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The Brooklyn Nets are already without one of their three stars during their home games, as Kyrie Irving cannot play in games that take place in New York due to the city’s vaccine mandate. Now, the franchise is holding its breath as a second star went down with an injury on Saturday night.

During the second quarter of the team’s game against the New Orleans Pelicans, Kevin Durant tried to get back on defense as Herb Jones was bringing the ball up the floor in transition. Jones collided with Bruce Brown, who went flying backwards and collided with Durant’s left leg, causing it to bend inward at the knee. The former league MVP eventually had to make his way back into the locker room, although he was able to do that under his own power.

After getting his knee examined during halftime, the Nets eventually announced that Durant would sit for the remainder of the game due to a left knee sprain.

According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Durant will get an MRI of his leg on Sunday.

At the time of his departure, Durant had 12 points, three rebounds, two assists, a steal, and a block. Following Saturday night’s game, the Nets will play 17 games before the NBA takes its All-Star break in the middle of February.

For the first time since the first Bush was president, the Cincinnati Bengals have won a playoff game. Cincinnati, the 4-seed in the AFC, knocked off the fifth-seeded Las Vegas Raiders at Paul Brown Stadium, 26-19, to punch their ticket to the divisional round of the postseason.

Despite one heck of a ref show, the Bengals and Raiders put on a thrilling game, one that came down to Las Vegas’ final drive. After forcing a Cincinnati punt, the Raiders got the ball with no timeouts left, 1:51 left on the clock, and 65 yards between themselves and the potential game-tying score they needed. Twice did the team convert a third-and-long, including a third-and-17 that got them into the red zone thanks to the reliable Derek Carr and Darren Waller connection.

There was a curious decision on the game’s final set of downs, as Vegas faced first-and-goal from the Cincinnati 9-yard line with 30 seconds left but decided to spike the ball instead of running a play. After two straight incompletions, the Raiders faced a fourth down where nothing but a touchdown would work. Carr dropped back, tried to rifle a throw into Zay Jones, and got picked off by Germaine Pratt.

Now, the Bengals will wait have to wait and see which team they’ll play next week as the rest of the AFC Wild Card round figures itself out.

One great thing about Snoop Dogg? He’s never been the kind of rapper to shy away from collaborating with women, in fact, he’s also embraced feminine energy (and lullabies) with open arms, from Katy Perry, to Martha Stewart, and now, supermodel Heidi Klum.

In her native Germany, Klum hosts the modeling reality show Germany’s Next Top Model, and when the idea came up for her to also create a theme song for the show, well she jumped at the chance. After Snoop got on board, Klum also managed to get Rod Stewart to approve the pair using his song “Baby Jane” for their version, which is called “Chai Tea With Heidi.” Finally, DJ Duo WeddingCake, composed of Tom Kaulitz (48-year-old Heidi’s 31-year-old husband) and Devon Culiner.

Still, the most fascinating part is Klum wanting to work with Snoop Dogg — she spoke to SiriusXM today about the unlikely collaboration. “I love Snoop Dogg,” she started. “Like why don’t I do a duet with Snoop Dogg? And they were like, ‘Really? With Snoop Dogg? That sounds amazing. Like do you know each other?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, I feel like I know him enough over the years that I feel like I can, you know, call him up and just ask him.’ And so I really literally just did. I called him up and I said, ‘Hey, do you wanna do this song with me for my TV show in Germany? And hey, while we’re at it, we might as well just like put it out in the world.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, you know, let’s do it. Come to Inglewood and let’s see what we can do.’”

Check out the full song below, and the shortened theme song version, complete with a Snoop and Heidi dancefest, up above.

Fans of bad officiating were treated to a masterclass from the crew calling Saturday afternoon’s playoff game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Las Vegas Raiders. If there is good news for the teams, it’s that both of them were on the receiving end of a call that would have made them furious — at the end of the first half, an accidental whistle should have marked a play where the Bengals scored dead, and during the third quarter, Las Vegas were rather fortunate to be afforded a time out on a play where Joe Burrow hit Ja’Marr Chase for a big gain that would have set Cincinnati up for a first-and-goal from the Raiders’ six.

On top of that, the crew originally ruled this third-and-4 completion a Hunter Renfrow a catch and a fumble before the Bengals challenged and got it changed to an incomplete catch.

It wasn’t good! Considering the stakes that come with playoff games, you’d think there would be some better officiating going on. But instead, it’s drawn a whole lot of scrutiny from folks on the internet.

This game’s crew, which is headed by longtime official Jerome Boger, has come under a whole lot of fire from fans who have, well, seen them do games before.

Rule number one of officiating is to never be so bad that people learn your name, so it’s safe to say the refs in this game broke that rule over and over again.

Earlier this week, Kendrick Lamar was announced as one of the creators of an upcoming film. It’s listed as a comedy and it has Kendrick’s longtime partner Dave Free as well as the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, as collaborators of the film. So far so good? Well, here’s where things get sticky. The currently untitled film was described as follows: “a young Black man who is interning as a slave reenactor at a living history museum” … finds out that his white girlfriend’s ancestors owned his own ancestors.

This plot seemed to rub many the wrong way and it resulted in the film being absolutely torn apart on social media. One person wrote, “And it’s gonna be a… comedy? Oh this bad,” while another shared an image of Dr. Umar Johnson and wrote, “What is this plot?” A third person said, “This is easily, without hyperbole, the worst idea for a story I’ve ever heard.” Others pointed to how their recent requests from the rapper were for new music, his fifth album preferably, and not this kind of movie. “Mannn.. all we asked for was the J.Cole collab,” a user wrote.

The script for the upcoming film was written by MTV2’s Wonder Showzen creator Vernon Chatman, who also voiced a handful of characters on South Park. A director for the movie has not been selected yet.

You can see some more reactions to the upcoming film below.

Joe Burrow threw for two touchdowns in the first half of the Cincinnati Bengals’ playoff game against the Las Vegas Raiders. While Burrow’s first score — a strike to CJ Uzomah — was notable for his tight end’s celebration after scoring, his second TD caused a little bit of controversy thanks to an errant whistle by the referee.

Burrow, facing a third-and-4 on the Raiders’ 10 right after the two-minute warning, rolled out to his right and didn’t look like he had much of anything. Right before going out of bounds, thought, Burrow saw Tyler Boyd in the end zone and let one rip, and the veteran wide receiver didn’t have to work all that hard to pick up six.

As you might notice in the clip, though, the Raiders seem awfully confused. That’s because, right before the ball got to Boyd, one of the referees blew their whistle, which made the Las Vegas players think the play was over. By the letter of the law, the play was immediately supposed to end when the referee blew it dead, even though things were still ongoing.

It would have been a tough break either way, because either the Raiders allowed on a touchdown on a play that should have stopped or the Bengals would have had a touchdown wiped off the board when it looked like Boyd would have caught it regardless — unless the audio is not synced up, the whistle appeared to have came when the ball was no more than a foot or two away for Boyd.

If there is a silver lining for the Raiders, though, it’s that Derek Carr marched them down the field to score on the next drive, and as a result, Cincinnati’s lead was only 20-13 heading into the locker room for halftime.

Kanye West held a rare Instagram Live session on Saturday. It wasn’t to play new music. It was so he could air his frustrations after he claimed that he wasn’t allowed to attend the birthday party for his and Kim Kardashian’s daughter Chicago West, who turned 4 years old on Saturday. “Wishing my daughter a public happy birthday,” Kanye said during the livestream. “I wasn’t allowed to know where her party was. There’s nothing legal. They’re saying these are the kind of games that are being played. This the kind of thing that has really affected my health for the longest.”

He continued, “I’m just not playing, I’m taking control of my narrative this year. I’m being the father, the best father, the Ye version of a father and I’m not finna let this happen. We gon’ be in real-time with this right here. Chicago, happy birthday. I love you.”

He then explained why he went public with the situation. “I’m just putting this online ’cause I need y’all support,” he said. “I done called Kim, text the nannies. I got on the phone with Tristan, he asked Khloe. Won’t nobody give me the address to my daughter’s birthday party, right now. That’s gonna imprint in her mind that I wasn’t there for her.”

After the livestream, it seems that someone in Kim’s camp sent the address to him, as he was later spotted at the party. An image that was posted by the Twitter account @TeamKanyeDaily shows the rapper speaking with Kris Jenner at the event.

After Taylor Swift’s lawyers urged a judge to reconsider his decision to let the lawsuit against the singer for “Shake It Off” go forward, the plaintiffs are fighting back. “Plaintiffs could sue everyone who writes, sings, or publicly says ‘players gonna play’ and ‘haters gonna hate.’ To permit that is unprecedented and cheats the public domain,” wrote Swift’s lawyer, Peter Anderson, in his filing.

But the accusers lawyers have some of their own. In a new report from Billboard, the attorneys for songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, who wrote the song “Playas” claimed there was “no conceivable procedural vehicle” for the lawyer’s request.

“The rules simply do not provide defendants with vehicles for rehashing old arguments and are not intended to give an unhappy litigant one additional chance to sway the judge,” wrote Marina Bogorad, who represents Hall and Butler. “Summary judgment decisions are not made in the court of public opinion, and this court should not be swayed by its fickle nature. Defendants cite no basis for their truly unprecedented attempt to infuse public debate into the court’s analysis.”

Their song was written for the girl group 3LW, who released the song “Playas Gon’ Play” back in 2001. Hall and Butler and began attempting to sue swift in 2017 for similarities between their song and “Shake It Off,” and though their suit was initially dismissed, it’s now been reopened. Choice lyrics involved in the suit: ” “playas, they gonna play” and “haters, they gonna hate” in t3LW’s song, and “‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate” in Swift’s version.

“Out of the myriad of choices available to put together a chorus expressing the basic idea that people will do what they do while the protagonist should stay true to herself, defendants decided to appropriate all the plaintiffs’ choices,” Bogorad claimed. The complete legal filings are available below.

After much pandemic-induced delay, Daniel Craig’s final spin as James Bond belatedly arrived last fall, bringing an end to a unique period in the franchise’s long history. The English actor helped take the series in darker directions, with a continuous story rather than the traditional self-contained (and often borderline campy) romps. He even attracted Oscar-winning directors to the helm. One of them is the esteemed Sam Mendes, who went from the small parental dramedy Away We Go to, suddenly, Skyfall. And Mendes may not have gotten the gig had Craig not been a little tipsy.

On an episode The Hollywood Reporter’s podcast Awards Chatter (as per IndieWire), Craig talked about how, over a decade ago, he attended a Christmas party thrown by Hugh Jackman. Mendes, who had directed him in 2002’s Road to Perdiction, was also there, and at one point — while he was, as he put it, “definitely a little drunk” — sat down to chat with Mendes. And while slightly inebriated, he realized the director of American Beauty and Revolutionary Road should direct a 007.

“It just became glaringly obvious to me sitting opposite him,” he says. “And so I just basically went, ‘I’m probably not supposed to say this, but do you want to direct the next Bond movie?’”

Thing is, Mendes agreed. “And he just did this thing, he kinda just looked at me [and squinted] and said, ‘Yes.’ And then I went, ‘I’m in s*it now,’” Craig recalled thinking. “I’m sure there is someone I have to talk to about that before I go offering directors jobs. It’s not my responsibility, but I was drunk!”

Luckily, when he rang up series producer Barbara Broccoli the next morning, she thought it was a good idea, too, saying, “Amazing. Great.”

Skyfall went on to become the highest grossing movie in the Bond franchise, outperforming other Craig ventures like Casino Royale and No Time to Die, which may still wind up somehow losing money despite one of the highest grossing movies of last year. The Bond team liked Mendes so much that he directed the follow-up, Spectre, before going back to more serious pictures, like the one-take WWI movie 1917.

In other words, if you’re some famous director and you run into Craig at a party and he’s had a couple, you may suddenly wind up directing some blockbuster that will make you and everyone involved even richer.

(Via Awards Chatter and IndieWire)

The Cincinnati Bengals hope to break a three decades-long streak of never winning a playoff game on Saturday afternoon. The team, which earned the 4-seed in the AFC, kicked off the 2022 NFL postseason by playing host to the Las Vegas Raiders, and after holding the 5-seed to three points on their first drive, Cincinnati got the ball and marched right down the field.

As he’s done so many times this season, Joe Burrow marched the Bengals offense right down the field, going 5-for-7 for 65 yards on his first ever playoff drive. To cap things off, Burrow went to one of his favorite targets, throwing a strike on third-and-goal from the 7-yard line to tight end CJ Uzomah.

It was the first time Uzomah’s career that he scored a touchdown in the playoffs, and he celebrated by showing some love to beloved former Bengal Ickey Woods. Right after he got up, Uzomah hit the Ickey Shuffle before doing the Griddy.

As an added twist, Uzomah did this with Woods in attendance. Woods, who was on the last Bengals team to win a playoff game, got the crowd fired up before the game, and of course did his famous dance.

The Bengals are hoping to win a playoff game for the first time since Jan. 6, 1991.