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The Los Angeles Sparks have been a bright spot early on in the 2023 WNBA season. While improvement wasn’t unexpected given their offseason changes, it’s notable that the Sparks are 2-2 and extremely competitive, especially considering that two starters haven’t played yet (Azura Stevens and Jasmine Thomas) and the team is wrestling with a non-COVID illness outbreak.

Sixth-year guard Lexie Brown was a reliable rotation player with the Sparks last season. This year, she’s breaking out as a plus starter and is a very early name to watch in the league’s Most Improved Player race. After an opening night victory over the Phoenix Mercury in which Brown was pivotal as the Sparks mounted a comeback, franchise star Nneka Ogwumike weighed in on her growth postgame, highlighting what we’ve seen play out in the week since.

“Lexie, I think, is at an inflection point of her career,” Ogwumike said. “She’s always known that she’s good, and she is good, but this is where you turn from good to great. She’s stepping into what I think requires to be great: a vulnerability. You have to be vulnerable to take a hard shot, you have to be vulnerable to keep shooting when it’s not going in, knowing that you are the right person to take the shot. I see that slowly happening with her.”

After setting a career-high with 26 points against the Mercury, a game which she sent the game to overtime with a clutch layup, it’s safe to say that vulnerability has fully set in.

Brown is averaging 14.5 points and 2.8 assists per game and is seventh in the league in true-shooting among players who have played at least 50 minutes this season. It’s made all the more impressive considering Brown, who stands 5’9, is the only player in the top-15 who is shorter than 5’11.

The change in Brown’s usage is notable and a credit to her skill development. Per Synergy Sports, her pick-and-roll volume is way up, from 39.3 percent of her possessions last season to 60.5 percent in 2023. It’s also a credit to a restructured offense in Los Angeles. Much of last season featured stagnancy and poor spacing. New pieces on the roster have helped, but so has intentionality in the half court to play with more pace.

Brown has long been a capable shooter, but cemented herself as one of the best in the league last season. She was adept from the slots and gunning off of flare screens. What stood out immediately with her this year was how willingly Sparks coach Curt Miller opened the playbook to emphasize her shooting ability and play out of it. We saw motion in relocation and some off-ball screening actions last year, but that doesn’t compare to this.

Shooting 42.9 percent from three is very good no matter how you slice it. When factoring in volume (5.3 attempts per game) and movement, her ability to knock down shots from behind the arc hits defenses that much harder.

Defenders can’t duck under ball screens against her. They can’t fall asleep when guarding her in the weak corner. Overplay a denial and she’ll hard cut to get the ball and an easy look at the rim. Brown is demanding help at high level, and making the most of it with crisp pocket passing when she draws two.

All of this is gigantic for a team that needed to juice its offense. With consistent pick-and-roll reads and playing with an efficacy that defenses have to honor and guard accordingly, Brown has been L.A.’s engine throughout the first few weeks of the season.

The Sparks didn’t have enough consistent, three-level scoring threats last season. A season-ending injury to new signee Stephanie Talbot over the offseason and Katie Lou Samuelson’s maternity leave brought back some of those same concerns prior to camp starting this time around. While Brown was expected to be a significant contributor, the way she’s risen her play has been pivotal in opening up L.A.’s offense. She’s created windows for Chiney and Nneka Ogwumike that weren’t often there last season, and she’s started to form quality synergy with Dearica Hamby. Her performance is a major reason the team is tied for third in the league in offensive rating at this early point in the season.

Will Brown shoot right around 43 percent from deep for the entire season? That’s a lofty goal, but she looks every bit one of the handful of shooters in the league that can comfortably take and make enough shots off the dribble, off screening actions, and off awkward movements. Regardless of any efficiency dip, defenses are going to treat her as a consistent threat.

The Sparks will get healthy and add one of the most versatile frontcourt players in the league back into the fold in Stevens. That, mixed with their core continuing to gel, is going to make the team dangerous all year long. And a major reason why will be Lexie Brown, who will continue to assert herself as a crucial piece in Los Angeles’ puzzle.

It’s a pretty good time to be Nikola Jokic. The two-time league MVP has led the Denver Nuggets to the first NBA Finals in franchise history, and while there’s still a long way to go, the team finds itself with an edge on the Miami Heat after an impressive win in Game 1. Unsurprisingly, Jokic was outstanding in the game, as he put forth a triple-double and did all the stuff that has turned him into perhaps the best basketball player on the planet.

Game 2 is on Sunday evening in Denver, but before then, Jokic had to clear a pretty big hurdle: He had to meet with the media on Saturday and answer a bunch of questions about stuff. There was, however, a curveball thrown into all of this, as Jokic was going through the motions before he was asked a question by a reporter from Kessler Sports Fan Page. This, of course, is not a real thing, as it was instead a website that Walker Kessler of the Utah Jazz made up so he could ask Jokic how he’s doing.

“Ooh! I like it!” Jokic said in response to the question. He then talked about the weather for a few seconds.

“Listen, my day got brighter when I saw you,” Kessler said.

“Oh, I like it, my friend!” Jokic said. “Appreciate it.”

Barbie doesn’t hit theaters for another month-and-a-half and many things about it still remain a mystery. But one thing’s for sure: It is going to be one seriously pink movie. Margot Robbie’s living Mattel doll lives in a world where just about everything is pink. And it’s not CGI: They really built a giant set on the Warner Bros. lot in London, with pink props and pink clothes and pink everything. Indeed, there was so much pink that it caused a paint shortage.

In a profile of the forthcoming film by Architectural Digest, director/co-writer Greta Gerwig told her team to go over-the-top, saying, “Maintaining the ‘kid-ness’ was paramount.” She added, “I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much.”

So production designer Sarah Greenwood did just that, to the point that the fluorescent shade they got from the company Rosco ran dry. “The world, Greenwood said with a laugh, “ran out of pink.”

Or did it? Los Angeles Times pressed Greenwood on the matter, and she admitted it wasn’t as simple as she’d claimed. When Barbie was in principal photography last summer, Rosco was still dealing with the global supply chain being mucked up by the pandemic. On top of that the freak winter storm that hit Texas in 2021 damaged some of the materials the company used to make paint.

“There was this shortage,” Proud explained, “and then we gave them everything we could — I don’t know they can claim credit.”

Still, it sounded like it was worth it. From the sight of it Barbie creates one of the cinema’s great ludicrious houses, with Gerwig citing as an influence the house from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Gene Kelly’s cramped apartment in An American in Paris.

“I wanted to capture what was so ridiculously fun about the Dreamhouses,” Gerwig told AD. “Why walk down stairs when you can slide into your pool? Why trudge up stairs when you take an elevator that matches your dress?”

Barbie hits theaters on July 21.

(Via Architectural Digest and Los Angeles Times)

Despite what the title might suggest, Kelly Clarkson‘s new song “I Hate Love” features a surprisingly pleasant guest. None other than actor Steve Martin appears as a feature on the track, with him lending it his banjo.

Clarkson had previously seen videos of Martin playing on social media and really wanted to work with him on a song. “I was like, ‘I know that sounds crazy,’” Clarkson told Billboard. “[My producer] Jesse Shatkin was like, ‘I think it sounds rad.’

“I generally don’t ask because I get very nervous about bothering people,” she added. “But literally, within hours, [we] got an answer: ‘Oh my God, he’d love to, when are you recording it?’”

While Martin and Clarkson deliver a very fun and unique collaboration, the two multitalented stars have yet to actually meet in person, even with the American Idol alum‘s decades of working in the business.

“My ideal moment is him coming on my show and then us performing it — but I’ll take just him coming on my show so we can talk and hang out so I can, like, meet him,” she said.

The track also follows Clarkson’s handful of previous releases ahead of her upcoming album, Chemistry, which drops later this month.

Check out Kelly Clarkson’s “I Hate Love” feat. Steve Martin above.

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

RXK Nephew dropped his song “I Love My Girlfriend” as an official single, just weeks after it got a shoutout from Rihanna. In a recent TikTok, the pop star uploaded a video of herself decked out in diamonds and walking, with the track on the soundtrack.

“quiet luxury,” RiRi captioned.

Just as the title describes, the rapper’s song is an ode to the affection he has for his girl.

“That’s my b*tch she just like me / She not gon’ snitch she gon’ take a plea / My seat back I let her drive / Baby shoot the Glock with one eye / Told lil mama f*ck Bonnie and Clyde / Baby me and you are sum’ different,” he raps.

“Walk in that b*tch, me and my b*tch / I’m sippin on henny she fine’ then a lick / It turn me on when my bitch rob / That sh*t sexy when she hold the Glock,” RXK Nephew adds.

As the lyrics suggest, his squeeze is just as into robbing others as he is. This makes him fall for her more and the two embrace the chaos. The song, according to Genius, first appeared on his 2020 mixtape, Crack Therapy 3.

Check out RXK Nephew’s “I Love My Girlfriend” and Rihanna’s TikTok using it above.

As a heatwave settled thickly on Toronto, community leaders, members of the Raptors front office, and the Prime Minister of Canada filed enthusiastically into the vaulting cool of the Raptors practice facility. There, on the hardwood most familiar with reps, where the team spends their time doing the same move over and over until they get it right, a brand new action was taken. Alongside Raptors Vice Chairman and Team President Masai Ujiri, Justin Trudeau announced the first National Day Against Gun Violence, to be held as a day of remembrance and awareness going forward every year on June 1.

The announcement, and the day, came as a culmination of a meeting and subsequent petition the Raptors put forward a year ago to bring awareness to the growing threat of gun violence in Canada. That petition gandered over 30,000 signatures and sought to gain the federal government’s ear in inciting policy to address the 80 percent rise in violent crimes involving guns in Canada since 2009, where one in three homicides is related to firearms.

Ujiri was candid when he spoke about his experience with gun violence. First, with the shootings in La Loche in January 2016, a small community in northern Saskatchewan that Ujiri visited with the Raptors, and then with the two Somali-Canadian mothers who started the group Mending a Crack in the Sky after losing their sons to gun violence. Ujiri said both things showed him “how close gun violence is in our communities.”

“I’m happy everyone is here in this sports environment because I think sports is a protector,” Ujiri said. “Sports brings people together, sports bring peace in an incredible way, and sports is a connector.”

John Wiggins, the Raptors Vice President of Organizational Culture and Inclusion, echoed the stance in noting how important it was — and has been — to use the platform the Raptors have to affect significant change within the communities that support the team.

After the petition, the Raptors hosted talks with leaders from communities affected by gun violence, and with municipal and provincial politicians, asking what needed to be done and how the organization could help. Wiggins, the only Canadian on the Raptors leadership team, takes his civic responsibility and the platform he has with the team seriously.

“We can’t do it without them, I’m guided by the information they’ve given me. Everything we’re doing is in support of work that they were doing,” Wiggins told Dime, noting that the community leaders integral to the day’s announcement and its subsequent policy impacts approached Ujiri, asking for help in amplifying the cause. “If we can catch the federal government’s ear and say this is an issue we need everyone to pay attention to, then we’re doing our job as leaders in the community. None of this gets done without community.”

“Our ownership takes pride in this, our players take pride in this. For us, we have to be voices,” Ujiri told the room. “You can say why does sports participate in these things? This is our community.”

Some of the community that Ujiri referred to and Wiggins has used his position to support were late — their bus got stuck in traffic. Shortly after the announcement by Trudeau and Ujiri was over, a group of young women and men in gym shorts and shirts filed quietly but excitedly into the gym. They were participants of Midnight Basketball, a program initially launched by Toronto Community Housing in 2013 and that the Raptors helped reinstate last spring.

“Every Friday what we do is we shuttle in kids from different communities downtown to University of Toronto’s gym — just giving them a different option on a Friday night,” Wiggins smiled, glancing around at the kids, now mid-scrimmage. “We feed them dinner, go through some life lessons with them, and then we play basketball until about midnight and we make sure they all get home safe.”

Wiggins took part in the program when it first started and says it was the only place he wanted to be on a Friday night growing up. It was also something his family valued because they knew where he was, and that he was safe.

“It’s something that we wanted to revive and it’s something we want to expand across the whole city,” Wiggins said. “It’s just another way of what we see as a prevention measure. To keep [kids] away from any of the negativity that might be happening out there, to allow them to thrive and come together so that they can have a positive experience. It goes back to what the PM said, we want to show them that they matter.”

While the announcement for a National Day Against Gun Violence and the further policy Trudeau and his party have promised are distinctly Canadian mandates, the actions taken by the Raptors have broader impacts on the NBA writ large. James Cadogan, the Executive Director of the NBA’s Social Justice Coalition, was in attendance. The representative of a league that is primarily situated in the United States, Cadogan spoke to Dime about the energy he felt on display.

“The first step to be able to solve a problem is acknowledging that you have a problem, and this is as big of an acknowledgment as you can get,” Cadogan stressed. “What the Raptors have done — with the federal government, civil society leaders, and folks impacted by gun violence — to dedicate a day against gun violence is a huge step forward.”

Asked if there are applications stateside for the blueprints being drawn in Toronto for Canada, despite the U.S.’s failed efforts to pass the sorts of sensible gun reform that polls remarkably well among its population, and Cadogan thinks there can be takeaways. He stresses that any lasting advocacy comes from building the right kinds of partnerships.

“It looks different place to place, market to market, even challenges like community safety and violence manifest differently, but ultimately it’s about taking a day like today and saying how do we put together all these groups of people, and say that we can do something different,” Cadogan says. “We can replicate that in other markets on our issues. That’s a powerful way to approach the challenges.”

Ujiri went up and down the line of the Midnight Basketball group as they got to, belatedly, meet the Prime Minister. The Raptors President was warm and completely relaxed. He stopped to chat with each young athlete, cracking jokes and asking questions that made it clear he’d met some of them before. The franchise has some of its largest basketball decisions on the horizon, but there was, just then, nothing bigger than this. Nothing was more important than the community which will benefit from actionable steps toward facing gun violence, and watching them relax, palm a basketball, and start to play.

When he first became president, Donald Trump vowed to take on North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He even made fat jokes about him. Eventually they became besties. Indeed, when the feds raided Mar-a-Lago, among the documents they left with were a series of “love letters” between the two. On Saturday he continued their bromance, to the disgust of even fellow Republicans.

As per The Independent, North Korea was recently admitted to the World Health Organization’s executive board. To many, news that the dictatorship was given a big role in the WHO was strange and disgusting. But not so with their fearless leader’s good buddy.

“Congratulations to Kim Jung Un!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social.

Trump’s love for Kim has never been met well with the party he took over, and his congrats riled even former cronies of his.

“Donald Trump is running to the left of Ron DeSantis, RFK, and now Joe Biden?” wrote his former lawyer Jenna Ellis. “We don’t have a pro-Kim Jung Un lane in the GOP. What has happened to Trump?”

Nikki Haley, Trump’s former UN ambassador and current 2024 rival, wrote, “Kim Jong Un starves his own people. It’s a total farce that North Korea has a leading role at the World Health Organization.”

Georgia governor Brian Kemp tweeted, “Taking our country back from Joe Biden does not start with congratulating North Korea’s murderous dictator.”

To everyone else, the news was not surprising.

(Via The Independent)

Months after he was arrested for loaded gun possession at an NYC hotel, Cage The Elephant‘s lead singer Matt Shultz pled guilty this week to two felonies and one misdemeanor for “attempted criminal possession of a weapon, criminal possession of a firearm, and criminal possession of a weapon in exchange for avoiding time in jail,” according to Rolling Stone.

Shultz had reportedly been caught after one of the hotel’s workers had spotted him with the weapon.

The latest development in the deal is that Shultz will not face any jail time for the three charges, at least right now. His lawyer, Sanford Talking, also gave the publication more insight into the charges.

“Matt has worked hard to put this case behind him. He appreciates the opportunity to prove himself,” Talking said. “Nothing like this will never happen again. He can move forward in his life and with his music.”

The judge on Shultz’s case, Cori Weston, also reportedly told him to “stay out of trouble for one year.” If he cooperates, he would have a clean slate on his record, and the guilty plea would not be recognized.

However, according to the The New York Post, if Shultz does not follow Weston’s demands, he could face up to seven years in prison rather than a one-year conditional release.

In the Miami Heat’s second regular season game of the year, Jimmy Butler failed to attempt a free throw as the Heat fell at home to the Boston Celtics, 111-104. Over the next 80 games, including the playoffs, Butler logged at least one free throw every outing. That streak was snapped in Miami’s Game 1 loss against the Denver Nuggets to open the NBA Finals on Thursday night.

Butler scored a playoff-worst 13 points. Miami posted a playoff-worst 102.2 offensive rating and its lowest free-throw rate of the year (.021). Those happenings are intertwined. Doing his best Steve Nash impression by probing and weaving through Denver’s defense to set up his sweet-shooting teammates, the superstar wing played altruistic facilitator. On numerous occasions, his hasty decision-making ignited scramble situations for the Nuggets’ defense that resulted in quality looks.

Yet that table-setting nature bled into Butler’s individual offensive ethos. The goose egg under the free-throw column exemplifies it. The quiet 14 field goals punctuates it. During the last two rounds, the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks regularly elected to inhibit his space from midrange. Denver did not, opting for a heavy dose of drop coverage with Nikola Jokic. Butler hadn’t seen that much intermediate space in weeks and often appeared satisfied to hoist the jumpers Jokic and the Nuggets invited.

On repeated occasions, he treated Jokic’s looming interior presence as though he was Brook Lopez or Jaren Jackson Jr. defensively, unwilling to challenge or pressure him at the rim. His paint touches were playmaking pursuits rather than scoring endeavors. When he curled around a screen with the runway to charge through, he tapped the brakes and pulled up. He let Jokic off the hook. For all of the two-time MVP’s superlatives — scoring, passing, rebounding, dexterity, processing speed, etc. — paint protection is not one of them. Butler gifted the ground-bound big man a get out of jail free card.

The vacant space Butler saw in ball-screens likely leaped off the screen when he and the Heat rewatched Game 1. It was there continuously. He recognized the opportunities they all bypassed and knows that passivity was a root cause of their offensive downswing, headlined by his own laidback shot profile.

“We shot a lot of jump shots, myself probably leading that pack, instead of putting pressure on the rim,” Butler told reporters postgame. “When you look at it during the game, they all look like the right shots. And I’m not saying that we can’t as a team make those, but gotta get more layups, gotta get more free throws.

“I gotta put pressure on the rim. Me with no free throws, that was all on myself, nobody else. We’ll definitely correct that next game, but only I can do that.”

Unless Denver decides to defend Butler at the level or switch against pick-and-rolls, the midrange pull-ups will be there for him. There’s nothing wrong with mixing them in. On a singular basis, they are good, open shots, as Butler said. Compiled together, the snowball into an overarching win for the Nuggets’ defense and their capacity to insulate Jokic’s limited rim protection, which Miami’s offense cannot afford.

While Butler wasn’t confronting Jokic much, his co-star, Bam Adebayo, was face-to-face with the affable maestro all night. Adebayo’s 25 field goal attempts represented a career-high in the regular season or the playoffs, and his 26 points were tied for the third-most of his 65-game playoff tenure. Denver iced pick-and-rolls to push actions toward the sidelines, which opened pocket passes to Adebayo in the middle.

There, the Nuggets typically adhered to single coverage, with Jokic on him and everyone else trying to stay tethered to shooters. They did, however, shrink the floor and dissuade driving lanes by periodically sagging off of Butler and Haywood Highsmith when Adebayo was at the helm.

Adebayo did not play poorly. He was aggressive as a scorer and pioneered passing chances when possible (five assists, one turnover). Denver was also content to kick its feet back and grant him 26 points on 25 shots with zero free throws (52 percent true shooting). It’s how Boston opened last series, only for Adebayo to prove too quick for Al Horford on mid-post, empty corner touches.

By icing pick-and-rolls, the Nuggets prevented most of those mid-post chances, reoriented where he caught the ball, and diffused the inherent, beneficial angles Adebayo thrived with early last round.

Throughout the night, as the Heat started slowly from deep, much was made about their three-point slog. By game’s end, though, they were at 33.3 percent. That’s not good, but it’s salvageable and not a deathknell for profitable offense, even with this team. The bigger issue was shot distribution. According to Cleaning The Glass, only 21 percent of their shots were at the rim (21st percentile) and 17 percent of their shots came from long midrange* (89th percentile).

* — Long midrange is defined as any shot deeper than a free throw and shorter than a three.

Separate from Butler dialing up the aggression, Miami put together a handful of possessions that should be replicated in Game 2 to loosen up the offense inside the arc (45.6 percent on two-pointers).

Late in the first quarter, Butler got Michael Porter Jr. on a switch and dusted him off the bounce, while Adebayo prepared to set a screen, which occupied Jokic and took him out of the roaming role that Butler was passive against. It led to a bucket at the rim. In the second quarter, as Jokic lurked off the ball, Kyle Lowry flipped the floor via skip pass and Adebayo flowed into a DHO with Duncan Robinson to spur a short-roll rep for Adebayo and dunk for Highsmith. A couple Butler-Adebayo high-low sets tilted the Nuggets’ defense in the third quarter as well.

The first two resonate because Miami didn’t occupy Jokic enough when he played free safety. Shift him around. Don’t let Adebayo cannibalize space off the ball, which happened a bit much in Game 1. Empower him to utilize the space, instead. Those last two things resonate because of the advantageous spot it puts Butler in around the rim and exploits the Nuggets’ hesitancy to leave him with a mismatch so close to the basket.

I imagine Aaron Gordon goes under that back screen next time, at which point Butler could flare beyond the arc and flow into a pick-and-roll with Adebayo, potentially opening a pocket pass to the empty corner and setting up a mid-post chance for the big man. There are multitudes to the high-low game.

Since the playoffs began, the Nuggets’ defense and the Heat’s offense have shed their regular season skins to turn weaknesses into strengths. During Game 1 of the Finals, the Nuggets maintained their novel identity. The Heat did not, although they can remedy some of that.

Denver’s schemes, cohesion, and physicality should not be ignored. This is a legitimately good, malleable defense. Any chance of solving that dilemma, however, starts with Butler being the chiseling slasher he is, not the tepid, pass-first player he moonlighted as in Game 1.

Just days after he called Matty Healy of The 1975 a “slack-jawed f*ckwit” over suggesting an Oasis reunion,Noel Gallagher is now doubling down on the comments during an interview with NME.

“Oasis’ influence, I think, was for people to f*cking start a band in the first place,” Gallagher said. “I do meet loads of guys who say that and that’s great. There are a lot of them around, it’s just a pity guitar music has become marginalised. You’ve either got to be rock, or that f*cking [The] 1975. At the BRITs, The 1975 won Best Rock or some f*cking sh*t.”

Gallagher then went off about how he felt about the band winning — and that his two kids agreed.

“I was watching it with my kids, two teenage lads, thinking, ‘Is it me being a grumpy old man, or is this sh*t?’” he added. “They were both going, ‘Oh no, this is f*cking sh*t’. The 1975, Best Rock Band? Someone needs to re-define that immediately, because that is… I don’t know what that is, but it’s certainly not f*cking rock. Whatever rock is, that’s not it.”

Throughout the interview, Gallagher did, however, express his love for Kasabian as real rockers and thinks those behind the AI-generated Oasis album were “f*cking idiots” who have “too much time on their hands.”

Check out Noel Gallagher’s interview above.