright, and he is already quite good.

NBA All-Star Weekend is about the finest talent professional basketball has to offer, but some of the biggest names in music popped up during the festivities, too. DJ Khaled, Lil Wayne, Lil Baby, Gunna, Ludacris, Migos, and Mary J. Blige performed on Saturday, and yesterday’s actual All-Star Game featured more recognizable music figures taking the stage.

Machine Gun Kelly (who was born in Houston but spent some of his formative years in Cleveland, this year’s All-Star host city) helped introduce the game’s starting lineups by getting the crowd excited, thanking “all the hard workers of this town,” cracking a couple of jokes, and handing things over to DJ D-Nice before the team lineups were properly introduced. Kelly had his fingerprints all over the weekend, as he also played during the celebrity game.

Prior to tip-off, Juno Award nominee Ryland James sang the Canadian national anthem before Ohio native Macy Gray delivered a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Some people online noticed LeBron James seemed amused by Gray’s performance, as he was seen seemingly trying to suppress a smile as she sang.

As for halftime, the mid-game break was mostly focused on a celebration of the 75th anniversary team, although it did feature Earth, Wind & Fire performing their thematically appropriate hit “Shining Star.”

Meanwhile, Adele was spotted courtside (which makes sense given her relationship with sports agent Rich Paul) and caught the attention of the TNT broadcast crew, which prompted Charles Barkley to reckon he and Adele ought to duet. Barkley’s co-hosts quickly and definitively shot that idea down.

Check out the musical highlights from the All-Star Game above.

NYU-student-turned-pop-star Maggie Rogers has announced that her next album is finished, making the reveal in an Instagram post. What better way to break news than with a picture of yourself at a monster truck show? Rogers wrote alongside the pic, “album is done. celebrating with monster trucks :).”

Just last month, the Maryland-native singer-songwriter hinted at new music when celebrating the three-year anniversary of her debut album Heard It In A Past Life on Twitter, writing, “happy birthday HIIAPL [lightning bolt emoji] the covid era has taught me that time is elastic and my sanity is kept by keeping friends + community close. feeling so much of that today. thank u for your endless support and care. it’s nearly time to begin again…” This comes a few days after Rogers shared a new photo of herself (which is now her social media profile picture) and wrote, “okay 2022, let’s have some fun [lightning bolt emoji].”

Fans have been inquiring about a new album for quite some time, and last year Rogers revealed through a tweet that she was in the Harvard graduate program, “studying the spirituality of public gatherings and the ethics of power in pop culture,” which is a pretty solid defense if you ask me. A few months before that, her breakout tracks “Alaska” and “Light On” had been Certified Gold.

Three months have elapsed since John Oliver’s last episode of Last Week Tonight, and so much has changed. There’s been another COVID wave. Russia might be invading Ukraine. There were the Olympics that, again, not enough people watched. Former president Donald Trump both soft-launched his long-threatened Twitter clone and might lose all his income save for his pensions. But when Oliver returned to HBO, he devoted most of his first 2022 episode to a controversy that won’t go away: the rightwing hoopla over Critical Race Theory.

For months, conservative firebrands and their outraged civilian followers have been up in arms over [checks notes] a purely academic practice that is only taught in higher education. And yet a lie has arisen that it’s being taught in public schools to second graders. It’s not. And Oliver and his writing staff, as is their wont, spent a lot of time meticulously debunking their nonsense.

“A lot of people are getting very mad about critical race theory right now, and instinctively, you probably know that it’s a manufactured panic; but the fact is, the fear around it is having real effects,” Oliver explained. “Last year, Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race in Virginia after repeatedly promising that on his first day in office he’d ban CRT from being taught in schools; multiple states have passed laws outlawing the teaching of it; and Republicans are likely to make it a major focus of the midterms.”

Oliver then explained what CRT is, to everyone but especially to pundits like Tucker Carlson, who confessed he has no idea what it is even though he’s spent months railing against it. “It’s the name given to a body of legal scholarship that began in the 1970s that attempted to understand why racism and inequality persisted after the civil rights movement. The core idea is that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something that is embedded in legal systems and policies,” offered Oliver. He also tackled Carlson’s outrageous claims. “As for Tucker’s notion that it teaches some races are superior to others, or that parent’s claim that it teaches kids to hate America, none of that is remotely true.”

He also reminded people that “CRT is graduate-level legal theory, so unless your 5-year-old is currently pursuing a law degree, they’re not reading Kimberlé Crenshaw,” referring to one of the practice’s leading scholars.

As usual, Oliver and team dug in deep to the scandal: how it was invented out of whole cloth; how it took on a life of its own; how 37 states (so far) have introduced laws prohibiting teaching of it in schools; how it’s been used to inspire parents to impose restrictions on teachers who may point out, say, that the nation was founded by slave owners. And he pointed out that it’s been a way to short-circuit any real discussion of racial problems plaguing America.

“For all the laws being passed to prevent discomfort or anguish on account of an individual’s race, whose discomfort, exactly, are we prioritizing here?” Oliver asked. “Because kids of color can tell you, they don’t get a choice to not talk about race and have it go away.”

You can watch the full Last Week Tonight episode above.

The first “half” of the 2021-22 NBA season is in the books and, because of the league’s calendar, more than two-thirds of the campaign is over. As such, award season is firmly here and, while a lot of attention will be paid to the NBA’s Most Valuable Player race above all others, the jockeying for position will continue in other pursuits. One piece of hardware that is interesting to monitor is the push for Sixth Man of the Year and, this time, there is a clear front-runner at the All-Star break.

Here is a look at the candidates, coming to you in alphabetical order.

Tyler Herro

Herro is the clear favorite, both in the mainstream discussion and in the betting market. In fact, the betting market lists Herro as more than a -1000 favorite, suggesting that he is overwhelmingly likely to win the award. Even if you throw out that angle, Herro does have an impressive profile. Scoring is generally rewarded in the Sixth Man race, and Herro is the only player in the top 50 of the NBA in scoring that also would qualify for the award. One potential argument against Herro is a sky-high usage rate, but the third-year guard has reasonable efficiency and carries bench groups for Miami when called upon. He also has name recognition and, while this isn’t everything, it probably helps Herro that he is on a very good Heat team.

Buddy Hield

Hield is off the radar now after a trade to Indiana, but he was at least a fringe candidate in Sacramento. Like Herro, Hield makes his biggest impact in the scoring category, and he is one of the best three-point marksman in the NBA. It is possible that Hield will be a fully entrenched starter for his new team, but the only requirement for Sixth Man eligibility is that a player has to come off the bench more often than he starts. Hield is going to meet that threshold.

Kevin Love

Love being on this list would’ve been unthinkable in the recent past. He flamed out of the U.S. National Team over the summer, and there was buzz that Cleveland might even try to send him away, either by trade or buyout. Fast-forward to now, and the Cavs are firmly in the playoff mix in the East and Love is playing quite well. He has been supplanted by Evan Mobley at the 4, but Love has been a highly valuable role player, providing much-needed spacing with his three-point shooting. Love is playing frisky basketball on defense, and he fits well with both Mobley and Allen. If Herro falters, Love could step in.

Kelly Oubre Jr.

Only Herro is averaging more points than Oubre at this juncture. As noted above, that is usually a pretty good metric for projecting Sixth Man consideration, and he has some “flash” games to attract attention. No one would accuse Oubre of being terribly consistent, but he is averaging more than 16 points per game on league average efficiency for a pretty good team. That’s a solid formula in a year that doesn’t have too many glaringly obvious candidates after Herro, but he also may have to contend with a new teammate (see below) for positioning.

Honorable Mentions

Jordan Clarkson – Points. Per. Game. Clarkson won the award a year ago and, to be fair, he enjoyed the best season of his career. This time, he hasn’t been as good or as efficient, and the Jazz have fallen below expectations. Can that change? Absolutely, and Clarkson is kind of the embodiment of a traditional Sixth Man candidate who primarily derives value from microwave scoring.

Montrezl Harrell – Harrell might’ve been on the list above if he stayed in Washington, and he still might get there in Charlotte. The situation is just a bit uncertain, but Harrell is a former winner in 2019-20. He also has a penchant for putting up stats and doing so in a reserve role.

Cam Johnson – It hasn’t been an incredible year for Johnson, but the Suns are the best team in the league. That team distinction usually bumps players a couple of spots in consideration and, with a weak field, Johnson could snare some No. 3 votes.

Anfernee Simons – At the time of this post, Simons qualifies by coming off the bench more often than he starts. With that said, his eligibility will almost certainly change, as Simons is now a key piece of Portland’s future-facing approach. If the Blazers really wanted to get Simons into the award race, they could play him 32 minutes off the bench, but that doesn’t seem to be a priority.

Perhaps you thought the day would never come. And yet on Presidents’ Day 2022, a version, at least, of former commander-in-chief Donald J. Trump’s long-threatened Twitter clone got a soft release, hitting iOS only. If you thought a complicated social media service run by a guy under multiple investigations that have already turned up “significant evidence” of fraud would go swimmingly, then you just don’t know Trump.

As per Insider, Truth Social hit the Apple app store Sunday night in, shall we say, an extremely limited capacity. It’s only available on iOS. It’s only available in America. There is no web version. What’s more, it was plagued with problems from the get-go. By 11:24pm EST, an update revealed they were having technical issues that prohibited potential users from creating an account. Some eight hours later, on Monday morning, it was revealed the app had been down all night.

That’s not all. A message on the service stated that they are currently limiting user sign-ups, but that they’ll “expand capacity over the coming hours to enable more users to join Truth Social.”

Regardless, guess who’s back on social media? Trump himself made the first post last week — not that anyone else could see it on the app. Instead, Don Jr. had to post a screengrab on Twitter, which booted his father over a year back after his supporters stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to overturn an election he lost. Looks like, for the time being anyway, that that’s how most people will be able to see what’s happening over at Trump’s Twitter clone.

(Via Insider)

The Weeknd is already having a big year after releasing his sixth album Dawn FM. Last month, he achieved the most monthly listeners on Spotify, surpassing Justin Bieber who held that spot since last spring. The star is now teaming up with Amazon for a music special titled The Weeknd x The Dawn FM Experience, which will premiere exclusively through Prime Video this Saturday, February 26.

“I’m ecstatic to partner with Amazon to premiere the most elaborate live TV special I’ve ever done,” The Weeknd (aka Abel Tesfaye) said in a statement. “Welcome to the next phase of Dawn FM — a purgatory otherworld where live performance, theater, and performance art collide for a night out at the club.”

The official teaser is out now, and it centers on the strange, older version of Tesfaye who we’ve been seeing on the album cover and in music videos. Tesfaye has suggested that Dawn FM is part of a new trilogy, following the trilogy of House Of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes Of Silence that launched his career. Maybe this new special will provide context to this complicated world that Tesfaye seems to be building.

Watch the teaser for The Weeknd x The Dawn FM Experience above.

(SPOILERS for this week’s Euphoria will be found below.)

Euphoria’s wild, unpredictable second season is about to come to a close, but before the screen fades to black — and, hopefully, Rue heads to an in-treatment facility — we’ve got some fan predictions to sort through. Which characters are on the chopping block? Who’s leaving East Highland? And just how devastated is the Fexi fandom going to be? We’ve got some theories.

Rue Takes Her Sobriety Seriously

Does Rue’s latest sobriety attempt feel like a “fool me twice” kind of scenario? Sure, but we’re going to remain hopeful that this latest trip to rock-bottom has finally opened the character’s eyes. Her conversation with her mom felt like somewhat of a turning point. Rue seems to realize how selfish and self-centered she’s been, especially after learning how badly Gia’s been doing in school. And though Lexi’s play used her grief and addiction as a plot point, Rue didn’t seem angry about it. In fact, her reaction to seeing herself through her former best friend’s eyes felt like a step forward. With Jules, Rue traded one addiction for another. With Lexi, Rue might finally be starting to realize what an incredible support system that she had all along. It seems clear that a Jules/Rue reunion is not in the cards anytime soon, so we’re predicting Lexi and Rue will renew their friendship and Euphoria’s main character will actually make some progress in her sobriety journey … before that whole mess with Laurie rears its ugly head in season three.

Nate And Jules Hook Up

Writing out this particular fan theory gives us absolutely no pleasure but, it must be said: a Nate and Jules hook up seems like more and more of a possibility. Nate’s tossed Cassie out with yesterday’s trash, and he knows his relationship with Maddy is irreparable. He clearly still has feelings for Jules — his nightmare proved that — and Jules, for her part, seemed to be appreciative of his efforts to make amends by returning his dad’s sex tape. Jules is not in a good headspace at the moment, since Rue continues to ignore her and focus on her own sobriety so, while we’d absolutely hate to see it, the idea that both of these characters might seek comfort from one another while their lives implode around them is not that unrealistic.

Maddy Tries To Help Cassie

Let’s be clear: Cassie is a coward, and Maddy deserves better. What’s also true is that Maddy is a really good f*cking friend who’s starting to realize what a joy-sucking parasite Nate Jacobs is. Lexi’s play spent a good amount of time focusing on the friendship between Cassie and Maddy, something that caused Cassie to flee to the bathroom for a quick cry session. And, when Maddy was banging on Cassie’s bathroom door, demanding she admit to sleeping with her ex-boyfriend, she seemed more upset that Nate had once again ruined her life, this time by using someone she viewed as a sister, to do it. Does Cassie deserve forgiveness? Absolutely not, but Maddy is a good person. Such a good person in fact, that we wouldn’t be surprised if she’s able to push past her own hurt to see how Nate’s mind-f*ckery has really warped Cassie’s perception of herself, recognize she went through the same thing while dating him, and try to help her former best friend claw her way out of the cycle. Hopefully afterward, she’ll give East Highland, and everyone in it the big middle finger, find some rich man who wants to give her all of his money, and do whatever the hell she likes with her life.

Cal And Nate Face Off One Last Time

If Nate thought Cal abandoning the family to be his best Queer self meant life might finally get easier, he was sorely mistaken. Left humiliated by Lexi’s play, single after breaking up with Cassie, and still pining for both Maddy and Jules — Nate Jacobs is finally getting hit with a bit of good ol’ fashioned karma. Even his mom — who he might’ve expected to have a better relationship with once his dad was out of the way — sees him as an angry, aggressive jerk. Unfortunately, few characters on this show have the bandwidth to self-reflect on their poor choices so we doubt Nate will look inward to fix the broken parts of himself. It’s more likely he’ll look for someone to blame for his current problems and with no women around to serve as a punching bag, that job will probably go to Cal. Here’s hoping the two most toxic men on Euphoria end up getting what they deserve.

Custer Dies

There’s really no need to break this down further. He’s trying to set Fez and Ashtray up for Mouse’s murder, and he’s being terribly obvious about it. Ash might not know the whole plot, but he knows a rat when he sees one whispering to his girlfriend in his living room and nervously fidgeting on his couch. Custer is not long for this world.

Fez And Ash Get Caught

Sadly, we can’t imagine a season two finale that doesn’t see either Fez or Ash getting busted for someone’s murder — if not Mouse, then at the very least, Custer. Whether both will go to jail (a juvenile detention center in Ash’s case) or one of them will die still remains to be seen, but there’s no way our favorite neighborhood drug dealers are getting away clean. R.I.P Fexi shippers.

This year’s hip-hop-focused Super Bowl Halftime Show — featuring Dr. Dre, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, and 50 Cent — was generally well-received. It also managed to renew interest in some of the performers’ music, as the new Billboard 200 chart indicates: On the chart dated February 26 (which accounts for listening activity from February 11 to 17, while the Super Bowl was on the 13th), albums by Eminem and Dr. Dre have returned to the top 10 for the first time in years.

Eminem’s Curtain Call: The Hits (a former No. 1 on the chart) had a major rise, as it ascended to No. 8 this week, up from No. 126 the previous week. That’s thanks to about 31,000 equivalent album units earned, an increase of 256 percent. Meanwhile, Dr. Dre’s 2001 rose from No. 108 to No. 9 with about 30,500 units (a 220-percent increase). Its previous peak was at No. 2 on the chart dated December 4, 1999.

This is the first time Curtain Call has found itself in the top 10 since the chart dated March 11, 2006, when it was No. 8. The last time 2001 was in the top 10 was on the May 13, 2000, when it ranked No. 9.

Those albums were well-represented during the halftime show: Eminem performed “Lose Yourself,” while three 2001 songs — “The Next Episode,” “Forgot About Dre,” and “Still D.R.E.,” made the setlist.

Elsewhere on the chart, the smash hit Encanto soundtrack is once again No. 1, for a sixth total week. That ties it with Adele’s 30 for the third-most weeks spent at No. 1 in the last five years (since January 2017). Ahead of those LPs are Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album (ten weeks) and Taylor Swift’s Folklore (eight weeks).

Jack Harlow had a huge weekend: He dropped a video for “Nail Tech,” he participated in NBA All-Star festivities, and he received high praise from one of his idols, Kanye West (aka Ye).

In a now-deleted Instagram post shared on Friday morning, West posted a thumbnail from Harlow’s “Nail Tech” video and wrote, “This n**** can raaaaaaap bro And I’m saying n**** as a compliment Top 5 out right now.” Harlow shared a screenshot of the post and expressed his excitement over the situation, writing, “This right here…is one of the greatest moments of my entire life…glad y’all all get front row seats to it…suddenly all the hate means nothing…imagine your hero saying this about you…I could cry.”

This is just the latest in a series of feel-good moments Harlow has had in recent months. On December 18, 2021, Louisville, Kentucky celebrated Jack Harlow Day. Also that month, Harlow visited his old school, and naturally, the students were pretty amped about it. Back in November, he reunited with one of the few fans who attended his first ever concert and showed gratitude.

Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.