The fifth episode of The Last Dance opens with Michael Jordan at the 1998 All-Star Game and his interactions with — and private thoughts on — a 19-year-old Kobe Bryant, who was making his All-Star debut.

In the East locker room before the game, Bryant is the chief topic of conversation, with Jordan preparing everyone — including himself — for Kobe inevitably trying to play them 1-on-1 all game, and how he’s going to embrace that challenge.

“That little Laker boy’s gonna take everybody one-on-one,” Jordan said. “He don’t let the game come to him. He just go out there and take it. I’m gonna make this sh*t happen. I’m going to make this a one-on-one game.”

The locker room discussion on Kobe continued with someone remembering him missing his first four shots in a game they played against him and expecting him to stop shooting, with Jordan chiming in that if he were Kobe’s teammate he would’ve made him stop.

“After his first four attempts? If I was his teammate I wouldn’t pass him the f*ckin ball,” Jordan quipped. “You want this ball again, brother, you better rebound.”

Sure enough, Kobe and Jordan went at each other on the court, with MJ promising to his teammates he’s “gonna make his ass work” on the defensive end before Kobe gets his chance on defense, while Grant Hill explains that he refuses to end up on a poster by jumping with Bryant. Kobe’s remembrance of that All-Star Game was simply how much fun it was for him to be out there with his idol, going toe-to-toe and really understanding what makes Jordan great.

“I grew up watching Michael on TV, and now you got a chance to go face-to-face with him,” Bryant said. “You get a chance to really see and touch and feel strength, speed, quickness. It was fun to be out there.”

While Jordan clearly wasn’t willing to cede his throne to Kobe at the time, that didn’t mean Jordan wasn’t a willing sounding board for the young, rising star. Bryant, whose game was so clearly modeled off of Jordan, explained how helpful Mike was to him.

“It was a rough couple years for me coming into the league, cause at the time the league was so much older. It’s not as young as it is today, so nobody was really thinking much of me,” Bryant recalled. “I was a kid that shot a bunch of airballs, and at that point, Michael provided a lot of guidance for me. Like, I had a question about shooting his turnaround shot, so I asked him about it, and he gave me a great, detailed answer.”

That advice came in a game, and Jordan shared what he told a young Bryant in the postgame interview.

Kobe continued on, noting Jordan was like a big brother to him and said it always made him uncomfortable when fans would ask him things like who would win in a game of 1-on-1.

“But on top of that he said, ‘If you ever need anything, give me a call,’” Bryant remembered. “He’s like my big brother. I truly hate having discussions about who would win one-on-one. You hear fans saying, ‘Yo, Kobe, you’d beat Michael one-on-one.’ I’m like, yo, what you get from me is from him. I don’t get five championships here without him, because he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice.”

Jordan’s relationship with Bryant occurred mostly behind closed doors, but we got a glimpse into that relationship during his speech at Kobe’s memorial service, when he called him a “little brother” and offered a tearful tribute to his legacy on and off the court.

Even though everything’s been locked down for a month-and-a-half, we’ve been seeing a lot of celebrities during the quarantine. Tom Hanks has been particularly ubiquitous. He and his wife Rita Wilson were among the first famous people who tested positive for Covid-19, and after recovering he’s made appearances on SNL At Home and done virtual chat shows, in which he’s opened up about his difficulties battling the virus. Now he’s gone and surprised a class of graduating collegiate with an inspiring speech.

As per Entertainment Weekly, the two-time Oscar-winner surprised the graduating class of Wright State University in Ohio, who, like many students, have had to finish their semester remotely. That includes their commencement, but at the very least they received a message from one of the country’s most popular entertainers, who was honored there in 2016 by having a school named after him, namely The Tom Hanks Center for Motion Pictures.

“You are the chosen ones because of a fate unimagined when you began your Wright State adventures,” Hanks told the class. “You started in the olden times, in a world back before the Great Pandemic of 2020. You will talk of those earlier years in your lives in just that way.”

He continued: “Part of your lives will forever be identified as ‘before’ … In the same way other generations tell time like ‘that was before the war,’ or ‘that was before the internet,’ or ‘that was before Beyoncé.’ The word ‘before’ is going to carry great weight with you.”

Hanks called this era “the great reboot,” adding, “You’ll reference these past weeks for how many other weeks there are yet to come as ‘during the pandemic.’ ‘During the COVID-19, during the lockdown, the quarantine, during the shelter-in-place.”

Throughout he tried to stay positive. “You will be enlightened in ways your degree from Wright State never held in promise,” he told them. “You will have made it through a time of great sacrifice and great need. And no one will be more fresh to the task of restarting our normalcy than you — our chosen ones.”

You can watch Hanks’ full speech in the tweet embed above.

(Via EW)

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best music released in the last week.

This week saw a surprise Drake release, and Megan Thee Stallion realizing a big-time dream thanks to a special collaborator. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

Drake — Dark Lane Demo Tapes

Drake can decide to own any given week, and he proved that a few days ago when his surprise Dark Lane Demo Tapes project dominated the hip-hop conversation. Additionally, the Future- and Young Thug-featuring project will be followed by a legitimate album this summer.

Megan Thee Stallion — “Savage (Remix)” Feat. Beyonce

Beyonce became the idol of aspiring Texas musicians since her rise in Destiny’s Child, and that included Megan Thee Stallion. The fellow Houston native’s musical dreams came true last week when Beyonce hopped on a “Savage” remix (OnlyFans was pretty happy about it, too).

Lil Baby — My Turn (Deluxe)

f

Car Seat Headrest — Making A Door Less Open

f

Kehlani — “F&MU”

f

Doja Cat — “Say So (Remix)” Feat. Nicki Minaj

f

Haim — “I Know Alone”

f

Khalid — “Eleven (Remix)” Feat. Summer Walker

f

Lil Tjay — “Ice Cold”

f

Big Thief — “Love In Mine”

f

View Entire Post ›

We just want our homemade bread to stay fresh for a little longer.

View Entire Post ›

“The Rachel” was actually horrible, and it’s time to stop pretending it wasn’t.

View Entire Post ›

From extra-dry to very oily, we’ve got you *covered*.

View Entire Post ›

“We now have to weigh the safety of store owners and employees to threats of violence,” said the city manager of Stillwater, Oklahoma.

View Entire Post ›

There may be no superstar that was more forward about modeling his entire game and mentality off of another player than Kobe Bryant, who would happily tell people that his game was molded in the image of Michael Jordan.

Kobe mimicked just about everything Jordan did on the floor, and also was driven by the same insatiable desire to win and be the best. It’s something that Jordan admired about Bryant, calling him a “little brother” during his speech at Kobe’s memorial service earlier this year. Sunday night’s installment of The Last Dance will touch on their relationship, most notably the 1998 All-Star Game when they squared off in Madison Square Garden.

Ahead of that, the Chicago Bulls dug into the archives to give folks a look at their relationship in that 1998 season, with Jordan explaining after a game where cameras caught the two chatting during a free throw that he was giving the young Bryant some advice on how to perfect his patented turnaround jumper.

“He wanted to know when I turnaround on my jump shot how I lock the defense and how to feel the defense,” Jordan said. “I told him you should feel the defense with your legs. Once you feel the defense with your legs you more or less can feel where the defense is and you can take advantage of that.”

When asked if he didn’t have a problem sharing “trade secrets” in a game, Jordan said it was part of his duty to pass that on to the next generation

“Not at all. That enhances his basketball skill, and someone did that for me and certainly I’m not against giving him any kind of hints about his game if he asks. I’m certainly not going to come out and try to give him too much information. The kid, he’s learned a lot in the short amount of time he’s been in the league and, believe me, he’s going to continue to learn.”

It’s a cool video to pull from the archives and show how Jordan was willing to share those parts of the game with Kobe, as, while it’s obvious the influence of Jordan on Kobe’s game, a lot of younger fans haven’t necessarily seen that kind of concrete example of how Jordan provided that guidance to him.

View Entire Post ›