Category: Worldwide

The heart and soul of the Boston Celtics left Saturday night’s showdown with the Los Angeles Lakers due to an injury. Right at the start of the game’s fourth quarter, Celtics guard Marcus Smart stepped awkwardly on his left foot and ended up going down in the heap with what looked to be a pretty nasty injury.

Smart was preparing to battle under the rim with Lakers big man Montrezl Harrell when the injury occurred, and while it was unclear exactly what was wrong, it was evident that something was up with his left leg. He eventually made his way back into the locker room with plenty of assistance, as he was unable to put weight on his leg.

After getting examined, the Celtics announced that Smart would miss the remainder of the game with a left calf strain, while Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported that the he will get an MRI on Sunday.

The Celtics have managed to stay afloat this year throughout a number of injuries and COVID-19 related absences, but losing Smart for any sort of extended period of time would be a gigantic blow to a team that is trying to ease Kemba Walker back into things after he missed the start of the year due to knee issues.

Damian Lillard is one of the best big shot takers and big shot makers the league has ever seen. His latest entry into his vast collection of walk-off shots came on Saturday night as the Portland Trail Blazers went to Chicago and knocked off the Bulls thanks to the heroics of their superstar guard.

Portland found itself down by one with a tick over six seconds left. There was no guarantee that Lillard was going to get a chance to win the game — Gary Trent Jr. had to win a jump ball against Zach LaVine — and in the ensuing chaos, it was evident that both teams knew the plan was to get Lillard the basketball.

Despite the Bulls’ best efforts, Lillard got the ball, but was smothered by Lauri Markkanen. That’s when Dame decided to make the best of the situation, launching a fadeaway triple from the wing that got over Markkanen’s arm and was as pure as could be as it went through the rim.

Lillard had 44 points on 15-for-26 shooting and connected on eight of his 17 attempts from behind the three-point line. That 15th made bucket and the eighth made triple were the most impressive of the bunch, although for Lillard, hitting a shot at the buzzer to give the Blazers a win has become incredibly normal.

Matthew Stafford’s tenure with the Detroit Lions is over. In a bit of news reported by Adam Schefter of ESPN, Stafford, who mutually decided with the franchise to part ways earlier this month, will pack his bag to Los Angeles to join Sean McVay and the Rams in a blockbuster deal.

Schefter reports that the Lions will get quite a haul in return: Rams quarterback Jared Goff is headed to Detroit, as will three picks. Two of those selections will be in the first round, while the final one will be in the third.

The news was confirmed by Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero of NFL Network.

As for when those picks will head to the Motor City, Pelissero reports that only the third-round selection will be in the upcoming Draft.

It’s a monster deal involving a pair of quarterbacks who have only suited up for one franchise in their NFL careers. Stafford will get to go to a Rams team that is perpetually close and boasts one of the nastiest defenses in the league, but could use something to get over the hump and will give the veteran an offense with a number of talented skill position players. Goff, meanwhile, will get a fresh start in Detroit as the team looks to build under new head coach Dan Campbell.

Kat Dennings showing up in WandaVision wasn’t as much of a surprise as perhaps it could have been for most. Dennings’ Darcy Lewis hadn’t shown up since Thor: The Dark World in 2013, and things are very different both in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and with Lewis herself. A teaser about what was coming in Episode 4 of the Disney+ series hit the internet ahead of its Friday release, and Dennings gave it a slight nod earlier in the week.

Slight spoilers ahead, but while her return to the MCU was certainly a welcome sight, there was something the actress apparently didn’t know came with a spot in the WandaVision cast. Shortly after the show’s fourth episode started streaming, Dennings excitedly posted on Twitter about the fact that her character got a special Twitter emoji.

In fact, Darcy was one of three new emojis made for the show, with Jimmy Woo and Monica Rambeau each getting their own at the end of their hashtags.

It’s certainly a nice bonus of being in a show like WandaVision, which is one of the most unique portions of the MCU to say the least. And it’s a show that’s already shown some considerable change for the character she hasn’t played in seven years.

After three episodes that were fairly formulaic and self-contained, the show’s cast certainly expanded in Episode 4. And so, too, did the mystery of what will happen next.

GameStop has been the talk of the financial world the last few days, and the consequences of the wild stock market activity have stretched far beyond the stock market. The tech world, social media, and the financial lives of millions of individuals have been impacted, and it’s pushed at least one prominent sports figure off of Twitter.

On Friday, Mets owner and hedge fund manager Steve Cohen released a statement saying he would take a “break” from Twitter after receiving threats as a result of what’s become a battle between hedge fund managers shorting retail stocks and the internet-based day traders who have banded together to make stocks like GameStop and AMC soar in recent days.

As ESPN detailed, Cohen claims his family has been threatened by people online for getting involved with Melvin Capitol, one of the hedge funds which vocally battled with people on the Reddit forum that has been instrumental in the stock craze.

“I’ve really enjoyed the back and forth with Mets fans on Twitter which was unfortunately overtaken this week by misinformation unrelated to the Mets that led to our family getting personal threats,” Cohen said in a statement Saturday after deactivating his account Friday night. “So I’m going to take a break for now. We have other ways to listen to your suggestions and remain committed to doing that. I love our team, this community, and our fans, who are the best in baseball. Bottom line is that this week’s events in no way affect our resources and drive to put a championship team on the field.”

The reason Cohen has fallen in the crosshairs of angry denizens of the internet is not because of Mets-related goings on. Rather, Cohen’s Point72 has essentially rescued Melvin Capital from its own oblivion as a result of shorting GameStop stock. Point72 was part of a gigantic influx of more than $2 billion in money to keep Melvin afloat amid massive losses due to the stock price rising, as the latter was betting heavily on GameStop stock to further collapse.

That information, along with some fairly inflammatory comments about the day traders who have banded together, caused some problems online for Cohen.

Before closing his Twitter account, Cohen — the richest owner in baseball, worth more than $14.5 billion — responded to the controversy Tuesday by tweeting, “Rough crowd on Twitter tonight. Hey stock jockeys, keep bringing it.”

Among the critics of Cohen, WFAN morning host and former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason said he would stop going to Mets games “until I find out exactly what’s going on here” regarding Cohen’s involvement with the GameStop situation.

Between his GM flaming out with a horrifying sexual harassment allegation and becoming one of the noted bad guys attracting attention from ordinary day traders, it’s quite stunning how quickly the honeymoon has ended for Cohen’s Mets ownership.

It’s been a hectic offseason for the Houston Texans, which are in the midst of reckoning with the fact that Deshaun Watson does not want to play football for them anymore even though he is one of the five-best quarterbacks on earth and they would really prefer to not lose him. According to recent reports, though, Watson may not be the only franchise stalwart who could use a change in scenery.

A trio of reporters from NFL Network bring word that J.J. Watt’s future with the franchise could be up in the air. Ian Rapoport and Mike Garofalo claim that while the team is dealing with the Watson situation is ongoing, the Texans would want to figure out what to do with their defensive cornerstone, with the sentiment being that it might make sense for him to continue his career somewhere else.

James Palmer of NFL Network went on to report that it goes further than his colleagues believe: Conversations with those in the organizations reveal a belief that Watt’s tenure with the team is over.

While trading Watson would obviously be franchise-altering, Watt is the greatest player in the Texans’ relatively short history, and moving on from him would mark the end of an era. The team selected him in the first round of the 2011 NFL Draft, and in his tenure in Houston, Watt has done just about everything a defensive player can do. He’s been a first or second-team All-Pro selection eight times, was named the league’s Defensive Player of the Year thrice, recorded 101 sacks, and was an unanimous selection for the NFL’s All-Decade team. The connection between Watt and the city is strong, too, as he won the league’s Walter Payton Man of the Year award in 2017.

It is worth mentioning that Watt is in the final year of his contract, and if the team wanted to embark on a gigantic rebuild, it would make sense to not tie up a ton of cash in someone who will be 32 in March. Still, the concept of Watt playing anywhere other than Houston would be incredibly strange, even if it’s hard to imagine that the league’s other 31 teams would love to bring him on board.

Rudy Giuliani‘s legal woes are stacking up, and apparently the anti-Trump Republicans behind The Lincoln Project are the latest opponent ready to take Trump’s personal lawyer to court. Giuliani is already in hot water with Dominion Voting Systems to the tune of more than a billion dollars, which he’s already blamed on basically everyone else.

Giuliani has kept talking despite speaking at a rally that served as a precursor to a MAGA riot at the US Capitol that left five people dead. And that includes an appearance on newly-pardoned Steve Bannon’s podcast. According to The Independent, Giuliani blamed The Lincoln Project founder Steve Schmidt, at least in part, for organizing the failed coup attempt that was very clearly carried out by QAnon believers and Trump supporters.

That latest bit of clearly misplaced insanity saw an immediate answer the next day. Schmidt appeared on MSNBC and was interviewed by Ali Velshi on Saturday, and said he was “thrilled” to potentially have the chance to sue Giuliani for defamation.

Speaking on Saturday morning, Mr Schmidt said: “Well, what’s amazing about it, Ali is that at the end of it when you cut it off when Bannon goes to, ‘you’re killing me, you’re killing me,’ because Steve Bannon knows he’s going to get sued by us also, and he is, and so is Donald Trump who is Rudy Giuliani’s client, and Rudy Giuliani is acting on his behest.”

He added: “But look, it is very difficult to sue somebody for defamation or libel in the United States, but our lawyers are telling us that Rudy is well across the line so we’re thrilled about this.”

Later on Saturday, The Lincoln Project’s Twitter account released a blistering, citation-filled statement about Giuliani’s various lies and demanding he retract the statements he made or face legal action.

Considering how undeterred Giuliani was by Dominion’s lawsuit, it seems unlikely this changes much of how the former mayor of New York City operates moving forward. But it’s certainly not good news for Giuliani, who is likely to spend a lot of time in court defending himself if lawsuits start to stack up.

Jazmine Sullivan made her return to the music world after more than five years away with the release of her Heaux Tales EP earlier this month. The project was met with positive reviews from critics and fans alike, and for many it became the first beloved album of 2021. According to the Philly-born singer, howeverm she was a bit unsure at how the project would be received when it dropped.

“I didn’t know how people would respond to this project, so it did scare me a little bit,” she admitted during a recent appearance on Sonos’ Object Of Sound podcast.

She also explained why she placed the interludes, which are labeled as “tales,” on the EP.

“People don’t really necessarily want to hear all the interludes,” she said. “But I felt like these were special. They felt important to the project as a whole.”

A total of six tales appeared on Heaux Tales and each one served as an introduction to the song that followed it, which helped to perfect the conceptual aspect of the project. Elsewhere in the interview, she discussed how maintaining patience as she created the album was important to her. “I’m glad that I took the time that I needed,” she said. “Time for me feels a little different. I don’t like it’s as expendable as it was before.”

As for what’s next, Jazmine will perform the national anthem with Eric Church at Super Bowl LV on February 7.

You can listen to the full Object Of Sound podcast here.

It didn’t take long for Marjorie Taylor Greene, aka the wacky QAnon believer and conspiracy theorist elected by Georgia to the House of Representatives, to become infamous. Not only was she spouting nonsense on the House floor, old social media posts, in which she blamed Jewish people for California wildfires and even threatened members of Congress with violence, were made public. Greene has not backed down one iota, which has made the calls to denounce or even expel her all the louder. Though few in the GOP have done so, there is one brave enough to stand up: Mitt Romney.

The Utah senator and former presidential candidate let his derision known over Twitter, in a quote-tweet that revealed Greene had spoken with former president Donald Trump. “Lies of a feather flock together: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s nonsense and the ‘big lie’ of a stolen election,” Romney wrote.

Greene has been one of a number of Republican lawmakers who’ve spread misinformation about voter fraud. On top of the social media posts, a video of her harassing David Hogg shortly after the Parkland school massacre in 2018 recently surfaced, which caused Hogg and other survivors to call for her removal from the House. She’s also gotten into scrapes with security over bringing guns into the Capitol, and she’s driven fellow new representative Cori Bush to move her office away from hers after Greene and her team refused to wear masks and harassed her own staff. Oh, and she believes the Sandy Hook massacre was a “false flag.” So all in all, she sounds like she’s a lot of fun.

Romney, meanwhile, has long been one of the few Republican voices to come after Trump and his followers. He was the only GOP senator to vote to impeach Trump the first time he was impeached, in January of 2020. So him coming after Greene is hardly a surprise, though that doesn’t mean it’s not welcome.

Bankroll Freddie has been one of the more prominent rap artists to come out of Arkansas and his recent success earned him a new record deal with Motown Records. The new signing comes after Freddie joined the Quality Control roster nearly two years ago, and to celebrate the second deal, the Arkansas rapper unleashed a video for “Add It Up.”

The visual is a lavish celebration of his success and finds Freddie surrounded by luxurious items that include cars, watches and chains. As he drives through his hometown of Helena, Arkansas, he makes sure to keep up the flexing by tallying the price of his flashy items.

The new video is Bankroll Freddie’s first release of the year and with his new signing to Motown, it puts the Arkansas native in a fairly good position to have a breakout year in 2021. His success can be traced back to 2019 when he earned his first taste of mainstream success thanks to his “Drip Like This” single. The track was subsequently remixed by Young Dolph and Lil Baby, with the latter standing as Freddie’s labelmates on Quality Control. Elsewhere, the rapper has also collaborated with the likes of YFN Lucci, Moneybagg Yo, and Lil Yatchy in his blossoming career.

You can watch the “Add It Up” video above.