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The Phoenix Suns have cruised to the best record in the NBA at the All-Star break, sitting at 48-10 with a 6.5-game cushion atop the 2-seed in the Western Conference. Just before the All-Star Game on Sunday evening, the team announced some news that very well might put their ability to hold onto the top seed in the West in jeopardy.

One day after Chris Paul hinted that a thumb injury might cause him to spend some time on the sideline, the Suns said that Paul’s right thumb has an avulsion fracture, which will hold him out for 6-8 weeks. Paul suffered the injury during the team’s game against the Houston Rockets on the Wednesday before the All-Star break.

Despite the injury, Paul is going to take the floor for a little while he is in Cleveland. According to TNT’s Allie LaForce, “Chris Paul is going to try to play a couple of minutes tonight, get maybe an honorary assist or two.”

If Paul is to miss the shorter end of that timetable, that would mean he’d come back right around the first week of April, just before the Suns begin their postseason push. Phoenix’s final regular season game is on April 10, and the NBA is slated to begin the playoffs six days later.

The NBA’s season-long 75th anniversary celebration reached a crescendo on Sunday at the NBA All-Star Game in Cleveland, as the 75 Greatest Players team was set to be honored at halftime of the game.

The unveiling of the team at the start of the year naturally led to some debate about who should’ve been on the squad, as they added 26 names (thanks to a tie in voting) to everyone who was the NBA at 50 team. What makes the team so difficult to argue and so great to look at is the way it pays tribute to each era of the NBA and those who paved the way for the current era of stars to stand next to, and All-Star, when so many legends come back for festivities, is one of the times of year where you can really see how much it means to guys to be in that company.

On TNT’s pregame show, Charles Barkley and Shaq were asked about the photoshoot before the game for all the 75 Greatest Players team and Barkley offered some quick comments on how cool it was, but Shaq had much more to say, launching into a pretty incredible speech in which he thanked not just the legends in the NBA who came before him but everyone who pushed him throughout his career — from childhood to the NBA — to get him to the point where he can be on that stage with other NBA legends.

As Ernie says at the end, it’s genuinely one of the best things they’ve ever done on TNT and the honesty and emotion of Shaq, who is so often guarding that emotion and deflecting with comedy, was tremendous. It is a reminder of how much this team means to these guys and Shaq wishing his father, sister, and Kobe Bryant could be there for this to celebrate with him because of how important they were to his journey was particularly touching.

The 2022 NBA All-Star Game saw a number of the stars that were named to the team unable to compete on Sunday night, with Kevin Durant, Draymond Green, and James Harden all had to be replaced on the team by players named by commissioner Adam Silver.

Going into Sunday, there was also some uncertainty about Chris Paul’s status after he suffered a thumb injury earlier in the week, but he remained on the roster. Just over two hours before the festivities began, a different All-Star from the West pulled out of the game, as Donovan Mitchell announced he had an upper respiratory illness that was not COVID-related, but would keep him from playing.

Hopefully Mitchell is able to get over his illness before the season restarts later this week. Mitchell was a member of Team LeBron, who will now be down to 11 players including Paul, who one would figure won’t play too much given his thumb issue. That likely means we’ll see a considerable amount of Darius Garland, Luka Doncic, and Fred VanVleet as the reserve guards on Team LeBron beyond Mitchell and Paul. If there’s a silver lining from a roster standpoint, it’s that this year’s All-Star rosters were very guard heavy so it shouldn’t mean anyone gets too over extended in the exhibition.

Jason Mewes has been by Kevin Smith’s side since the start. Starting with his debut, Clerks, the actor has played Jay to Smith’s Silent Bob. They’ve been there for each other through thick and thin. Mewes has been sober for 11 years, and he’s always been very open about his addiction struggles. On a recent appearance on the podcast Steve-O’s Wild Ride!, he told the Jackass star, himself a recovering addict, a heartbreaking story about the first time he decided to get sober.

Over the years, Mewes has gotten sober several times, with the help of Smith, who wanted him to not only stay healthy but also be able to appear in his films. Mewes recounted a tale of one of the numerous times he says he’s hit rock bottom. It was a Thanksgiving many years ago.

“I remember me and him sitting out in front of his house, and he’s crying, saying ‘I want to let you in, but the whole family is here,’” Mewes recalled. “And I had on a tank-top on, and I had track marks. And he’s like, ‘I can’t have you see them like that.’ And I’m like, ‘I can’t come in for a plate of Thanksgiving dinner?’ And he’s like, ‘You can’t. Here, I am going to bring you some food.’ That was the first time I got sober for a while.”

Mewes said Smith has never been judgmental about his addiction issues, and he simply wanted him to be a healthy member of his extended family. “All the trouble I had, I had Kevin’s support and I know that made a big difference in the outcome of everything,” Mewes told Steve-O.

You can see a clip of Mewes’ Steve-O’s Wild Ride! appearance in the video below.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Frank Ocean is one of those artists who immediately captured the world’s attention. As soon as Channel Orange was released, it catapulted Frank, born Christopher Breaux, into superstardom. Yes, his previous mixtape Nostalgia Ultra was a fan-favorite as well, but the co-sign of Def Jam and Channel Orange‘s high-profile guests like Earl Sweatshirt, Andre 3000, and John Mayer, made it clear that this was an artist’s artist. A few years later, his cleverness in pulling the wool over his label’s eyes with Endless, and immediately following it up with Blonde helped establish Ocean as a legacy artist following in the footsteps of fellow rebels like Prince. Now that it’s been almost six years, though, fans are hopeful that some of things Ocean has been teasing over the last few years will finally see the light of day. Here’s what we know so far about what might be next.

Everything We Know About Frank Ocean’s Next Album
One thing we do know is that Frank has been reportedly shopping a new record around to labels. It seemed like he was gearing up to head into album mode back in 2019 when he shared both “DHL” and “In My Room,” but it’s likely the pandemic got in the way of any planned releases in early 2020. Though, he did put out another pair of singles in March of 2020, releasing “Dear April” and “Cayendo.” During a recent Christmas episode of his Apple Music radio show, Blonded, he also shared another new nine-minute track. Still, the best timeline we have for his new album is pegged to his rumored headlining slot at Coachella 2023. So it makes the most sense that even if we get a few new singles this year and in early 2023, that the project would drop close to his appearance at the biggest festival in the world.

The eternal question for music fans always looms large when artists take a few years off: When will they return? And since the back-to-back — or bait-and-switch — release of Endless and Blonde in 2016, Frank Ocean has been mostly off the grid. He did resurface to pay homage to his great friend Virgil Abloh after the fashion legend’s passing, but staying out of the spotlight is basically a full-time job for this R&B star. Still, it’s been close to six years since we got a full-length from Ocean and inquiring minds want to know, will we ever get another? And if so, when?

When Is Frank Ocean Releasing A New Album?
Unfortunately, if you came here looking for a definitive answer, that isn’t really in the cards at this time. Ocean has been slowly but steadily releasing songs here and there on his Apple Music radio show Blonded, including a pair of singles, “Dear April” and “Cayendo” back in 2020, but has spent the bulk of the pandemic canceling releases or working on secret side projects.

Due to delays and cancellations related to the pandemic, Frank won’t be headlining Coachella this year — though he was slated to in 2020 — but the festival’s co-founder claims he will in 2023. So maybe we’ll finally get an album before that massive appearance? Which means there’s a potential singles could start rolling out in late 2022… so that’s what we’ll go with for now. Give it six months and check back in. Rumors that he’s been shopping an album around to labels are persistent, so it could be a matter of timeline, and Coachella makes the most sense so far.

The Michigan Wolverines lost to the Wisconsin Badgers on Sunday afternoon, 77-63. After the game, a fight broke out between the two teams after the two head coaches, Michigan’s Juwan Howard and Wisconsin’s Greg Gard, had a testy exchange with one another. As the pair were being separated, Howard swiped at Badgers assistant Joe Krabbenhoft, making contact with his face and leading to tensions boiling over between the two teams.

The moment that appeared to lead to all of this came in the final minute of the game when Wisconsin was up comfortably — Michigan kept pressing Wisconsin’s backups, and in an attempt to avoid a backcourt violation, Gard called a timeout. Howard looked like he wanted to ignore Gard in the handshake line after the game, which led to Gard touching Howard’s left elbow in an attempt to slow him down. As he explained after the game, Howard believed that Gard touching him was the thing that escalated tensions.

“Well, basically, I addressed with the head coach that I will remember that, because of that timeout,” Howard said. “And for someone to touch me, I think that was very uncalled for, for him to touch me as we were verbalizing and communicating with one another. So, that’s what ended up happening, and that’s what escalated it.”

Gard, meanwhile, claimed in his press conference that he tried to tell Howard why he called the timeout, although by the sounds of things, he did this after he already touched the Michigan coach’s elbow.

As of this writing, it is unclear if the Wisconsin assistant who Howard swung at said or did anything in particular to further fan the flames in this incident.

NFTs are still a young phenomenon, though it’s already given celebrities another way to make some dough (or to just bore TV audiences). It’s also already become a target for thieves and scammers. Earlier this month, one lover of non-fungible tokens, whose Twitter handle was actually “ILovePonzi,” lost a large collection to a scammer. And on Saturday, the NFT world freaked out over hackers who’d nabbed nearly $2 million in digital doodads.

This comes from Vice, who report that someone or someones have been stealing and flipping NFTs on OpenSea, the internet’s largest exchange for digital collectibles. A warning on the service warned of a possible phishing operation and warned users to “not click links outside of opensea.io.” Those who’d been hit lost a number of high-end NFTs:

Blockchain records show that the attacker was able to transfer numerous NFTs from different users to their address for free. Stolen NFTs included examples from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and several other popular collections. The attacker has already sold some of the NFTs, for example, this NFT from the Azuki collection for 13.4 ETH ($36,380). The attacker’s wallet currently contains more than 600 ETH worth nearly $2 million.

That said, the hacker(s) did wind up returning some of their pilfered NTFs. Numerous tokens were returned to one user, save one, which remains frozen on OpenSea. Users of the service have been required to upgrade to a new contract, which fixes an issue that allowed hackers to nick valuable digital collectibles from unsuspecting users. So if you’ve spent a pretty penny on Bored Apes, best be careful.

(Via Vice)

Sunday afternoon’s Big Ten tilt between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Michigan Wolverines ended with the two teams needed to be separated in the handshake line. Late in the game, Wisconsin coach Greg Gard took a timeout when the outcome was already decided, which apparently did not sit well with Michigan coach Juwan Howard.

The two coaches came together at the end of the game for a handshake, but Howard had some choice words for Gard. Players and coaches attempted to get in between the two while tensions were on the verge of boiling over, but while that was happening, Howard extended his arm and swiped at Badgers assistant Joe Krabbenhoft, making contact with his face.

A brawl then broke out between the two teams, with plenty of pushing and shoving and several players appearing to throw punches without any of them landing.

This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened to Howard’s Michigan squad — the former Fab Five member-turned-head coach got ejected from a Big Ten Tournament game against Maryland last year for getting into it with now-former Terrapins coach Mark Turgeon, which he said was the result of him feeling like he was “being threatened.” The loss dropped the Wolverines, which entered the season ranked in the preseason top-10 but have struggled mightily to meet those expectations, to 14-11 on the year and 8-7 in conference play.

Shortly after this month’s Super Bowl Halftime Show, The Game hinted that he was a bit upset that he was left out of the lineup for the performance. The rapper, just like Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar, and Anderson .Paak who all performed at the show, is a prodigy of Dr. Dre’s, which may have been why he hoped he’d be invited to perform. Days later, The Game’s longtime manager Wack 100 said that his client wasn’t invited to the halftime show because he “told that n**** [JAY-Z] to suck his d*ck like 18 albums ago.” This caused The Game to step forward and set everything straight.

“Don’t nobody speak for ‘The Game’ except ‘THE GAME,” he wrote in an image he posted on Instagram. “I ain’t had no conversation with nobody regarding Jay-Z and the Super Bowl he put together. I don’t feel no way about no being included. It was a GREAT SHOW featuring iconic artists. It was a WIN for the culture.” He continued:

“I control my own narrative. Do not be fooled by the internet, blogs, podcasts or anyone speaking on my name that is not me. My life & new album are both amazing & I’m in a great space creatively & artistically. I’m in Miami to help Ye’ finish Donda 2 & support my friend in one of the most pivotal times of his life/career. Leave me & my name out of any NEGATIVE conversations unless I have given you a REAL reason to include me !!! Hov’ continues to break down doors for the culture & I am in full support of anything & anyone who is on the help side of urban greatness.”