GoneTrending

With just a few weeks until the NBA Playoffs start, the Los Angeles Clippers are unsure when they will see Serge Ibaka again. Before the Clippers hosted the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday, head coach Tyronn Lue said that there was no set “potential return date” for Ibaka.

Ty Lue: No “potential return date” for Serge Ibaka.

— Mirjam Swanson (@MirjamSwanson) May 5, 2021

Ibaka, who signed with Los Angeles in the offseason, has not played since March 14 due to lower back tightness. After Monday’s night’s game, he’ll have missed 26 consecutive games due to the injury. For the season, he’s appeared in 39 games — all starts — while averaging 10.9 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks a night. After Los Angeles faces Toronto, there will be just six games left in the regular season.

In the short term, this could hurt the Clippers’ chances of getting a higher seed in the Western Conference. Prior to the Raptors game, they are four games back of the top-seed Jazz and 3.5 back of the second-seeded Suns. That ties them with the Nuggets, who are off on Monday. If the Clippers end up as the third or fourth seed, they’ll could easily end up playing the Lakers (who do have their own injury concerns) or the Mavericks in round one.

There are also real playoff concerns here. The Clippers have Ivica Zubac as a starter and he’s solid. They also have Demarcus Cousins, who they signed for the rest of the season last week. But Lue hasn’t always trusted Zubac when it matters and Cousins is not what he was at his peak. Ibaka, if he’s right, offers a more mobile center choice than the team’s other options. He also unlocks some five-out units for Lue to turn to. Not having him now hurts and it’ll hurt even more if Ibaka isn’t available or isn’t at 100 percent come the playoffs to support Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.

Back in 2019, when DJ Khaled dropped his 11th album, Father of Ashad, he released a boatload of videos within the first 24 hours. With his new album Khaled Khaled, he’s doing something similar, though at a much slower rate this time around. The latest is for “Every Change I Get,” and it finds the rapper stasnding side by side with Lil Baby and Lil Durk, all of them surrounded by women, luxury cars, burning objects, and more, all while Durk and Baby deliver verses about their relentless pursuit of success.

The new video is the fourth that Khaled’s has released in five days. He kicked things off with a lavish one for “Sorry Not Sorry,” with Jay-Z and Nas, before heading to Jamaica to connect with reggae artists Buju Banton, Capleton, and Bounty Killer for their collaboration “Where You Come From.” Next, he called on Lil Wayne and Jeremih for the album’s intro track, “Thankful.”

As for Durk and Baby, the two rappers are currently working on their joint album, The Voice & The Hero, which is set to arrive in the near future.

You can watch the video for “Every Chance I Get” above.

Khaled Khaled is out now via Epic Records. Get it here.

Ever he was kicked off most of social media — including Twitter, his favorite, for all eternity — Donald Trump has threatened to start his own online platform. It seemed far-fetched, if not impossible. To run one requires a lot of bandwidth, which he probably can’t get, or at least a lot of money, which he probably doesn’t have. But lo and behold, on Tuesday, he debuted his great idea. And it was just a blog. That only he could access.

It appears to be called “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” and all it is is a place to dump the press releases he’s been releasing over the last couple months — the ones that are clearly just what would have been tweets, typos and random all-caps and all, placed below formal-looking letterhead. That quickie diss of Mitt Romney in which he calls him a “stone cold loser” that he would have fired off at 3am? It’s here instead.

You can repost Trump’s posts on Twitter or Facebook, but there’s no way to interact with them on his special social media site. It’s a pretty elegant reflection of his own isolation, down in Mar-a-Lago, ranting to strangers about the election he lost half a year back.

When news broke of the platform, a lot of people, including us, compared it to a blog. But others had another, even older comparison: He’d just reinvented LiveJournal, the diary site that took off in the early days of the internet after it took off with the public. Founded in 1999, it came well before the term “blog” was born, and it allowed users to blather about their thoughts and dreams and grievances. It even allowed you to list you general mood, like “angry” or “feeling excited.”

Trump’s site doesn’t have those, but it does have lots of grievances. Still, when it launched, everyone made the same LiveJournal joke.

Does Donald J. Trump even know what LiveJournal is? Did he have an account that we haven’t discovered yet? He seems to have only discovered the Internet when Twitter came around, allowing succinct, rapid-fire posts. But perhaps he’ll expand the capabilities of his newfangled sosical media site, and we’ll really learn about his dreams and his feelings.

It took three years, but in March frustrated (and persistent) DC heads finally got their precious “Snyder Cut.” The new edition gave something approximating the insane ambitions director Zack Snyder’s had for Justice League, which was supposed to be the comic line’s version of Marvel’s Avengers. But it almost didn’t happen, and in a new interview the filmmaker explains he spent a while afraid to support the fans calling for the cut lest his old bosses get mad.

“I was more worried the studio would sue me. Do something to silence me,” Snyder told The Sunday Times, in a bit teased out by IGN. So he stayed quiet, just as he had ever since leaving the project in early 2017. He kept his trap shut as replacement director Joss Whedon did extensive reshoots and as the studio took what was supposed to be a serious, complex study of superherodom and tried to retcon it into a bubbly (and relatively short!) entertainment, complete with catchphrases and “boo-yahs.” And he kept it up as it got lackluster reviews and underwhelming box office returns.

Not that the online fans who helped resuscitate it have been portrayed as heroes. Far from it. They’ve been called out for their online bullying, with some worrying that by pestering a studio into doing its bidding, they’ve set a terrible precedent. But Snyder defended them, saying, “Here’s the reality. That fandom raised $750,000 for suicide prevention and mental health awareness.”

Still, now they’re trying to get Warner Bros. to let him do his whole “SnyderVerse.”

(Via The Sunday Times and IGN)

YFN Lucci is once again in trouble with the law. The Atlanta rapper, born Rayshawn Bennett, was indicted on racketeering charges connected to a murder that occurred in his hometown of Atlanta. The announcement was shared through the city’s local news station, WSB-TV, which also revealed that Bennett was one of 12 individuals indicted in relation to the incident. The rapper is also accused of tampering with evidence at the crime scene, strangulation, encouraging the assault of a person for playing a rival gang’s music, and other offenses.

After news of the indictment arrived, Bennett’s lawyer Drew Fielding denied the accusations in a statement to WSB-TV. “He’s not a gang member,” Fielding said. “What he is is an internationally recognized musical artist that is a triple platinum winner, that has performed all over the United States and all over the world.”

The racketeering charges are not connected to the felony murder charges Bennett received at the top of the year. In this case, the rapper was charged in connection with the December 10 shooting death of 28-year-old James Adams. He was also accused of aggravated assault, participating in criminal street gang activity, and more in relation to Adams’ death. He surrendered to police in mid-January and was released nearly a month later on $500,000 bond.

YFN Lucci is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Over the course of his career, Rostam Batmanglij has worked with a plethora of big names in pop, indie, and hip-hop, meaning his rolodex when it comes time to request guest features is quite extensive. From super recognizable collaborators like Haim and Charli XCX, to more obscure indie royalty like Hunx And His Punx leader Seth Bogart, Ariel Rechtshaid, and Remi Wolf, the rotating crew of people in the back of the cab helps drive home the song’s sweet message.

This is one of severals track Rostam has released off his upcoming second solo album, Changephobia, including “4Runner” and “These Kids We Knew,” “Unfold You,” and “Under Control.” Though he’s been working on the record for quite some time, it’s slated for release in early June.

Of course, part of why his own solo work was on the back burner over the last three years was probably due to his work producing Clairo’s Immunity and Haim’s excellent Women In Music Pt. 2. Rostam co-directed the video with Jason Lester, and a full list of all the celebrity guests is included below:

Demi Adejuyigbe, Seth Bogart, Matt DiMona, Kaia Gerber, HAIM: (Alana Haim, Danielle Haim, Este Haim), Ghazal Hashemi, Carter Howe, Huck Kwong, Julian McClanahan, Chris Paloma, Ariel Rechtshaid, Nick Robinson, Bryce Willard Smithe, Samantha Urbani, Wallows: (Braeden Lemasters, Dylan Minnette, Cole Preston), Remi Wolf, Charli XCX

Shiloh Barrientos, Dwight Boyce, Shaneel Chand, Sadie Chen, Paola Cruz, Kaydence De Mare, Alisha Erozer, Ron Gilbert, Richard Kray, Stacy Leland, Odell Mack, David Manning, Yoko Misawa, Paul Olguin, Rhoda Pell, Payton Poissant, Jessica Salazar, Nolan Sanyeh, Ayva Severy, Chok Suwanavisootr, Mark Winn.

Watch the video above and look for Rostam’s album out on 6/4 via Matsor Projects. Pre-order it here.

The 2021 Oscars were generally seen as a noble semi-failure, though even that descriptor seems harsh. For everything that didn’t work (the weirdly rushed In Memoriam segment, for one), there were two, maybe even three experiments that did (the cool opening long take, arguably the longer speeches). There was one failure that trumped them all: the ending. The award for Best Actor was moved to the end, knocking Best Picture — the capper for eons — down a few pegs. But it didn’t go to the perceived favorite, the late Chadwick Boseman. It went to Anthony Hopkins, who wasn’t there. Then the show abruptly ended.

In what was essentially an exit interview with Vanity Fair, Steven Soderbergh — one of three producers for the rejigged pandemic-era show — stopped just shy of admitting something most people assumed was true: That Best Actor came last because Boseman was expected to win, for the August Wilson adaptation Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which would have been quite a closer. Soderbergh — an Oscar-winner himself — didn’t say that outright. But he basically said that.

Soderbergh said that that acceptance speech, which would have been given by the acclaimed actor’s widow, Simone Ledward Boseman, “would have been such a shattering moment” that “to come back after that would have been just impossible.” And so Best Picture was bumped to two awards back. “I said if there was even the sliver of a chance that he would win and that his widow would speak, then we were operating under the fact that was the end of the show.”

Whether he was right, we’ll never know. It was a big gamble, and the producers lost. What’s worse, it had dismal ratings (though, mind you, so have all pandemic-era awards shows). But that’s okay, Soderbergh argued, because this year was about experiments, and experiments often fail.

“You have to understand this show was very much viewed by us and by the Academy as an opportunity to try some really different stuff,” Soderbergh said. “There are going to be some things that work and some things that don’t, things that people like, things that people don’t.” He added, “That’s the point.”

Soderbergh even defended another controversial move: not allowing Anthony Hopkins, who won what would have been Boseman’s award, for his work in the Alzheimer’s drama The Father, to give his acceptance speech over Zoom. Instead, when Hopkin’s name was called, he was fast asleep in his home in Wales. When asked if he regretted not bending the rules, even for Sir Anthony Hopkins, Soderbergh’s answer was short: “No.”

(Via Vanity Fair)

At long last, the world finally received a release date for J. Cole’s next album: The Off-Season, which the rapper has been teasing since late last year, will arrive next week, on May 14. Cole shared the news on his social media accounts, and he also revealed the album’s artwork: an image of him standing in front of a burning basketball hoop. While everyone else has to wait, the rapper’s labelmates are already letting people know what to expect before it arrives.

Hours after J. Cole made the announcement, Cozz, who’s also signed to Dreamville Records, took to Twitter to share his thoughts on the forthcoming release. “From what I’ve heard so far this cole best sh*t to date,” he wrote. His comments come after labelmate Bas hinted at the album’s impending arrival in a now-deleted Instagram post, writing, “pack your bags. [rocket emoji] in two weeks.”

The road to The Off-Season dates back to Cole’s 2018 album, KOD, which is when he revealed that he already had a name for his subsequent effort. It was originally teased for a 2020 release, but the year came and went without its arrival. In December, he shared a to-do list that featured The Off-Season as something he wants to complete before releasing its follow-up, The Fall Off.

On Monday night, the Washington Capitals beat the New York Rangers 6-3, but the game caused buzz for an altercation around the net that saw Caps forward Tom Wilson slam the Rangers’ Artemi Panarin to the ground, causing a lower leg injury that will end his season.

The incident took place after a scrum at the net when Wilson hit Pavel Buchnevich in the head while on the ground and Panarin skated in to pull Wilson off of him. Wilson then slammed Panarin to the ground twice and was given a 10-minute penalty for game misconduct and a four-minute penalty for roughing.

After the game the two coaches had very different views of what took place, via ESPN.

“We all saw it. There are lines that can’t be crossed in this game. There’s just zero respect for the game in general. You got one of the star players in this league now that could have gotten seriously, seriously hurt in that incident,” said Quinn following the Rangers’ 6-3 loss to the Capitals. “You all saw what happened, and it happens time and time again with him. Totally unnecessary.
…
Capitals coach Peter Laviolette didn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary during the second-period incident. “I thought it was just a scrum. Physical play. There was something going on originally with the goalie and jamming at the goalie. We had a bunch of players jump in there. It happens a lot,” he said.

Some broke the video down in slow-motion to show just how dangerous Wilson’s takedown of Panarin was, but the league determined that the only punishment was a fine for what he did to Buchnevich.

As such, the Rangers were furious with the decision, calling the NHL’s head of player safety “unfit” to continue in his current role if all he is going to do in such an instance is dole out a $5,000 fine.

It’s as scorched earth as you’ll ever see an official team statement go, calling out the league and, by name, the head of player safety. On the other side, the Capitals were much more celebratory about Wilson’s actions, initially tweeting “Capitals Choose Violence” and Wilson was living “rent free” in people’s heads in a since-deleted tweet, but still had a photo of Wilson being taken to the box afterwards in their post-victory celebratory tweet.

The two teams meet again on Wednesday in New York and there will surely be some bad blood that spills over between the two sides.

Manchester City became the first side to punch its ticket to the 2021 Champions League final on Tuesday, as the English champions-elect toppled French giants Paris Saint-Germain, 2-0, to win the tie on aggregate, 4-1. It was an impressive display by the Mancunians, but one moment that occurred in the second half of the match has drawn scorn from the football watching world.

PSG’s Ángel Di María, in a moment of frustration, stomped on the foot of Manchester City’s Fernandinho after the ball had rolled out of play and Fernandinho tried to keep him from taking a quick throw in. It was an obvious red card — Di María was promptly sent off — and in the aftermath, CBS commentator Jim Beglin repeated a racist trope that South American players have shorter tempers than other players to explain why the Argentine did this.

Several minutes of ultra-chippy play occurred before Beglin addressed his comment, apologizing to anyone who “has taken offense.”

There are plenty of reasons why this is a completely ridiculous comment from Beglin, chief among them being that all of English football did a social media blackout over the weekend to raise awareness of the lack of attention that companies have paid to addressing racism on their platforms. Beglin himself participated in the blackout, but it is evident that he, much like the sport itself, have plenty of work to still do. Whether CBS will address Beglin’s commentary publicly or not remains to be seen, but plenty of fans were understandably upset.