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The Toronto Raptors entered this offseason with two significant free agents who have been cornerstones of the franchise’s ascent to a championship in 2019. The first, Kyle Lowry, was expected to leave. He had given the franchise his all and, as the team transitioned to a future-facing outlook, he needed to compete now and made his way to Miami via a sign-and-trade. The second, Masai Ujiri, was much more secretive about his future, with fans hoping the president of the team would return but unsure because he was a highly coveted front office executive by most teams — the Knicks and Wizards had each famously tried to poach him in recent years.

However, on Thursday, word broke from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that Ujiri was coming back to Toronto, with the Raptors releasing a video featuring Ujiri saying “we will win in Toronto,” that didn’t explicitly say anything about a new contract but was, effectively, the official announcement.

Ujiri has been with the Raptors since 2013 and is among the most well respected executives in the NBA and is a beloved figure among Raptors fans for his work in constructing the 2019 title team. The fears he would leave for a new challenge persisted for the last two years with his contract ending this year, but ultimately it seems what he’s built in Toronto and the challenge of trying to do it again was too strong for him to look to move on.

As the NFL gets set for the 2021 season, a big conversation has been around what players are and are not getting the COVID-19 vaccine because of the league’s strict policies regarding COVID-related absences for those who choose not to get vaccinated. Unlike last year, games will not be rescheduled for outbreaks on teams and players won’t get game checks for forfeited games (on either side) if it’s due to unvaccinated players.

That has led to a small group of players voicing their displeasure with the policies, but for the most part, the league has seen vaccination rates soar, as they announced they reached 90 percent of players being vaccinated league-wide, with 27 of the 32 teams over 85 percent (per CBS). With the vast majority vaccinated in order to protect themselves and their teammates as case counts rise around the country once again due to new variants, it has cast a light on those who have chosen not to get the vaccine, particularly those at marquee positions.

Among those is Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins, who recently missed four days of camp as a close contact to backup quarterback Kellen Mond, putting into perspective the precarious position he is putting his team in by not being vaccinated and thus being subject to much stricter policies regarding close contact to cases. Cousins has remained insistent he won’t get the vaccine and is apparently willing to go so far as to stay in a plexiglass box inside the Vikings facility rather than getting the free and incredibly effective vaccine.

While the vaccine doesn’t guarantee you won’t get the virus (as is the case with every vaccine), it has been proven safe and wildly effective in helping the body’s immune system fight off the virus and avoid serious cases, as well as limiting the danger of spreading the virus. Trying to take such drastic measures as building himself plexiglass areas in the facility to keep from having close contact with his teammates seems like an awful aggressive and unnecessary strategy when, as noted, the vaccine would be far more effective and require much less effort on everyone’s part — for example, the Vikings have had to change up what room is for quarterbacks in order to have more space.

Cousins has also parroted a favorite line of those who refuse to get the vaccine, which is to say they are “doing their research” into it, but when pressed as to whether that research included talking to the NFL’s head doctor who has been made available to all players who have questions or concerns about the vaccine, Cousins confirmed he had not.

That would seem to indicate the research is, at minimum, incomplete on Cousins’ part, and his steadfast refusal to get the vaccine has to have Vikings fans wary of a season in which they could very well see their starting quarterback miss games as a close contact because he would rather try to prevent getting the disease via plexiglass instead of the vaccine.

After the release of her debut album, Jaguar last year, Victoria Monét has been laying low. As one of the go-to songwriters for pop stars like Ariana Grande, and a frequent collaborator with her on songs like “Monopoly,” the R&B star is just starting to get her career underway as a solo artist. After Jaguar came out last summer, she was focusing on becoming a mother. In an interview today she told Apple Music that being a mom has changed her perspective because “I have a little angel in my arms daily to remind me of the importance of life.”

Speaking of the importance of life, today, she’s back on the scene with a brand new song called “Coastin’,” that features production from The Stereotypes and channels all the best parts about summer. Talking further with Apple, Monét said she made the sunny new song during winter, and was channeling what she wanted to feel. “It was definitely a lot of fun and I actually made it in the winter time, so it was an interesting, nice way to escape into an, cause we were also still pretty quarantined and social distanced. So I was able to kind of jump into a summertime that I wish existed and just, I was really inspired by some old classics, one being “Tell Me” by Groove Theory. I just wanted that energy.”

Check out the funky new song above, and look more new music and the follow-up to Jaguar coming soon.

For months, Britney Spears has been fighting to have her father removed as her conservator. The singer’s previous push to have her father, Jamie Spears, withdrawn from the role was denied. But now that the singer is finally allowed to choose her own lawyer, she is reportedly looking to take the case to court ASAP.

According to a report from TMZ, Britney’s new lawyer, Mathew Rosengart, filed court documents asking the judge to move the date for her next hearing from September 29 to August. It is then that the judge will officially rule whether or not Jamie should be removed as Spears’ conservator.

The court documents filed by Rosengart, per TMZ’s report, quotes Britney’s personal conservator, Jodi Montgomery. Montgomery claims continuing to have Jamie as her conservator causes unnecessary emotional distress. “Mr. Spears’s removal as conservator is critical to [Britney’s] emotional health and well-being and in the best interests of the conservatee,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery also reportedly added that Spears’ medical team is in agreement. “I have had numerous, ongoing conversations with the medical team and we all agree that it would be best for Ms. Spears’ well-being and mental health that her father stop acting as conservator,” she said.

Rosengart’s court documents allegedly go on to claim Jamie’s actions are negatively affecting Spears’ finances, stating there “has been an evident dissipation of assets of Ms. Spears Estate, and that dissipation is ongoing.” He added: “Every day that passes is another day of avoidable harm and prejudice to Ms. Spears and the Estate.”

The legal documents also reportedly included a recent quote from Spears’ mother, Lynne, speaking to Jamie’s inability to act in Spears’ best interest. “It is clear to me that James P. Spears is incapable of putting my daughter’s interests ahead of his own on both a professional and a personal level,” she said. Lynne’s original quote included claims about how Jamie asserts “microscopic control” over their daughter, have been known to prescribe inappropriate medicine, and even continually threaten her.

Christopher Meloni is very aware that people are sharing photos of his posterior while he stretches on the set of both Law and Order: Organized Crime (which is currently filming Season 2) and SVU. The 60-year-old Wet Hot American Summer star has recently taken a fancy to provocative photoshoots (recently for Interview Magazine) and now, he’s messing with everyone in a new feature shoot for Men’s Health, for which he does the splits and lifts heavy objects against the Manhattan skyline.

Meloni got real during this interview on a number of subjects, including religion and (more relevant for our purposes) the more detailed reason why he left SVU a decade ago. First, though, he couldn’t resist a tush joke. While he and reporter Anna Peele discussed getting in the “flow state,” Peele mentioned killing flies like it ain’t no thing. And Meloni offered, “I catch flies with my a** cheeks, like a Venus flytrap.” According to Peele, he was “giggling” and “cackling” while adding, “I’m clever with my ass cheeks!”

How fascinating. Meanwhile, Meloni detailed how those reported NBC contract disputes (which led to a rather abrupt departure) seemed like more “bullsh*t” than they were previously imagined to be:

He says he told NBC, “Well, if it’s this”–meaning this amount of money–“then this is the way to go around so you don’t have to pay this”–meaning this larger amount of money that Meloni wanted. He got creative. “My thought was: Instead of 22 episodes, bring me back for nine episodes, or bring me back for 18 episodes. They literally came to me on a Thursday night and said, ‘This is the deal. We want the answer by tomorrow. It’s our way or no way.’”

Meloni wasn’t into it. He then told NBC, “I don’t want to f*ck around with you guys. This is what I want. If you can’t do it, that’s fine. Let’s figure out my exit.” And from there, Elliot Stabler left without even telling Olivia Benson goodbye! No wonder she looked exhausted when he showed up for that SVU crossover event. Well, it’s all gone swimmingly since then, with Organized Crime landing as a hit with audiences and scoring its fabulous villain for the next round of hot octopus drama.

In related news, Mariska Hargitay gave an update on her recent ankle surgery (in the below Instagram post), which will not affect Season 23 plans. SVU and Organized Crime will both return on September 23.

(Via Men’s Health)

Betty Gilpin spent “a year [of] listening to Ann Coulter audiobooks” to perfect her impression of the conservative pundit for Impeachment: American Crime Story. But unfortunately for us (because Gilpin is great) and unfortunately for her (because 12 months of pumping Ann Coulter into your noggin sounds brutal), the GLOW actress dropped out of the FX series due to scheduling complications. Executive producer Ryan Murphy & Co. have already found a replacement, though, and all it took was a trip to the (National?) mall.

Variety reports that How I Met Your Mother star Cobie Smulders will portray Coulter in season three of the Emmy-winning series. Outside of her frequent appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Maria Hill, the Canadian icon also starred in ABC’s Stumptown and voiced Wonder Woman in The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.

Here’s more on the series:

Impeachment: American Crime Story examines the national crisis that led to the first impeachment of a U.S. President in over a century through the eyes of the women at the center of the events: Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp and Paula Jones. All three were thrust into the public spotlight during a time of corrosive partisan rancor, shifting sexual politics and a changing media landscape.

Impeachment: American Crime Story, which also stars Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinsky, Clive Owen as Bill Clinton, Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp, Margo Martindale as Lucianne Goldberg, Billy Eichner as Matt Drudge, Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton, and Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones, premieres on September 7.

(Via Variety)

After spending his entire professional career up to this point with the club, Lionel Messi is set to leave FC Barcelona. According to a release put out by the team on Thursday afternoon, Messi will not be able to sign a new contract with the Catalans due to financial regulations put in place by La Liga.

Despite FC Barcelona and Lionel Messi having reached an agreement and the clear intention of both parties to sign a new contract today, this cannot happen because of financial and structural obstacles (Spanish Liga regulations).

As a result of this situation, Messi shall not be staying on at FC Barcelona. Both parties deeply regret that the wishes of the player and the club will ultimately not be fulfilled.

Messi officially became a free agent earlier this year, with the overwhelming expectation being that the best player of all time would come to terms on a new deal with the club. However, according to a myriad of financial hurdles that, as the club was quick to note in its statement, are imposed by the league, getting Messi to fit into La Liga’s financial fair play is not possible, even though the two sides reportedly agreed to a five-year deal with a wage cut for Messi.

The big question is whether or not this actually ends up happening. Messi has, very publicly, come to the very brink of leaving Barcelona in the past, even requesting a move last summer that never came to fruition. The state of play here seems a bit different than that, if only because Barcelona is positioning this as a La Liga issue that prevents themselves and Messi from doing what they want to do.

There is already speculation that this is something of a leverage play by Barcelona to make La Liga change up its rules so Messi does not leave — a report last month indicated that other clubs in the league believe Messi is to valuable to La Liga as an entity and would want to assist in keeping him in Spain. But perhaps Occam’s razor applies here, and in actuality, Messi’s decorated career in Catalonia is actually over.

This raises the question of what would be next? Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City are always going to be linked to Messi — the former would offer him the most money and the chance to play with his old pal Neymar, while the latter would give him the chance to reunite with former Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola, although reports have already popped up indicating that City would rather continue its pursuit of Tottenham striker Harry Kane than try to make yet another move for Messi. Could another club pop up in Europe? Could the move to Major League Soccer that he’s said he’d like some day come to fruition a little earlier than anyone could have anticipated?

Who knows! Again, “Messi is going to leave Barcelona” is hardly a new thing, so it might be safe to be in “see it when you believe it” mode with this one. There is not a ton of time before the La Liga season begins — things kick off in eight days — so the safest assumption is that things are going to move very, very quickly if the inevitable end point here is Messi staying. But if that doesn’t happen, perhaps we will, indeed, see the single most shocking thing in world football: Lionel Messi wearing the shirt for a club that is not Barcelona.

Lorde’s highly anticipated third studio album, Solar Power, is already almost here. We’ve already heard the title track and “Stoned At The Nail Salon,” and now Lorde has started rolling out a series of stripped-back performances shot on the rooftop of legendary New York City studio Electric Lady.

The studio versions of both songs were already relatively raw, but these Rooftop Performances remove all of the processing and layered production to isolate Lorde’s beautiful vocals with Jack Antonoff’s muted electric guitar, giving us a glimpse at the strength of the songs in their most basic form.

“We had plans to do a handful of songs but the fine warm day became a large storm, and we got through one take of ‘Solar Power’ and had to tap out for fear of electrocution,” the singer wrote in a recent email to fans. “Picked it back up the next day. I love both.” Check out “Stone At The Nail Salon” above, and both renditions of “Solar Power” below.

Solar Power is out August 20. Pre-order it here. Lorde will also embark on a lengthy tour in (relatively) intimate venues around the world, kicking off early next year. Check out all the dates and pick up tickets here.

After years of various studios attempting to create a show or film based on Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s critically-acclaimed DC Comics’ series Y: The Last Man, we are now just over a month out from its big premiere on FX and have our first full-length trailer — which is much further than many of us fans ever thought we’d get, to be honest. The trailer reveals a pretty true-to-series look at the comics, filled with memorable scenes featuring all of the story’s major players, and sets the tone for the post-apocalyptic drama in which all cisgender men but one have perished — and no one knows why.

The cast features Diane Lane as congresswoman-turned-president Jennifer Brown, Ben Schnetzer as her son and sole-male-survivor Yorick Brown, Olivia Thirlby as Yorick’s sister, Hero Brown, and Ashley Romans as Yorick’s mysterious and powerful companion, Agent 355, or “three-fifty.” In addition, Juliana Canfield will take on the role of Yorick’s girlfriend Beth Deville, Amber Tamblyn will play Kimberly Cunningham, Marin Ireland will play Nora Brady, Diana Bang will take on the role of geneticist Dr. Allison Mann, and last but not least, Elliot Fletcher will play Sam Jordan.

In addition to a nearly all-female cast (and understandably so), every episode of the first season is directed by women and the production crew has a “significant number of female department heads,” including both DPs, the production designer, costume designer, casting director, editors, stunt coordinator and more, according to the series’ press release. Eliza Clark serves as Y: The Last Man‘s showrunner and executive producer along with the series original author, Brian K. Vaughan, Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson of Color Force, Mari Jo Winkler-Ioffreda, Louise Friedberg, and Melina Matsoukas.

Y: The Last Man premieres exclusively on Hulu on September 13, giving you plenty of time to hit up your local comic book shop and give the books a whirl before we watch Yorick’s story unfold.

Following his public admission that he tested positive for COVID but is thankfully only experiencing mild symptoms thanks to the vaccine, Lindsey Graham has reportedly urged former president Donald Trump to be more “aggressive” about telling his supporters to get the shot.

While calling the COVID vaccine “the antidote to the virus that’s wreaking havoc on our hospitals,” Graham told the Associated Press on Thursday that he just got off the phone with Trump. According to the South Carolina senator, he applauded Trump for getting the vaccine “developed,” but now the important part is getting his supporters to stop being hesitant about the shot because “we should do all we can as a nation to get our economy back up and running and to protect our way of life.”

Graham also used the interview to voice his own support for the vaccine. Via the AP:

Recognizing that taking the vaccine might be a “sacrifice” for some, Graham said the task paled in comparison with others that have been required of Americans in the past.

“No one’s being asked to go off to fight radical Islam or fight a foreign enemy. We’re being asked to make responsible medical decisions,” Graham said. “Take the vaccine.”

After testing positive over the weekend, Graham revealed his COVID status on Monday and made it a point to tout the benefits of being vaccinated. “I feel like I have a sinus infection and at present time I have mild symptoms,” Graham tweeted. “I am very glad I was vaccinated because without vaccination I am certain I would not feel as well as I do now. My symptoms would be far worse.”

(Via Associated Press)