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The Milwaukee Bucks began the season with a statement, blowing out the Nets on ring night, but injuries derailed things from there as they sputtered to a 6-8 record early on. Since then, they’ve been on a six-game winning streak, coinciding with the return of Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton to the lineup, but they are still without a key starter in Brook Lopez, who has been out with a back injury.

Lopez is hoping to return in due time, but the Bucks’ center situation has been an area of concern without their defensive ace in the middle. As such, Milwaukee appears to want a bit of insurance in the middle for the regular season (and possibly beyond), as they are reportedly inking DeMarcus Cousins to a non-guaranteed one-year deal, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and The Athletic’s Shams Charania.

Cousins has been waiting on the right opportunity after playing last year with the Clippers and providing some decent minutes in a pinch, as he is still a talented offensive player in bursts off the bench. Cousins isn’t a needle-mover like he once was thanks to a variety of injuries, but for a Bucks team desperate for some size in the middle when Lopez isn’t playing and the uncertainty of a back injury, Cousins provides some low-risk insurance in the middle and could provide their bench unit with a scoring boost in spots.

Nearly a year after she announced her retirement from music, Teyana Taylor set out on a brief tour to say goodbye. The string of shows, titled The Last Rose Petal… Farewell Tour, began earlier this month and is set to continue until November 30 in Atlanta. Unfortunately, her plans for a smooth tour were disrupted before a recent show. She was set to perform in Connecticut on Saturday alongside Ari Lennox and Sevyn Streeter when she took to Instagram to reveal she was hospitalized for exhaustion

“Thank you for being so understanding,” Teyana wrote under a picture of her in a hospital bed. “Y’all know Petunia don’t miss no shows & most importantly, know I’ve been leaving it all on tha stage for a month straight 1000%. So I am really saddened to have not been able to do the same for you last night.” She continued, “My team & I tried everything down to the very last second to get me out on that stage, but my body simply just gave out, which actually started a few days ago. SHUT DOWN, my body actually low key betrayed me cause ah b*tch was tryna get on that stage.”

“Y’all know I’m with the sh*ts,” she added. “Y’all have seen me with a broken foot and all types of other crazy sh*t but still got on that stage and bodied it… But honestly you have to listen to your body and know when to sit down; or it will definitely sit you down….. in the ER.”

Teyana also said that she would take the next few days to “continue to recover.” She added that a new date for the Connecticut show will be scheduled soon and previously-purchased tickets will be honored.

The 2021 college football season has created absolute carnage in the coaching ranks. A year after a lot of teams seemed willing to give coaches a pass due to the circumstances of playing under COVID restrictions and an odd season, patience has run out this season and some of the biggest jobs in the country have come open.

On Sunday, the University of Florida made the first move of the big schools, landing Billy Napier of Louisiana-Lafayette, the hottest name of the up-and-coming Group of Five coaches. That left USC and LSU as the two potential national powerhouse programs with vacancies, and they were going big name hunting from the Power 5 ranks. Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley has long been coveted by other big programs (and some NFL teams), but he shot down the idea he would be headed to Baton Rouge when asked about it on Sunday.

That apparently wasn’t because he was sticking with the Sooners long term, but because the Trojans had come calling and made him an offer he simply couldn’t refuse. Yahoo’s Pete Thamel brought word on Sunday afternoon that Riley was expected to be announced as USC’s next head coach within the next 24 hours once details on his contract were finalized, bringing a massive shakeup in the coaching carousel.

That report was confirmed by Ryan Kartje of the LA Times.

As is always the case with college football coaching hires, there is nothing guaranteed, but it sure seems like a terrific move by USC to swipe the coach of one of the perennial top programs in the country. That puts more pressure on LSU with its hire, now that the likes of Riley and James Franklin, who just inked a new 10-year deal, seem off the board. It also means Oklahoma is on the market, although it’s possible the Sooners just promote from within and make Alex Grinch the new head coach in Norman, keeping things in the Oklahoma family once again.

Anderson Paak has been on fire lately. His success with Bruno Mars on the duo Silk Sonic notwithstanding, Paak also released not one but two albums in the last three years, putting up Oxnard and Ventura within a year of each other. Like most people, he cooled things down last year during the pandemic, but apparently spent that time constructing a throwback duo with Bruno that kicked off with the hit single “Leave The Door Open” and exploded from there. And given his great taste in collaborators, it’s not surprising that Paak made his way to SoFi Stadium last night to make sure he got some facetime with one of the biggest pop groups in the world, BTS.

Taking a group pic with the beloved boy band and immediately posting that content to Instagram, Paak had the best caption for the moment, too. “@bts.bighitofficial lmk if you need another member! I work well in groups!!!” he wrote. Well, I don’t think anyone would be mad about a collaboration between these two — Paak himself said he’d be down earlier this year — so we can at least start there. Or BTS jumps on a Silk Sonic song? When the supergroups are just every pop star in the ecosystem, we’ll have reached peak internet.

The Houston Rockets have the NBA’s worst record at 3-16, and have played the first quarter of the season without John Wall on the court. The biggest name on the roster has been a healthy scratch each game, sitting on the bench with the team but not a part of the rotation as Houston pivots fully into rebuilding mode.

That was initially a mutual decision between the team and Wall as they try to trade him, but the former All-Star is getting the itch to play again. Wall has made his desire to play clear to the organization, but the two sides apparently cannot agree on what role he would take on and as such he will continue to sit out, even as a trade seems unlikely. According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, Wall wants to be a starter again, or at the very least have the opportunity to compete and win the starting job. The Rockets, however, are insistent that if he plays it needs to be in a bench role.

Wall spoke to Rockets officials and stated his desire is to play, have a starting role and compete to maintain it, but the franchise informed him that they want him to come off the bench, and not start, in order to play, sources tell The Athletic. The outcome of the conversations is that Wall will continue to sit out games while remaining professional and being around and engaged with the team, sources said. Rockets officials informed Wall in their conversations on Sunday that they were not willing to guarantee him a starting role.

The two sides have reached an apparent impasse, but it seems like it shouldn’t be this difficult to come to an agreement with Wall on a role that can satisfy all parties. The starting role shouldn’t be all that important to either side, but one would think that you could bridge that gap by starting Wall, bringing Kevin Porter Jr. off the bench, but limiting Wall’s minutes and having Porter still playing a bulk of his minutes with the starting unit if the goal is to build continuity with Jalen Green, Christian Wood, and others who might be part of the long-term plan.

The pitch to Wall is that he plays 25-28 minutes a night, technically holding the starting role and getting to show his viability as a player for other teams, while also ceding some minutes to the young guys, including in some big spots. It’d take some finesse to get KPJ on board, but if he’s playing important minutes late in games where that applies, even if not starting, that would seem to be a fair compromise.

The response to House of Gucci, the splashy new docudrama about the fashion brand, may be mixed, from critics and those depicted alike. But it’s proven to a surprise hit. Indeed, it’s the first drama to make money at the box office since Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, nearly two years ago. Still, even its fans have to admit those Italian accents, delivered by largely American actors, are…something. They’re so astonishing, sometimes so over-the-top, that Slate recently spoke to a dialect coach to see which one was best. And the answer is more than a little surprising.

Slate spoke with Garrett Strommen, head of a Los Angeles-based company that offers language lessons and dialect coaching. Strommen deems the movie a “mixed bag,” accent-wise, but he gets into the nitty-gritty about the actors’ attempts to be Italian (while speaking almost exclusively in English, of course).

For instance, while Lady Gaga, as scheming Patrizia Reggiani/Gucci, has earned the bafflement of some accent critics, Strommen’s a fan. He says she’s excellent when speaking Italian (“actually the best of any of the other actors”). But she was also “inconsistent” in certain specific ways, and that her “H sound” was suspiciously “American-sounding.” She also didn’t gesticulate with their hands, a common Italian practice. But then, he noticed, nobody else did either.

Eventually Strommen is asked the million dollar question: Who was the best? The answer wasn’t “what you want to hear,” Strommen admitted. He initially said it was a “a tie between Al Pacino, Lady Gaga, and, God—I can’t believe I’m saying this—Jared Leto,” the latter who is getting tons of, um, notices for his barndoor-broad, way-over-the-top take on doofus Gucci outcast Paolo, son of Pacino’s doomed Aldo. Then he pushes him to the front. “I feel like he won,” Strommen says, though he points out that he had a problem with the “tonic accent, which is that most words have the accent on the second-to-last syllable.”

Here’s what else Strommen had to say about Leto’s divisive turn:

I’m almost upset about this one because he did so much right, but then really kind of messed it up with one thing that he kept doing. With how he hit his consonants, kind of hard and heavy, that was very Italian. Italian is a language that requires you to really use your mouth and tongue. If you don’t speak Italian normally and you’re speaking it properly, your mouth should get tired in about five minutes. He was maybe the the best at some things with that. His vowel sounds were remarkable, honestly. At one point, I even wondered if he was Italian, because at first I didn’t really even recognize him in his makeup. Also, part of what was so convincing was how much he used his hands and gesticulated. I thought that was really convincing and authentic.

The whole thing is a fascinating read, really getting into the weeds of each actor’s attempts at going Italian. But the message is clear: Go big or go home. And Leto went really, super, ultra-big.

(Via Slate)

The music and entertainment world was hit with shocking news on Sunday: Famed designer and DJ Virgil Abloh has passed away at the young age of 41. The news was shared through his personal Instagram account as well as the social media pages ofLouis Vuitton, where he served as the company’s artistic director. “For over two years, Virgil valiantly battled a rare, aggressive form of cancer, cardiac angiosarcoma,” the post on Abloh’s Instagram read. “He chose to endure his battle privately since his diagnosis in 2019, undergoing numerous challenging treatments, all while helming several significant institutions that span fashion, art, and culture.”

The news was met with a wave of condolences across the music world. Pharrell, who Virgil credited as a big influence on his work, shared a lengthy message honoring him. “My heart is broken,” Pharrell wrote. “Virgil you were a kind, generous, thoughtful creative genius. Your work as a human and your work as a spiritual being will live forever.” He added, “Sending love and light to your wife, children, family and day ones. You’re with the Master now, shine.”

Virgil Abloh’s work appeared all over the entertainment and creative world. From his trademark Off-White brand and work with Louis Vuitton to crafting some of music’s most memorable recent album covers, from working with the likes of Ye, 2 Chainz, ASAP Rocky, Lil Uzi Vert, and more, his contributions to the world will never be forgotten.

You can read more condolences below.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Playing defensive tackle in the NFL is not often a glamorous job. Your job is, typically, to try and occupy as much space as humanly possible, making plays when able, but mostly taking on blockers to free up linebackers to run free to make tackles.

That means a lot of hand to hand combat on the interior of the line where holds and hands to the face don’t get called as often as on the outside because it is harder to see in the middle, which leads to some serious shots being taken by the big fellas on the inside. As such, it takes a special kind of mentality to be able to play in there and deal with all of that.

We got a peek into how different those guys are on Sunday when Buccaneers star nose tackle Vita Vea had his helmet dislodged, exposing his mouth, which then got popped by a Colts lineman’s helmet causing him to lose a tooth — which you can see fly out in the below video.

Naturally, Vea jogs off the field smiling and pointing to his missing tooth that is bleeding, because that’s a totally normal reaction to having your tooth knocked out. Most people would be a bit more distraught, but the NFL does provide a good dental plan and Vea’s pain tolerance is, well, a bit higher than the average human.

Donald Trump hasn’t formally announced he’s running again in 2024, having failed to get re-elected over a year ago. But ever since his term ended in disgrace, he has been strongly suggesting it. He even recently claimed he’d clinch the Republican nomination once more should he deign to try again. There is one person, though, he’s calling BS on that: former Trump lawyer and ex-VP for the Trump Organization Michael Flynn, who knows him so well he helped him pay off a porn star with whom he cheated on the future First Lady.

Cohen, who recently ended a nearly three-year sentence for crimes related to the former president, went on Meet the Press, where he proceeded to rain on Trump’s re-re-election parade. He claimed that his talk of a 2024 run is simply a carrot dangled in front of his supporters, “to keep the grift growing and to keep the grift going.”

The disbarred attorney said Trump’s current presidential aspirations “should become a documentary, and it should be called the greatest grift in US history. He added, “Donald Trump has made it very clear, right, that he is grifting off of the American people, these supporters, these individuals that are just sending money to him at record levels.”

Cohen claimed Trump’s continued claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election is just part of his con. “One of the things Donald Trump has done is grift off of the ‘Big Lie’ that the election was stolen from him in 2020,” he said. “It was not stolen from him.”

Even if Trump does run for a third time, Cohen said, he’s confident Americans will tell him where to go. “If he loses, which he will in 2024, what happens to the ‘Big Lie?’ The big lie disappears,” he said. “He can’t now be like the boy who cried wolf. ‘Oh, they stole it from me in 2020 — they now stole it from me in 2024.’ Right? Now, that goes out the door and there goes his money.”

He added, “He’s going to run it like he did in 2011, right to the very, very last second.”

Trump, of course, has been begging his cash-strapped supporters for money since he left office, under the auspices that it would be used to battle election fraud. Instead, the financially plagued rich guy has used it on himself.

Since turning on Trump shortly before his incarceration, Cohen has not held back about his longtime client, whom he knows better than most. He’s desperately tried to warn allies and supporters that Trump will turn on them if he has to, as he did to him. Of course, that’s been to no avail. In other news, he’s claimed Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric should all be expecting indictments very soon.

(Via Insider)

Brian May of Queen found himself in some controversy about comments he made about how the band would fair if they were active today. He claimed that the legendary band would be “forced” to include “people of different colors” as well as a “trans [person]” due to the standards in today’s culture. “I find it frightening that you have to be so calculating about everything,” he said, adding, “You know life doesn’t have to be like that. We can be separate and different.” After his comments circulated throughout the entertainment world, May took to Instagram to clear things up.

“Yes – I was ambushed and completely stitched up by a journalist at the recent ITV event,” May wrote in an Instagram post. “And it’s led to a whole mess of press stories making it look like I’m unfriendly to trans people. Nothing could be further from the truth. My words were subtly twisted. I should have known better than to talk to those predatory Press hacks.”

He continued, “Sincere apologies to anyone who has been hurt by the stories. My heart is open as always to humans of all colours, all creeds, all sexes and sexualities, all shapes and sizes – and all creatures. We all deserve respect and an equal place in this world. And my grateful thanks to all of you who stepped up to defend me in the last couple of days. It means so much that you have faith in me.”