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After winning a thriller in the play-in against the Warriors, the Lakers made their playoff debut on Sunday in Game 1 against the Suns, and if anyone looked rusty, it was the Lakers. L.A. had a dismal shooting afternoon as a team, posting a rather awful 43.4/26/9/60.7 shooting split as a team in a 99-90 loss to the Suns, who got massive contributions from playoff debutants Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton in a 99-90 win.

While few on the Lakers played well, the performance that stood out as especially poor came from Anthony Davis, who had just 13 points and seven rebounds in 39 minutes of play. Davis was 5-of-16 from the field, including going 0-for-2 from deep, and just generally looked disengaged from the action for most of his time on the court. Afterwards, Davis took the blame for the Lakers loss, noting that he can’t play like that if they’re going to win games, much less a series.

Davis is right, and it’s not the first time he’s had a game where he all but disappears. Last year, once he got it going in the playoffs he was the unstoppable force the Lakers needed him to be, and we’ll just have to see if he can find that gear soon enough in this series. The good news for L.A. is that they’ve done this before, coming out flat in a Game 1 before making the requisite adjustments to steamroll through a series. That said, doing so against this Suns team will be more difficult than, say, last year’s Portland squad, and Phoenix wasn’t exactly operating at full strength in this one after Chris Paul suffered the shoulder injury that caused him to almost completely avoid shooting for the final three quarters.

On Sunday afternoon at the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, Phil Mickelson made history as the oldest major winner in the history of golf, as the 50-year-old stared down Brooks Koepka in the final pairing to win the 2021 PGA Championship, his sixth major title and first since the 2013 Open Championship.

Mickelson entered the final round with a one stroke lead on Koepka and the two traded blows early in what was a nervy start for both. After the first hole, the two had swapped places following a Phil bogey and Brooks birdie. Phil then birdied the second while Koepka made his first double of the week with a 7 on the par 5, giving Mickelson a two shot advantage. Mickelson then found himself back up just one after a bogey on three and the sloppy start from the leaders had suddenly brought a bunch of others into the mix.

On the sixth, Mickelson earned his first massive roar of the day with a vintage make from the sandy area short of the green for birdie, causing an eruption at Kiawah.

On 10, he extended his lead to four and it would eventually reach five as it looked like a runaway was on the way.

He would hit some hiccups with a pair of bogeys in the middle of his back nine to see his lead cut to two, but down the stretch, Phil put on a show as only he can. He hit the longest drive of anybody all week on 16 at 366 yards — besting Koepka’s 361-yard effort — and then hitting a masterful chip shot from over the green to set up a birdie to extend his lead to three.

On 17, Mickelson played it safe on the long par-3 over water, launching an iron over the back of the green and while he was unable to get up and down for par, his bogey was perfectly fine to keep a two-shot advantage going to the last. There, he put a drive once again in the place of least danger, sending it way up into the crowd left of the fairway and hit a beauty of an iron from there to officially begin the coronation walk up the 18th, with a sea of humanity behind him.

Phil had three putts to win and only needed two, cozying the first putt right up to the hole and then tapping it in for a final round 73 and a history-making win. Mickelson entered as a 200-1 longshot, having not won a tournament on the PGA Tour since 2019 and having not finished in the top 10 of a major since 2016. Still, he passed Julius Boros, winner of the 1968 PGA, as the oldest winner at a major in golf history and created an unforgettable scene at Kiawah in the process.

For three years, fans of J. Cole patiently waited for a new solo album. In those years, the rapper delivered an impressive guest feature run, even spearheading Dreamville’s compilation album Revenge Of The Dreamers III. At long last, the wait ended earlier this month, when the North Carolina rapper shared his sixth album, The Off-Season, which saw Bas, Morray, Lil Baby, and 21 Savage contribute to Cole’s latest hip-hop chapter. Now, the album is Cole’s sixth chart-topper, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

The Off-Season achieved the feat thanks to a total of 282,000 album units, the most for a hip-hop release this year. This number is comprised of 243,000 streaming equivalent album units and 37,000 album sales. The former is a result of 325.05 million on-demand streams of the album’s tracks, making for the most from any full-length effort that was released this year. The previous record holder was Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album, which posted 240.18 million streams in its first week.

With the debut of The Off-Season at No. 1, all six of J. Cole’s official albums have now held the top spot on the Billboard 200. The rapper’s 2013 release, Born Sinner was the only release that failed to debut at No. 1. The rapper’s only full-length project that failed to reach No. 1 at any point was 2016’s Forest Hills Drive: Live, which peaked at No. 71.

The Off-Season is out now via Dreamville/Roc Nation. Get it here.

From the opening tip, the Phoenix Suns played with an incredible amount of energy and effort in Game 1 of their first round series against the Lakers. It was a series that looked on paper more like a conference finals matchup than a first round matchup, and the opening game delivered in the drama category, for sure.

After a hellacious start, the Suns saw Chris Paul go down with a shoulder injury that he would return from but never look like his normal self. Paul had just seven points and eight assists on 3-of-8 shooting as he was clearly unable to shoot right after the injury, but he was still a +6 on the afternoon, guiding the team with his craftiness and intelligence rather than his ability to score himself.

Luckily for Paul and the Suns, their two young stars were more than up for the challenge of taking on that scoring load, as Devin Booker made his long-awaited playoff debut with a remarkable 34-point performance, going 13-of-26 from the field, to go along with eight assists and seven rebounds, and absolutely took over down the stretch in what became a 99-90 Suns win.

Alongside Booker was Deandre Ayton, who the Lakers had no answers for in the paint. The big man had 21 points and 16 rebounds, eight of which came on the offensive end, and he was monstrous and efficient, getting his 21 points on 10-of-11 shooting.

Across from Phoenix was a near no-show from the Lakers, as Anthony Davis had a dismal outing with just 13 points and seven rebounds, as there were long stretches of action where you could completely forget he was on the floor. Andre Drummond had 12 points and nine rebounds, but was attacked consistently by the Suns in pick-and-roll and was a net negative. LeBron James had 18 points, 10 assists, and seven rebounds, but was just 6-of-13 from the field and didn’t assert himself as we are accustomed to. All told, the Lakers shot just 43.4 percent from the field, 26.9 percent from three, and a horrific 60.4 percent from the free throw line, which was the one area they held an advantage on Sunday, getting 28 attempts compared to just 12 from Phoenix.

There were a few signs of life at various points as the Lakers would make a brief push, but each time they did the Suns had the answer with key stops and big buckets. Emotions were high even if neither team shot as well as they’d like to, and we even got our first kerfuffle of the playoffs with Cam Payne getting tossed for throwing the ball at Alex Caruso.

As we have all learned in watching LeBron James-led teams over the years, Game 1 isn’t indicative of anything, as they looked flat against the Blazers in Game 1 last year as well before steamrolling Portland. That said, this Phoenix team is better than that Portland squad and will likewise feel like they have more to give, particularly if Chris Paul can shake off his shoulder issue for Game 2. The Lakers, meanwhile, will have plenty of adjustments to make and one would expect a different look from them, both in effort and in their rotations.

Game 1 between the Lakers and Suns was a physical contest all night and got testy down the stretch. In the second quarter, Chris Paul left with a shoulder injury but returned shortly after, albeit clearly not his normal self. In the fourth quarter, there was a lot going on after a missed LeBron James free throw, as he and Paul got tangled up, with James falling to the ground and grabbing at his own shoulder.

25 feet away, Cam Payne and Alex Caruso were jawing at each other, with Payne launching the ball at Caruso leading to Montrezl Harrell sprinting in from the other side of the court and trucking Payne.

You can tell Harrell wasn’t trying to actually fight and ran into Payne accidentally because he immediately tries to hold Payne up, but he got a technical for his actions. Payne got ejected as his actions in firing the ball at Caruso earned him an early exit, per the NBA’s rules. LeBron would shake out his shoulder injury during the kerfuffle and ensuing review and not miss any time, and now the Suns are without their top backup point guard while Chris Paul is still clearly dealing with his shoulder contusion/stinger issue.

The Utah Jazz will begin their playoff campaign on Sunday night when they play host to the 8-seeded Memphis Grizzlies in their first round matchup. Given the way Memphis played in their play-in finale to beat the Warriors, Utah has to be expecting a stern test from Ja Morant and company, and to take Game 1, they’ll have to do play once again without one of their top stars.

Donovan Mitchell hasn’t played in Utah’s last 16 games due to a sprained ankle but had recently returned to practice in hopes of a return for the postseason. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski — and confirmed shortly after by just about every Jazz reporter — he will unfortunately not play in Game 1 against Memphis.

It’s obviously a blow to the Jazz, but they remain an 8-point favorite in Game 1 over the Grizzlies even in his absence. Utah went 10-6 in the 16 games Mitchell missed to close the season — which sometimes coincided with rest for their other stars — so they have experience in navigating games without him. It will put more of the creative load on Mike Conley as he faces his longtime team, and a bigger scoring burden on Bojan Bogdanovic, Joe Ingles, and the presumptive Sixth Man of the Year in Jordan Clarkson. It also shifts how Memphis will deploy their best perimeter defender, as Dillon Brooks will be able to focus his attention on Clarkson and Bogdanovic, one would assume.

Morgan Wallen has had as much success this year as he’s had controversy. It began when he was caught on camera using a racial slur around friends and since then. Since then Wallen has kept a rather low profile. Despite this, his sophomore record, Dangerous: The Double Album, ruled the charts for nearly three months, spending its first ten weeks at No. 1 — the most ever for an album. Nearly two months after that streak came to an end, Wallen took to Instagram to debut his first song since his offennding incident.

The new track is titled “Thought You Should Know,” and it finds the singer addressing the “bad decisions” he’s made in his life. “I wrote this song for my mom a while ago, seemed like an appropriate time to share it,” he said before performing the song. “What’s going on mama?/ Something’s just dawned on me/ I ain’t been home in some months,” Wallen sings on the soft track. “Been chasing songs and women/ Making some bad decisions/ God knows I’m drinking too much/ Yeah, I know you’ve been worrying ’bout me/ You’ve been losing sleep since ’93.”

The song arrives after Wallen performed at Kid Rock’s Nashville bar for his first live set since his controversy.

You can listen to the song in the video above.

Edgar Wright has been busy. He has two movies out this year: the epic music doc The Sparks Brothers, about the legendary rock band Sparks, and Last Night in Soho, a psychological horror thriller starring Anya Taylor-Joy and JoJo Rabbit’s Thomasin McKenzie. There’s been a fair amount of secrecy shrouding the latter, and while the official trailer is set to drop Tuesday, on Sunday we got a brief taste of what looks like some real sinister, moody, retro vibes.

The teaser, if you can even call it that, is extremely short — a mere 15 seconds. And it’s a real tease, offering a mood more than a story. We see McKenzie, who we know plays a young woman who mysteriously time travels (or something) to the ’60s, where she encounters her favorite singer, played by Anya Taylor-Joy. We also see Taylor-Joy, decked out in mod fashions, bathed in red and blue neon, looking every bit the Swingin’ Lodnon idol.

Again, you’ll see far more when the trailer drops on Tuesday, though you’ll have to wait till October 22 to see the full thing. In the meantime, you only have to wait till June 18 to see The Sparks Brothers. And you can catch up with Taylor-Joy’s stint hosting the season finale of SNL, showing off the comedic chops she should display more often.

You can watch the teaser in the video above.

It’s been almost three years since Kevin Spacey was seen on the big screen, his career destroyed by a host of sexual assault allegations in the early days of the #MeToo era. He hasn’t disappeared completely; every December he’s released a holiday video, usually with him in the guise of his House of Cards antihero Frank Underwood. But now he’s attempting what looks like a soft comeback, landing his first film role in four years — though it’s definitely not in Hollywood.

As per Deadline, Spacey has signed on to appear in L’uomo Che Disegno Dio, aka The Man Who Drew God, an Italian film directed by legendary actor Franco Nero, best known for Camelot and the original Django. The movie will also star Vanessa Redgrave, Nero’s even more famous wife, whom he married in 2006, decades after they dated. Spacey has not formally commented on the new gig.

The allegations against Spacey first emerged in 2017, with at least 20 people accusing him of sexual misconduct over the years. Charges against him have since been dropped one way or another, with one ending when the accusee had died. When the allegations emerged, filmmakers were quick to either erase forthcoming Spacey performances — as in Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World, which replaced him with Christopher Plummer — or cancel the films altogether, as with Netflix’s Gore Vidal movie Gore. Clearly, Spacey has been itching to return, but he also clearly knows baby steps is the way to do it, if it must be done at all.

(Via Deadline)

The world of cryptocurrency is a strange one. Indeed, anyone who put money in a new cryptocurrency project called DeFi100 were in for a bit of a surprise this weekend: When they visited the website for the service, they saw nothing more than a message informing them they’d all been scammed. According to Financial Express, the total amount allegedly absconded with is in the range of $32 million. But the people behind the project have since denied any wrongdoing, even claiming they’d never had any investors fund the project in the first place.

It all started when a short but shocking message appeared on the project’s website. “We scammed you guys and you can’t do s*it about it,” it read, adding, “HA HA. All you moon bois have been scammed and you can’t do s*it about it.” The message was attributed to one “DEVSIN,” and a message at the bottom drove it all home further: “F*CK YOU MOONBOIS.”

The message has since been removed, though not before it was screengrabbed. After a few hours, DeFi100 responded on their Twitter page, denying the allegations. “It’s been said that DEFI100 scammed for $32 million. The highest market cap project ever had was less than $2 million and project never held any investors fund! Rumours of scamming for 32 mil are false and baseless,” the message read. “Yes, our investors faced huge losses as project failed to achieve what we hoped for. But there is no exit scam and we are still working on finding a way to bring the project back on its feet.”

So, there you go. This has been yet another strange episode in the strange but exciting world of cryptocurrency.

(Via Financial Express)