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Not a whole lot has gone right for the Indiana Pacers this season, as the team sits 25-55 and are in 13th place in the Eastern Conference. Despite this, there are some reasons for optimism going forward, like the play of the team’s prized trade deadline acquisition, Tyrese Haliburton. Since joining the team from the Sacramento Kings, Haliburton has averaged 17.4 points, 9.6 assists, 4.5 rebounds, and 1.9 steals in 35.9 minutes per game while connecting on 42 percent of his attempts from three.

One potential domino that could fall as a result of his strong play is a trade for veteran guard Malcolm Brogdon, who has only played in 36 games this season. Brogdon signed a 2-year, $45 million extension in October that made him ineligible to be traded this season, and according to Marc Stein, the team has “left numerous rival teams with the impression that they will be trying to move” him once he’s eligible.

As for where Brogdon — who averaged 19.1 points and 5.9 assists in 33.5 minutes a night this year — could end up, Stein reported that there’s a certain team in Los Angeles that would love to bring him on board.

Another option that could (stress: could) present itself provided the Pacers like the idea: The Lakers have a well-documented interest in Buddy Hield, who came to Indiana along with Haliburton in the Sabonis trade, and might well offer Russell Westbrook and his $47.1 million expiring contract for Hield and Brogdon. With the Pacers presumed to have no interest in Westbrook beyond his expiring salary, such a swap figures to hinge on what sort of draft compensation the Lakers would be willing to furnish to sweeten the deal for the Pacers to participate and then (we can only imagine) part ways with Westbrook.

It’s hard to imagine that the Lakers would be able to pull this sort of deal off unless they add some of the young talent on their roster and both of their first-round draft picks in 2027 and 2029, and even then, it’d take the Pacers determining that’s better than anything else they could get back for Brogdon.

Will Smith’s film career really took off thanks to Michael Bay. The director’s debut feature was Bad Boys, which was only Smith’s fourth movie, and the first in which he was one of the leads. The two reunited almost a decade later for Bad Boys II. Though Bay didn’t helm the series’ threequel, it’s not like the two wouldn’t work together again — not even after Smith’s infamous, career-rattling Oscars slap.

Bay has a new movie in theaters, the bonkers thriller Ambulance, and he was inevitably asked, during a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, about the fiasco that took the Academy Awards in a shocking direction.

“At first, immediately I’m like, Did this just happen?” Bay told EW. “Then I saw the yell from Will. That’s a real Will yell. Will is an amazing fighter. He’s studied boxing.”

Bay said what Smith did was “wrong to do, no matter what.” But he doesn’t believe those who think Smith could have killed Chris Rock, whose joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, led to Smith’s slap. “No, a slap is different. A punch? Yeah, you can kill someone. Will gave him a slap,” he said. He also wondered why the slap has started to earn more press than the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “There are babies getting blown up by the hundreds right now and people are so concerned about this. I don’t know. To me, it’s just like, enough of it. All right, so a dramatic thing happened, but I just think we’ve got to get our priorities straight.

About whether Bay would work with Smith again? “Absolutely, 100 percent,” replied. “He’s a very even-keeled guy. Very even-keeled.”

So perhaps if Bad Boys IV ever happens, which it now might not, Bay could always return to the franchsie.

(Via EW)

The Chicago Bulls did not have a particularly great Friday night. The team trailed by 28 points at halftime against the Charlotte Hornets, and while that margin wasn’t quite as bad when the clock hit zero, they still lost convincingly, 133-117. It marked the fourth game in a row and the seventh in 10 games where Chicago lost, and since the All-Star break, the team has a paltry 7-15 record.

For a team that looked like a threat to make some noise in the Eastern Conference this postseason, the Bulls suddenly seem like a team that would be lucky to get out of the first round. Their fans expressed frustration with this at halftime against the Hornets, showering the team with boos, and during his postgame media availability, Zach LaVine made clear that he thinks the fans should absolutely make their voices heard.

“They should,” LaVine said of the boos. “It’s embarrassing. We’re a really good basketball team, and we’re not playing like it. They know that. We know that. It’s understandable. We understand that they have our back, but we got to play better.”

LaVine went on to say the team is “upset” and characterized the team’s recent run of form as “we’re getting our ass kicked” before venting about how things are going.

“They just jumped on us,” LaVine said, per Jamal Collier of ESPN. “We singing the same story, and I always try to be very uplifting and try to see the bright side, but I’m tired of talking. We say a lot of words and we say the right thing, but we got to figure it out. We’re not doing that, plain and simple.”

The Bulls are locked into the 6-seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, and will get whichever of the Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics, or Philadelphia 76ers finish the regular season in third.

Jack White is having himself quite the weekend so far. He released his fourth album Fear Of The Dawn on Friday, and it makes for his first full-length solo effort since 2018’s Boarding House Reach. Despite the wait, Fear Of The Dawn is the first of two albums that White will release in 2022 as Entering Heaven Alive will arrive at some point later this year. In addition to releasing Fear Of The Dawn, White also performed the national anthem on Opening Night for the Detroit Tigers on Friday. As if that wasn’t enough, White would go on to get engaged and married later that day.

The opening night of White’s The Supply Chain Issues Tour took place at Detroit’s Masonic Temple Theatre. According to Detroit Free Press, nearly an hour and a half into the night, White invited his girlfriend and Black Belles singer Olivia Jean on stage where they performed the White Stripes’ “Hotel Yorba.” At the song’s “let’s get married” lyric, White paused and looked at Jean, pulled out a ring, and said, “I’ve got a question for you. Will you marry me?” Jean answered with a resounding “yes!” and the two got married during the show’s encore.

Detroit Free Press says White and Jean’s respective bass players were best man and maid of honor. White’s longtime friend Ben Swank officiated the wedding and White’s mother and Jean’s father were also in attendance. White’s marriage to Jean is his third one after he previously tied the knot with Meg White in 1996 and Karen Elson in 2005.

You can check out White and Jean’s special moment in the video above.

Fear Of The Dawn is out now via Third Man Records. You can stream it here.

On Friday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally made a decision about what to do with Will Smith after his Oscars slap: The actor has been banned from attending the ceremony for 10 years. Since the incident, a noted awards show host, Ricky Gervais, has inevitably weighed in, making jokes about what jokes he would have said had he been in Chris Rock’s shoes. And he had one for the Academy’s big decision.

“Hopefully, he’ll only do 6 years with good behaviour,” Gervais joked on Twitter.

While Smith will not be allowed to attend the show until 2032, not even virtually, at which point he’ll be in his 60s, that doesn’t mean he can’t be nominated, let alone win awards. Nor will the trophy he won for the biopic King Richard, which he accepted shortly after he struck Rock over a joke he made about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, be rescinded.

Gervais never hosted the Oscars, but he gained notoriety, even infamy, for hosting the Golden Globes, which he did five times, starting in 2009. His jokes threw few punches, often eliciting gasps at his barbed insults of the rich and famous. His last Globes stint, in 2020, was not that well-received.

For many, the news of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Dwayne Haskins‘ passing after being struck by a car came by way of Adam Schefter of ESPN. Schefter relayed the news from Haskins’ agent, but after much outrage, he decided to delete his original tweet — specifically, people were not happy that Schefter said that Haskins was “a standout at Ohio State before struggling to catch on with Washington and Pittsburgh in the NFL.”

After deleting, Schefter changed the wording in the tweet to make it the following:

Still, much was made of his original characterization of Haskins’ NFL career, which, in addition to being an unnecessary inclusion into the tweet, was not accurate: While he was cut by Washington before the conclusion of his second season, Haskins was signed by Pittsburgh less than a month later, where he spent last season and was part of the quarterback room heading into 2022.

But no matter what, Schefter’s decision to include that in his original tweet drew the ire of a number of NFL players, including Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, who expressed an apparent long-standing gripe he has with Schefter.

A number of Haskins’ teammates with the Steelers joined the chorus of voices that were not happy with this characterization of him.

And from a reporter’s perspective, Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports to say that “the players we cover are human beings.”

The first quarter of 2022 was very eventful for Kanye West, in both good and bad ways. He released his eleventh album Donda 2, a project he shared exclusively on his Stem Player website, and collaborated with names like The Game and Fivio Foreign. Elsewhere, Kanye also used his Instagram account to speak out about his divorce from Kim Kardashian, struggles with co-parenting, his beef with Pete Davidson, and more. His rants on Instagram came to an end when the platform suspended him for 24 hours following racial slurs he directed at Trevor Noah. Since then, we haven’t heard much from Kanye.

Now, thanks to an update given by Fivio Foreign, we know how Kanye is doing and what he’s been up to as of late. “YE is on a Island relaxing clear’n his mind & healing from all the stress of Society,” Fivio wrote in a tweet. “He appreciates the support for the Album & the response.” The album that Fivio is referring to is his debut album B.I.B.L.E. Kanye executive produced the project and contributed a guest verse to it with “City Gods” which also features Alicia Keys. B.I.B.L.E. arrived with 17 songs and additional contributions from KayCyy, Quavo, Queen Naija, Coi Leray, Chloe, ASAP Rocky, Lil Yachty, Lil Tjay, Yung Bleu, DJ Khaled, Vory, Polo G, Blueface, and Ne-Yo.

Fivio’s update comes after Kanye officially dropped out of his headlining slot in this year’s Coachella festival. The Weeknd and Swedish House Mafia have stepped in to headline the final day of Coachella’s respective weekends.

You can view Fivio’s tweet above.

B.I.B.L.E. is out now via Columbia Records. You can stream it here.

Dwayne Haskins died on Saturday morning when he was hit by a car in Florida, according to his agent. Haskins, who was 24, was with a number of other members of the Pittsburgh Steelers for an offseason workout.

In the aftermath of Haskins’ passing, both of the NFL teams for which he played in his career — the Washington Commanders, which took him with the 15th overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, and the Steelers — put out statements. Washington’s statement came by way of the Snyder family, while Pittsburgh’s was authored by head coach Mike Tomlin.

The NFL community came together to celebrate Haskins, with recently-retired All-Pro safety and fellow Ohio State Buckeye Malcolm Jenkins saying “we’ve lost a king before we got to watch his rein.”

Haskins was memorialized by a number of individuals who spent time around him as a teammate. This included Cincinnati Bengals signal caller Joe Burrow, who famously transferred to LSU after getting beaten out by Haskins for the backup quarterback job at Ohio State in 2017, giving him a leg up in the race to get the starting nod the following year — Haskins would go on to set a number of team records en route to being named the Big Ten’s Offensive Player of the Year and a finalist for the Heisman Trophy for the conference and Rose Bowl-winning Buckeyes.

There aren’t a lot of openly pro-Trump celebrities. The former president’s inauguration did not feature big names, though a pre-inauguration celebration did manage to score Toby Keith and Three Doors Down. For some reason rap rocker Kid Rock was not on that list, but he’s certainly made up for that since. He’s come out against masks and dropped homophobic slurs at his shows. He even claims Trump tapped him for advice on North Korea. Now he’s even bringing him to his shows, sort of.

As per Rolling Stone, Rock has been opening his shows with a pre-taped video message from the big boy himself. And it’s pretty awkward.

““Hello, everyone. I love you all,” Trump says to the crowd. “I know you’re having a great time at the Kid Rock concert tonight. Quite frankly, he’s amazing. All of you in attendance are truly the backbone of our great country. Hard-working, God-fearing rock-and-roll patriots.”

Trump also casually informed the crowd of something they might not have known: Kid Rock’s name is Bob (and he’s also just okay at golf). “Bob is truly one of the greatest entertainers of our time,” Trump says. “Not the best golfer by any means, his golf game could use a little work, but a great, great entertainer, and that’s why you’re there. Let’s all continue to love one another, fight for our God-given freedoms, and most of all, let’s make America rock again.”

Granted, if you’re going to see Kid Rock in 2022, you probably wouldn’t be too surprised to see a former president who now lives in resorts. Still, there’s probably no one less rock ‘n’ roll than the guy who loves dancing to “Y.M.C.A.”

(Via Rolling Stone)

Dwayne Haskins, the former first-round NFL Draft pick who was a finalist for the Heisman Trophy during his collegiate career at Ohio State, died on Saturday morning. According to Adam Schefter of ESPN, Haskins’ agent relayed the news that the Pittsburgh Steelers was hit by a car in Florida. He was less than a month away from his 25th birthday.

Schefter went on to report that Haskins was training with his teammates at the time of the incident.

Haskins went 15th overall in the 2019 NFL Draft to the Washington Commanders, but before Washington’s 2020 season could conclude, it was announced that the team decided to cut him. He did, however, get a second chance with the Steelers, which signed him in January of 2021 and had him on the roster for the duration of the 2021 NFL campaign, although he was only active for one game. Steelers coach Mike Tomlin had previously announced that Haskins would compete for the starting job in the wake of Ben Roethlisberger’s retirement.

Prior to his time in the league, Haskins was a highly-sought after 4-star recruit out of Maryland who opted to go to Ohio State. He redshirted his freshman campaign and got the occasional snap in JT Barrett’s stead during his second year in Columbus, and prior to the 2018 campaign, he earned the starting job over Joe Burrow. His one year at the helm could not have gone much better: The Buckeyes went 13-1 with a Big Ten title and a win over Washington in the Rose Bowl, with Haskins winning MVP honors in both games.