Udonis Haslem is the elder statesman of the Miami Heat, an 18-year veteran who has spent his entire career with the organization and is the physical embodiment of their beloved Heat Culture.
Haslem doesn’t play much anymore, having played just four games in 2019-20 and entering Thursday night’s action against the Sixers had yet to step foot on the court this season, but no one around the Heat will stand for anything but giving the utmost respect to Haslem for what he brings them in the locker room at 40 years old. However, on Thursday, Haslem finally got his first minutes of the season and made the absolute most of them.
The Heat legend checked in for the final minute of the first quarter, getting a fastbreak bucket to close out a sensational first period for Miami.
From there, he added another bucket to start the second and then got into it with Dwight Howard, earning a quick two technicals for pointing and poking a finger in Howard’s face and getting himself tossed.
For those counting at home, that was two minutes, four points, one rebound two technicals, and an ejection for the Heat lifer. No one enjoyed the Haslem experience more than Pat Riley who was beaming from his perch in the arena as the entire situation unfolded.
Jay-Z’s 2021 has been filled with business moves from all corners of the world. The billionaire rapper has bought his way into new ventures and sold his way out of others. The various deals involved his champagne company Ace Of Spades, his streaming service Tidal, Los Angeles-based fitness company LIT Method, and NFT marketplace Bitski. Through it all, some hoped the rapper would also be working on a new album, one that would be the follow-up to his 2017 solo effort, 4:44. According to Conway The Machine, however, who says he recently spoke to Jay about the possibility of new music from him, that is not the case.
“I was asking him, I’m like, ‘Yo, you gonna record more? You been cooking up, what you doing?’” Conway said during an interview with Nadeska on Apple Music. “He actually was like, ‘nah man, I ain’t, I ain’t’ and he was saying the way he records is kinda like how I do it. It’s gotta be a vibe. Like, I gotta hear something, they gotta take me there, I gotta be experiencing something, I gotta do something.
“I’m just sitting there soaking up jewels, you know what I’m saying,” he added. “But that’s what it was like with Hov. I’m a listener, so, I’ma sit back and collect all the jewelry as I, as much as I can.”
You can listen to Conway The Machine’s interview on Apple Music here.
Elon Musk’s SNL appearance had far less controversy than many expected, though the days after he showed up and declared Dogecoin a “hustle” apparently haven’t been very kind to his net worth. Musk’s chance to host the show had cryptocurrency enthusiasts excited about the potential to send the coin “to the moon” in value, but while he said it on the show that hasn’t exactly worked out for anyone.
Despite mentioning crypto and quite literally explaining what Dogecoin was on Weekend Update, the price of the coin crashed throughout show and has continued to stay lower than it was in the lead-up to his appearance. Musk has encouraged people to invest in Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies, and his Tesla had previously accepted Bitcoin to buy cars in the past.
But as Forbes pointed out, Tesla and some other of Musk’s investments saw drops as well in the wake of his SNL appearance and other decisions announced this week, to the tune of about a $20 billion loss in his net worth.
Shares of Tesla have fallen 15% so far this week, lowering Musk’s net worth by $20.5 billion—to $145.5 billion as of market close on Thursday—according to Forbes’ estimates. He remains the third-richest person on the planet, just slightly ahead of Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, whose fortune stands at an estimated $127.6 billion.
It’s extremely unlikely the drops were entirely related to SNL, regardless of how well or not he did on the show. But the drops are related, in part, to cryptocurrency. This week Tesla abruptly said it would stop accepting Bitcoin as payment for vehicles, causing both the value of the crypto and Tesla itself to fall. Musk announced the move on Twitter, citing the currency’s mining uses a huge amount of energy and is not viable when it comes to climate change.
As Forbes’ Sergei Klebnikov pointed out, Bitcoin dropped by about 17 percent in the wake of that announcement, and another Tesla announcement about a factory further saw its stock dip. There are a number of different ripple effects that happened, and it’s all very interesting to see what impacts other things in the market. But it’s clear that Musk’s appearance on the show did not give crypto fans the boost they wanted. Since then, in fact, the news has pushed everything a bit further away from the moon.
Some of the best uniforms in the NBA are going away. According to Aaron Dodson of The Undefeated, the Miami Heat will retire their iconic Vice uniforms, which have existed in some form or fashion as the club’s City Edition threads since the 2017-18 season and have consistently been among Nike’s top sellers.
Miami’s last home game of the regular season Thursday against the Philadelphia 76ers marks the end of this storied uniform era. The Heat will suit up in Vice jerseys for what may be the final time as the team prepares to head in a different direction with its uniforms in this year’s playoffs and next season.
The Heat decided to use their Twitter account to celebrate the unis in the lead-up to Thursday night’s game.
Miami’s done four versions of these kits — the first were a sleek black look, followed by fuchsia, blue, and then the gradient look that has become a staple this season. It’s unclear if they will come back at any time in the future, or if the team will ever try to sell Vice-inspired merch going forward, but according to chief marketing officer Michael McCullough, the team is open to anything, even making it the team’s permanent colors if the situation is absolutely correct.
“A ton of people keep asking us, ‘Why don’t you just make Vice the Heat’s permanent colors?’ ” McCullough told The Undefeated. “And I’m not gonna say we don’t have those conversations internally, because we do. And will we continue to have those conversations? Absolutely. … But that’s a big decision, right? You’re talking about the total identity of a brand. There’s an over 30-year history with this team and there’s a lot of equity in red, black and white. We won our first championship in red. That red uniform here has a lore. That’s a long-term decision that we have to make, and you don’t want to make it just because you’ve had a lot of success with this run of uniforms. Having said that, it’s not out of the question though.”
Season two of the HBO comedy The Righteous Gemstones looks primed to be even more chaotic and hilarious than the first things to its latest additions to the cast.
According to Variety, Eric Andre, Jason Schwartzman and Eric Roberts will join the cast of the Danny McBride-led comedy as reoccurring members, and we already know the unsettlingly weird and almost certainly hilarious roles they will play.
The nine-episode Season 2, which is currently in production, will see Schwartzman in the recurring role of Thaniel, a journalist working on a story on the ministries. Roberts will play Junior, who grew up with Eli and has suddenly re-entered his life, while Andre will play Lyle Lissons, a megachurch pastor from Texas who befriends Jesse and Amber.
The news should be joyous for pretty much anyone who enjoyed the first season, as Schwartzman and Andre in particular have a litany of oddball roles to their credits. The Eric Andre Show is a staple of weird comedy on Adult Swim, and he can absolutely pull off a megachurch pastor almost certain to have ulterior motives. Schwartzman, meanwhile, is a veteran of Wes Anderson films and certainly has “journalist working on megachurch expose” in his wheelhouse.
And then there’s Eric Roberts, who seems absolutely game for anything and is a perfect fit for the vibe of the evangelical mayhem McBride and company showcased in its first season. If that’s the energy everyone is bringing to Season 2, we’re all in for a real treat.
Variety reports that Chicago’s Lollapalooza has been cleared to continue with a four-day event in its usual venue (Grant Park) at full capacity — or else, near to it. The festival’s organizers, C3 Presents, are expected to make an official announcement sometime next week, along with headliners. While C3 declined to comment, Variety notes the organizers expressed optimism about the festival’s return in 2021 to the Chicago Tribune, while Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced the city would loosen its pandemic safety restrictions.
The Windy City Smokeout on July 8-11 is expected to be the first street festival, requiring full vaccination for all vendors, performers, and staff, while attendees will need to present proof of a negative COVID test within three days from attendance. Meanwhile, Rolling Loud is scheduled to return to Miami on July 23-25 at the 65,000-capacity Hard Rock Stadium with ASAP Rocky, Post Malone, and Travis Scott headlining, while New York’s Governor’s Ball returns in September, including many of the same artists, as well as more pop-oriented acts like Billie Eilish. If trends in festival booking hold to what they’ve resembled in the past, you can rest assured that many of the same names will appear on Lollapalooza’s announcement next week. Fingers crossed!
On February 19, 2020, a group of outdoor adventurists took a 25-day rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. During the trip, they had no cell service and no contact with the outside world. When they ended they ended their journey on March 14, the man who pulled them ashore asked if they had been in touch with anyone else. When the rafters said no, the man sighed, then launched into an explanation of how the globe had been gripped by the coronavirus pandemic and everything had come to a screeching halt.
The rafters listened with bewilderment as they were told about toilet paper shortages and the NBA season being canceled and everyone being asked to stay at home. One of the river guides, who had done these kinds of off-grid excursions multiple times, said that they’d often joke about coming back to a completely different world—it had just never actually happened before.
The rafters’ story was shared in the New York Times last spring, but they’re not the only ones to have had such an experience.
Twitter user @thought_grime shared a mind-blowing story of a man who came extraordinarily late to the pandemic party last winter.
“I will never forget the guy who came into my work this past December with no mask on saying, ‘Can somebody please tell me what’s going on!!??'” they wrote. “We gave him a mask, learned that he had been living off the grid for a while, and had not yet learned that there was a global pandemic. He was so sweet and so confused and he said he only came to town because he ran out of oats.”
he was so sweet and so confused and he said he only came to town because he ran out of oats
People who live that far off the grid for that long are rare, but they exist. It’s hard to imagine being that unplugged from society, but even those who disconnect even temporarily can find themselves returning to a world that’s very different than the one they left, sometimes just days before.
Imagine being backwoods camping when 9/11 happened. Or when the Soviet Union fell. Imagine coming back to a world forever changed by a major event you had no idea had occurred.
@pdxbrock @thought_grime @clapifyoulikeme I came back from a backwoods camping trip to find the Soviet Union no longer existed.
— Kits Fool and 1000s of others (@kitzfuhel) 1620869575.0
It’s hard to imagine now with everyone carrying internet-enabled cell phones, but even being disconnected for a matter of hours can leave a person feeling dazed and confused if they miss a major event. There were some people who didn’t know their loved ones were safe after 9/11 hours after it had happened, and even some people who didn’t know it had happened.
@Goofyfan_Chuck @thought_grime A friend of mine worked in the twin towers. On 9/11 he missed his train then the tra… https://t.co/Qj3vd04x1k
We’ve become accustomed to news coming to us in real- time, but it wasn’t that long ago that news of only extraordinary news events warranted interrupting regular television programming. And prior to television, news came out only as fast as word of mouth and print newspapers could carry it.
These days, it’s generally people who have chosen to live in isolation or those who are living someplace remote who find themselves blindsided by major world changes that they missed.
For instance, imagine what it was like for this team of science researchers studying on a remote atoll 1300 miles from Hawaii, who returned to civilization—and a raging pandemic they hadn’t heard about—in December.
Isolated Science Researchers Learn of Pandemic 8 Months In
Living in the age of constant connectedness and instant information makes these kinds of stories all the more incredible, and perhaps ironically, also makes them more accessible to more people. The fact that some of us can miss big things due to a lack of technology, and then utilize the technology we were lacking to share that experience with millions is a sort of surreal sign of the times.
At long last, the Friends reunion is finally happening. On Thursday, HBO Max unveiled the official teaser for Friends: The Reunion, along with a release date for the highly anticipated special: May 27. While the teaser doesn’t show much except for a silhouette of all six of the original cast members walking together, fans will be happy two know that that the reunion is only two weeks away after the pandemic postponed the production barely a month after it was announced in 2020.
HBO Max also unveiled an insane amount of guest stars, which includes faces hardcore fans of the NBC sitcom will surely remember: Monica’s old boyfriend Richard (Tom Selleck), Rachel’s younger sister Jill (Reese Witherspoon), and of course, the bane of Chandler’s existence, Janice (Maggie Wheeler.) Also, for some reason Game of Thrones‘ Kit Harrington shows up.
Here’s the full list via Entertainment Weekly, and yes, we noticed a distinct lack of Paul Rudd, too:
In addition to the series main cast members Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schimmer, Friends: The Reunion will feature guest appearances by BTS, Lady Gaga, David Beckham, Justin Bieber, James Corden, Cindy Crawford, Cara Delevingne, Elliott Gould, Kit Harington, Larry Hankin, Mindy Kaling, Thomas Lennon, Christina Pickles, Tom Selleck, James Michael Tyler, Maggie Wheeler, Reese Witherspoon, and Malala Yousafzai.
As for how HBO Max arranged a reunion where others have failed, each of the original six cast members are reportedly getting paid $2.5 million each for the special.
Friends: The Reunion reunion hits HBO Max on May 27.
On Thursday, the CDC announced that fully vaccinated individuals could begin going to outdoor and indoor gatherings of any size without needing to wear a mask, as the biggest step yet towards an indication of a more full return to normalcy as vaccination rates expand nationwide. In the sports world, this means more fans in stands, which has been a welcome sight, especially for the athletes who have not enjoyed playing in front of empty arenas and stadiums for the past year-plus.
In baseball, many stadiums are at or nearing full capacity, and while that brings the joy of the full ballpark experience back to baseball it also means, well the full ballpark experience good and bad. On the negative side of fans being back is that fans of opposing teams are back to jawing with each other and starting fights, which we saw in some matinee action on Thursday at Coors Field during Padres-Rockies. The Rockies have been one of baseball’s worst teams to start the season, but picked up a 3-2 win over San Diego on Thursday.
The conversation about the game was not about the Rockies beating the Padres, but what happened in the stands when a Padres fan very calmly strolled up to a Rockies fan and knocked him out cold with one punch, sparking a brawl as other Rockies fans descended on the man in the Padres brown jersey.
We have absolutely no context for what led to this, but clearly there had been some jawing and as the guy in the Padres jersey comes rolling up on the Rockies fan, he pops up expecting some more, up close talk. Unfortunately for that gentleman, the Padres fan was not here for talk and was about that action, boss, absolutely cooking the Rockies fan with the best right hook at a baseball stadium since Rougned Odor gave Jose Bautista one in Texas.
The Rockies fan goes out like a light and then it becomes all out chaos in the stands as fans jump to his aid, albeit too late for him as he got rocked by one punch. This is a reminder that if you’re jawing with another fan, you can never be sure that they aren’t there looking for an excuse to knock you out, especially after a year inside. As for what happened with the fans in question, Denver police say no charges were filed by the fan that got punched and no arrests were made.
The person who threw the first punch, was contacted by police. However, the person struck did not want to press charges. No one was arrested.
— Denver Police Dept. (@DenverPolice) May 13, 2021
When it comes to pop culture figures that rappers love to reference in their songs, NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal stands head and shoulders above the rest — literally, in most cases. Not only does he have an extensive hoop, film, and rap career to draw lyrical comparisons to, but there is a wealth of words that rhyme with “Shaq” — not to mention, his many, many nicknames. The Big Diesel, who’s now best-known for his nightly hoops analysis on NBA on TNT, tried his hand at breaking down some of the bars about him from rap titans like Biggie, Cardi B, Drake, and Jay-Z for Genius’sBetween The Lines.
Throughout the course of the video, Shaq gives his impression of the many, many rap lines about him. Nas’s “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” was one of the first songs to make reference to O’Neal (more precisely, to the way “Shaquille holds the pill”), blowing the then-NBA sophomore’s mind, while Mannie Fresh’s “Still Fly” line about buying a car from him turns out to be a true story. Shaq also notes he wasn’t bugged by Biggie’s line about losing money on Lakers games from “I Love The Dough” because it too was based on the performance of the Lakers in their first three playoffs appearances with Shaq on the team, plus due to BIG’s contribution to Shaq’s own album — which he naturally gets into as well.
There’s plenty more to talk about; watch the full video up top.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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