Category: Worldwide

The last NBA game I attended in a non-media capacity took place on April 5, 2016. The Philadelphia 76ers picked up their 10th and final win of the season, a 107-93 win over the lowly New Orleans Pelicans. Carl Landry, and I swear I am not making this up, got MVP chants because he was the team’s best player that night — I beg you, please look at this box score, which includes a host of players you have not thought about in a minute.

The following day, Sam Hinkie resigned from his job as the team’s general manager. It had been a long time coming, as the team had hired basketball executive Jerry Colangelo as its chairman of basketball operations, reportedly thanks in part to an extremely persuasive nudge from the league itself. He wrote a long, strange letter that is funny to read in retrospect, one that included this passage:

The NBA can be a league of desperation, those that are in it and those that can avoid it. So many find themselves caught in the zugzwang, the point in the game where all possible moves make you worse off. Your positioning is now the opposite of that.

Plenty of people dislike Hinkie for justifiable reasons, and The Process rubbed a whole lot of people the wrong way for justifiable (and, in plenty of ways, correct) reasons, but having a plan — even a flawed one — that places an emphasis on never being in a position of desperation is sound. At the time that Hinkie left, Philadelphia had Joel Embiid, would go on to draft Ben Simmons a few months later, and boasted enough future draft capital and cap space that they were well-positioned to add at least one superstar to that 1-2 punch at some point — following Simmons’ rookie campaign, ESPN did future power rankings and put the franchise in sixth, with particularly high marks in “Money” and “Draft.”

Even if that optimism was 110 percent warranted at the time, it’s strange to look back on in retrospect. Because after Sunday afternoon, when the Sixers lost to the Boston Celtics and saw a season that had such high hopes end with a sweep in the first round of the playoffs to a division rival that is well-positioned to compete for championships going forward, Philly feels like a team that needs to do something desperate, only the sort of flexibility that existed in the past is gone.

The exact moment it happened is up for debate, but The Process in Philly is very much dead — perhaps it happened the moment Hinkie resigned or at some other point in the last few years. Whatever the case, now the Sixers face an offseason in which there are more questions than answers and no concrete plan in place guiding them to what’s next.

There are three ways to acquire talent: drafting players, signing free agents, and making trades. For years, the Sixers have failed to one extent or another at all of these, showing off startling roster mismanagement around their homegrown stars of Embiid and Simmons.

No team is going to hit on every single decision it makes. Plenty will miss more than they hit. And of course, the entire idea behind stockpiling so much young talent and so many picks for any team is that they are chips that can be cashed in when a disgruntled superstar asked for a change in scenery. In theory, it takes just one good swing to hit a home run, so giving yourselves as many cuts as possible is simply good math. The Sixers were more blatant with The Process than most other teams are when they decide to go through a rebuild, but some combination of those three paths get traversed by teams that win.

What makes Philadelphia’s run of late so infuriating for fans isn’t that they swung and missed, but that they had some hits and gave them away in the misses.

Hindsight is 20/20 but it is pretty wild to think about how the Sixers went from that group to the one that just got swept out of the playoffs unceremoniously. Bryan Colangelo, the sport’s all-time greatest poster, was someone who, as my pal Yaron Weitzman laid out in his book Tanking to the Top, felt he needed to make his imprint felt on the team while simultaneously trying to get past the reputation that formed after he drafted Andrea Bargnani in Toronto. So he burned draft capital to move up two spots and select Markelle Fultz at No. 1 overall, whose … whatever happened with him meant that he went from the theoretical perfect fit next to Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons to someone who was traded for Jonathon Simmons, a 2019 second-round pick that ended up getting flipped to Boston on draft night, and the 21st pick in the 2020 Draft.

They turned Mikal Bridges into Zhaire Smith and a pick, then turned that pick and other pieces (including Landry Shamet, who would have given them a seemingly snug replacement for sharpshooter J.J. Redick, who left in free agency last summer) into Tobias Harris. They turned two good contributors in Dario Saric and Robert Covington into Jimmy Butler, who was very good in his brief time in Philly but would leave after half of a season for a variety of reasons, depending on who you ask. With the exception of trading Bridges, which was done by Brett Brown in his role as interim GM, those trades were executed by a first-time general manager in Elton Brand.

That group came four bounces away from forcing overtime in Game 7 against the eventual champion Toronto Raptors and entered the offseason with some serious decisions facing them with Butler and Harris entering free agency. They chose to give Harris (a good player, albeit not a superstar) a near-max deal, executed a sign-and-trade to send Butler to the Heat for Josh Richardson (a good shooting guard whose biggest weakness is perimeter shooting), and gave a lot of money to Horford instead, who in addition to bolstering their concept of playing Bully Ball, weakened the Celtics (or so they thought) and was a nine-figure insurance policy for when Embiid would miss a few regular season games.

Even factoring in questions about fit and shooting, the most pessimistic prediction about the Sixers before this season tipped off would have guessed that this team would at least be a tough out in the Eastern Conference playoffs. In retrospect, there was much further down they could go. Philadelphia built a roster with an eye on a seven-game playoff series against the Bucks that would require battling against Giannis Antetokounmpo. Perhaps they thought losing Al Horford and Kyrie Irving would cause the Celtics’ chances to crater, even if only for a season. Perhaps they thought losing Kawhi Leonard would do the same to Toronto. And perhaps they assumed that teams like the Heat and Pacers just wouldn’t have the firepower — at least not yet — to realistically compete.

All of those teams finished with better records than Philly. The gambit made by the Sixers front office was that their size could overwhelm everyone else, particularly when games slow down in the playoffs. They did this by sacrificing ball-handling, shot-making, and playmaking, and despite the fact that they were a gigantic basketball team, this did not translate into the kind of indomitable defense (eighth in defensive rating) or unstoppable interior offense (16th in two-point field goal percentage, 22nd in free throw rate) that has to happen for this approach to work.

Their roster imbalance reared its ugly head consistently throughout the year, as, generally, the team’s best defensive lineups couldn’t score, while it’s best offensive lineups couldn’t get stops. Lineups that featured the four players that made the most money — Embiid, Horford, Simmons, Tobias Harris — were not good enough. When Simmons was out during the postseason, things got even worse. Playing Embiid and Horford together went so poorly that Horford’s own sister correctly pointed out that it just doesn’t work, which is not really the fault of these two, but rather, those who made the decision to pair a 7-foot center and a 34-year-old big man together at the same time, particularly when a 6’11 point guard who is a non-shooter is crucial to making everything work.

Their grand experiment of the Jumbo Sixers went horribly. Now Brown has been fired, some sort of big front office shakeup would be justifiable, and the Sixers will enter next season with a jaw-dropping bill to foot. They’re paying $119 million to four players on a team that just got swept in the first round of the playoffs, and even if one of those players didn’t suit up in the series, there should be three others who could have picked up the slack. Some fans would probably be pretty happy if the ownership group, which wasn’t particularly popular even before its recent self-inflicted wound in which it announced a salary reduction for employees amid a global pandemic that got overturned when fans expressed their fury and Embiid offered to foot the bill, sold the team. Things could, certainly, be going better.

Mapping out Philadelphia’s future is hard. It’s ironic, in a way, that a team that once had so much possibility — money to spend, picks to make, two young pillars to build around — seems stuck, to an extent. Embiid and Simmons being in town means the floor will never get too low, and the job for now is to figure out what needs to happen to raise the ceiling. Even then, Philly went 31-4 at home this year. There is a dominant team within them. The goal, then, is to make sure that dominant team shows up on a nightly basis.

With Brown officially out, a new coaching hire that is more in the mold of the Lakers hiring Frank Vogel than the Raptors hiring Nick Nurse makes sense. Philly isn’t a team that needs a young, innovative head coach as much as it needs someone who can step in there and be the adult in the room, particularly after Josh Richardson lamented after the Celtics sweep that “I don’t think there was much accountability this season, and I think that was part of our problem.” That could mean former Cavs coach Tyronn Lue or ex-Nets coach Kenny Atkinson, or convincing Stan Van Gundy to come back to coaching, or keeping an eye on the soon-to-be out of contract Mike D’Antoni. Whatever the case, look for them to go the route of experience, particularly working with superstars.

The front office could use something, although as Shams Charania of The Athletic noted, it seems unlikely that that’s coming. Still, around the time Brand was promoted from the front office of the team’s G League affiliate, three individuals from the previous front office received promotions, with two of them still in town (the third, Marc Eversley, is now the GM of the Bulls). At the very least, bringing in a new voice and a different perspective on things would be wise, although as the Hinkie/Colangelo experiment showed, the balance needs to be struck between that and undermining a person’s authority.

All of this has to get sorted out before getting to the roster, something Philly hasn’t always been great with. Consider the 2018 offseason, when among other things, the team was rumored to be one of three franchises that piqued LeBron James’ interest. At the time, Brown served as interim general manager. Considering they had 3.5 weeks to hire someone after Colangelo resigned in early-June, it makes sense that they couldn’t get someone in right away, although it’s strange that it took them until mid-September to eventually give someone the job.

Regardless, the Sixers need to sit down and figure out their roster, with Weitzman reporting that the expectation are that major changes are coming. Embiid and Simmons should be untouchable. Even if their fit next to one another isn’t perfect, they are two uniquely talented All-Stars who can become top-10 players in the league. Unless you are able to acquire another top-10 player, breaking up that duo would be short-sighted. And even then, Embiid is 26 and Simmons is 24. The window to win with them is longer than it would be for most other teams if everything else around them works.

The issue, of course, is the “everything else.” Horford is a good player, and it might be reasonable to think he can look like himself in a different situation, one where he is surrounded by four players who can shoot and constantly move. Figuring out a trade for him is tricky — let me be the 10,000th person to suggest Sacramento, which wanted to give him big money last offseason and can make something work with disgruntled guard Buddy Hield‘s upcoming extension kicking in — but as long as the team isn’t giving him up for pennies on the dollar and can figure out a way to use Horford (along with whatever additional players/picks they would need to give up) as a way to get players that complement their two standouts, moving him wouldn’t be the worst idea.

Things might be a little trickier with Harris. He is a good (albeit inconsistent) player, but he is owed a shocking amount of money going forward. As of now, the only people in the NBA who have more guaranteed money coming their way are Damian Lillard and Klay Thompson. Is there a team that would be willing to take on this money? Is there a way for the Sixers to do a trade without giving up everything they have and/or taking back gobs of bad contracts? Or is the most likely outcome that Philly is in a position where it has to hold onto Harris and turn him into a more expensive version of Harrison Barnes on the 2015 Warriors as a fourth option on offense who lets catch-and-shoot threes fly while occasionally giving them something off the bounce?

On top of all of that, we’re entering an offseason in which no one, not even the NBA, knows what the full financial ramifications of the pandemic will be on their business and what that means for potentially plummeting salary cap figures. That may make it even more difficult to find bidders for blockbuster type deals, as cap uncertainty might push front offices towards keeping big, longterm deals off of the books until things are sorted out.

Should they get some traction in trade talks, there are players who can help sweeten the pot in deals — Thybulle looks like a potential defensive stud, Milton has shown flashes of being a dynamic combo guard who can hit threes, and they do have a few picks they can move. Richardson is on an expiring deal and was inconsistent this year, but we have enough evidence to say he’s a solid player, and while it might be wise for Philly to keep him, it’s not hard to see why someone would want to bring him on board. And if the team can figure out how to make stuff happen while retaining all of them, even better.

In the past, it hasn’t always seemed like Philadelphia’s plan has been to build the best team around Embiid and Simmons. Signing Horford was, in part, a move to give them insurance for when Embiid got hurt. Trading for Butler was, in part, a move to get someone to initiate the team’s offense when Simmons could not. Getting Harris was, in part, a move to get someone who could take the ball and hit a shot off the bounce. This offseason, priority No. 1 absolutely needs to be to view every single thing that happens in relation to those two. If the plan is anything other than to build a team — hell, an organization — around them, then this offseason is a failure before it even begins.

“I just feel like, a couple years ago, when we made the playoffs for the first time, we had a bunch of great players that were drafted here or either formed in Philly and we had a bunch of guys especially that were in a great situation,” Embiid said after Sunday’s loss. “And then we, as you know, we decided to trade a lot of it with the picks and stuff for Jimmy, Tobias, and we got a bunch of great players in return. Like I said, it just didn’t happen. We could never find a rhythm this year. It is disappointing. There’s a lot of regrets. I felt like the focus was not always there. And we got to do better; we just got to look at ourselves in the mirror and just do better.”

A weird little quirk about The Process was the level of hope that it instilled in a not insignificant pocket of Sixers fans. Calling it polarizing was an understatement — a whole lot of people, both in Philly and beyond, weren’t fans of how brazen the entire experiment was. It’s perpetually fascinating to me, an idiot who knows a disproportionate amount of Sixers fans compared to every other NBA fanbase solely based on where I went to college, about the extent that being loud impacted views on the whole experiment, especially compared to teams that aren’t actively trying to miss out on the playoffs year after year but do.

But boy, were those people who believed (and, to be fair, still believe) in The Process loud, in large part because they were fine with not being stuck in the NBA’s version of purgatory — somewhere between the 5 and the 10 seed every year, losing in the first (or, if they got lucky, second) round; lather, rinse, repeat — if it meant there was something on the other side. This is where hope came into play. Rejecting The Process, to those fans, meant rejecting hope. And for some time, that inherent hope looked like it was paying off in a big way. The 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons were the first two times since the mid-80s that Philadelphia won 50+ games in back-to-back seasons.

In terms of how this season went, the Sixers are back in purgatory, stuck in the morass and surrounded by other teams that can win, but not compete. The good news, relatively speaking, is that a path out of this does not involve embarking on a years-long project that leads to things like Carl Landry getting MVP chants in the team’s 10th and final win of the season and the objectively pretty crappy approach of alienating agents by viewing every player as nothing more than things that exist as assets and numbers in a spreadsheet. There will not be another capital P “Process” this time, but there must be a plan put in place with Embiid and Simmons’ input that is more in-line with how you win basketball games in the NBA right now.

Hinkie’s plan was always to have the longest view in the room. That, more than anything, is why The Process, as it has been defined, is dead — Philadelphia is not in a position to look 5-10 years down the road, because Embiid and Simmons are entering their primes. Still, not making hyper-reactionary moves driven by fear of what happens if next season is a repeat of this one is going to be a challenge. It’s one that they need to face head-on, and funny enough, it was something that was addressed in the strangest resignation letter in NBA history.

“It’s clear now that I won’t see the harvest of the seeds we planted,” Hinkie wrote. “That’s OK. Life’s like that. Many of my NBA friends cautioned me against the kind of seed sowing that felt appropriate given the circumstances for exactly this reason. But this particular situation made it all the more necessary, though. Part of the reason to reject fear and plow on was exactly because fear had been the dominant motivator of the actions of too many for too long.”

While The Process is over, the potential for a new era in Philadelphia is on the horizon. Embiid and Simmons will always serve as a link to the past just as much as they are the bridge to the future. That future is incumbent on soul-searching occurring across all levels of the organization, accepting that this season was a catastrophic failure and getting to work. Whether or not this happens is a completely different story, but having the right people put together a sound plan together is huge. If it’s a good one, trusting that process is, ironically enough, the best path forward.

If you ever wondered to yourself what the Powerpuff Girls would be up in These Trying Times, the CW and Diablo Cody are apparently ready to answer that question for you. Variety reported on Monday that CW is looking to add to its live-action superhero arsenal with a bit of Cartoon Network nostalgia, working on a Powerpuff Girls show that continues where the beloved Craig McCracken show essentially left off.

According to Variety, the show would focus on the now-adult Girls as they come to grips with a violent and uneven childhood that results from a professor pouring sugar, spice, and everything nice into a volatile mix of probably illegal chemicals.

In the updated version of the series, the titular superheroes are now disillusioned twentysomethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime fighting. Will they agree to reunite now that the world needs them more than ever?

If this sounds a bit like The Umbrella Academy, well, that’s very astute of you. But it is at least a more realistic way to do a live-action Powerpuff Girls show than, say, having child actors play Blossom, Buttercup, and Bubbles and try to fight crime as elementary school-age heroes.

The original Cartoon Network show ran for six seasons from 1998 to 2005, though it was rebooted on Cartoon Network again in 2016. That run has lasted three seasons, while The Powerpuff Girls Movie was also released in 2002. According to Variety, the in-development show is led by writers and executive producers Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer’s Body, Young Adult) and Heather Regnier, whose writing credits include the Veronica Mars revival, SMILF, and iZombie.

It’s unclear if the rest of the show’s cast like Mojo Jojo, HIM, or the RowdyRuff Boys will appear, but we hope they’re all doing well and have gracefully aged into early adulthood, too.

Hulu must’ve clued into the fact that we’re all depressed, isolated potato sacks right now because the streaming platform is giving us plenty to laugh at this month.

Lamorne Morris’ Woke arrives early to give us a fresh and timely twist on the Black Lives Matter moment that we’re living in before PEN15 debuts its second season filled with more pre-pubescent cringe-comedy that we can’t help but relate to. Here’s everything coming to (and leaving) Hulu this September.

Woke (Hulu series streaming 9/9)

New Girl’s Lamorne Morris stars in this imaginative comedy series about a Black cartoonist on the rise who suddenly has his eyes opened to the injustice and inequality surrounding him. Morris plays Keef, a talented artist keeping things light with his work — which is set to go mainstream — until a violent run-in with the police leaves him questioning his reality. It’s timely for sure, taking an inventive approach to the Black Lives Matter moment, but there’s still plenty of humor to keep it all grounded.

Pen15: Season 2 (Hulu series streaming 9/18)

The second season of Hulu’s breakout comedy lands on the streaming platform this month as Maya (Maya Erskine) and Anna (Anna Konkle) navigate the end of summer and the start of a new school year. The girls flit between awkward pool parties, school plays, weird break-ups, and bloody sleepovers while trying to maintain their close friendship and rise in the popularity ranks. It’s the best kind of cringe-worthy comedy.

Here’s the full list of titles coming to Hulu in September:

Avail. 9/1
Mike Tyson Mysteries: Complete Season 4
Jeopardy!: Episode Refresh
50 First Dates (2004)
Absolute Power (1997)
Aeon Flux (2005)
American Dragons (1998)
An American Haunting (2006)
Any Given Sunday (1999)
Anywhere but Here (1999)
Back to School (1986)
Bad Girls from Mars (1991)
The Bank Job (2008)
Because I Said So (2007)
The Birdcage (1997)
Broken Lizard’s Club Dread (2004)
Call Me (1988)
Carrington (1995)
The Cold Light Of Day (2012)
Cool Blue (1990)
Criminal Law (1989)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
De-Lovely (2004)
Demolition Man (1993)
Desperate Hours (1990)
Deuces Wild (2002)
Employee of the Month (2006)
The End of Violence (1997)
Evil Dead II (1987)
Extreme Justice (1993)
The Festival (2019)
Hanoi Hilton (1987)
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008)
Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle (2004)
Hoosiers (1986)
The House on Carroll Street (1988)
I Feel Pretty (2018)
The Impossible (2012)
Invasion U.S.A. (1985)
Jessabelle (2014)
Julia (1977)
The Last Boy Scout (1991)
The Last House on the Left (1972)
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)
Love Is All There Is (1996)
Mad Money (2008)
Man of La Mancha (1972)
The Mechanic (1972)
Mississippi Burning (1988)
Mr. North (1988)
Music Within (2007)
Not Another Teen Movie (2001)
Notorious (2009)
The Omen (2006)
Outbreak (1995)
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
Pieces of April (2003)
Practical Magic (1998)
Rambo (2008)
Reasonable Doubt (2014)
Religulous (2008)
Slow Burn (2007)
Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)
Stargate (1994)
The Terminator (1984)
Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her (2001)
This World, Then the Fireworks (1997)
Top Gun (1986)
Trolls World Tour (2020)
Turkey Bowl (2019)
Twilight (2008)
The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011)
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012)
Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls (2007)
The Weight of Water (2002)
Wanted (2008)
The Woods (2006)

Avail. 9/2
Hell on the Border (2019)

Avail. 9/3
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (2016)

Avail. 9/6
Awoken (2019)

Avail. 9/7
Madagascar: A Little Wild: Complete Season 1A (Hulu Original)

Avail. 9/8
American Ninja Warrior: Season 12 Premiere
Brother vs. Brother: Season 7 Premiere

Avail. 9/9
Woke: Complete Season 1 (Hulu Original)

Avail. 9/10
Prisoners (2013)

Avail. 9/11
My Hero Academia: Episodes 64 – 76

Avail. 9/16
Archer: Season 11 Premiere

Avail. 17
The Good Shepherd (2006)

Avail. 9/18
Pen15: Complete Season 2
Sherman’s Showcase: Black History Month Special
Babyteeth (2019)
The Fight (2020)
Gemini Man (2019)
StarDog and TurboCat (2020)

Avail. 9/20
The Haunted (2020)

Avail. 9/21
The 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards: Special

Avail. 9/22
Filthy Rich: Series Premiere
The Addams Family (2019)

Avail. 9/23
Cosmos: Possible Worlds: Special
If Loving You Is Wrong: Complete Season 5

Avail. 9/24
Teen Titans Go! Vs Teen Titans (2019)

Avail. 9/25
Judy (2019)

Avail. 9/26
The Wilderness of Error: Series Premiere

Avail. 9/28
Bless the Harts: Season 2 Premiere
Bob’s Burgers: Season 11 Premiere
Family Guy: Season 19 Premiere
Fargo: Season 4 Premiere
The Simpsons: Season 32 Premiere

Avail. 9/29
Inherit the Viper (2020)
Trauma Center (2019)

Avail. 9/30
Southbound (2015)

Here’s what’s leaving Hulu in September:

Leaving 9/30
2001 Maniacs (2005)
50 First Dates (2004)
A Bridge Too Far (1977)
A Mighty Wind (2003)
A Perfect Murder (1998)
Best In Show (2000)
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
Brick Mansions (2014)
Brokedown Palace (1998)
Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (1992)
Buried (2010)
Cats & Dogs (2001)
City Slickers (1991)
City Slickers 2: The Legend of Curly’s Gold (1994)
Cold War (2012)
Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Employee of the Month (2006)
Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
For Your Consideration (2006)
Friday the 13th – Part III (1982)
Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter (1984)
From Paris with Love (2010)
Futureworld (1976)
Hoosiers (1986)
House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
Iron Eagle IV: On the Attack (1999)
Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (2002)
Larry Crowne (2011)
Mississippi Burning (1988)
My Cousin Vinny (1992)
Nate and Hayes (1983)
Norma Rae (1979)
Pathology (2008)
Poseidon (2006)
Post Grad (2007)
Practical Magic (1998)
Rabbit Hole (2011)
Rambo (2008)
Right at Your Door (2007)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
Sands of Iwo Jima (1950)
Some Kind of Hero (1982)
Speed 2: Cruise Control (1996)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Stargate (1994)
Strategic Air Command (1955)
Sugar Hill (1994)
Sunset Strip (1999)
The Birdcage (1997)
The Client (1994)
The Color Purple (1985)
The Devil’s Rejects (2005)
The Eye (2008)
The Eye 2 (2005)
The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete (2014)
The Mask (1994)
The Ninth Gate (2000)
The Sender (1982)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996)
The U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006)
Three Musketeers (2011)
Top Gun (1986)
Undertow (2004)
Unlocked (2017)
Waiting for Guffman (1997)
Wanted (2008)
West Side Story (1961)

The Philadelphia 76ers will begin searching for a new head coach after firing Brett Brown after seven seasons as head coach. The news came via Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN and was confirmed by Kyle Neubeck of Philly Voice.

Brown guided Philly through the extremely lean Process years before making the leap to a perennial playoff team (overall a 221-344 record), but one that never capitalized fully on the promise of its young stars.

The final straw was a rather humiliating playoff sweep in the Orlando Bubble at the hands of the rival Boston Celtics, in which Philadelphia’s roster outside of Joel Embiid underperformed and the team struggled to find consistency on either end of the floor — even moreso than was to be expected without Ben Simmons. The question in Philly is whether this is just the beginning of organizational changes for the Sixers, because their issues are far from just the fault of the coach.

While Brown’s questionable lineups and rotations played a role — and there are grumblings of his influence in personnel decisions like moving on from Jimmy Butler — there is plenty of blame to go around in Philadelphia’s front office for constructing a roster that lacks balance. If those problems aren’t addressed this offseason as well, whoever comes in to coach the Sixers next will have their hands full trying to figure out the right combinations to try and unlock the potential of the Simmons-Embiid combo, without having the desired personnel to do so.

Even with a roster that has clear flaws in its construction and a pair of highly paid players in Al Horford and Tobias Harris who didn’t come close to living up to their contracts this season, the presence of Embiid and Simmons figures to make the Sixers coaching job a highly coveted one. The question is what kind of coach Philadelphia will be looking for, with my money on them seeking out a coach with an offensive track record in hopes of unlocking something more on that end — in expectation of them still being a quality defensive team given their pieces.

MTV’s Video Music Awards kicks off this Sunday and the awards show is known for memorable moments in pop culture. How could anyone forget the time Lady Gaga showed up on the red carpet sporting a dress made of raw flank steak? Or when Kanye West infamously took the microphone away from Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech? Though the show will have limited live attendance due to the pandemic, MTV hopes to make this year’s event just as memorable with a line-up of big-name performers. The VMAs just unveiled the musicians who are playing sets during the pre-show, and fans aren’t too happy about some of the picks.

VMAs shared their pre-show lineup Monday, which boasts performances by Chloe x Halle, recent XXL Freshman Jack Harlow, Lewis Capaldi, Tate McRae, and Machine Gun Kelly featuring Travis Barker and Blackbear. As soon as the full bill was announced, fans instantly took to social media to express their disappointment that Chloe x Halle weren’t booked for a main show set.

One fan said MTV was showing the duo “disrespect” for their pre-show placement, while others were simply upset.

While the sister duo didn’t make the main show cut, Chloe x Halle are still nominated for a couple awards on the night. Their track “Do It” from their recently-released record Ungodly Hour is nominated for Best R&B and their MTV Prom-A-Thon performance of the track is nominated for Best Quarantine Performance, a new category for the awards show.

Ungodly Hour is out now via Parkwood Entertainment. Get it here.

The MTV VMAs pre-show premieres 8/30 at 6:30 pm EDT. Watch it here.

“I mean, it’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, ten dollars?”

That line, spoken by Lucille Bluth during season one of Arrested Development, has become a catch-all reference for any time a rich person has no idea how much a basic item costs. Like on Monday, when Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was asked by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) about the price to mail a postcard. “I don’t know, he said.” Now, I’m not a fancy, big-city blogger, but it doesn’t seem great that the guy in charge of the United States Postal Service doesn’t know how much it costs to mail something. imo.

DeJoy, who was selected by President Trump as postmaster general in May (it probably has nothing to do with that “since 2016, Mr. DeJoy has donated $1.2 million to President Trump’s campaign coffers and nearly $1.3 million to the Republican Party”), was testifying before the House Oversight Committee when he failed to answer that postcards cost 35 cents. He added that he knows “very little about postage stamps.”

Porter then quizzed DeJoy on the weight limit for priority mail, which he correctly said was 70 lbs. He was unable to tell Porter the starting rate for priority mail. DeJoy also said he was unable to say how many people voted by mail in the last election.

“I’m glad you know the price of a stamp, but I’m concerned about your understanding of this agency,” Porter said. “I’m concerned about it because you started taking very decisive action when you became postmaster general.”

DeJoy was also grilled on the Postal Service’s “cost-cutting moves” ahead of a presidential election that requires unprecedented mail-in voting due to the pandemic, but it’s that “I don’t know” that’s going to stick with him. It’s his “it’s one banana, Michael” moment, or in this case, you can’t mail a postcard without spending… ten dollars?

(Via Guardian)

If nothing below suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now.

I May Destroy You (HBO, 9:00 p.m.) — After a season-long mystery inside Arabella’s mind, she returns to the scene of the crime to confront the man who raped her. Let’s just say that closure comes in many shapes and sizes, and viewers will be thrilled and satisfied with where Arabella ends up personally and how she dispenses with the ghosts underneath her bed. It’s a blazingly beautiful ending to a firestarter of a season with wonderful resolutions for Kwame and Terry as well.

The Republican National Convention 2020 (ABC, CBS, NBC, 10:00 p.m.) — The 2020 Republican National Convention is officially underway while taking over the networks and plenty of cable coverage as well. The main attraction tonight should be Donald Trump Jr.’s bombastic ways, as well as an appearance by “St. Louis gun-toting couple” Mark and Patricia McCloskey. Other guests include Steve Scalise, Matt Gaetz, Nikki Haley, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Andrew Pollack, and more.

Lovecraft Country (HBO Max) — The unfurling of monsters continued on Sunday night, and there’s no time like now to catch up if you missed it. Snakes are darting across an astral plane and Atticus gets roped into a cult ceremony, and along the way, there’s plenty of pulpy sci-fi splatter as the bad guys go down.

Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor, Tim McGraw, and Laura Benanti

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Maisie Williams, Bright Eyes

Jimmy Kimmel Live — Dan Levy; Elle King

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

If you can get through more than two songs on Los Angeles rapper Duckwrth’s debut album SuperGood without at the very least two-stepping and snapping your fingers, the term “two left feet” is probably insufficient to describe your inability to dance. Within those first two songs, “New Love Song” and “Money Dance,” the veteran underground rapper utilizes such infectious four-on-the-floor beats and disco-influenced grooves that even the most off-beat person would feel hard-pressed to keep still.

Duckwrth’s debut, which has been nearly a decade in the making, comes along at a time when the lines between dance music and rap aren’t just blurring, they’re skittering and scratching like a California seismograph. Doja Cat scores her first No. 1 with nu-disco hit “Say So,” bringing Nicki Minaj along with her, then Nicki’s main rival Cardi B taps into a Jersey club classic to issue one of the most talked-about smashes in recent memory in “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion. That’s to say nothing of the resurgence of interest in the history of house music as a creation of Black subcultures in the 1980s.

SuperGood is right in line with these ideals, from the glittering dance-floor funk of lead single “Coming Closer” to “Quick,” a slippery bop that pulls from Afrocentric traditions. It’s the rare rap album — at least, it would have been rare just a year ago — more interested in stimulating listeners’ physical reactions than lighting up their intellect or convincing them how tough its creator had it growing up. That isn’t to say Duckwrth isn’t RAPPING on this project, because he has more than enough silver-tongued, slick observations to have listeners reaching for the rewind button.

But this album is about making you feel something, and that something is an involuntary urge to wiggle. It’s so effective that I was still rocking when I connected with Duckwrth via Zoom call to talk about the album, its eight-year gestation period, his gift for collaboration, the pioneering partnerships he formed over the past few years, and just why dance music is making such a tremendous comeback.

There’s some interesting evolution from your 2019 Falling Man EP to SuperGood, with SuperGood feeling a little more like your older stuff. Was Falling Man more like a detour, or was it a stop on the way?

Falling Man was definitely like a death and rebirth, and SuperGood is just like, “We’re cool.” Falling Man was reflective of my life as a part of me died. Every couple of years, a part of me dies. So at that moment, it was more of a physical manifestation of it. I cut all my hair off and for years people have known me, for ten years people known me for my hair.

So I got on IG Live. I got some razor, electric razor and cut all off. I was like, “Well, I got to do something from here,” so I knew I was going to do that. Actually, I was already writing the Falling Man, but I was like, “Something got to be different about this one.” And it just worked out. So I guess you die, and then you rebirth. So I guess SuperGood is the new launching pad for who I am today because I’ve been wanting to do SuperGood since 2013 but I never was in the right place to do it. I’m Uugly came from me wanting to do SuperGood, but I wasn’t in the right place. Xtra Uugly Mixtape, Falling Man was like, “Well, I know I got to do SuperGood, but until then let me do this.” And yeah, SuperGood it’s finally here. It’s finally out.

I think that for me, it was proving to myself who I am and what sound I like the most for myself, what space I want to be in, and it’s something about soul and more specifically rhythm. Rhythm is my shit. When I perform, I don’t stop moving. Unless it’s just one of those moments I have to sit still, but further than that rhythm is my shit. So I think SuperGood solidified it for me. Like, “N****, this is you, so kick it here for a bit,” but I’m still going to play with different genres.

You have so many of great collaborations on SuperGood. What kind of energy do they bring to the recording process and how do they help get more out of you?

Jean Deaux, we met a year ago in the studio and just vibed immediately. She was hella cool. She’s a real Chicago woman to the truest extent and yeah, I was trying to figure out the groove and I had this beat from Terrace Martin and I was like, “This one thump. I’ll see if we can do some with it.” And it went from there, the relationship was lit because she just hella cool. She really from the hood and she’s intellectual as fuck. I always appreciate her bravery and essence. She powerful. And I always say I’m a dragon, but not on some Kanye shit.

Dragon energy.

We got dragon energy [laughs]. No, no, no, I mean, it’s something about that greatness that I try to find in other people and she got it. She got it hands down. That’s my friendship with her, and then also I flew out my homegirl Julia Romana who’s on “Coming Closer.” She lives in the UK, but I flew her out for a month to stay in the same place. We got one of those studios, that’s like a home studio. So the studio is in the back house and then the home is in the front. I just flew her out for a month and I was like, “Let’s just throw everything at the wall,” and yeah man, she’s on probably 60% the album as well.

She has those great vocals that work well with mine. It’s definitely a sweeter tone. But even shit, Alex Mali too, who’s on “Find A Way,” she did vocals on “Tuesday” and then she definitely did vocals on “Say What U Mean.” So very subtle, but perfect. “Say What U Mean” had a really crazy chorus. I love that chorus so much because it’s not elaborate. They’re just really saying, “Say.” That shit so tight to me.

I really had to research to find out more about G.L.A.M. What made you want to share this platform with kind of an unknown artist and what do you think it brought out of the song?

Well, G.L.A.M. is a long-overdue collaboration. That’s been my homie for a long time. We know each other from teen backpack days in San Francisco. She’s a fucking spitter. We both held back on “Coming Closer” because it’s a dance track, so we just going to try to have fun in it. But she, oh my gosh, she goes ham and she produces all her music. She knows her sound. She likes my sound. We both connect on some NERD shit. Even my song I had called “Love Is Like A Moshpit,” with Rico Nasty, that was originally supposed to be G.L.A.M.

I think she so tight that if I can use whatever bit of my platform to be able to shine some light on her so people can know, and then from there she can take the ball and run with it, whatever it may be. But I think world should definitely know her.

It’s funny because for the last week, I’ve been thinking about NERD and Gorillaz and Channel Tres. Recently, “WAP” came out and now we’re talking about Black people in house music again. We’re talking about those Jersey club tracks. The history doesn’t tell how closely related hip-hop is with these other Black-created forms of music, but now artists like the ones we mentioned and yourself are bringing them back together. Why is it so attractive to us now that we bring these things together these dance music grooves into hip-hop?

Personal theory, I think that the reason why house is so big in the white demographic is because it’s very much straightforward. It’s two, three, four, one, two, three, four, and with Black folks, we like…

We put a little swing in everything.

We put a little swing that thing. I feel the original creators of it like Mr. Fingers. I think Mr. Fingers had a bit more of a soulful flare to it, and then as time went on different people started grabbing it, and then it may have become more simple. Because even Mr. Fingers’ bass top line, it still has some swing to it. And that’s how we got [Kanye West’s] “Fade.” I think you can hear the Blackness in the original house.

SuperGood is obviously your first major label project and in your wildest dreams, in your ideal world, where does SuperGood place you in terms of on the charts, in your life, in the music scene, publications, press? Just spitball wildly here, go for broke.

I mean, my main thought in making it was just “Grammy.” Even if I don’t win shit, I want that shit to feel so fucking great that n****s would really have to consider nominating that motherfucker. Just the way I composed it. Right when you turn it on, it’s bringing you into a world and then just the chorus, or the girls that are singing at the end of “New Love Song,” it’s a Clark Sisters flip. So it’s taking these very classical moments, and composition, and sound, and mixing it with who I am today. I’m trying to bring sounds from the past, sounds from the present and then trying to fill out what’s going to be the future in putting it all into one sound. Even sounds that we use, we use the same synths that they had in Thriller, the [Roland Juno-106] and stuff like that. Michael was a big inspiration for this album. So it’s just taking those different textures of greats and putting that into my music.

What’s the story between 2012 when you were first popping up on 2DopeBoyz and now? What have you been doing? What have you been up to?

Just really finding myself, I suppose.

I think the best musicians are the ones that really know themselves. Because you can find yourself mimicking your favorite artists, but you never really find your sound until you find yourself. So I think for these past years, I’ve just been growing up and really diving into myself, not just as a creative but as a human. I think it’s gotten to this point of today
.
Absolutely. All the projects that you’ve done since Uugly, which is a funny album title by the way, have been-

It has a meaning. People never just look into the meaning.

Okay, what’s the meaning behind Uugly then, because I always wondered.

Pretty much when the bass slap in a certain way, when the snares hit you in the spine, whatever it may be, when a beat knockin, your face frowning up. [We both do the face.] Exactly. I’m ugly.

So you have been pushing boundaries sonically for a while. What was the inspiration behind trying to push the boundary of what LA rap is supposed to sound like?

First, I got to show love to the people that did come before me. It was groups like J*Davey, which is Brook and Jack. It was mainly J*Davey that gave me the courage to, being from LA, just working a more eclectic sound. But yeah, I kind of dipped out… I definitely dipped out 2006. So when I dipped out from LA at that time, a lot of groups really started popping and I was in San Francisco, 2008, 2010, around that time. And then, 2012 or 11, that’s when it really started cracking off in Los Angeles. So it was like, I’m in San Francisco and I moved to San Francisco because LA just wasn’t eclectic like that. I say it was only like gang-bangers and jerkers.

I’m going to tell you, I first became aware that you were kind of on the scene again, when I was watching Spider-Man (Into The Spider-Verse). I actually had the Spider-Man soundtrack ahead of time. And I was like, Duckwrth is on here? And then I heard it and I was like, “This is hard.” But then when I saw it in the movie, I was like, it’s in the movie. A lot of songs get on the soundtrack, they’re not in the movie. And you had a song during one of the more pivotal parts of the movie. What went through your head when you saw that?

They told me they were going to be using that song during a scene where a kid was listening to music. And the way they described it was like, he was supposed to be listening to rebellious music or music you’re not suppose to be listening to, I guess.

But I didn’t know exactly what scene it was going to be in until I saw it. And I was like, “Oh, okay, that’s crazy.” And the feeling I had, I don’t know, man, it’s weird. These type of moments, they’re more surreal. It makes you feel like a dream. It don’t feel real. You know what I’m saying? Like, how is this even possible that my voice is being played in this movie? And it was tight because it was the Black Spider-Man. It was surreal, but it was tight. And then what hit me wasn’t even a scene. It was when the ending credits, when my name came down, my artist name came down and my real name came down. I’m like, “Yeah. Okay. That’s tight.”

Yes, sir. Speaking in terms of just the things that you were able to accomplish since your comeback, the one that stood out to me the most was your League Of Legends role, which is an incredible thing. Because it feels to me it’s getting a little lost in the wash. Travis Scott is in Fortnite and all these other guys are doing virtual concerts in games because of the pandemic and yet you were at the forefront of that before anybody else was whispering about it. So again, you’re a little bit ahead of your time. What’s the process of creating music that is supposed to be music, but as someone else for a very specific thing, that’s a little bit outside of what you would normally create it for in like normal concepts?

I think it’s like acting, like you’re playing out a role, especially in those types of scenarios where I’m playing a character. This is what the character would say. If I was this character, I would say this. And that’s the fun part, really. You know what I’m saying? The moment that you can be outside of your skin, think differently. Especially from a character that lives in a fantasy world, it’s just like, there’s a challenge. And I love that. But also, Gorillaz is one of my favorite groups, and I’ve always wanted to do some CG shit, where I make the music for it, but it’s a totally different character. So between League Of Legends or even the animated video for “Find A Way,” these are my “dip my toe in the pool,” and just satisfy my need to want to do like some type of illustrated character.

What’s a superhero-ish character that you would love to play?

Shit. It’s a great question. Shit, this is an easy one with Miles Morales, if they ever do another one. I for sho would be Miles Morales. Really, I want to do one of the X-Men, but I don’t have then accent. But I like Nightcrawler.

You can learn to do a German accent.

I’m not going to do that. No, there are some German folk they can get for that [laughs]. Okay. Static Shock, hands down.

Hey, a Static Shock reboot, featuring Duckwrth. Let’s pitch that to somebody make it happen.

Go crazy. Static Shock.

SuperGood is out now via Republic Records. Get it here.

Harrowing footage of another police shooting of a Black man circulated on social media on Sunday night after an incident in Kenosha, Wisconsin, quickly went viral and sparked outrage and protests in the town and online.

Jacob Blake, a Black resident of the town, was shot multiple times by police while his back was turned to officers, sparking a night of protests and condemnations from across the world, including Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The NBA world also expressed its outrage with yet another example of an unarmed Black man being shot by police, starting with Utah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell.

“F the games and playoffs,” Mitchell wrote on Twitter Monday as video of the brutal shooting spread. “This is why we don’t feel safe.”

As a warning, the video is graphic but was shared by a number of players as further evidence of the systemic police brutality against Black people.

LeBron James, also in the Bubble in Orlando, shared his anger and pain about seeing yet another Black man shot by police, this time while an officer grabbed his shirt and fired several times into his back while Blake tried to get into a car with three of his children.

Others in the NBA community also shared their frustration and condemnation of the shooting.

Many retweeted a statement from Taylor Rooks on Monday.

The NBA’s players have made a point of continuing to advocate for social justice issues while in the Bubble, both with jersey slogans and actively commenting about societal issues while essentially sequestered from society in Orlando. Mitchell, for one, has largely turned his social media presence into a conduit to amplify the Black Lives Matter movement and encourage change.

Incidents like what happened in Kenosha on Sunday only seem to reaffirm their desire to speak about issues like this, as well as prove the point many have made that these societal problems are ongoing even while NBA basketball has resumed and that the focus can never shift off of these issues.

The Los Angeles Lakers will pay tribute to Kobe Bryant on Monday night by bringing back their “Black Mamba” uniforms for Game 4 of their first round series with the Portland Trail Blazers in honor of Bryant’s birthday on Sunday and it being 8/24.

Throughout the second half of this season since the tragic death of Kobe, his daughter Gigi, and the nine others that were killed in the helicopter crash that rocked the sports world in January, the Lakers have offered various tributes to their legendary star. On Monday, City of Los Angeles city council president Herb J. Wesson announced that Bryant’s memory will live on outside of Staples Center where the Lakers play every day going forward when they rename Figueroa Street, “Kobe Bryant Boulevard.”

The renamed section will run from MLK Jr Blvd, down by USC’s campus, to Olympic Blvd, just past L.A. Live, putting Staples Center officially at 1111 Kobe Bryant Blvd. It’s a great gesture by the city of L.A. and a fitting tribute to Bryant, given that he made Staples one of L.A.’s hottest destinations for almost two decades. A statue to join those of Shaquille O’Neal and other Laker (and Kings) legends is surely on the way for outside of Staples, as well, and the center of the L.A. sports world residing on Kobe Bryant Boulevard seems just about right.