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The Phoenix Suns are finally out from under the ownership of Robert Sarver and new owner Mat Ishbia has quickly looked to change the perception of the franchise around the NBA. While some of that has been spending big and making major trades to reshape the franchise on the court, it also means paying tribute to those who helped lead the Suns to some of their best years.

This season, the Suns will honor two such players by retiring their jerseys, as the Nos. 31 and 32 will go into the rafters for Shawn Marion and Amar’e Stoudemire.

“Shawn and Amar’e are two of the very best to ever wear a Phoenix Suns uniform,” said Mat Ishbia, owner of the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury. “Shawn changed the game with his elite versatility and Amar’e was one of the most electrifying players the league has ever seen. Shawn and Amar’e helped define the Suns and inspired generations of fans, and our Suns family is incomplete without them in the Ring of Honor.

“As we embark on the new era of Suns basketball it is a priority that we remain connected to our storied history. We are excited to celebrate Shawn and Amar’e and properly recognize their incredible contributions and achievements.”

There is no easier job than being the team owner who takes over a franchise for a notoriously terrible owner, as you have some absolute layups to get fans excited in your first few years. If you are willing to spend a bit more than the previous owner and do some things fans want the team never did previously — in this case, retiring the jerseys of two fan favorites from years past — you can win over the fan base very quickly.

However, it’s not only about making fans happy, but showing the best players on the team that you’ll look to show them appreciation throughout their time with the franchise and beyond. That means someone like Devin Booker, who noted his excitement to see Stat and the Matrix get their jerseys raised this season.

The exact dates for each jersey retirement night will be released in the future, but it’s cool to know that a pair of Suns legends will get honored this year.

Robbie Robertson, best known as the lead guitarist for Bob Dylan in the ’60s and ’70s and as the guitarist and songwriter of The Band, has died at the age of 80 years old. According to Variety, his management announced his passing in Los Angeles after a long illness. Robertson was also well-known for his long collaborative history with famed director Martin Scorsese, recently completing his 14th film project with the soundtrack for the upcoming Killers Of The Flower Moon.

Jared Levine, Robertson’s manager of 34 years, said in a statement, “Robbie was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, including his wife, Janet, his ex-wife, Dominique, her partner Nicholas, and his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine, and Delphine’s partner Kenny. He is also survived by his grandchildren Angelica, Donovan, Dominic, Gabriel and Seraphina. Robertson recently completed his fourteenth film music project with frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese, ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’ In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to the Six Nations of the Grand River to support a new Woodland Cultural Center.”

Robertson’s work with Scorsese began in 1976, after the director filmed The Band’s farewell concert, The Last Waltz. Since then, Robertson was credited as composer, music supervisor, and music producer on films like Raging Bull, The King Of Comedy, Gangs Of New York, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, and more. Robertson was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame as a member of The Band and for writing classics like “The Weight” and “Broken Arrow.” With his death, only one original member of The Band remains: Garth Hudson.

Nikola Jokic is famously one of the NBA’s most laid back superstars. His initial reaction to winning his first NBA championship was, quite literally, “We can go home now,” and he was mad he had to stay in Denver for the parade because he thought it might make him miss a horse race on Sunday — although he did end up loving the parade.

On the court, he tends to be fairly stoic and it can seem at times that he doesn’t even really care all that much — with the notable exceptions of his frustration with referees, propensity for an occasional over the top retaliation foul, and when the other team’s owner tries to hold the ball. That relatively quiet nature means when he does get fired up and vocalize his frustrations to his teammates, they tend to perk up and take note.

Thomas Bryant spent last season in Denver and only remembered one time the two-time MVP really lit into the team, recalling the timeout during Game 3 of the NBA Finals when cameras caught Jokic ripping into his teammates. As Bryant told Gilbert Arenas and the rest of the Gil’s Arena crew, Jokic was just pleading with his teammates to play the right way and just run the offense.

I do enjoy listening to guys who have played with Jokic talk about him, because they all say the same two things to hammer home the kind of player he is. The first is that he really, truly doesn’t care about his own scoring and just wants to get everyone involved. The second is gushing about how easy he is to play with and how freakish his abilities are to just break down defenses. Watching Jokic it almost doesn’t make sense how easy he makes the game look, and even other NBA athletes, who are the elite of the elite, are somewhat baffled by how simple the game is to him. Bryant’s the latest to make those points, but he also loved seeing the fire from Jokic and seeing that passion that tends to get held inside come out in that moment. Given how the rest of the Finals went, I think it’s fair to say his point was taken and they ran the offense how it’s supposed to all the way to a title.

While some people might prefer the drama and luxury of a White Lotus hotel, others might be more inclined to check into a hotel more violence-oriented. It’s all personal preference! Luckily, the John Wick universe is expanding faster than Keanu Reeve’s fists and The Continental is heading to screens just next month.

The prequel follows a young Winston Scott (played by Ian McShane in the films, and Colin Woodell in the series) who is climbing his way up the organized crime ladder in New York City. The event will consist of three parts, with each episode taking place over the course of one evening. Here is everything we know about what will surely be the most assassin-obsessed TV event of the season.

Plot

Unlike the Wick we all know and love, this story will take place in 1970s-era New York City, which is really as dangerous as any face-off against John Wick could ever be. The series will provide a backstory for Winston, Wick’s confidant-turned-enemy, and how he ended up at the top of the hotel chain to begin with. Here is the official plot description:

The three-part event will explore the origin behind the iconic hotel-for-assassins centerpiece of the John Wick universe through the eyes and actions of a young Winston Scott, as he’s dragged into the Hell-scape of 1970’s New York City to face a past he thought he’d left behind. Winston charts a deadly course through the hotel’s mysterious underworld in a harrowing attempt to seize the hotel where he will eventually take his future throne.

Cast

Since it’s a prequel, there will be no Keanu, unless there is some sort of flashforward but let’s be honest, Keanu is really busy these days. Instead, you get Colin Woddell as Winston Scott, alongside Mel Gibson as mob boss Cormac. Ayomide Adegun portrays a young Charon, while Peter Greene, Ben Robson, Hubert Point-Du Jour, Jessica Allain, and Katie McGrath round out the rest of the cast.

Release Date

The first part will drop on Friday, September 22nd on Peacock, with parts two and three releasing on September 29th and October 6th.

Trailer

Aya Cash stormed The Boys as Stormfront in Season 2 of the Amazon superhero-skewering series, and she ended up burnt so crispy that the character was a shadow of herself in the next batch of episodes. Stormfront certainly will not return for Season 4. Yet we might be receiving Aya Cash in close to the same mode again because she’s joining the cast of an HBO series that is sliding into the power vacuum created by some undeniable superhero fatigue in Hollywood.

The Franchise, a new parody series from Sam Mendes and Veep producer Armando Iannucci, along with Veep‘s Jon Brown as showrunner, is in the works as a straight-up comedy. The show will also arrive with a blessed 30-minute runtime and — this sounds reminiscent of The Dawn Of The Seven — revolves around a fictional superhero film that’s sliding into the gutter. There are no details yet, but Aya might actually play a crew member for that fictional film, and this series promises to bring some unique touches:

“The crew of an unloved franchise movie fight for their place in a savage and unruly cinematic universe. The Franchise shines a light on the secret chaos inside the world of superhero moviemaking, to ask the question — how exactly does the cinematic sausage get made? Because every f*ck-up has an origin story.”

The series will also star Daniel Brühl, Himesh Patel, Jessica Hynes, Billy Magnussen, Richard E. Grant, and more. It will also coexist in a streaming sense (on Max) with the upcoming DC Universe from James Gunn. Hopefully, that won’t make it too awkward, but heck, such a vibe could be good for both entities.

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

Donald Trump has a lot of weird beliefs. Remember when he said that asbestos gets a bad rap? Is he also pro-mosquito? But one of the absolute weirdest has to do with windmills.

“If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value. And they say the noise causes cancer,” he said in 2019, offering no evidence of who “they” is.

Needless to say it (but I’m going to say it anyway), wind turbine noise does not cause cancer. “In fact,” according to Fact Check, “some sound waves help diagnose cancer, and they might even fight off the disease, researchers at the Institute of Cancer Research outside London have found.”

Joe Biden took a shot at his predecessor’s bizarre obsession with the wind during a speech in Belen, New Mexico, on Wednesday. While talking about wind turbines, he said, “Those blades are 103 yards long. Longer than a football field. And by the way, they don’t cause cancer.”

Biden has been full of piss and vinegar lately. He’s selling “Dark Brandon” merchandise (which Trump believes is a “thinly veiled” reference to his indictments); he tweeted Marjorie Taylor Greene’s accidentally complimentary words about him; and now this. Biden only has to keep it going until he’s, uh, 86.

(Via Twitter/Acyn)

Welcome to SNX DLX, your weekly roundup of the best sneakers to hit the internet. It should go without saying, but 2023 has been a weird year for sneakers. It’s not that we haven’t had good drops, we’ve had a bunch of them. But we’re 8 months into the year and there still isn’t a single stand-out release we can point to that has clearly won the year. Do you know what does come to mind though? MSCHF’s Big Red Boots are a ridiculous sneaker release sure, and one that got everyone talking and captured eyes on the internet more than any other shoe.

Now, we’re not saying the Big Red Boot is the best sneaker drop of the year. That would be ridiculous. It’s just that it’s the most noteworthy and conversation-starting. If you hate the Big Red Boot, we totally understand. We also have very bad news for you. The Big Red Boot is back. Only this time it’s yellow and MSCHF has teamed up with Crocs. It feels tailor-made to make sneakerheads outraged and, admittedly, that’s why we love it.

Don’t worry, there are still plenty of other sneaker releases out there if the boots aren’t for you, namely some new Jordans, beautiful Humanrace Sambas, and Billie Eilish’s latest Nike collaboration. Let’s dive in!

Billie Eilish x Nike Alpha Force 88

Price: $130

I’m not entirely sure why Billie Eilish’s Nike releases don’t have the same amount of hype as Travis Scott’s. Sure, Eilish’s signature Nikes aren’t radical departures as you’ll find with the Cactus Jack Nike designs, but she has consistently delivered dope takes and updates on Nike’s famed silhouettes. We can’t say the same for Scott.

Case in point, Eilish’s version of the Nike Alpha Force 88. This sneaker sports a synthetic leather and recycled textile upper with recycled polyester lining and Billie’s custom debossed logo with a sleek partially obscured swoosh. It’s just a great-looking shoe, whether you’re a Billie Eilish fan or not.

The Billie Eilish x Nike Alpha Force 88 is out now for a retail price of $130. Pick up a pair via the Nike SNKRS app, and the Billie Eilish webstore.

Nike Air Flight Huarache Black and Varsity Purple

Price: $125

Laker fans are going to love this one! The newest Air Huarache colorway features Tinker Hatfield’s bold design draped in LA colors, with a mix of royal purple at the base encased in a black shroud with golden accents throughout. Nick Air cushioning at the heel and forefoot ensures a comfortable step and peak court performance for those days you feel like pretending you’re even half as good as Kobe.

You may not be playing at Mamba’s level, but you sure look great and that’s all that matters!

The Nike Air Flight Huarache Black and Varsity Purple is set to drop on August 10th at 7:00 AM PST for a retail price of $125. Pick up a pair via the Nike SNKRS app.

Nike Air Jordan 2 Retro Low Varsity Royal

Price: $150

This year we’ve been given all sorts of reimagining of the Jordan 2 — but sometimes a simple update is all that is needed. That’s what the Varsity Royal achieves, it does little to change the overall build and design of the AJ-2, but swaps out the OG colorway with a mix of Royal Blue, Muslin, and black colors. It’s sporty, and simple, and highlights the original design of this ahead of its time silhouette.

Never has a shoe done less and still looked so luxurious.

The Nike Air Jordan 2 Retro Low Varsity Royal is set to drop on August 10th at 7:00 AM PST for a retail price of $150. Pick up a pair via the Nike SNKRS app.

Nike Air Jordan 12 Field Purple

Price: $200

Nike continues to salute the Lakers with this Field Purple colorway of the Air Jordan 12. It’s less blatantly Lakers-related than this week’s Air Huarache, but the purple and gold team is still repped in this premium sneaker via the Field Purple mudguard and embroidered Jumpman logo, and polished golden eyelets.

The sneaker sports lizard print leather at the mudguard and tumbled leather along the base upper.

The Nike Air Jordan 12 Field Purple is set to drop on August 12th at 7:00 AM PST for a retail price of $200. Pick up a pair via the Nike SNKRS app.

Adidas Humanrace Samba Tones

Price: $200

While Pharrell is busy being the new creative director of Louis Vuitton menswear, the icon is still making time to tend to his Humanrace Adidas label. This time by reimagining the classic Samba for the 21st century. The new design ups the production quality with an ECCO leather upper, leather lace closure, leather tongue, and full leather lining. It takes an iconic design and outfits it with a luxury leather build. It’s a simple but effective move.

The sneaker drops in three triple-dipped colorways — White, Terracotta, and Charcoal.

The Adidas Humanrace Samba is set to drop on August 12th at 7:00 Am PST for a retail price of $200. Pick up a pair via the Adidas CONFIRMED app.

Crocs x MSCHF Big Yellow Boots

Price: $450

MSCHF saw how the internet reacted to its Astro Boy-inspired Big Red Boot and decided to make the design even more polarizing by collaborating with Crocs, another polarizing brand in the sneaker community. Respect! It takes guts to drop a sneaker like this. The boot sports Croc’s iconic ale pattern design and strap and slaps it on the Big Red Boot silhouette. It looks even more ridiculous than the originals.

As part of the ad campaign, the brand recruited Paris Hilton. It makes sense as we’re living in the era of Y2K revival and no celebrity embodies the era more than Paris.

The Crocs x MSCHF Big Yellow Boots are set to drop on August 9th for a retail price of $450. Pick up a pair via the MSCHF webstore.

New Balance ALD X New Balance 550 Warm Sand with Afterglow/True Brown with Sandstone

Price: $129.99

Aime Leon Dore helped to bring the New Balance 550 out of the brand’s vaults, so it’s always exciting when the brand drops new iterations of the silhouette. But this reimagining — dubbed the ‘Basketball Oxford’ — is the most radical take ALD has ever given us yet.

Featuring hairy suede overlays over a canvas build, the Basketball Oxfords sport a nylon tongue, woven tongue label, two-tone midsole, and co-branded details over a warm sand colorway. It looks great and is a solid way to close out this week’s SNX.

The New Balance ALD x New Balance 550 is set to drop on August 9th at 7:00 AM PST for a retail price of $129.99. Pick up a pair via the New Balance webstore.

There’s been a bit of beef between Eminem and Melle Mel of Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five this year. In March, Mel claimed a lot of the praise Eminem receives is because he’s white. Last week, Em and new Shady Records signee Ez Mil teamed up for “Realest,” on which Em raps, “Shout to the Furious Five and Grandmaster Flash but boy / There’s someone who really is furious, stay out his path, his wrath avoid / And I’ll be the last to toy with a juice head whose brain is like half destroyed / Like a meteor hit it, well there went Melle Mel, we lost his ass to ‘roids.”

Mel decided to drop a diss track in response yesterday (August 8), and based on the majority of the reactions to it, he probably shouldn’t have.

The song doesn’t seem to have a name, but the YouTube upload of the track is titled “Melle Mel’s Response to Eminem’s Latest Diss.” The YouTube description of the minute-long song reads in part, “Get ready to witness sparks fly in the hip-hop universe! Join Melle Mel as he fires back at Eminem’s fiery diss, ignited by the explosive ‘Realest’ collaboration with EZ Mil. In this unfiltered video, Mele Mel dives deep into the drama, giving you an informal yet intense glimpse into his response.”

On the track, Melle raps in part, “The Top 5 is cap / You the piss that’s on the floor in the elevator of rap / Why you ducking on The Game when you sh*t on my name? / Why they put Pee-Wee Herman in the hall of fame? / I would give you a pound, but I’d break your hand / I got a lawyer so white, he will take your land / Yo, check your man, come and look at your friend / ‘Cause I think that Eminem is popping pills again!”

The YouTube comments section, meanwhile, is absolutely ruthless. One user wrote, “Damn Mel. You were better off not responding at all. I hope this flies under the radar. I’m embarrassed for you.” Another person commented, “I respect Melle Mel and what he contributed to hip hop. The Message still gets played to this day. Not just the single, the entire album. But… G*ddamn. This sh*t right here should’ve never seen the light of day. Shame on everyone who was involved in making this and encouraging it to be released. The people in your circle aren’t really your friends Melle Mel.”

YouTube commenters and X/Twitter users are united here, as the tweets about the song are in the same vein. Check out some of the reactions below.

For an organization based on promoting the well-being of living things, PETA has a long history of being particularly nasty to anyone within a twelve-foot radius of an animal byproduct. Or certain video games.

But thanks to the power of Barbie, it seems like PETA has changed its tune and is now celebrating the wins instead of always having to call out the losses. To them, there are just so many losses.

PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange released a statement (via TMZ) hyping up the one and only Ken, and therefore Ryan Gosling, thanking him for his cruelty-free outfits in the costume-heavy film. “From his fabulous faux mink coat to his rad vegan leather boots, Ken serves looks that mirror actor Ryan Gosling’s own kindness to animals and refusal to wear fur,” Lange told the site. No word on if Ken’s disco jumpsuit consisted of ethically-sourced, eco-friendly sequins, but maybe that issue isn’t on PETA’s radar. Yet.

To take it a step further, PETA is already putting out a disclaimer on Halloween costumes. “PETA encourages everyone to be Kenough this Halloween by following in Gosling’s footsteps and keeping animals’ skins out of the mojo dojo casa house,” Lange continued.” So if you’re looking to don a Barbie-inspired costume like the rest of the world, you should also consider eco-friendly glitter while you’re at it. Microplastics are bad for the animals, too!

(Via TMZ)

It’s no secret that there are a lot of hip-hop documentaries. As the first genre to really break in an era where it could be widely documented in real time by camcorders, tape recorders, and eventually, film crews paid by artists and their labels, it’s kind of inevitable that there’d be so many movies about its foundations and growth. Unfortunately, because it’s all so well-covered already, it can feel at times like there’s so much overlap between the events and figures being cited that nothing new or worthwhile is really being unearthed — especially for fans who’ve voraciously consumed all these histories in an effort to learn everything there is know about hip-hop.

With hip-hop’s 50th anniversary going on, it’s the perfect time to go back and check out some of those docs (we’ve got a handy list here), but if you already have, or if you’re like me and feel like many of them only offer the same-old-same, then Mixtape is definitely the one you need to see. A joint production of Def Jam and MTV Films currently streaming on Paramount+, Mixtape does one thing that makes it great: It sticks to its subject like glue. By focusing on the rise, spread, and influence of mixtapes and their creators on the hip-hop landscape, it offers a fresh perspective on well-examined eras throughout hip-hop’s history.

For instance, while those early park jams and club performances often receive obligatory nods, those nods can also often seem cursory. But with Mixtape, so many names and personalities get their due, from Brucie B and Kid Capri (shout-out to The Notorious B.I.G.) to pioneers like Tony Touch. The film drills down, not just into who these individuals were or what their contributions changed about the art of making mixtapes, but also into their techniques and why they were so innovative in the first place. While the usual timeline landmarks are all still in place, they’re sublimated in service of telling this specific story — the story of the mixtape.

That includes a worldwide perspective, from the Dirty South and the West Coast to France, Japan, and Puerto Rico. The evolution of the art is tracked through pause tapes, the growth of freestyle tapes and exclusives, and the introduction of CDs and the big business of the late ’90s and early 2000s — the beginning of the internet era. And, as far as seeing something you didn’t know, let me just say — I grew up with these mixtape DJs, and I had absolutely no clue what most of them looked like until now. Also, the collection of interview subjects is so good at recounting their tales, I didn’t mind hearing them again.

It also touches on the corporate appropriation of the culture via moments like the Tommy Hilfiger mixtapes, Sprite sponsorships, and more. There’s even some light labor advocacy; a couple of the DJs who get interviewed readily admit that they got their early leaks by simply bribing unpaid interns (go figure that not paying your employees actually costs companies more). And thanks to the names involved, the list of interviewees is truly impressive. Yes, the usual suspects all appear, but so do A-listers like 50 Cent, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Lil Wayne, Mike Tyson, and even Shaq (Uproxx co-founder Jarret Myer even makes a quick cameo!). Befitting of a film about mixtapes, there are all kinds of great transitions and gimmicks — there’s even an intermission of sorts.

And, of course, the film digs into the dark side of the scene — the violence, the theft and damage to reputations, and eventually, the legal repercussions for some of the biggest mixtape DJs — with cutting insight. While the whole thing moves a little too quickly (basically chucking the whole of the blog era) and still clocks in at two hours long, it provides a broad and satisfying overview of its subject, shedding light on a subset of hip-hop that has been overlooked for nearly the entirety of its 50-year history. That’s all anyone could ask for — and like a real mixtape, Mixtape leaves the listener/viewer wanting more.

Mixtape is now streaming on Paramount+.