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As has become an annual tradition, the Toronto Raptors were considered a potential seller this summer, with OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam, and pretty much anyone not named Scottie Barnes popping up in trade rumors. However, to this point the Raptors have done what the Raptors have done every time there’s talk of them tearing it down, which is double down on their current path.

The result is a team that is coming off of the 9-seed and a loss in the first Play-In game looking mostly the same, with one major exception, as Fred VanVleet (understandably) bolted for Houston’s max money. While there are still rumblings of a possible Siakam deal, it seems as though he will be there for the start of camp and the Raptors will give this group one more chance to try and recapture the magic of the past before finally, maybe shifting gears towards the future at the deadline or next summer.

Here we’ll grade out the Raptors offseason moves in the Draft, free agency and contract extensions, and the trade market.

Draft: A-

The Raptors started their offseason by landing Gradey Dick with the 13th overall pick in this year’s Draft, a strong value as there were many who expected him to be off the board by the time Toronto was on the clock. The sharpshooting wing out of Kansas not only fit the mold of being one of the best players available at 13, but he also fit a major need for Toronto, as they desperately needed to add more floor spacing options. Our Brad Rowland gave them an A- on Draft night, explaining that grade as follows:

This is a good value and a good fit. Dick is one of the best shooters in the class with good size for a wing and the ability to move off the ball and shoot on the move. Defensively, he probably won’t be a big plus, but Dick improved as the season went along, and Toronto’s roster could use the infusion of floor spacing.

Free Agency/Contract Extensions: C

Re-signing Jakob Poeltl on a 4-year, $80 million contract is a perfectly good deal, especially given how thin the center market was this summer. Poeltl is a terrific defender as well as providing value as a rebounder and roll man, and $20 million per year is certainly fair value for his skillset. Getting Gary Trent Jr. to pick up his player option likewise is a nice get for the Raptors, as he’s the best shooter on their roster and losing him in free agency would’ve made it very difficult to find a replacement. The bigger issue with the Raptors summer is that they worked very hard to try and run it back, hoping they can have a Miami-like surge at some point, but they lost their most important free agent in VanVleet.

Toronto, by all accounts, was willing to go to 4 years, $120 million on VanVleet, which allowed him to push Houston into offering the 3-year max. That’s just good business by VanVleet and his agent, but it left Toronto with a sizable hole that they quickly tried patching over with the signing of Dennis Schröder on a 2-year, $26 million deal. Schröder’s ability to replicate VanVleet as a point of attack pest on defense is helpful for keeping up the defensive pressure they’re accustomed to on opponents, but it’s a fairly significant step down on the offensive end where Toronto already had its issues. Schröder is an even worse three-point shooter and far less of a threat to let them fly (last year he took 4.1 threes per 36 minutes compared to VanVleet’s 8.6 attempts per 36). For a Raptors team already short on spacing options, VanVleet’s willingness to bomb away from deep provided value on its own, even in a down year (that, again, was better than Schröder’s career three-point percentage).

On top of that, Schröder is not as good of a facilitator as VanVleet, which presents real concerns for an offense that already was prone to getting bogged down and was 23rd in the NBA in assists. Schröder isn’t a bad pivot considering the options available, but he’s just not as good as VanVleet in a number of areas the Raptors don’t have clear alternatives to help fill those holes.

Their other offseason acquisition was Jalen McDaniels, who is a nice player and a perfectly fine signing, but it did make me chuckle that the Raptors added another 6’9 wing with defensive versatility and questionable shooting ability. That’s as on-brand a signing as the Raptors could have, but I can’t see how that’s really going to help them take a stride forward. All told, that’s the issue with this summer. In a vacuum, they haven’t made any bad signings, but they also seemingly have gotten worse as a team. When you were already the 9-seed hoping for internal improvement under a new coach to vault you into playoff contention, taking a step back as a roster is a bad start to achieving your goals.

Trades: INC

My colleague Katie Heindl suggested I give the Raptors a grade of WTF, which could also stand in for the INC here. That is because, again, it’s not clear what the plan is in Toronto beyond “don’t ever do a trade that doesn’t win you the press conference.” Masai Ujiri built his reputation on shrewd signings and trades, but it seems from the outside like he has gotten to a point where he’s so aware of that reputation that he’s determined to only build on it or do nothing out of fear of ever being the one to “lose” the trade in the immediate reaction — we call this “the Danny Ainge.”

The league seems determined to temper the cost of stars on the trade market after last summer saw 10 first round picks get traded for three players (7 of those going to Ainge himself), which means the Raptors are having a hard time finding suitors to meet their demands for Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby. The other problem is, they’ve built a roster with so many redundancies that there’s not a clear path to winning at a high level, and teams seem willing to wait them out until they’re the ones desperate enough to make changes. As a result, the Raptors find themselves in something of basketball purgatory. They are a team that clearly has high end talent, but it’s not complementary talent, which seemingly puts a ceiling on how high they can go. They have a front office that doesn’t want to pivot towards a rebuild, but results keep telling them they should at least reassess their roster building strategy. Now we wait to see if this is finally the year they relent, or if they will keep hammering away in hopes that, through some miracle, that ceiling is removed.

We’re a little over two weeks into the SAG-AFTRA strike, which saw over 160,000 members join the 20,000-strong WGA on the picket lines. Since then one actor after another has shared the comically low residual checks they’ve received during the streaming era. In the good old linear TV days, residuals used to be meaty enough to keep some actors afloat. Not anymore. But some of the checks at least boasted a couple cents. Check out this one.

Robert Carradine, of the Revenge of the Nerds and Lizzie McGuire series, shared a check he got from Disney. How much did he get? Zero dollars. Someone cut and mailed him a check that’s utterly worthless.

“Why we’re striking,” Carradine wrote in the caption.

In the early days of the strike, Mandy Moore revealed that she’d received residual checks for under a dollar. Abbott Elementary’s William Stanford Davis, meanwhile, received one for three whole cents. But Carradine’s the real winner here, getting nada — a waste of paper and postage.

The two-pronged strike is the first time the two guilds have struck together since 1960. This has caused productions to shut down and movie release dates to be bumped. It could very well cause the collapse of movie theater chains. At least the wealthy studio heads who won’t meet their demands can mill about in public without being booed.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

It’s been a busy summer for Kelly Clarkson. On top of moving her talk show from Los Angeles to New York City, and releasing her critically acclaimed 10th studio album, Chemistry, Clarkson also launched her Chemistry Las Vegas residency show last night (July 28).

During her first Vegas show, Clarkson performed many songs from Chemistry, as well as her classics, like “Stronger,” “Behind These Hazel Eyes,” and “Since U Been Gone.” But as Clarkson is known to do, the inaugural American Idol winner also delivered some Kellyoke.

Viewers of The Kelly Clarkson Show know that Clarkson often opens the show with her Kellyoke segment, in which she covers a hit song and adds her own spin on it. For the first Vegas performance, she covered Harry Styles‘ hit song, “As It Was.”

During the performance, Clarkson breathes new life into the songs, adding a wider range of notes to the catchy bop.

At the time of writing, it is unknown is Clarkson plans to make the “As It Was” cover a permanent fixture in the Chemistry residency’s setlist, or if she plans to switch up the cover every night.

You can see a clip of the performance above.

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

Jeopardy! has always attracted the best and the brightest. It’s Wheel of Fortune that tends to score terrible guesses. But every now and then someone has a massive brain fart, maybe two. That’s what happened to Sharon Bishop, a high school Spanish teacher hailing from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, who had not one but two all-time bad responses — before almost winning the game.

As per The Big Lead, Friday night’s show saw Bishop ringing in for a $200 answer in the category “Messin’ with Texas.” The clue: “In 2014 Decatur, Texas rescheduled this holiday back to the 30th, as it conflicted with Friday Night High School Football.” The correct question: Halloween, of course.

That’s not what Bishop said, though. She went with…”football.”

These things happen! In fact, sometimes they happen twice.

Later on the show, Bishop dinged in on a $400 clue for the category “Real Fast,” which concerned a track record held by Sifan Hassan, when she clocked in at 4 minutes, 12.33 seconds. Which event was it? Bishop answered with “the 50-yard dash.”

Suffice to say, no one’s going to win a medal taking a handful of minutes to run 50 yards. Even host Ken Jennings had to make a light joke about it before revealing it was really a mile run.

It’s cool, though, because otherwise Bishop did really well. By the time Final Jeopardy reared its head, she was up $17,000. She ultimately lost, but second on Jeopardy! is nothing to sneeze at. Hey, it’s not in the same universe as that episode that had a whopping 23 stumpers.

(Via The Big Lead)

Esteemed comedy writer Jaboukie Young-White, better known simply as Jaboukie, is everywhere these days. Whether you know him from his polarizing social media presence, or his show-stealing roles on Rap Sh!t or Only Murders In The Building, Jaboukie has become ubiquitous within the zeitgeist of the times. Now, the comedy extraordinaire is giving his hand a turn at music. Last year, fans of Jaboukie got to know his musical stylings through his house-inspired debut single “BBC” and his scorching rap-fueled track, “Rockwhyler.”

This August, Jaboukie will finally release his long-anticipated debut album, All Who Can’t Hear Must Feel. The title is an homage to Jaboukie’s heritage and upbringing, and alludes to a Jamaican proverb.

“In the abstract, it’s like, ‘If you don’t heed the warnings of others, then there will be consequences,’” said Jaboukie in a statement. “But it can also be like, ‘Alright, if you don’t listen to me, I’m about to beat your ass.’”

Ahead of the album, Jaboukie has shared his new single, “Not_Me_Tho,” in which he celebrates his sexuality and queer freedom. In the song’s video, which is directed by Jaboukie himself, Jaboukie is seen walking through the city wearing a dress, leggings, black high heel shoes, and shiny red lipstick.

You can see the video for “Not_Me_Tho” above and the All Who Can’t Hear Must Feel album artwork and tracklist below.

1. “++y”
2. “Not_Me_Tho”
3. “26”
4. “Hit Clips Pt. I”
5. “Hit Clips Pt. II”
6. “LA”
7. “Cranberry Sauce”
8. “GONER”
9. “Cake (Interlude)”
10. “BBC”
11. “Feel The Same”
12. “INCEL”
13. “Solid States 140bpm”

All Who Can’t Hear Must Feel is out 8/25 via Interscope.

Throughout Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour leg across North America, the shows have been known to be filled with excited fans. Considering the intense demand that resulted in Ticketmaster chaos, Swifties have been packing out stadiums every weekend.

Yet, it’s Swift’s recent show at Seattle’s Lumen Field that had seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach pointing out that across the two nights, it added up to an earthquake. At 2.3 magnitude, to be exact.

“The shaking was twice as strong as ‘Beast Quake.’ It absolutely doubled it… The primary difference is the duration of shaking. Cheering after a touchdown lasts for a couple seconds, but eventually it dies down,” Caplan-Auerbach shared with CNN. “It’s much more random than a concert. For Taylor Swift, I collected about 10 hours of data where rhythm controlled the behavior. The music, the speakers, the beat. All that energy can drive into the ground and shake it.”

“I grabbed the data from both nights of the concert and quickly noticed they were clearly the same pattern of signals,” she added. “If I overlay them on top of each other, they’re nearly identical.”

Tonight, Swift continues her tour in Santa Clara, California at Levi’s Stadium. Considering she uploaded a new TikTok from backstage and recently changed her layout, fans are suspecting that another wild announcement is set to happen.

Let’s see if it sets off another earthquake.

The 1975 recently made headlines for their set at Malaysia’s Good Vibes Festival, where lead singer Matty Healy protested the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws with the rest of the band — by kissing each other on stage.

The move resulted in not only the rest of the festival being canceled but the group has since reportedly been banned from Malaysia.

“I made a mistake. When we were booking shows, I wasn’t looking into it. I don’t see the f*cking point, right, I do not see the point of inviting The 1975 to a country and then telling us who we can have sex with,” Healy had said on stage at the time.

Following the incident, Muse is going to be the first outside band to play in Malaysia since the festival’s cancelation. According to Adam Ashraf, a co-founder of the concert promotion company Hello Universe, he told Rojak Daily that the group edited their set to better follow the rules.

“They called us shortly after the incident went global. After discussions, they decided to pull one song out of the setlist due to the title of the song. It’s nice to know they’re eager to entertain while also respecting the guidelines,” Ashraf said.

However, Healy himself has since caught wind of this and he had some thoughts via his Instagram story today. In the first post, he shares a message from Muse’s album pre-order where it reads “Join the resistance.” Underlining it in red, Healy captioned it, “Sick.”

His second post is a screenshot of the NME news that Muse adjusted their setlist. “…Oh,” he added.

Check out Healy’s uploads here.

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

Ashnikko’s new album, Weedkiller, arrives next month — but she’s keeping fans pleased with new singles. Her latest, “Cheerleader,” finds her critiquing society’s beauty standards.

“Hatе me ’cause I’m beautiful, b*tch, I don’t like you either,” Ashnikko boldfully declares in the chorus. Later in the track, she also tosses in a fitting Bring It On reference.

“It’s twisting this perfect cheerleader into a monstrosity,” she shared in a statement. “It’s commentary on the need to be f*ckable to be commercially viable, and I really do feel that pressure. It’s so tiring and played out. No matter how much logic I’ve built up in my head, there’s still some carnal part of my brain that says, ‘You have to be f*ckable to sell this music, b*tch!’ It’s draining on my spirit and makes me feel like I have literal car exhaust in my brain.”

Later this fall, Ashnikko will kick off her Weedkiller World Tour in North America. It will start on September 10 in Austin. According to a press release, she is also set to host fan events and pop-ups tied to the record’s release. Fans can find a complete list of dates and more information here.

Check out Ashnikko’s “Cheerleader” above.

Weedkiller is out 8/25 via Warner Records. Find more information here.

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

Whether we are parents by birth, adoption or kinship care, we have all halfway listen to a child when they’re being a bit too talkative or when we’re almost asleep. Sometimes that means agreeing to a snack we didn’t realize they asked for until they walk into the room chomping away. Other times it means accidentally telling kids a ridiculous lie, then having to clean up so they don’t go repeating it.

One dad, Dillon White, found himself in the latter category when his daughter asked him if having babies hurt—except he didn’t hear “babies.” He thought his daughter had asked about rabies and proceeded to tell her details about the horrible disease, which she repeated to her younger brother.

Dillon, who surely thought he was killing it at this parenting thing, did not realize his mistake until his wife, Suzanne White, sat him down in front of a camera.

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The dad was confused about why Suzanne was recording until she asked, “Why did I overhear Riley telling Mason that I was foaming at the mouth when I was having Bailey?” Dillon sort of giggled, but it didn’t fully click until she repeated that she overheard their older daughter telling their 4-year-old son that she was foaming at the mouth while delivering their youngest child.

In that moment, the dots began to connect like one of those memes with the dramatic math equations. Dillon nearly spit out his food with laughter as everything began to make sense. He couldn’t stop laughing long enough to get out all of the words at first. As he realized his mistake and his wife started recognizing where the misunderstanding happened, the two could not contain their laughter. It’s a story you have to hear, told by the parents below, to gain a full appreciation of it.

Here’s a lesson in gaining clarification before giving out parental wisdom to children:

@momchats

Maybe we will do better when she asks where babies come from.

The bond between gamers is a special one.

In a short Facebook post, the Hapeville Police Department in Georgia shared that one of their officers recently surprised a young boy with a PlayStation.

Office Colleran was called to “remove a juvenile” from the area. However, when he arrived on the scene, the boy had revealed he only “wanted to do yard work: pulling weeds, cutting grass and trimming hedges to save up for a PlayStation.”

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The department praised the young man as being “polite, respectful and truthful,” and wrote that “Officer Colleran, a gamer himself, was impressed with the young man and thought he would help him reach his goal.”

The video below shows the sweet moment that Office Colleran appears with not only a new Ps5 gaming system waiting for the boy, but a “gift card to pay for the membership so he could play immediately.”

The boy’s reaction says it all:

“Officer Colleran made sure that this young man knew they would play on the same team online soon!” the post concluded.

Over in the comments section, people were delighted that the officer made the young man feel recognized for his efforts and were all around touched by the positive interaction.

Check out what folks had to say:

“Thank you Officer Colleran! What you just did for that young man is life changing. The caller should be embarrassed. Keep being awesome young man! There are plenty of our youth that could learn from your example. 💙🙏”

“I could not love this more. ❤️ Thank you Officer Colleran and friends for acknowledging this boy was doing absolutely nothing wrong! He was seeking work so he could get himself a PlayStation. Very kind gesture, Hapeville PD.”

“We need more people like this officer and this young man. It’s awesome to see a young person with a work ethic and an officer that takes time to be involved with his community. God bless you both.”

It’s disheartening enough to hear when good adults are treated poorly, but when someone does something unkind to a good kid…that’s a whole ‘nother level of soul-crushing. But when this does happen, people often step up to help, because at the end of the day, there’s still just as much, if not more, goodness left in humanity than there is bad. Certainly, many people would have responded the way Officer Colleran did.

Hope these two become the best of gaming buddies.