GoneTrending

The Brooklyn Nets and Kevin Durant are headed towards a breakup. Prior to teams and players being able to agree to contract extensions on Thursday afternoon, news came out that Durant went to the Nets front office and requested a trade, bringing an end to his three-year stint with the franchise.

There are a whole lot of questions that can be asked right now, but at the top of the list is how things could have gone so wrong for a team that looked like a championship contender. According to Nick Friedell of ESPN, the fingers are being pointed at Kyrie Irving among those in the know in Brooklyn.

“Almost all of it,” Friedell said when asked how much blame is being placed on Irving. “Malika, they know that if Kyrie had gotten that vaccination, their season would look incredibly different. First and foremost, James Harden would still be here, that team would have done much better in the regular season, would have had a higher playoff seed. Of course, they had injuries, but if Kyrie is on the floor full time, it’s not a distraction. And I cannot tell you, after all the years I’ve been doing this, how miserable that team was at the end of that season, top-to-bottom in the organization.

They’re not blaming Kyrie for every single thing, but they know not only the vaccination shot, but all the ways that he said … all the things that he did in press conferences, and people are looking around in the organization, shaking their head, and he’s talking about, ‘I wanna be on top with Joe Tsai and Sean Marks and Kevin,’ and they’re going, ‘Huh? What is that guy talking about?’” Friedell continued.

Friedell went on to mention that another team he covered this season, the Golden State Warriors, featured a similar player having COVID vaccine hesitancy in a city with a mandate, as Andrew Wiggins did not want to get vaccinated but eventually relented and, as Friedell says, “that brought the Warriors closer than they have been in years.”

“As they look back, I think everybody in that organization knows that everything that happened today falls right at the feet of Kyrie Irving,” Friedell said.

Irving was slated to become an unrestricted free agent this summer but decided to pick up his player option for the 2022-23 season. While he said that he would play for the team this upcoming season, reporting since Durant’s trade request indicates that may no longer be the case.

The Denver Nuggets weren’t expected to be big players in free agency, as their main focus this offseason was locking up Nikola Jokic on a supermax extension, getting Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. back on the court, and upgrading their roster via trades, which they felt they did by sending Monte Morris and Will Barton to Washington for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Ish Smith.

Still, there was the issue of finding a backup center for Jokic, which has been something of a rotating cast of characters in recent years. Last year it was DeMarcus Cousins who finished the year in that role for Denver, but it appears the Nuggets will move on from Boogie for another aging veteran big man. Per Shams Charania, the Nuggets have agreed to a one-year minimum deal with DeAndre Jordan to take over that backup center position.

Jordan averaged 4.3 points and 5.5 rebounds per game on 64.3 percent shooting (55 percent from the line) in 48 games with the Lakers and Sixers last season, and has not been particularly effective in recent years.

Denver will hope that changes with them, but given how Jordan has bounced around in recent years, it’s not a guarantee that the Nuggets will finish the season with Jordan backing up Jokic.

The Levitation Festival is coming back to Austin, Texas this coming fall and they announced the official lineup yesterday (June 29). Those attending the four-day festival taking place over Halloween weekend (October 27-30) can expect to see headlining acts The Jesus And Mary Chain, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, The Black Angels, and Osees.

Of course, there are no headliners without talented acts preceding them, and this year those include Os Mutantes, W.I.T.C.H, Moon Duo, Goodspeed You! Black Emperor, Viagra Boys, and Shame. As expected, this is not everyone who will grace the stage and more information can be found on the Levitation Instagram.

The festival was originally founded as Austin Psych Fest in 2008 by members of The Black Angels. It was then renamed Levitation in honor of Austin’s psychedelic rock trailblazers The 13 Floor Elevators who reunited and performed at Levitation 2015 for their 50th anniversary. Over the course of Levitation’s time, it has expanded beyond Austin to France, then becoming the largest festival of its kind in Europe. Levitation France will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2023, marking a long run of celebrating psych, punk, electronic, indie, metal, and darkwave both stateside and beyond.

Check out more information and purchase tickets to Levitation 2022 here.

Marlon Brando made one of the biggest Hollywood comebacks in 1972 after playing the iconic role of Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather.” The venerable actor’s career had been on a decline for years after a series of flops and increasingly unruly behavior on set.

Brando was a shoo-in for Best Actor at the 1973 Academy Awards, so the actor decided to use the opportunity to make an important point about Native American representation in Hollywood.

Instead of attending the ceremony, he sent Sacheen Littlefeather, a Yaqui and Apache actress and activist dressed in traditional clothing, to talk about the injustices faced by Native Americans.

She explained that Brando “very regretfully cannot accept this generous award, the reasons for this being…are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry and on television in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.”

---

The unexpected surprise was greeted with a mixture of applause and boos from the audience and would be the butt of jokes told by presenters including Clint Eastwood. Littlefeather later said that John Wayne attempted to assault her backstage.

“A lot of people were making money off of that racism of the Hollywood Indian,” Littlefeather told KQED. “Of course, they’re going to boo. They don’t want their evening interrupted.”

Three months later, Brando explained his reasoning in an interview with late-night host Dick Cavett where he also discussed how all people of color are misrepresented in Hollywood. The interview was historic because Brando was known for avoiding the media.

“I felt there was an opportunity,” Brando told Cavett about the awards ceremony. “Since the American Indian hasn’t been able to have his voice heard anywhere in the history of the United States, I thought it was a marvelous opportunity to voice his opinion to 85 million people. I felt that he had a right to, in view of what Hollywood has done to him.”

Brando’s eyes were opened after reading John Collier’s novel “Indians of The Americas.”

“After reading the book I realized, I knew nothing about the American Indian, and everything that we are taught about the American Indian is wrong,” Brando said. “It’s inaccurate. Our school books are hopelessly lacking, criminally lacking, in revealing what our relationship was with the Indian.”

“When we hear, as we’ve heard throughout all our lives, no matter how old we are, that we are a country that stands for freedom, for rightness, for justice for everyone, it simply doesn’t apply to those who are not white,” Brando said. “It just simply doesn’t apply, and we were simply the most rapacious, aggressive, destructive, torturing, monstrous people who swept from one coast to the other murdering and causing mayhem among the Indians.”

Brando understood that the boos from his contemporaries were the sounds of powerful people who couldn’t stand having their industry and reality challenged. It was the sound of pure denial.

But Brando was unapologetic about bursting the audience’s collective bubble.

“They were booing because they thought, ‘This moment is sacrosanct, and you’re ruining our fantasy with this intrusion of reality. I suppose it was unkind of me to do that, but there was a larger issue, and it’s an issue that no one in the motion picture industry has ever addressed themselves to, unless forced to,” Brando said.

“The Godfather” star then expanded his thoughts on representation to include all people of color.

“I don’t think people realize what the motion picture industry has done to the American Indian, and a matter of fact, all ethnic groups. All minorities. All non-whites,” he said. “So when someone makes a protest of some kind and says, ‘No, please don’t present the Chinese this way.’ … On this network, you can see silly renditions of human behavior. The leering Filipino houseboy, the wily Japanese or the kook or the gook. The idiot Black man, the stupid Indian. It goes on and on and on, and people don’t realize how deeply these people are injured by seeing themselves represented—not the adults, who are already inured to that kind of pain and pressure, but the children. Indian children, seeing Indians represented as savage, ugly, vicious, treacherous, drunken—they grow up only with a negative image of themselves, and it lasts a lifetime.”

Hollywood is still far from ideal when it comes to being truly representative of America at large. But it is miles ahead of where it was in 1973 when the film industry, including some of its biggest stars, was outwardly hostile toward the idea of representation.

In 1973, Marlon Brando was at the height of his power which most would have relished after a series of setbacks. But instead of taking the opportunity to bask in the spotlight, he spent a large portion of his star power capital to give voice to the people Hollywood had dehumanized for seven decades.

The Los Angeles Lakers have moved quickly in free agency to try and fill out their roster, with their biggest move being signing Lonnie Walker IV to the taxpayer mid-level, leaving them with just minimum contracts the rest of the way.

After signing Troy Brown Jr. to one of those minimum deals, the Lakers added former Warriors fan-favorite Juan Toscano-Anderson on a minimum deal, bringing him south to L.A. to bring some additional defensive toughness to their wing rotation.

Toscano-Anderson averaged 4.1 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 1.7 assists per game for the Warriors last season, and while he won’t do much to bring more shooting to the Lakers, their clear priority was to get younger, faster, and more athletic on defense this summer. Darvin Ham harped on wanting to bring the Lakers defense back to being among the league’s best, and he needed versatile wing defenders to have a chance at that, and with Walker, Brown, and Toscano-Anderson they’ve at least attempted to do so.

Filling out a roster around three max veterans is tricky, particularly if the effort is to get younger as not a lot of young players want to take minimum contracts, but the Lakers have opened free agency with a flurry of Klutch signees to bring a bit of youth to a veteran squad.

The Dallas Mavericks had an excellent season during the first year of Jason Kidd’s tenure at the helm, making a surprise run to the Western Conference Finals behind the magic that Luka Doncic can provide. Despite the fact that the team lost Jalen Brunson in free agency, it was expected they’d go into this summer looking to upgrade around Doncic with the hopes of getting over that hump and returning to the NBA Finals.

Time will tell if they can find someone who can replace Brunson, but according to multiple media reports, Dallas has made it a point to bolster its center rotation by bringing back an old friend. Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports reports that JaVale McGee, who previously suited up for the team during the 2015-16 campaign, is returning to Dallas.

McGee, who suited up for a Phoenix Suns team that the Mavs beat in the playoffs last season, will get the full taxpayer midlevel to join a frontcourt that includes Maxi Kleber, Dwight Powell, and the recently-acquired Christian Wood, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic.

McGee, one of the most well-traveled centers in the NBA, averaged 9.2 points and 6.7 rebounds on 62.9 percent shooting (69.9 from the line) in 74 games for the Suns last season.

Beyonce has fans of all ages, races, identities, and really any other characteristic used to label someone. This week’s example of her ubiquity comes in the form of a child singing along to her recent single “Break My Soul.” The young man took a break from his cheese puffs to dance with excitement before requesting his Alexa to turn the music up when the upbeat jam turned on. He then went on to sing along to its chorus, repeating “You won’t break my soul” and adding an emphatic “Everybody.” As the male voice in the background sings “Release your mind, release your job,” it appears the young man is trying to free himself of the shackles of whatever job is weighing him down. The kid gets it.

Beyonce released “Break My Soul” on June 20, coincidentally following Drake’s full dance album Honestly, Nevermind, ahead of her upcoming album Renaissance Part 1 which is set to release on July 29. “Break My Soul” featured contributions from The-Dream, Big Freedia, and her husband Jay-Z. Renaissance will mark Beyonce’s first proper solo album release since 2016’s Lemonade, though she did provide Everything Is Love in 2018 in collaboration with Hov plus Homecoming: The Live Album and The Lion King: The Gift in 2019.

Check out the charming young man’s karaoke performance of “Break My Soul” above.

The Brooklyn Nets have a whole lot on their plates this offseason. Despite Kyrie Irving picking up his player option and expressing his intention to play for the team this season, Kevin Durant’s trade request has thrown the team into a state of turmoil. The future of both stars is now up in the air, and there’s no telling exactly what the future holds for a franchise that has aspirations of winning a championship.

Whatever the team will look like next year will include Nic Claxton. The No. 31 pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, Claxton has turned his special physical tools into an increasingly important role in Brooklyn during each of his first three seasons in the Association. That, unsurprisingly, turned him into a guy who was viewed as someone who could interest teams during the 2022 offseason, as Claxton hit restricted free agency.

Brooklyn decided to not let him get away. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Claxton and the Nets came to terms on a 2-year contract extension that will pay him $20 million over the life of the deal.

Claxton posted a number of career-best marks for the Nets during the 2021-22 season, appearing in 47 games with 19 starts and averaging 8.7 points and 5.6 rebounds on 67.4 percent shooting from the field in 20.7 minutes per game.

Hours before NBA Free Agency was set to open on June 30, future Hall of Fame forward Kevin Durant threw the entire league into chaos by requesting a trade from the Brooklyn Nets. No matter where Durant eventually lands, the Nets will command a king’s ransom for his services, but the rest of Brooklyn’s roster is also in a period of uncertainty until the big dominoes fall. In the midst of that odd situation, veteran guard Patty Mills elected to decline a player option that would have paid him $6.2 million for the 2022-23 season, setting up unrestricted free agency. However, Mills will reportedly stick around Brooklyn on a two-year deal that will pay him $14.5 million.

From a financial standpoint, this is a success for Mills, adding salary for 2022-23 and locking in another year for the 33-year-old. Though it remains to be seen what the roster will be like around Mills, the 6’1 veteran remains an incredibly valuable offensive player. Mills connected on 40 percent of his three-point attempts a season ago, boosting his career mark to 38.9 percent, and Mills averaged 11.4 points per game while appearing in 81 contests.

While Mills is somewhat duplicative with Seth Curry as smaller perimeter shooters with defensive questions, the $7.25 million average annual salary is certainly appropriate for what he brings. Mills is also a steadying presence that is well-liked in the league, and the Nets are bringing at least some modicum of stability to a chaotic situation by bringing him back into the fold.

Few guys have taken a more unique path to the NBA than Houston Rockets forward Jae’Sean Tate. After four years at Ohio State, Tate spent time in Belgium and Australia before the Rockets decided to take a chance on him in the lead-up to the 2020 campaign. It’s paid off for them in a big way, and as a result, Tate is getting paid.

According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, Tate and the Rockets came to terms on a new 3-year deal that will pay him $22.1 million.

Tate, who was a first-team All-Rookie selection at the conclusion of the 2020-21 campaign, hit restricted free agency this offseason, and as Charania noted, is set to make get quite the raise on what he was in line to get if stayed on his old deal.

Tate’s strength and tenacity on the defensive end of the floor have made him an interesting piece on that end of the floor for the Rockets, while he’s managed to provide some scoring, rebounding, and playmaking. He appeared in 78 games last season with 77 of those coming in the starting lineup, averaging 11.8 points, 5.4 rebounds, 2.8 assists, and 0.9 steals in 26.4 minutes per game while connecting on 49.8 percent of his attempts from the field.