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A New York drug dealer connected to the overdose death of actor Michael K. Williams received a two-year prison sentence on Tuesday after both The Wire creator David Simon and Williams’ nephew petitioned the court for leniency.

Carlos Macci was looking at 20 years in prison after being connected to the drug crew that sold Williams the fatal dose. Unlike fellow dealer Irvin “Green Eyes” Cartagena, Macci was not directly charged with Williams’ death, but he was still looking at significant jail time. In a letter to the court, Simon argued that Williams would’ve been opposed to the lengthy sentence.

Via Associated Press:

“I miss my friend,” he wrote. “But I know that Michael would look upon the undone and desolate life of Mr. Macci and know two things with certainty: First, that it was Michael who bears the fuller responsibility for what happened. And second, no possible good can come from incarcerating a 71-year-old soul, largely illiterate, who has himself struggled with a lifetime of addiction.”

Williams’ nephew Dominic Dupont, who was extremely close to the actor, also asked the court for leniency. Dupont told the judge that he sympathized with Macci’s plight and believed he could turn his life around.

“It weighs heavy on me to see someone be in a situation he’s in,” Dupont said. “I understand what it is to be system impacted.”

(Via Associated Press)

Ice Spice is one of the most strategic acts in the game right now — both on and off the mic. As she is adjusting to stardom, she’s come up with special ways to maintain her sanity while on the go.

In an interview with British Vogue, she revealed the things she likes to keep in her pink Chanel bag — including some handy garments.

“I always keep a pantie on me,” Ice said. “The baddies that get it, get it. All my panties are pink. I always keep a pantie because like, you just be having to change your panties.”

There was no shortage of pink accessories in her purse, in addition to the underwear. Ice likes to keep pink lip gloss, which she said she’s been wearing since she was in high school. She also carries a pink wallet, as she admits she has a spending habit.

But there’s one thing for sure that Ice can’t leave home without.

“The most essential thing a musician should have in their bag — earphones,” said Ice. “That way, you can, like, listen to beats [and] jot down some lyrics.”

She specifically noted that she prefers wired headphones, as Bluetooth headphones often have a lag with the sound.

You can watch the full interview above.

When the In-Season Tournament sprouted as an idea, a major discussion point was why players and teams should care about playing for a trophy not named after Larry O’Brien. What would incentivize players to play harder or teams to strategize for a random collection of games in the middle of the season?

The NBA decided against awarding a playoff spot, a draft pick, or funky salary cap incentives and decided a cash prize and a trip to Vegas in December would suffice. It’s difficult to imagine LeBron James or Steph Curry coveting the $500,000 cash prize, but that’s a nice chunk of change for a player on the minimum or a rookie-scale contract. Teams may also find extra incentive in having games early in the season where the competition level cranks up a half-notch. For example, in the knockout round, a team could test drive a young player to see if they’re ready for the bright lights in May and June. A team with little playoff experience or roster cohesion could fine tune their playoff rotation. The tournament could serve as a sandbox for the league’s most creative coaches. Somewhere Nick Nurse is dreaming about the gnarliest defensive scheme he could deploy in a single elimination tournament.

The Play-In Tournament has provided some highly entertaining and competitive games, but the Play-In is just a ticket for the real playoffs. The In-Season Tournament presents an opportunity for both teams and players to add something to their resumes. As the years go by, In-Season Tournament accolades will slowly drip into the discourse about a player, team, or coach. There will be an iconic In-Season Tournament performance or a championship game disaster. The single elimination format provides an opportunity for teams at the margins to take center stage. Only a handful of teams are title contenders each year, but in theory, any team can string together eight games and win the tournament. That opportunity will be especially meaningful to teams on the outside looking in. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a few teams who should really value the In-Season Tournament.

Oklahoma City Thunder

The Thunder are transitioning out of the Sam Presti draft pick ponzi scheme into a promising young team loaded with talent. OKC probably isn’t ready for a deep playoff run, but with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the bevy of young playmakers around him, they’re poised to upset any team in a single elimination game. The tournament also gives head coach Mark Daigneault an opportunity to sort out his rotation. OKC currently suffers from their own success and Sam Presti’s addiction to making trades. They have 21 legitimate NBA players on their roster and will be forced to cut that down to 15 by the end of camp. Even after the roster cuts, dispersing minutes amongst all of OKC’s promising young players will be next to impossible. Who Daigneault chooses to play in deciding games could forecast which OKC youngsters will be around for the long haul.

Charlotte Hornets

Can you name the biggest moment in Hornets history? I certainly cannot. The franchise has never made the conference finals, and since the team was revived in Charlotte back in 2004, they have not won a playoff series. A run in the In-Season Tournament would mean a lot to a franchise like that. They would certainly hang a banner for a tournament win and it’s the kind of accomplishment that would mean more to them than many of the league’s title contenders. There could be no better way to initiate the In-Season Tournament than LaVar Ball standing next to LaMelo on the championship podium. That’s what the tournament should be all about.

Phoenix Suns

Is a weekend trip to Vegas enough to entice DeAndre Ayton into playing hard during the tournament? That’s one of many questions that will be facing this experimental Suns roster this season. The tournament could provide an early look at the role players surrounding the core four players in a competitive environment. Despite Devin Booker turning into a human flamethrower last season, Phoenix couldn’t overcome the shoddy shooting from their role players. The Bradley Beal introduction and new cast of role players will bring many questions for Phoenix, and the tournament may provide an early trial run to seek out some answers.

Sacramento Kings

Sacramento sprung back into relevancy last season through the sublime clutch play of De’Aaron Fox and the power of the beam. With a loaded Western Conference, there’s an expectation that Kings will regress a bit this season, but they’ll be eager to prove last year’s run to the 3-seed wasn’t a fluke. For Sacramento, the tournament provides an opportunity to define themselves as the league’s best up and coming team. Additionally, there is no better environment for a single elimination game than the Golden One Center. Hopefully the beam shines a little brighter for a In-Season Tournament win.

Los Angeles Lakers

There is no basketball argument for this. LeBron James does not need the In-Season Tournament for his legacy or to even challenge himself. The Lakers proved last year they could make a playoff run with very little roster cohesion. However, the Lakers winning the In-Season Tournament would send Laker fans into a frenzy. They would never stop talking about it (at least until the actual playoffs started). Every talk show endlessly discussing the meaning of the tournament. Eventually someone, somewhere, would say that Michael Jordan never won the In-Season Tournament. Maybe the Lakers even hang a baby banner. If Adam Silver wants the tournament to become a huge thing, this is the outcome that gets the most people talking.

Travis Scott is getting involved with a new film titled Circus Maximus after he revealed the trailer for it during his recent set at Rolling Loud Miami. Not only is he set to direct the project, but Scott will act in it as well.

Several other well-known directors are attached to the movie, including Harmony Korine (Spring Breakers), Gaspar Noe, Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive), Kahlil Joseph, and Valdimar Jóhannsson.

According to Variety, A24 is not involved with the film, despite their logo being on a poster that Scott posted. The film’s release is tied to Scott’s new album, Utopia, both of which drop Thursday at midnight.

Circus Maximus‘ runtime is an hour and fifteen minutes. Fans can watch it at various AMC theaters across the country. According to the description, the site reads: “The film is a surreal and psychedelic journey, uniting a collective of visionary filmmakers from around the world in a kaleidoscopic exploration of human experience and the power of soundscapes.”

“Travis Scott takes his audience on a mind-bending visual odyssey across the globe, woven together by the speaker rattling sounds of his highly anticipated upcoming album ‘Utopia,’” it adds.

Tickets for the movie can be found here.

Check out the trailer for Scott’s Circus Maximus above.

Megan Fox got ahead of the response she knew her new outfit would get on Instagram.

While wearing an orange striped mesh maxi dress that would drive Tony the Tiger wild, the Jennifer’s Body actress wrote, “before you start angrily typing- those are not my nipples, calm down. they are safely and completely hidden under nipple covers so no worries, we will all live another day without a rip in the space-time continuum.”

In addition to the dress, the Transformers star sported silver statement necklaces by Dylan Lex and had her hair swept up into a top knot. And she had plenty of fans cheering her on in the comments. “Goddess energy,” Selling Sunset alum Christine Quinn wrote, while Jersey Shore’s Jenni “JWOWW” Farley dropped a series of fire emojis.

The caption sounds like something Fox would say (and something her on-again, off-again partner Machine Gun Kelly would comment on), but was it actually her typing the words? “I have social media, but I don’t personally use it. I have somebody who posts for me and I decide what I want to say,” she explained to Glamour U.K. in 2022. “But I think it’s sinister. I think it’s evil.”

You can see the post below.

(Via E! Online)

Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town” is currently No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, but the song has received some significant negative attention due to its allegedly racist video. The visual as it exists on YouTube today, though, apparently isn’t the same as it was when it was originally uploaded on July 14.

The Washington Post reports the video is now six seconds shorter than it was when it was uploaded, and that it “no longer contains a news clip from Fox 5 Atlanta depicting violent confrontations during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020 and subsequent protests in January.” The publication also notes that “portions of that clip appeared twice in the original music video,” and that while it’s “unclear when exactly the video was edited,” “numerous changes appear to have been made since last week.”

They also report, “The final 30 seconds of the original video featured idyllic rural footage including a man in a baseball cap and sunglasses looking into the sun, and an older man speaking about small-town values while sitting in a wheelchair. Neither clip appears in the new version.”

The publication notes they got no responses when reaching out to YouTube, Fox 5, or TackleBox (the production company behind the video) about the video.

Last night (July 25), Drake surprised fans during his second of three Madison Square Garden shows by bringing a very special guest: his mom.

In a video from the show, Drake and his mother, Sandi Graham, sit on a couch together as he performs “Look What You’ve Done” from his 2011 album, Take Care, to her.

Given the track is a reflection of how Drake’s loved ones helped jumpstart his career, with his mom being one of the people to get a special dedication in the lyrics, seeing him perform it at MSG made her cry.

“They love your son, man, that boy gone / You get the operation you dreamed of / And I finally send you to Rome / And get to make good on my promise / It all worked out, girl, we should’ve known / ‘Cause you deserve it,” Drake sings, reading from a notebook.

Halfway through his performance, the two of them hug, and then he continues. “Look what you’ve done for me,” he sings directly to her, as she appears to cry after the emotional tribute.

Drake wraps up his Madison Square Garden run tonight on his It’s All A Blur Tour with 21 Savage.

Check out the heartfelt moment between Drake and his mother here.

Rudy Giuliani has reportedly admitted that he made “false” statements about election workers in Georgia. The man once revered as “America’s Mayor” has been targeted in a number of lawsuits and investigations for his involvement in Donald Trump‘s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

While Giuliani has repeatedly maintained that he wouldn’t “flip” on Trump, this latest development shows that he will eventually give up the goods when pressed in courts. Giuliani claimed that the two workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, smuggled out votes in a suitcase hidden under a table. Wouldn’t you know it? That just wasn’t true.

Via Newsweek:

In a court filing on Tuesday, the former mayor of New York conceded that he had made the statements and had published them to third parties, but said that such an admission would not change his argument that they were “constitutionally protected” and had not adversely affected the workers concerned.

Giuliani did not contest that “to the extent that the statements were statements of fact and otherwise actionable, such actionable factual statements were false.”

Giuliani’s admission could prove disastrous for Trump. The former president is facing a likely indictment for election tampering in Georgia after he was recorded threatening state officials and ordering them to “find” votes. Special Counsel Jack Smith is also investigating Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election including, but not limited to, the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol building.

(Via Newsweek)

Rootin’ tootin’ Lauren Boebert has been known to bend the truth at times, to put it mildly. Quote recently, she showed up late to the Capitol and missed a vote for the debt ceiling bill that she had raged so hard against. Boebert later claimed to have purposely skipped the vote as a “protest,” but video footage showed her sprinting up the stairs (in heels) in a vain effort to make that same vote. That falsehood might have been what led a relative of an Uvalde shooting victim to accuse her of lying about the reason that she casually tossed a commemorative pin into the trash.

Now, Boebert is throwing a fit while accusing President Biden of being a liar, when the right-wing congresswoman is still stubbornly devoted to the King Of MAGA Lies. Yet this is simply a case of Biden not enunciating his words well enough and his critics running with their claims regardless of what did happen.

A bit of background: Joe Biden lost his eldest son, Beau, to cancer. Joe spoke about Beau during his first State Of The Union speech, only to be heckled by Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Over a year later, Boebert is perfectly willing to hang onto her claim that Biden now claims to have cured cancer, and she tweeted about how he “lied” from one of her accounts (“Joe Biden lied about curing cancer”) and sarcastically joked about the topic (“I feel like that would have at least gotten a press release”) from her other account.

As seen in the above clip (about from a discussion on healthcare), Biden responded to a question that Boebert apparently clipped, possibly to remove context. The president expressed his wish that he could cure cancer. Via Newsweek, here’s what he actually stated:

“‘If you could do anything at all, Joe, what would you do?’ I said, ‘I’d cure cancer.’ And they looked at me like, ‘Why cancer?’ Because no one thinks we can. That’s why. And we can. We can end cancer as we know it.”

The White House also provided a transcript of the discussion for what it’s worth. And it’s not worth much to the right-wingers, obviously, because a lot of them are out there tweeting that Biden lied. That includes Boebert, who went on to make that clip part of a thread to argue, “JOE BIDEN IS A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR! @POTUS can’t be trusted, he must be impeached!”

It’s beyond bizarre to hang one’s hat on a misheard quote, but oh well. Never mind that Trump not only continues to repeat the Big Lie but never did tell the truth about a silly typo that launched “covfefe” into the public lexicon.

Ice Spice has the summer on lock. With a song on the Barbie soundtrack, as well as a feature on a Taylor Swift single, the Bronx rapper is inescapable this year. Now, hot of the release of her Like…? (Deluxe) EP, Ice has shared the music video for her viral new single, “Deli.”

As its title suggests, the video features Ice and her crew dancing in a deli. The bodega appears to be closed down, as Ice and friends twerk on counters, stack up cash, and party it up without a care in the world.

Shortly after, Ice steps out to a crowd ready to greet her with much fanfare.

Perhaps this part of the video was inspired by real life. In an interview with Guardian, Ice revealed that she finds herself living a more clandestine life as she’s adjusted to fame.

“I’ll be thinking that I’m low-key, but then people start to notice – and once one person notices, people start to form a crowd and then I be getting a little overwhelmed,” she said. “…That’s the biggest thing to adjust to in real life – not being able to be outside as myself as much. I more gotta be, like, hiding a little bit.”

You can watch the “Deli” video above.