Category: Worldwide

A belligerent anti-masker in Victoria, British Columbia started 2021 nearly $700 poorer for forgetting the number one rule of riding in a cab: the driver is always in charge.

On New Year’s Day at 1 am, a cab driver picked up the man who was clearly intoxicated and refused to wear a mask. The drunk guy also put his hands in the driver’s face while he was operating the vehicle.

While refusing to wear a mask and to social distance in any location is dangerous, the drunk passenger was being especially terrible because COVID-19 is more likely to be spread in the confined, indoor space of a cab.

“When you are in a confined environment, there is a risk of airborne infection, especially in ride-sharing trips that take just 15 to 20 minutes,” Varghese Mathai, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, tells Verywell.

The drunk guy didn’t just put the cab driver in danger but future passengers as well. Studies show that COVID-19 can live on metal for up to five days and on plastics for two to three. How many people could he have infected by spreading the virus inside of the cab?

The cab driver knew he had to get rid of this passenger, but instead of dropping him off at the nearest street corner or driving him home, he plotted the perfect revenge.

The driver decided to change course and head towards the nearest police station.

What was the passenger going to do about it? Jump out of a moving vehicle?

But before arriving at the station, the driver called 911 and made sure the police knew they were on their way so they could throw the book at the passenger when he arrived.

According to the Victoria Police Department, the driver called 911 to report that a passenger was “belligerently refusing the driver’s requests for the passenger to adhere” to the province’s Covid-19 Related Measures Act guidelines (CRMA).

According to the province’s guidelines, when using a cab or a ride-hailing service, passengers must “as much as possible, avoid physical contact with passengers.” They are also required to social distance and wear a face covering.

When the driver arrived at police headquarters, officers were there waiting for the passenger’s arrival. However, the belligerent man refused to get out of the cab. So the officers removed him forcefully and placed him into custody.

The man was charged with three counts, abusive or belligerent behavior, failure to wear a face covering, and failure to comply with the direction of an officer. The fines totaled up to $690 CAD ($542 USD).

The man was also cited for public intoxication.

The next morning he probably woke up and realized that was the most expensive cab ride he ever took.

First off, did you know David Spade is 56? The eternally youthful SNL vet has been around for a very long time, and though he’s had his ups and downs — including having his Comedy Central chat show Lights Out cancelled early into the pandemic, after less than a year on-air — he’s always found a way to stay in the spotlight. (Indeed, he already has a new show, The Netflix Afterparty.) But will he ever be as ambitious as his good friend Adam Sandler and do the occasional intense drama — make his own Uncut Gems? Well, as he says in a new interview, probably not.

“With Sandler, I think once you do 10 $100-million movies in a row, it’s like, you want to try something new,” Spade told The Los Angeles Times about Sandler. “He’s a f*cking hard worker. Every movie we’re working on, he’s writing the next one at lunch. With me, I don’t work that hard.” In fact, something like The Netflix Afterparty is more his speed.

A talk show just sounded like a fun, steady job. I’m not as thirsty to do a million movies or 20 tours. I don’t want to chase my tail for the next 20 years. I don’t think I could be on the real road like Joan Rivers or something. I’m not as tough as her. To fly f— Southwest and connect in Houston to go to gigs every night? You want a good reputation, but as far as just grinding it out, that’s not my favorite thing.

Spade, however, does say that one does have to be open to new challenges. “Doing different things is sort of a survival mechanism,” he said. But he’s also realistic. “I’m not America’s No. 1 movie star. It’s never been that easy to get a movie going. I’d do one about every two years, and that’s not an everyday job.”

Of course, not that Spade hasn’t done movies. Older ones, like Tommy Boy and Joe Dirt, still get him mentions on the street (or did in the before-time), and he’s had hits with recent Netflix films, like the recent The Wrong Missy, which the service claims had 59 million views in its first month. But Netflix doesn’t often advertise its viewing stats, unless they’ve got a hit, which meant Spade couldn’t rely on, say, box office numbers so that people knew he’d had a hit.

“It’s so embarrassing. I have to go door-to-door around my neighborhood and tell everyone,” Spade said. “I used to have documents and proof. When Netflix started the top 10, that helped. I got 100 more calls than I would have. I was sent a lot of movies after Father of the Year, like, ‘Wouldn’t this be funny if it was you and Kevin Hart?’”

Spade also spoke about accusations of sexual misconduct in the stand-up comic scene, with people like Chris D’Elia, Bryan Callen, and Jeff Ross all receiving accusations over the summer. (The latter filed a defamation suit against his accuser.) Spade acknowledged that it’s a “touchy subject,” but ultimately said such actions have no place in the industry. “If guys are doing something like that right now, get rid of them,” he said. “If you’re still f*cking around and treating people super [poorly] or attacking women or saying ‘suck my d*ck and I’ll give you a job’ and don’t think there’s any repercussions? This isn’t Mad Men anymore.”

That said, Spade said he is surprised that it’s so prevalent in stand-up comedy, especially compared to other industries:

This is the weirdest place that this is all happening. Getting [oral sex] in the Belly Room? You would think the NBA — sports and side chicks. I’m sure the music world is super f— sketchy. I look at someone like David Lee Roth, and he’s having contests to f— as many girls as he can and that’s what you think goes on. Then you see David Lee Roth going, “I can’t believe what’s going on at the Comedy Store!” Comedy, of all places. I wasn’t really aware of all that craziness because I’m not a super club comic anymore. You walk in, see the set list and say, ‘Hey man, how’s the crowd?’ And that’s it.

(Via The Los Angeles Times)

If the past four years has taught us anything, it’s that when you think things can’t really get any nuttier, they totally can and will.

Case in point: Lin Wood’s latest tweets.

Lin Wood is a lawyer who has filed or joined multiple lawsuits on behalf of President Trump in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Wood has been an outspoken supporter of Trump and a forceful pusher of conspiracy theories—not only about the election, but about…well, just take a look.

Wood already made headlines a few days ago for suggesting Mike Pence should be executed by firing squad. Late last night, in a series of tweets, Wood lays out absolutely bonkers allegations against Chief Justice John Roberts and the world’s “most well-known & ‘elite’ intelligence agencies.”

I’m not fond of amplifying these kinds of batsh*t crazy rants, but considering how intertwined this individual is with the current legal actions of the president of the United States, and considering the fact that President Trump has retweeted this man’s tweets just within the past month, it’s important to understand the level of unreality that a significant portion of Americans are living in—or at least tacitly accepting.

In a series of tweets, Wood wrote:

“I believe Chief Justice John Roberts & a multitude of powerful individuals worldwide are being blackmailed in a horrendous scheme involving rape & murder of children captured on videotape.

I have the key to the files containing the videos. I have also shared this information.

This blackmail scheme is conducted by members of 10 of world’s most well-known & “elite” intelligence agencies. One of those groups was hacked by a group known as Lizard Squad.

The blackmail files of rape & murder were obtained by this group & copy was provided to Isaac Kappy.

The blackmail targets are approached with a gun, a child, & a camera. The target is ordered to rape the child on video. The target is then ordered to shoot the child on video. The target is then owned & controlled by the blackmailers until blackmail evidence loses its value.

After Kappy received the hacked files from member of Lizard Squad, he gave files to one friend and the encryption key to another friend. He provided this information to his friends shortly before he was murdered in May 13, 2019. Members of Lizard Squad were jailed for hacking.

Jeffrey Epstein used this same blackmail scheme of child rape & child murder to either further his own interests or those of any intelligence agency with whom he worked. ALL who flew on his private jet or visited his island must be IMMEDIATELY interrogated & brought to justice.

I decided to post this truth on Twitter & Parler as wall exists around @realDonaldTrump that may have prevented me from getting this evidence to him. Kappy tried to deliver info to President but was then murdered. I do not know who Kappy gave it to for delivery to the President.

I have concerns that information from Kappy was not delivered to @realDonaldTrump & his effort to get it to President may have caused his death. I am aware that my life is now at great risk. But I put my faith in God. I prayed before I made the decision. I had to reveal TRUTH.”

Let’s pause for a moment here.

First of all, how is this even a thing that he believes? Someone just walks up with a gun and a child and a camera? What? Most of us who actually are not pedophiles would rather die than rape a child. And if someone handed us a gun to shoot a child, most of us would shoot the person trying to blackmail us instead. On a basic level, this is just dumb.

Second of all, every conspiracy theory sucks people in with grains of truth, so let’s briefly get those out of the way. Lizard Squad might sound like a made-up thing, but it was actually a real hacking group that successfully disrupted XBox and PlayStation systems in addition to committing other hacking crimes. A bunch of members were arrested in 2014—but their arrest had nothing to do with intelligence agencies.

Former Lizard Squad member Vinnie Omari, when asked about Wood’s tweets, told the Daily Dot, “That sounds fucking insane, bro. I’m not going to lie to you. That sounds like the type of stuff that I usually laugh at people for bringing up in conversations.”

Omari said he’d never heard of Wood or Kappy and that the group never hacked any government entities or agencies. “We never hacked anything in regards to any of these billionaires like Jeffrey Epstein or any government officials,” he said.

That won’t convince the conspiracy theorists, of course. We’ll get to that in a minute. At this point you may be wondering who the heck Isaac Kappy is. Kappy was an actor and musician who tragically died by suicide by jumping off a bridge onto a freeway in Arizona in 2019. He left lengthy messages on social media before his death, expressing remorse for who he had been, stating that he had spent thousands of hours diving into QAnon conspiracies, talking about how he’s abused himself with drugs and alcohol, and apologizing to people he’d hurt.

But instead of his death being a cautionary tale, QAnoners like Wood claim that Kappy didn’t die by suicide but was murdered because this obscure actor had the elusive evidence proving all of the cabal nonsense that he was trying to get to the president. As if that makes sense.

Moving on. Wood wrote in continued on Twitter.

“I would never make an accusation without having reliable source for it. Stakes are too high. So I did due diligence to validate the accuracy of the shocking information I am revealing tonight. I am entirely comfortable that you are learning the truth. A truth that explains much.

I have no idea extent of blackmail scheme of raping & killing children but given the number of agencies involved, the hundreds of thousands of missing children, & the otherwise inexplicable actions of many powerful officials, celebrities, & business leaders, I fear the worst.

The number of missing children worldwide & in United States is staggering.

So I have now conveyed the truth as I know it. There has been a rising chorus of people questioning my sanity in recent days. Now you can understand why. I have no idea what will be done to me or said about me in coming days, but I will rest well tonight for having spoken truth.

Many issues in our world may be tied to blackmail scheme I described tonight, including bizarre behavior of officials & judges in recent election. @realDonaldTrump must appoint special prosecutor to thoroughly investigate. We need answers. We must investigate. For the children.”

Ah yes. For the children. I’ve written about how the QAnon child trafficking conspiracy theories are doing real harm to actual anti-trafficking organizations that work to protect vulnerable missing children. QAnon is not in the business of saving children from anything.

Oh, and there’s also this:

To be perfectly clear, this is insane. That should be totally obvious, but at this point, even obvious truths need to be stated clearly, unequivocally, and constantly. This man has a million followers on Twitter and has been retweeted by the president, who is a known peddler of conspiracy theorists himself. We also now have QAnon adherents in Congress, so this stuff can’t be ignored. As NBC reports, nearly all of Trump’s election fraud allegations come from the QAnon world, and he has hoards of MAGA followers who have bought it all hook, line, and sinker. At this point, no one can be all in for Trump and not, by extension, support these crazy conspiracy theories. They are all inextricably linked.

So how did we even get here? And more importantly, how do we get out?

It was predictable, to be honest. During the 2016 election, there were an alarming number of comments that referred to Hillary Clinton being part of an evil global cabal of pedophiles who operate in secret and communicate in code via email. The rumors included various details about Satanic rituals (which involved bizzaro accusations of harvesting something called adrenochrome from children), Obama ordering 65,000 hot dogs (which was supposedly code for little boys), and child trafficking taking place in the basement of a popular D.C. pizza parlor (which doesn’t even have a basement). Even though none of it made the least bit of logical sense and most of us just rolled our eyes at it all, a shocking number of people truly believed it—and still do.

I assumed at the time that it was just a dumb disinformation campaign to hurt Clinton’s chances of winning the election (which it was) and that it would die out after the election (which it didn’t). I think most reasonable people believed the same thing, which was a mistake. For four years, we’ve watched these conspiracy theories grow and spread. For four years, I’ve personally seen more and more people get sucked into the unreality the person/people behind QAnon created. For four years, people have continued to claim that well-known politicians and A-list celebrities are about to be arrested, that they’re all going down soon, that Donald Trump is the great savior who will finally blow the lid off of this vast conspiracy and save the world from the machinations of the evil elite. For four years, the big reveal has always been just around the corner. Just wait. (That’s literally the entire premise of QAnon. Just wait. Just wait. Just wait. It’s coming. It’s coming. It’s coming.)

The quackiness was never going to just fade away. The fringe element just kept growing and spilling into right-wing media. And like a snowball that gathers size, speed, and strength as it tumbles down a mountain, the quackiness was becoming more and more dangerous.

When a guy took his AR-15 to Comet Ping Pong Pizza to save the children from the clutches of Clinton and her cabal of child traffickers and found nothing, that should have been the end of it. When the D.C. police called Pizzagate “a fictitious online conspiracy theory,” that should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t. Because that’s not how these things work.

There’s a reason conspiracy theories are called rabbit holes. Once you start detaching from reality, it’s really hard to come back. Real news is fake news. Fact-checkers can’t be trusted. Every reasonable explanation gets rejected. Anyone who denies the unreality is in on the conspiracy. From an objective outside stance, none of it makes sense, but within that world, it all makes perfect sense. Just wait, you’ll see.

From a psychological point of view, the draw is pretty simple. It’s a connect-the-dots mystery with the added thrill of a gambling addiction—this time, it’s really gonna happen. It’s a thrilling chase with the carrot of Trump saving the world from the evil elites always dangling just out of reach as you chase it. It has everything we’ve become accustomed to in our favorite movie plots—intrigue and deception, bad guys you’d never suspect, and an unlikely hero who we just know is going to swoop in at the finale to bring it all down. Just you wait.

The problem is that we’re not living in a movie. This is real life, and our country is being damaged in real ways by having too many of its citizens swept up in an alternate reality, which isn’t reality at all.

That’s the dilemma we face now is what to do about it. This stuff isn’t going to go away just because Biden gets inaugurated on January 20th, and it’s destructive to the fabric of society no matter who is in charge. For goodness sake, I’ve had people accuse me of being a pedophile because I wrote about how child sex trafficking organizations want people to stop sharing QAnon conspiracy theories. That doesn’t make sense, of course—but how am I supposed to sit down and have a reasonable conversation with someone who believes that? We can have disagreements about government and policy and social issues, and we can debate those things passionately even. But we have to exist in the same objective reality in order to have that reasonable exchange of ideas.

I’m not sure how we get there, but I have a few ideas. We need to have psychologists along with political pundits weighing in on the daily news shows. We need to see the opinions of cult deprogramming experts in addition to legal analysts as we talk about what happens from here. We need to be talking about how to convince millions of our fellow Americans to step back from the edge of the rabbit hole and how to extricate them from it once they’ve fallen down it.

The issues are important, but we can’t have the important conversations we need to have about the issues without a basic shared reality, and right now, we’re so not there.

Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde were spotted holding hands at a wedding over the weekend and the news was picked up as an indication that the two celebrities are dating. While some fans applauded the potential relationship, others saw a double standard. If holding hands meant a potential relationship, where were those same rumors when Styles and Lizzo were showing each other affection last January?

The dating rumors were first circulated by TMZ Monday, which reported that Wilde was Style’s plus-one to a wedding. The publication reported that they were “holding hands and very much together.” People went a step further and alleged that the two “have dated for a few weeks” — and it sent Twitter into chaos.

Fans instantly pointed out how the media didn’t jump at the opportunity to label Lizzo and Styles as “dating” when they were publicly spotted holding hands at an awards show last year. Styles had also previously surprised an audience by joining the singer on stage to give a duet of her hit song “Juice.” During their performance, the two were sharing flirty glances and Lizzo even danced on the former One Direction singer.

Styles and Lizzo fans alike flooded Twitter to point out the double standard in Lizzo’s treatment.

See fans react to Styles and Wildes’ relationship rumors above.

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

Death is a pretty finite thing in the real world, though apparently, even our grasp on the one thing we are all truly born to do has slipped in the first days of 2021. The year’s first weekend brought sad news that former Charlie’s Angels star Tanya Roberts had died at age 65 after collapsing in her home on Christmas day and a stretch in the hospital on a ventilator. It was reportedly not a coronavirus-related matter, but it was a sudden turn for the actress and one that shocked many in Hollywood.

But on Monday TMZ, which had originally broken the story and even sourced it through Roberts’ PR rep, had to retract its story and explain that it simply wasn’t true: Roberts was still alive:

The rep had told us she died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. He told us Tanya’s husband had informed him that Tanya had passed.

We even got a quote from the rep from Tanya’s husband, Lance, saying, “As I held her in her last moments, she opened her eyes.”

Now the rep, Mike Pingel, tells TMZ, Lance got a call just after 10 AM Monday from the hospital saying Tanya was still alive. Pingel said Lance truly believed Tanya had died.

As TMZ noted, it had also gotten word from family friends that Roberts had died, claiming that her husband had contacted them with the sad news. That makes for an even more bizarre story, for sure, though it’s unclear what condition Roberts is in at this current time. The recent months have been filled with enough suffering and loss, and this is likely a painful footnote in what will ultimately be a very sad story. But it’s likely to be one of the weirdest stories of 2021, and we’re only a few days into the year.

(Via TMZ)

Donald Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden in November, and in a few short days, he’ll be out of a job in Washington. But the fallout from that defeat, and the various Trump tantrums that have undermined the public faith in the election process and those that help carry it out, will be felt for years to come.

Trump’s insistence to openly defy the results of the election have been made manifest in many ways, the latest of which is Trump caught on tape asking a Georgia election official to “find” votes for him and somehow undo his loss. And now there apparently will be new lawsuits, but this time from the people who make election equipment and have been harassed with claims they somehow stole the election from Trump.

According to an Axios report on Monday, conspiracy-fueled lawyer Sidney Powell is reportedly the target of a defamation lawsuit over baseless claims that Dominion somehow conspired against Trump to cause him to lose the election. Dominion CEO John Poulos spoke on an Axios podcast on Monday about the suit, and the report says that the company hasn’t ruled out a lawsuit against Trump himself:

Between the lines: Dominion, which makes the voting machines used in Georgia and elsewhere, has been the subject of baseless accusations of malfeasance during last November’s elections.

Trump, during his leaked call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, called the U.S.-based company “corrupt” and had to be corrected by Raffensperger after claiming machines had been recently removed and/or altered by Dominion employees.

Dominion says that the rhetorical barrage has led to death threats against its employees, including one who remains unable to return to his home.

Though it does feel like it a lot these days, you just can’t say anything inflammatory you want these days, especially if it’s not true. And the wild theories people have put forth about Dominion, even on television channels like Fox News and OANN, have impacted public opinion about Dominion itself. Word of potential lawsuits is what prompted both Fox News and OANN to offer on-air corrections about statements people have made about the company while appearing on programming, which was an embarrassing correction on its own but also one clearly designed to avoid legal action.

That sort of course correction hasn’t happened with Powell, and it also hasn’t occurred with Trump, who as recently as Saturday was caught on tape describing a nonsense conspiracy where Dominion somehow removed the insides of a voting machine and replaced it with new parts to somehow carry out voter fraud. And while it’s unlikely that Trump will face any legal action from his dubious pressuring of election officials to throw out results that cast him a loser, it seems Dominion just might take him to court for continuing to disparage the company without any evidence. And according to ABC News, a Dominion employee is taking matters into their own hands, suing Trump and conservative media companies as well:

Eric Coomer, security director at the Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, said he wants his life back after being named in false charges as a key actor in “rigging” the election for President-elect Joe Biden. There has been no evidence that the election was rigged.

His lawsuit, filed Tuesday in district court in Denver County, Colorado, names the Trump campaign, lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, the website Gateway Pundit, Colorado conservative activist Joseph Oltmann, and conservative media Newsmax and One America News Network.

“I have been thrust into the public spotlight by people with political and financial agendas but, at heart, I am a private person,” Coomer said in a statement.

It’s impossible to know the future, but given what we know about the actual evidence of fraud Trump and his allies clearly don’t have, it would be likely Trump continues to lose in 2021.

(Via Axios)

Just months after Brooklyn rapper Rowdy Rebel was released, his fellow Brooklynite and GS9 member Bobby Shmurda may be freed as well. According to court documents shared by Complex, Bobby is up for consideration for early release pending a behavior review by the prison staff’s Time Allowance Committee. While he’s currently scheduled to be released on December 11, 2021, the conditional release may allow him to leave his current incarceration by February 23, 2021.

Although a previous review of his behavior while incarcerated caused him to miss out on early release in 2020, Bobby had his “good time” restored. If he can maintain that status, he can be released early and serve out the remainder of his sentence in supervised housing. However, that doesn’t mean he’ll be completely free; he likely won’t be able to have contact with Rowdy or any other GS9 member. Should Bobby try to resume his rap career, it’ll be complicated by the conditions of his release.

Meanwhile, Rowdy seems to be flourishing since his release, receiving support from other rappers such as Young Thug and organizing a toy drive in his hometown. He recently collaborated with the late Pop Smoke on “Make It Rain,” recording his verse from prison.

The Brooklyn Nets were the hottest team in the league for the first two games of the season, having blown out the Warriors and Celtics in succession, but have gone 1-4 since with losses to teams like the Hornets and most recently the Wizards. Those performances were reminders of the continued growing pains the Nets will have as they work with a very new roster led by superstars in Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, doing so under a new coaching staff headed up by Steve Nash.

The Nets are still tinkering with rotations and combinations, as well as trying to get accustomed to the offense which has seen them struggle mightily with turnovers as they all still feel out where everyone is going to be at any given time. Their next chance to work things out will be on Tuesday against a Jazz team coming off of their best performance of the season against the Spurs, but Brooklyn will be without a key piece.

The team announced on Monday that Kevin Durant will not be with the team due to the league’s health and safety protocols.

What raises eyebrows about the news that KD is in the league’s protocols is that he was one of four Nets players to test positive for COVID-19 back in March, remaining asymptomatic. Durant is in the protocols due to a close contact, not a second positive result, which would mean he must isolate and continue producing negative tests before he can rejoin the team after seven days, similar to what John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins went through earlier in the season — which Shams Charania and Adrian Wojnarowski confirmed shortly after the news broke.

With that timeline, he would miss four games as Brooklyn plays the Jazz, Sixers and Grizzlies this week, before facing the Thunder on Sunday. For any team, missing a star for an extended period makes life difficult, but that’s especially the case for a team still trying to figure out its identity around the two stars they revolve.

Howard Stern tore into Donald Trump on Monday for calling up Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a desperate, and most likely illegal, attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Stern spoke while noting country’s struggle to quickly distribute the COVID vaccine to as many Americans as possible, which would make significant strides in stemming the pandemic. Holding nothing back, the SiriusXM host referred to the call as “criminal” and “gangster” while blasting Trump for ignoring the health crisis to waste his time on strong-arming politicians into falsely saying he won. “It’s like Donald Corleone,” Stern said. “How is this sh*t not criminal?”

Via The Hill:

“The thing that’s really pissing me off is that this motherf*cking government that hardly exists now, they can’t get the coronavirus vaccine out,” Stern, 66, said, adding he would like to receive the COVID-19 vaccine himself.

“Front-line workers in hospitals can’t get it, and you’re making f*cking phone calls to try to end the election?” Stern said of Trump. “What happened to this country? It’s such a disappointment that we cannot vaccinate people. We can’t get f*cking vaccine into people’s arms.”

While efforts are being made by Dr. Fauci and top medical officials to ramp up the speed of vaccine distribution, Stern just couldn’t get over the fact that is Trump spending his time on the election while “we’re all locked in our houses.” After dropping a few more profanities, the radio host had some blunt advice for the outgoing president. “You didn’t win. It’s over. Go back to f*cking Florida.”

(Via The Hill)

After an 2-3 start in which they got blasted by the three presumptive playoff teams they’d faced, things looked bleak for the Golden State Warriors. Stephen Curry wasn’t able to get the looks he wants and his efficiency had dipped through the first five games of the season from where we’re accustomed to seeing it.

As such, despite the small sample size and the clear need for the Warriors to work through a lot as a team, the takes grew hotter and hotter about the viability of Curry as a player capable of producing at the rate and efficiency he once did without an elite cast of characters around him. While it was fair to wonder exactly how high Curry could lift this particular Warriors team, the conversation shifted beyond this season to his legacy and calling into question how good he actually was when he was winning MVPs and titles.

Curry has become an incredibly polarizing figure, with extremely loyal fans who defend him to no end and plenty of detractors who happily jump at the opportunity to pick at his legacy. On Sunday night, Curry let his play respond for him, dropping 62 points on the Blazers in a career-high performance that saw him light up the Chase Center and remind people just how high his highs can be. After the game, Curry was asked about if he’d heard the chatter and responded with a self-aware answer, noting that, yes, much like the now infamous meme of Michael Jordan from The Last Dance, he heard it and took it personally.

He quickly shifts the conversation to how good it felt to just get loose on the court again and help his team start to build some winning habits. Curry even seems to recognize that after such a performance expectations can swing wildly to the other side and looks to temper them by noting that this is a team still learning how to win, and they start with a focus on winning the first quarter and building from there. They did that and more on Sunday, and he’s glad to see it come together against a quality team in Portland for once after three dismal efforts against Brooklyn, Milwaukee, and Portland this past Friday.