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The second game of the NBA season to be postponed due to COVID-19 health and safety protocols will be Sunday’s Celtics-Heat game. Boston came in with just eight players available, meeting the minimum requirement but would have been without stars Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, but an inconclusive test result for Miami will actually be what causes the postponement, per The Athletic’s Shams Charania.

As Charania reports, contact tracing from the inconclusive test has led the Heat to having not enough players eligible to play — this comes after Avery Bradley was ruled out earlier in the morning. It’s the first postponement since the Rockets openers against the Thunder, but Miami and Boston are not the only teams dealing with COVID-19 issues at the moment. The Nets will be getting Kevin Durant back after a 7-day quarantine on Sunday afternoon and the Sixers recently played a game with seven players (the eighth “eligible” player was Mike Scott who did not play) after Seth Curry returned a positive test in the middle of their game in Brooklyn, which he was on the bench but not playing, last week.

The reality of the situation for the NBA is become readily apparent, as they are seeing numerous positives and contact tracing, which to be clear is critical and important to do to limit the spread, is wreaking havoc on rosters and making every night something of a mystery. Still, the league is adamant about pressing forward, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

Prior to the season, the league refused to put a set number of cases or define the situation that would lead to an all-out stoppage of the season. One does have to wonder at what point they would have to take that into consideration, but for now they’ll continue just trying to get through as much as they can and postpone games when absolutely necessary, as has become the case in Boston tonight.

In the wake of the failed but still deadly MAGA coup on Wednesday, the Republican party has been in tatters. Those who’ve long supported outgoing president (and social media pariah) Donald J. Trump, or remained silent as he shredded norms, have been jumping ship, suddenly welcoming his successor, Joe Biden, with open arms. One prominent Republican who’s never been fond of Trump — quite the opposite, in fact — is Colin Powell, former secretary of state during George W. Bush’s first term. On Sunday, a visibly vexed Powell went on CNN to announce he was finally done with his longtime party.

Powell was speaking to host Fareed Zakaria, who asked him, bluntly, about the state of the GOP, who have “refused to condemn him,” who have cozied up to him, and allowed the horrors that erupted on Wednesday to grow.

“They did and that’s why I can no longer call myself a fellow Republican,” Powell replied. He continued:

I’m not a fellow of anything right now. I’m just a citizen who has voted Republican, voted Democrat throughout my entire career. And right now I’m just watching my country and not concerned with parties. I do not know how he’s able to attract all these people. They should’ve known better. But they were so taken by their political standing and how none of them wanted to put themselves at political risk, they would not stand up and tell the truth or stand up and criticize him or criticize others. And that’s what we need: We need people who will speak the truth, who will remember that we are here for our fellow citizens, they are here for our country. They are not here simply to be re-elected again. Come on, guys, you can make it in private life if you don’t get re-elected. But right now we need you to be real Americans who we can trust, who will tell the truth, who will argue on the basis of facts and not just argue on the basis of what their primary looks like.

Powell has been critical of Trump from the very start and, as someone who’s been more or less out of politics for the last 15 years, he never had worry about enraging him or his base to keep a job. Still, he’s clearly not sympathetic to those who did just that, and especially those, like Ted Cruz and Matt Gaetz, who contributed to his misinformation about voter fraud, which led to the violence seen on Wednesday.

Of course, it’s not like Powell has exactly been in lockstep with his now formally former party.

Maybe that’s why he’s one of the most respected people who, until the other day, called himself a Republican.

There was a lot of “welcome to the resistance” talk.

And, inevitably, there were reminders that Powell played a key role in the misinformation campaign that erroneously got America into the Iraq War almost two decades ago.

After two straight first round exits from the playoffs, the Ravens looked early on like they might be headed for a third when they fell behind 10-0 to Tennessee in the first quarter on Sunday. The chatter about Lamar Jackson in the postseason was already starting to warm up, but Baltimore’s defense stood strong from that point, allowing just three Titans points in the final three quarters and Jackson got loose on the ground for some big plays to push the Ravens over the line at 20-13 to pick up his first playoff win.

The Titans had a chance to drive down the field and tie the game with four minutes to play after a Ravens field goal, but Kalif Raymond slipped on a post route and Ryan Tannehill’s pass found the waiting arms of Marcus Peters for the game-sealing interception with just under two minutes to play. It was a key play, but what will be most talked about is the celebration, as the Ravens ran onto the field and danced on the Tennessee logo — picking up a 15-yard penalty that actually made things a bit dicey if not for a big Jackson run to seal things.

It was an obvious callback to earlier in the season when the Titans stomped on the Ravens logo in pregame, leading to jawing between Tennessee and the Ravens players and coaches, including John Harbaugh.

After taking the final kneeldown to end the game, Baltimore ensured there would be no funny business or fights by taking off straight to the locker room, with just Harbaugh and a few players going out for handshakes to avoid any brawling.

The Titans and Ravens very clearly don’t like each other and this win will be extra sweet after last year saw Tennessee upset Baltimore as the 1-seed. It also was smart by Harbaugh to send everyone straight to the locker room rather than risk letting Peters or anyone else chirp at the Titans and start something with another game to come.

Over the last few days, the calls to remove Donald Trump from office have come from all corners of the political world. They arrived after the Capitol in Washington D.C. was broken into and vandalized by MAGA rioters last Wednesday. Democrats and even some Republicans are seeking to remove Trump from office, whether it be through impeachment or by invoking the 25th amendment, and some names from the music world have joined in this call to action, one of them being Demi Lovato.

The singer shared an Instagram post that called on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th amendment to remove the president from office.

“We must all come together condemning the mob that stormed the Capitol this week,” Lovato said in the caption alongside a video of The View co-host Meghan McCain asking the vice president to take action. “Donald Trump incited violence against our democratically elected officials and is unfit to lead this country.” Lovato added, “@vp, please invoke the 25th amendment + congress please move forward with impeachment. We must protect the future of our democracy.”

This is not the first time Demi Lovato has condemned the storming of the Capitol. Last Wednesday, she shared a message to fans on Twitter that expressed her disappointment in the event as a whole. “My heart is broken. It makes me to sad to believe how naive I was to think this couldn’t possibly happen, and yet it did. Here we are. For everyone in my comments saying ‘where’s d7’ or wanting me to sing instead of speaking up about what needs to change in this country,” she said in the first of two tweets. “THIS IS WHY I POST AS MUCH AS I DO. THIS IS WHY I CARE. THIS CANNOT HAPPEN ANY FUCKING MORE. I’m angry, embarrassed and ashamed.” She also said fans could expect new music soon. “I’m in the studio working on something special after today’s assault on democracy.”

You can view her Instagram post above.

Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez has spent the days following Wednesday’s attempted coup criticizing Senator Josh Hawley for whining about losing a book deal after helping incite the violence. She’s also supported a second impeachment of Donald Trump if he does not resign, which looks increasingly unlikely as the days pass. But on Sunday she called out Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Twitter for complaining about Twitter follower counts and apparent censorship, noting first and foremost that she’s likely telling on herself in the process.

Conservatives have spent the days following the coup attempt complaining online about dwindling follower counts on social media and sites like Parler getting booted from mobile app stores due to a lack of moderation of hate speech.

On Sunday, AOC retweeted a Huckabee Sanders tweet about her plummeting Twitter follower count and pointed out several things, starting with the fact that those followers disappearing is likely because countless QAnon and conspiracy-filled accounts, like Donald Trump’s, have been suspended.

More than that, though, she tried to point out that Republicans seem far more concerned about an intentionally misleading first amendment argument than actual threats of harm to the nation. Not to mention there’s still an ongoing pandemic that’s killing record numbers of people in the United States every day.

Ocasio-Cortez was far from the only person to call out Sanders and other conservatives tracking follower counts more closely than coronavirus infections, hospitalizations or vaccinations over the weekend, but few politicians can do so more eloquently and succinctly than the Representative from New York.

Meghan McCain has not had a great return on The View, struggling to get support for her claim that Donald Trump supporters should be respected and left to reason with a Trump-incited coup attempt in Washington last week by those same supporters.

McCain, who was on maternity leave until recently, was told on air by a View co-host that she was not missed while she was gone, and she’s clashed with Whoopi Goldberg on air in recent days as well. And this sort of on-air tension has been impossible to miss, and may have the pandemic to blame at least in part.

According to a report from E! the tensions might be high on the show due, at least in part, to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A source exclusively tells E! News that not being able to film the daytime talk show in person is contributing to a sense of increased tension, especially as Meghan McCain returns from maternity leave. The insider explains, “There has always been a sense of family behind the scenes at The View, but it has been harder to maintain that camaraderie amongst the show’s hosts while producing the show remotely.”

As the source explained, the on-air members of the show were not able to “hide” from each other when they were all filming in the same place. So even if things were tense during the show, which features several different hosts of various political persuasions, things were never really allowed to boil up for too long.

“The women typically start their mornings together in hair and make-up before passionately sharing their opinions,” the source continues. “Then once the show goes off the air, the panelists all walk off set together, and there is almost always a post-show meeting—allowing the hosts to smooth over any tension that may have bubbled over during the day’s episode.”

That lack of post-show meeting seems to be contributing to some of the troubles that have showed up on air. Laughing could be heard from somewhere on camera while Chris Murphy was explaining the First Amendment to McCain on Friday. And while there’s always been an “embrace debate” aspect of the show, McCain in particular has seen a lot of animosity since she’s returned.

[via E!]

Fans of Lil Kim will soon be able to hear her voice on the upcoming season of American Gangster: Trap Queens as she signed on to narrate the show’s second season. The BET-led show is set to return on January 14 and it will highlight some of the most notorious female gangsters. The show’s synopsis reads that series as a whole “examines the lives and the legend behind some of America’s most notorious female criminals set against the backdrop of the cities they ruled.”

The first season of the show, which premiered in 2019, was narrated by Jeezy, but for a show centered on women, Lil Kim should fit in well to its story. Frank Sinton, the executive producer of American Gangster: Trap Queens, shared what fans can expect for the upcoming season in a brief statement.

“While addressing social issues such as systematic racial and gender disparities, the stories this season vary from thrilling to shocking and everything in between,” he said. The first five episodes of the new season will be released on Thursday with Perrion Roberts, Brandi Davis, Dwen Curry, Tiffani Rose Peak, and Shauntay Henderson getting their own episode.

In addition to her new narration role, Lil Kim and Foxy Brown were set to reportedly face-off in an upcoming Verzuz battle, but Swizz Beatz shut down the rumors and said it was unconfirmed.

Think back, if you can handle it, to a time before social media. How is it possible, you may ask, that people existed without Twitter and Facebook and Parler and Pinterest? Did they even talk to each other or merely grumble under their breath as they passed? It’s unclear, but somehow business got done and society managed to coalesce into something mature enough to create the vast digital spaces where MAGA coups could be organized in plain sight.

But with Donald Trump finally banned from Twitter, and MAGA-friendly Parler looking for new web hosting and likely to be taken offline for a stretch, conservatives are complaining that it’s getting a lot harder to rile up their followers with coup attempts, wild misinformation about elections and lunatic QAnon conspiracies.

Which brings us to Republican house member Devin Nunes of California, who believes that conservatives are simply out of ways to communicate with constituents now that social media companies are taking measures to ban hate speech and the spread of dangerous misinformation and conspiracies about satanist pedophiles running the government and Hollywood. In what was billed as an “exclusive” interview on Fox News on Sunday, Nunes claimed that “conservatives have no way to communicate” despite being on live television on the network that bills itself as the most watched news channel in the country.

As the Daily Beast noted, Nunes was pretty steamed on Fox News, bemoaning all the followers he might lose on Parler if the plug gets pulled on its web hosting after Amazon Web Services stops supporting it this weekend.

“This is clearly a violation of antitrust, civil rights, the RICO statute,” Nunes added, calling on the Department of Justice and the FBI to open a “racketeering investigation” into what he views as a coordinated “attack” on Parler. “I have three million followers on Parler,” the congressman whined. “Tonight, I will no longer be able to communicate with those people.”

It cannot be said enough that, despite conservatives claiming strict adherence to the constitution and carrying pocket versions of it with them everywhere they go, there’s an incredible misunderstanding of what the first amendment actually is and what it protects. Private companies deciding not to deal with dangerous and — especially this week, seditious — speech is not a violation of the first amendment because they’re not part of the federal government. And there’s also the hilariously simple-minded conclusion that, without Twitter, there’s simply no way to talk to anyone.

Dismissing the simple fact that he’s claiming an inability to communicate while talking on Fox News, there’s also a wide variety of other ways to, you know, get your ideas out there if you are a sitting member of the House of Representatives. Modern media has created a phalanx of conservative news outlets, and Nunes has written and published a book. And it’s also important to note that politicians have entire press staffs at their behest to write speeches, press releases and access many other forms of direct communication to journalists and, more importantly, their constituents.

Nunes is being willfully misleading, to say the least, though that’s really nothing new. What is new, and entirely his problem, is that there may now actually have to deal with consequences for misleading others and distorting reality.

The 2020-21 season hasn’t gotten off to the start the Washington Wizards wanted, as they fell to 2-8 on Saturday with a loss to the Heat while without Bradley Beal who is currently in the league’s health and safety protocol after a postgame conversation with Jayson Tatum earlier in the week who tested positive.

Aside from Beal, who continues to be one of the NBA’s best offensive players, one of the few bright spots thus far for the Wizards has been the play of center Thomas Bryant. The fourth year big man is averaging 14.3 points and 6.1 rebounds per game on tremendous efficiency, shooting 64.8 percent from the field and 42.9 percent from three-point range to start the season. It was a leap the Wizards hoped to see, but on Saturday, his season was cut short as he went down with a knee injury on a rebound attempt early in the first quarter.

On Sunday, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Bryant’s MRI had confirmed the worst and his season was indeed over after having torn his ACL.

It’s a brutal blow for both Bryant and the Wizards, as he was enjoying a career year and provided Washington with tremendous energy and spacing on the offensive end. Scott Brooks will have to get creative with lineups to account for Bryant’s absence, as Robin Lopez figures to get more minutes and Washington also will probably play more small ball to keep their spacing intact. Hopefully Bryant is able to make a full recovery and come back in full next season, because he had been one of the early breakout players in the NBA this season.

This weekend has been all about the six-game NFL Wild Card slate as the playoffs begin and teams try to keep their Super Bowl hopes alive. For 18 teams, those dreams fell to the wayside last week or well before and this past week hasn’t been about preparation for a game but preparation for the offseason and trying to set themselves up moving forward.

Houston is among the group of teams that entered the offseason looking for a new head coach and a new general manager. They’ve brought in the latter, Nick Caserio who has long been the Patriots director of player personnel, and head coach interviews continue, with Panthers offensive coordinator Joe Brady as the presumptive favorite for many. What is most interesting about the Houston coaching search is the list of names not on their interview list, most notably Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bienemy, who is considered one of the top candidates on the market.

Bienemy also happens to be the preferred choice for star quarterback Deshaun Watson, who has heard nothing but effervescent praise from Patrick Mahomes about the OC. That Bienemy isn’t getting an interview and Brady is a lead candidate with far less experience has reportedly left the star very upset, and, as ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported on Sunday morning, has him at least mulling the possibilities of pushing his way out via trade and where he’d want to end up.

Not only did they not take his request for coaching search advice — something they had previously promised to do — but they also apparently chose Caserio over the two GM candidates that their search firm had recommended, leading to even more frustration, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

The Dolphins make the most sense for a Watson trade for a number of reasons, most notably that they have a young quarterback in Tua Tagovailoa that is the kind of prospect that could pique the interest of the Texans in moving their face of the franchise should he want out. From Watson’s perspective, the Dolphins are a team on the cusp, with a terrific defense and an offense with some solid weapons that seemingly could take the proverbial leap if they just had a better quarterback under center.

The report from Mortensen is fairly soft in terms of there being anything resembling a formal trade request coming in the immediate future, but simply seems to note that it’s on the table with how this offseason has started for Houston. If Watson does push his way out, he would become the top trade target for just about half the league, as he represents an upgrade at quarterback for all but maybe five teams.