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On Wednesday, Chet Holmgren was named the Gatorade National Boys Basketball Player of the Year, joining a long list of tremendous players to be given that honor like Jayson Tatum, Ben Simmons, Karl-Anthony Towns, Bradley Beal, LeBron James, and many more. The award comes with plenty of prestige and plenty of expectation for the future, but Holmgren is more than ready to welcome that on.

The Minnehaha Academy (Minneapolis, MN) star has been in the spotlight for years and is set to head off to Gonzaga for a year before likely heading to the 2022 NBA Draft as a high lottery selection. The 7-footer is very much a modern big man with the ability to stretch the floor as a shooter and the length and quickness to score and defend at the rim. To surprise Holmgren with the award was his longtime friend and teammate, Jalen Suggs, who is on his own path to NBA stardom as a top pick in the 2021 NBA Draft after his own season in Spokane.

We got to talk with Holmgren over Zoom about being named the Player of the Year, his relationship with Suggs and how that’s helped guide him, where he’s grown on and off the court, and how he’s already working to use his platform to impact the community, starting with Gatorade doing some charity work on his behalf in Minneapolis.

What does it mean to you to be given this award and to be named the Gatorade National Boys Player of the Year, and to have a friend like Jalen be able to surprise you with that announcement?

Yeah, so two things. It’s definitely a great honor for me to win this award, not only because … it’s not just something that kind of boosts my name or my resume or anything like that. Gatorade’s actually partnering with me and doing some charity work on my behalf to help a youth sports organization that’s close to home. I’ve seen a lot of people that youth sports has helped and to be able to give back and hopefully help the next generation, it’s definitely very special.

And I was definitely surprised when Jalen hopped on the Zoom call to award me … or not award me but, you know, kind of hand the award to me virtually or however you would do that. But yeah, it was a pleasant surprise. It’s really cool to have a childhood friend and teammate, somebody that I’ve known for so long, present me with the award.

You talked with with one of my colleagues a few months back and you mentioned some of the people you look up to off the court are guys like LeBron and KD and others that do that work in the community. When did you start thinking about your platform, as you kind of grew as somebody who’s getting national attention and somebody who’s going to have opportunities and doors open up, and how you could use that to help your community?

Yeah, once I realized how many people I could reach — not only with my voice but with my social media platforms, etc. — once I realized that I could reach out and get a message out to people, I thought it was very important to voice what I feel strongly about, what I believe in. Hopefully do that and, you know, create a positive change while doing that.

I talked with with Jalen a few minutes ago, what is it like having somebody like him who is a year ahead of you and is going through all these processes that you’re going to go through, whether it’s making a decision on college and now currently going through the draft process, that you can lean on and talk to about things? Not a lot of people have experience in being a five-star and being a top-flight player and you have somebody so close to you, that you can actually have those conversations with who has experience?

I mean, I think you almost just answered your question [laughs]. It was definitely very helpful. Because like you said, you know, he’s a year ahead of me. Everything I’m seeing now, he saw it last year and it’s very helpful to be able to go to him for advice and kind of understanding on, you know, what I’m about to go through and he’s been very helpful.

You’re going to Gonzaga where he just spent a year. What are the things he told you about playing there and playing for Mark Few?

Yeah, you know, everything. He answered every question I had and with knowing him for so long, I could trust pretty much anything he said. He had nothing bad to say, he had nothing but praise for them. It’s been a great partnership for them and he told me it’d be the same for me this next year coming up, and it’d be a great fit and a great opportunity for me.

I asked him this about you, so I’ll ask you the same about him. What have you seen in his game over the years that he’s grown and developed to get to this point where he’s about to be a top-5, top-10 pick in the NBA Draft?

That’s pretty hard to say cause, I mean, he’s been so good at almost everything for so long. So it’s hard to pick one thing, but he’s definitely great at creating for his teammates. He’s been doing that for a long time, drawing attention and getting downhill and finding open teammates when the defense collapses. But on top of that his leadership and his hustle, lot of people this year are we talking about how hard he plays and I’ve been seeing that since third grade. He’s definitely one of the highest motors, hardest playing kids I’ve ever played with. And I try to learn from some of the things he does.

And then for you, what are you most proud of in your development over the years to get to this point where you are earning an honor like this as the top player in the country?

Yeah, you know, I’m just proud of myself in the way that I’ve handled it all. It’s a lot coming at me but I think I’ve done a great job of being able to manage it all and stay true to myself in doing it.

Something that Jalen said is he’s always been impressed with your work ethic. How did you learn to embrace the work and the things you have to do between game days to get to the point where you can perform at your best and continue to get better as the competition gets better around you?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I just say it comes from staying true to myself like I said before. It’s something that I’ve kind of come accustomed to myself and expect of myself, really. And then I’d say it also comes from watching other people and the mistakes they’ve made and trying to learn from other people’s mistakes so I don’t have to learn for myself. I’ve seen other people make mistakes and I don’t want to make them myself and a lot of that comes down to, you know, working hard. A lot of people aren’t willing to put in the work but the work speaks for itself and if you stay true to the work it’ll serve you well.

As you get ready to go to Gonzaga, what’s your focus this offseason in your game and the things that you look at and want to be able to continue to improve headed to the next level?

I want to improve all facets of my game really and continue to work every day. I’m getting better, you know, putting a lot of work in this past 12 months now on my body, lifting almost every day and started a nutrition plan and all that. And on top of that, continue to work on my skills. You know, it’s scoring at all three levels, and learning the game, becoming a student of the game, watching a lot of basketball and trying to learn as much as I can.

How did that aspect the part about continuing to learn the game factor into your decision to go to Gonzaga and play for a coach like Mark Few for you who has been coaching for so long and has had so many successful players come through on that program on their way to the NBA?

Just go in and be willing to not only put in the work, but be willing to listen and learn. Like you said, he’s been at it for so long and he’s got a lot of successful players, so you know who am I to come in and try and tell him I’m right [laughs]. I’m coming in with all the willingness and all the want to try and pick his brain and pick everybody’s brain on the staff and learn as much as I can in however long time I’m gonna be there for.

On Wednesday, the MCU spinoff Loki began its six-episode run on Disney+, and critics were pretty much unanimous about one thing: Tom Hiddleston’s titular trickster god and Owen Wilson’s multidimensional bureaucrat make a killer team. Hiddleston’s gonzo energy, many agree, mixes well with Wilson’s laidback mien, while the latter is surprisingly adept at making its convoluted premise and dense expository dialogue go down smoothly. But we should have known they’d make a delightful pair. After all, it’s not their first rodeo together.

Amidst the social media clamor for Loki came this: Some people pointed out that they first teamed up, albeit briefly, 10 years back, in Woody Allen’s hit time travel rom-com Midnight in Paris. That film found Wilson’s sadsack screenwriter, vacationing in the City of Lights, with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams), learning he can magically saunter back to the 1920s, allowing him to hang with all the iconic artists and American ex-pats who’d made it their home. Those include Corey Stoll’s Ernest Hemingway, Kathy Bates’ Gertrude Stein, and Adrien Brody’s Salvador Dalí.

And then there was F. Scott Fitzgerald, played by no less than Tom Hiddleston. (Alison Pill played his also famous wife, Zelda.) Midnight in Paris was released in America in late May of 2011, mere weeks after the first Thor opened that year’s summer movie season. Granted, Hiddleston, as the author of The Great Gatsby, had far shorter locks than he did as Loki, as well as different accents. So who knows how many realized it was the same guy. (Also, how many people who saw Thor also saw Midnight in Paris? Probably not a huge Venn Diagram crossover there.)

So there you go: Gil Pender (Wilson’s Midnight in Paris character name, as if you didn’t know) and F. Scott Fitzgerald are back in action!

Fawn Weaver has been upending the American spirits industry, in general, and Tennesee whiskey, in specific, since 2017. Weaver, a former financial investor, got into the distilling game after partnering with one of the whiskey world’s most important legacy holders: The Green family. Uncle “Nearest” Green was the distiller who actually created the famous Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey all those years ago. His ingenuity and craft shaped the way Tennessee whiskey tastes to this day and his decedents became a cornerstone of the industry right up until Prohibition.

Weaver’s rise in the spirits industry has always been in pursuit of championing Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and female voices. Even before a single bottle of Uncle Nearest whiskey hit shelves, Weaver was already sending Green’s descendants to college so they could pursue their dreams. Once Uncle Nearest the brand became a reality, its CEO kept it all in the family by employing Nearest Green’s direct descendent, Victoria Eady Butler, as her brand’s Master Blender. She also made sure the leadership of her whiskey company was both minority and female-driven — something that’s all too rare.

Then came the awards, the glowing press, and all the laurels that come with releasing some of the best Tennessee whiskey in the game. It made for a hell of a story and an incredibly exciting ride, but Weaver was far from finished. Last spring, she partnered with Jack Daniel’s for the Nearest & Jack Advancement Initiative — helping educate whiskey’s next generation of distillers, blenders, and leaders. Now, Weaver has taken that investment a step further, founding the Uncle Nearest Venture Fund which has earmarked $50 million to support minority-owned spirits brands.

This week, I spoke with Weaver about the fund’s first two recipients (Equiano Rum and the Sorel Liqueur made by Jack from Brooklyn), and what motivates her to take on changing the whole damn spirits industry from the ground up.

Can you walk us through the evolution from Uncle Nearest to what you’re doing now with this new $50 million spirits fund?

It’s funny, for me it feels like a natural evolution. We follow the path of “how do we create diversity in this industry that reflects America as we know it.”

So, when I walk into a room of distributors and every single one is a white male with the exception of two white females, then we know we’ve got a problem. All you have to do is go to a few industry-related events here to discover that we have a diversity problem.

But the thing is I’m not wired to focus on the problem. It’s of zero interest to me. I’m wired to focus on the solution. And because I’m always focused on solutions, then one solution leads to another solution that leads to another.

We began with the Nearest & Jack [Daniels] and the Nearest Green School of Distilling and working with the president of Motlow State College to try to create a pipeline. But the problem with that is that that’s all later down the line. We knew it would take a couple of years to get through the accreditation process and that’s even pushing the state of Tennessee to get it done. And then you’ve got at least a few more years before you really truly have people in the pipeline.

The leadership acceleration program is sort of the microwave version of getting people of color into leadership positions because we’ve not been in leadership positions for so long, and it’s clear that the industry isn’t really set up properly to elevate people of color. You’ve got to set some gasoline on the fire to get that going!

But that’s only scratching the surface, right?

The challenge with that is we were putting all of our efforts around one brand to really create a model of success down the road. But then we started getting calls, emails, and reach-ins from all these other black businesses that — if someone did not support them pretty soon — were going to go out of business.

We began helping every single one that reached out, if they were actually already in the market. If they reach out to us with just an idea … we don’t have time for ideas. We have the ability to help them if they’re already working. We’ve gotten so many of them distribution by just utilizing our connections. With that, we’ve been able to help these Black businesses. Then, they could go out and raise capital.

Here’s the problem with raising capital though. In America, the problem with raising capital is you have all of these companies that these founders will pitch to. But the reality is that investors — and I’ve been an investor for a long time and I do the same thing — do not really invest in products. They invest in people. They invest in the founders. So the challenge is, if a founder does not have a connection, they’re going to be pitching all over the place and they’re just going to keep hearing, “no.” And that’s not because their product isn’t great, but because there is no way for that investment firm to validate this founder.

So you really need a connection. So the question became, “Okay, I’m helping them with these business plans, but who are they going to pitch and who’s actually going to fund them?”

Right. It feels like with the success of Uncle Nearest, you’re in a position to direct money in the right places.

Right. At the same time that I was grappling with how to best help black founders to be able to raise money, I was turning down money every single day. Literally, every day. I don’t remember the last time a day went by where there wasn’t some major investor in my email box, cold calling, hoping that Uncle Nearest would be willing to receive some type of investment.

I literally get DMs on my Instagram and Facebook from investors. I get it on LinkedIn. I get it on email every day. And my response had to be truncated down to, “No, thank you.” Then, I realized that at the same time I’m trying to figure out how to help these guys raise money, I’m turning down money every day in my own company.

So, I decided I would circle back to some of the people I turned down and say, “Hey, Uncle Nearest is still not a viable investment for you because I don’t plan on raising money again. I’m done. But I am going to set out to create or help develop the next Uncle Nearests in this industry.”

And what is the litmus for that brand to be the “next” Uncle Nearest?

That means really fast-growing. There has to be a brand story that the press will love talking about. It can’t sound like the same old story they’ve been telling for the last 100 years. You know the story, It’s some white dude with a field whose great, great, great grandfather… etc. There are stories that are interesting to people at this point that also don’t sound like a regurgitation of everything that came in the past. Those things are very important.

Another aspect was finding a founder that isn’t trying to build to flip. I have zero interest in helping people build just to sell. If that’s the case, we end up in the same place we started because the only people buying are white males. All of the large conglomerates are owned by white males. So if I help you to build your brand as a person of color or as a woman, and then you just sell it, we’re back at square one again.

What drew me into this story is when I heard you invested in an old friend of mine, Ian Burrell’s Equiano Rum. What about that story grabbed your attention?

Listen — it is the best brand story next to Uncle Nearest. Period. During the powerful movements taking place last summer, where we were all recognizing that Black people have been systematically oppressed and there was just no way of turning a blind eye anymore, there was an awakening all at the same time around the world.

And one of the names that kept coming up, in terms of giving a statue when all these other statutes were toppling overseas was Equiano. I didn’t know anything about him. And then I learned from Ian that he was coming out with a rum. Now, Ian has impressed me from the moment I met him at an Uncle Nearest event in London and he described himself as the global rum ambassador. And I was like, “What does that even mean?” So, when I discovered that he loved rum so much, that he didn’t want to represent a single brand, and instead went to all of the brands and created this position out of thin air to represent all of the brands, I knew he was someone special.

I knew that if he ever decided to found his own brand, it was going to be one of the best rums in the world. And I knew he was going to absolutely be brilliant in marketing it.

As you said, investors invest in people.

I knew immediately that I wanted to be first in line to invest. So, when I see the press come out for Equiano, I reached out to him. I kid you not, he will confirm this, I said, “When is your next raise? I want the entire round.” It was like, “I don’t want a piece of the round. What’s next? Series A? I want the whole round. When are you doing series B? I want the whole round.” That was the conversation. And that was before I knew the story and of Equiano. I just knew that whatever he was going to put out was going to be excellent and at the level of Uncle Nearest.

Ian really nailed the story too.

When he told me this story of Olaudah Equiano, and how he’s coming out of Africa and sold into slavery to a family in Barbados where he makes this rum that is so incredible. Then comes back to London … So, then Ian decided to make his rum by taking 20 percent of rum from Barbados and blending it with 80 percent of rum coming out of Mauritius, so Africa then bringing it back to London to share it with the world… The idea that they were following Equiano’s actual life journey and his fight for not only his own freedom but the freedom of all enslaved people through legislation and his writings… I got chills.

I still get chills every time I tell that story. And the only other story I get chills from is when I tell the story of Uncle Nearest.

I’d love to talk about Ian the whole day, and I’m sure he’d love that too, but we have to talk about your other main investment — Jack from Brooklyn’s and Sorel, which is a liqueur.

Jackie [Summers] founded the first black-owned distillery, post-prohibition, in America. Quite frankly, it’s hard for us to know whether or not there were any black-owned, legal distilleries prior to prohibition. When Jackie started in 2012, there were no other Blacks in the industry and he got beat up really, really badly. That usually happens, even though his product is absolutely phenomenal. But he’s a Black bald dude who wears a scarf, who’s buff, strong, and coming out of Brooklyn. So he’s got that Brooklyn toughness. And that doesn’t necessarily play well in the boardroom where you have to try to raise money from all white guys.

Here’s the thing about Sorel, it’s phenomenal. It is hands down my favorite liqueur, nothing comes close. I love St-Germain. I love Domaine de Canton. I always have them in my home bar. But neither one of them is lower than the halfway mark. I went through a bottle of Sorel in a weekend!

I put it in my whiskey. I put it in my rum. I put it in my champagne. I was like, “is there anything it doesn’t go with?” But here’s the crazy part, my favorite way to drink Sorel is neat. I have never tasted a liqueur that I wanted to drink by itself.

It’s a brilliant liqueur for sure.

Stellar. Plus, his backstory is amazing. But I’ll tell you what really drew me to Jackie. Jackie has this super tough exterior, and that’s what people see. But all you have to do is spend any amount of time with him away from the confines of the industry and he is one of the most kind-hearted and gentle people I’ve ever met in my life. I realized that his lack of funding has everything to do with the fact that people just didn’t know what to do with him. I think they can’t get past the tough exterior. Once I got past that, I was like, “okay, I am going to fund this” because it’s the best liqueur on the market, period. For me, there’s no question and I will take a Sorel spritzer over an Aperol spritzer any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

So once I learned that it has not gotten funding and it hadn’t been in the market for years but was still talked about by bartenders and spirits people all the time to this day — which said that that spirit left an indelible mark on this industry and that the entire industry was rooting for it to come back. So I look at it as such an honor and privilege to even be able to be a part of bringing that back into the industry because I think it did a disservice to the industry for it to be taken away.

I wholeheartedly agree. A Sorel Manhattan is one of my favorite drinks so I was very excited to hear it’s coming back and excited for Jackie as well. One last question: I feel like it’d be very easy for you to rest on your laurels after the success of Uncle Nearest. You’ve won the awards. You’ve won the respect of the industry. You could have been like, “Okay, I’m good. I’m just going to enjoy my life on the farm, enjoy my whiskey, and that’s that.” What has driven you to become a driving force for something bigger and better in the spirits industry?

I think you have to remember how the brand came to be to really understand that story. Uncle Nearest was never a money play for me, ever. I am still one of the lowest-paid full-time employees of the company and intend to stay that way because it is more important to me what I put in than what I take out.

But even before the first bottle of Uncle Nearest was ever sold, we were already putting kids through college with the Nearest Green Foundation by paying for his descendants to go to college. For us, it started off with really helping the entire lineage of the Nearest Green family because his children and his grandchildren were, for the most part, entrepreneurs.

At the time, they were wealthy for Black Americans, for sure, thanks to the whiskey business. Then Prohibition hit and, remember, Prohibition lasted ten years longer in Tennessee than anywhere else in this country. They were the first going into before federal Prohibition started and then they were the last ones to come out. Jack Daniel’s distillery was closed for almost 40 years. That’s an entire generation of Green descendants who were then removed from the industry. So by the time the next generation came, they’d all, for the most part, moved to Nashville or Indiana or St. Louis and they had different lives, different careers. They’d all moved on.

Even today, the three Green family members who are back at Jack Daniel’s are all working in the bottling house or warehouse. None of them are on the distilling side. None of them are in leadership. When I met Nearest’s descendants — the high schoolers and college-aged kids — it was very clear that they didn’t realize they came from a legacy of excellence. I wanted to bring that back to that family.

So that’s where this all began. That’s how we built all of this. It has always been very purpose-driven. This is abnormal for the industry because the way that we’re doing stuff is more like we’re a nonprofit. I don’t know when we’ll ever turn a profit because we keep putting all the money back into giving back. But that’s been our purpose from day one.

I think it’s why we don’t really have turnover in our company, why our team members absolutely love working for Uncle Nearest, because we all feel like we’re working towards something much bigger than us. The $50 million fund is a natural evolution, so don’t be surprised if a $250 million fund follows it. Because we’re not going to rest. We’ve got a very unique opportunity to actually diversify an entire industry and then to be used as a lighthouse for how the other industries that look similar to ours can start to diversify their own.

I don’t look at this as being something that’s limited to just spirits. I think that we are going to have a great impact on every single industry in America. So there is no time for sitting on our laurels.

Michigan has become a hotbed of hip-hop talent in recent months thanks to the wave of young upstarts from the Great Lake State rising in conjunction like 42 Dugg, Icewear Vezzo, and Sada Baby. Another of the state’s up-and-coming potential stars is Babyface Ray, who debuted earlier this year with the release of his EP Unf*ckwitable. Building on the favorable buzz from the project’s release, Ray followed up with a deluxe version in May featuring additional tracks and Midwestern guest star Jack Harlow, who’s in the midst of a breakout of his own this year.

Today, Harlow and Ray released the video for their collaboration, “Paperwork Party (Remix).” A boastful track produced by Kardiak, the song features a ghostly woodwind loop over which the two rappers brag about their money-making enterprises — and their endeavors to blow it all, because as Ray puts it, “I never seen a money truck chase a hearse.” The video makes the title literal, as the duo celebrates their riches with a get-together, complete with confetti rain and bottles of champagne, as Harlow boasts that “shows got banned, but I still got bands.”

Watch the “Paperwork Party” video above.

Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Celebrities, they’re just like us! They, too, get excited when they learn that two of the most famous and brilliant people in the world actually know who they are. That’s what happened to Trevor Noah the other night when he went to Barclays Center to see the playoff game between the Brooklyn Nets and Milwaukee Bucks. The Daily Show host and sporadic Ted Cruz sparring partner was casually sitting courtside when who should show up but former Barclays stake holder Jay Z and his wife, Beyonce, who is also very popular.

A Getty photojournalist just happened to snap the meeting of the minds, catching Noah and Beyonce mid-fist-bump. Noah made sure to post that pic to his Instagram feed, complete with a gushing, fanboyish, pinch-me-is-this-real? caption:

“I’ve thought of every possible caption for this picture but really what can I write? You’re at the @brooklynnets game, the King of Brooklyn walks in with his wife @beyonce and then they both fist bump you. You try to act cool but then later you see a picture of the moment and you realise that this life is insane!!! What a privilege and magical moment to experience in life. And even though magic happens to me every day, I hope the little South African boy inside of me never stops reminding me that I’m living a dream.”

Who among us hasn’t been sitting courtside at an NBA playoff game and traded fistbumps with Jay Z and Beyonce? Many were quick to congratulate Noah on the honor, though in the comments, Daily Show colleague Jordan Klepper took some jokey umbrage with one detail of his caption: him referring to Jay Z as “the King of Brooklyn.”

“To be clear, I live in Brooklyn,” Klepper wrote. “Is the Jay Z is King a totally settled thing?”

Anyway, it’s great to know one of the world’s most powerful power couples watches The Daily Show.

Ever since debuting with Die A Legend in 2019, Chicago rapper Polo G has been pretty intentional about stating his goals and following through on them — many times within the titles of the projects he’s released. For instance, after stating he’d “die a legend” on his first project, he followed up by calling himself The Goat in 2020. Now, he’s days away from dropping Hall Of Fame, and you can’t say the young rising star doesn’t aim high.

In a new feature in Complex about the upcoming album, Polo states another one of his goals — and the one caveat preventing him from pursuing it as aggressively as he normally would. He tells Harley Geffner that while he’d love to work with rappers like J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar in the future after being shouted out by Cole’s Dreamville partner Ibrahim Hamad, he wants “to get a little bit better lyrically in that style before I would jump on that type of song.”

Hall Of Fame will see him taking steps in that direction, sharing mic time with lyrical all-stars like Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj, but as Geffner notes, he may not be as far off as he feels. Look no further than his recent LA Leakers freestyle, which impressed Rap Twitter over its use of DMX’s “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem,” and Polo’s verse in BET’s 2020 Hip-Hop Awards Cypher, where he stood toe-to-toe with hard-hitters like Chika, Jack Harlow, and Rapsody.

Hall Of Fame drops 6/11 via Columbia Records. Pre-save it here.

Tina Charles is on a tear. The 6’4 big is thriving in her first year in Washington scoring at a more prolific and efficient clip than ever, spreading the floor like never before, and giving D.C. fans hope that the team’s 2019 championship run was just a taste of what’s to come.

When Washington traded for Charles in 2020, she was coming off the worst season of her storied career. She shot a career-low 38.9 percent from the field to score 16.9 points per game, which was her lowest average since her rookie season. After one season off due to Covid-19, she’s bounced back and then some.

Through just eight games, Charles has scored 29 or more points four times. At 25.9 points per game, she holds a 3.7 point lead over the next-best scorer in the league, 2019 MVP Breanna Stewart, and she’s shooting three percent better (46.3). The Mystics might only be 3-5 as a team, but there’s plenty reason to be optimistic, and Charles is leading that charge.

For most of her career, Charles has been a back-to-the-basket and low-post scorer. In the first six seasons of her career, she only attempted 17 3-point shots, and in 2014 she didn’t attempt a single one. That’s why it was a curious move for D.C. — a team that’s placed in the top-4 in 3-point attempts per game in each of the last seven years — to invest draft capital and cap space on a player who operates in the ranges they’ve moved to eliminate. In 2019, Charles took the third-most mid-range shots of any player in the league.

But Charles has bought into head coach Mike Thibault’s system which focuses on perimeter ball movement, drive-and-kicking, and spacing, and it’s taking her offense to the next level. She’s launching a career-high 5.5 3-point attempts per game and making 34.1 percent of them. Best of all, she’s cut out the least efficient shots from her repertoire.

In 2019, Charles took 39.9 percent of her shot attempts from between 10 feet from the hoop and just inside the 3-point line. This year she’s taking just 21.3 percent of her shots in that range while firing 17.1 percent more shots from distance. Charles’s shot selection has improved, and she’s had more open looks than ever before.

Charles finding new life with the Mystics couldn’t have come at a better time for the franchise. Two years ago, Washington wiped the floor with its competition, outscoring opponents by 14.8 points per 100 possessions. The team looked unstoppable with an abundance of young talent to push a potential dynasty forward, but there have been a number of speed bumps along the way.

A salary cap crunch left Kristi Toliver to sign with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2020 free agency. Then Charles, Elena Delle Donne, Natasha Cloud and LaToya Sanders all opted out of the 2020 bubble season. In the 2021 free agency period, Aerial Powers left the franchise to sign with the Minnesota Lynx, and her replacement, Alysha Clark, tore her Achilles before the start of the WNBA season. Then Sanders retired, and Delle Donne is still sidelined this season since having back surgery in the winter.

But Charles has embraced her role as the now-centerpiece of the Mystics franchise until co-star Delle Donne’s return. And she has an excellent supporting cast with Cloud, Ariel Atkins and 2020 breakout player Myisha Hines-Allen back in the rotation. With Charles in the fold scoring with both efficiency and volume, the Mystics suddenly have to be considered potential contenders again.

There are loads of ifs in play, such as when Delle Donne is going to return and what she’ll look like when she does slot back into the rotation. It’s unclear when or if Emma Meesseman will return after the Olympic break, too. But if those major pieces fall into place, it’s tough not to see Washington as a serious threat given the level Charles is playing at.

Her 31 points on 9-of-18 shooting including three 3-pointers were enough to lead the Mystics over the Lynx on Tuesday without EDD or Meesseman, and even against Jonquel Jones, Charles poured in 29 points on 11-of-22 shooting in a five-point loss to the Sun. She can still be a team’s top scoring option, and her ability to take over on any given night bodes well for Washington long-term.

The Mystics have a real chance to wreak havoc in a playoff system that has six of eight teams play win-or-go-home games until it’s proven that Charles’ dominance can be stopped.

In the sun-washed video for their collaboration “Pasadena,” Tinashe and Buddy head for the hills — literally. Taking over a far-flung, glass-walled home overlooking a truly stunning view, the two California artists take in the sights from the balcony while smoking and getting away from it all. Tinashe also puts her choreography skills on display with a team of dancers giving a performance that could put TikTok’s top influencers out to pasture.

The recently released track is their second collaboration to be released over the past year after August’s “Glitch.” It’s also Tinashe’s first solo single of 2021, building on the buzz from her cover of Chaka Khan’s 1978 classic “I’m Every Woman” from The Undefeated’s Music For The Movement Volume II project celebrating Black History Month to suggest that a new project is on the way from the genre-mixing singer.

In the press release for the video, Tinashe said she “felt a very strong calling to release music that feels like joy, excitement, and freedom” after the past year “to contribute positive energy to the universe.” “I wrote and recorded the song Pasadena in my home in Los Angeles with a bold, bouncing tempo that makes me want to dance,” she recalled. “The song is about growth, family, and the feelings I get when I visit the area I grew up in — energetic and nostalgic, but hopeful.”

You can check out the video above.

If someone broke into your house and stole the ashes of one of your dearest friends, it’d probably be a traumatic moment with next to zero punchlines. Not for Kevin Nealon. While stopping by The Ellen Show on Wednesday, Nealon revealed that he headed out to Tennessee for a few months to ride out the pandemic, but while he was gone, his house got robbed. According to the comedian, “nothing really major” was stolen except for a few sentimental items like some watches Nealon’s fathers had left, and oh yeah, a necklace that was filled with Garry Shandling’s ashes.

While that sounds terrible, Nealon can’t help but laugh about the whole thing and say that “Garry would’ve loved this.” Before Shandling’s death, the two had been friends for almost 40 years, and Nealon kept their comedic friendship alive by dunking on his late friend and joking that Shandling gave him the ashes before he died. “He was very prepared.”

And the laughs just kept on coming. Via Entertainment Weekly:

“What I’ve learned, is when your house has been broken into, you should check the pawnshops, like if you lost a watch, or if you lost Garry,” Nealon shared as the audience roared with laughter. “I’ve been calling pawnshops and I’m saying, ‘You have not seen Garry, have you?’ They said, ‘Garry Shandling?’ And I said, ‘You may not recognize him, he’s in an urn. I’m not sure what part of him is in the urn. It might be his lips, but then again, maybe that urn’s not big enough.”

Thanks for the advice, Kevin. We’ll keep that in mind the next time someone steals the remains of a beloved comedian from our sock drawer.

(Via The Ellen Show)

Loki: Season 1 Premiere (Disney+ series) — Tom Hiddleston has an absolute blast playing the mercurial trickster of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and we shall reap the benefits while he helps (or hinders) the Time Variance Authority during the process of cleaning up the timeline. Yep, Loki’s gotta atone after snatching the Tesseract in Avengers Endgame, and we can expect plenty of theatrics (including a possible D.B. Cooper-type incarnation) from the God of Mischief. Loki’s chronically looking out for Number One, but Hiddleston did provide a catch-up course to refresh fans, although we still don’t know Loki’s true essence here — is he the somewhat reformed version of himself, or nah? Finding out will be part of the fun.

Fresh, Fried & Crispy: Season 1 — You might gain 10 pounds while watching this show, which would fit right in with Guy Fieri’s adventures. The so-called Grandfather of Food Reviews on YouTube, Daym Drops, takes a cross-country trip across the United States to find the most decadent fried foods possible. There’s deep-fried Oreos (in San Diego), extra-crispy pork chops (in Birmingham), and more on the menu, and not only does he pop into actual restaurants, but home kitchens and food trucks are also part of the hunt. Get your appetites ready.

Awake (Netflix film) — This post-apocalyptic yarn follows a mysterious global event that leaves mankind without sleep and without all electronics. A troubled ex-soldier might be able to fix things through a “cure” that happens to be her daughter, although she might lose her mind before she can piece everything together. Yikes.

Tragic Jungle (Netflix film) — This story’s set in the 1920s Mayan jungle, where lawlessness and mythical ways rule near the Mexico-Belize border. A group of Mexican workers collide with a mysterious Belizian woman, which of course sends them into a desire-filled state, although there’s something else afoot. That would be the awakening of the legendary Xtabay being that might seal their destiny.

Crime Scene Kitchen (FOX, 9:00pm) — Joel McHale’s the host of this bizarro cooking-focused reality-competition show, which sees chef teams attempt to figure out what was baked after a dessert disappears, leaving only ingredients in the aftermath. Seriously, give this show a whirl because it is oddly meditative to watch the clues come together. Also, McHale is one of the best famous-types at the art of the interview, and I’ll stand by that claim no matter what.

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Samuel L. Jackson, Padma Lakshmi

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Will Forte, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Brendan Buckley

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Lisa Kudrow, Clea Duvall, Rostam