Action Bronson returned in September with his latest album Only For Dolphins, but the rapper had apparently set his sights on a larger project. While Bronson was the star of his own TV show F*ck, That’s Delicious and also made a cameo in the Netflix film The Irishman, he’s hoping to make it on the big screen. The rapper recently revealed he auditioned for a part in the upcoming The Matrix 4 movie, but it didn’t go as well as he expected.
In a recent interview with NME, Bronson described why didn’t manage to score the role:
“I definitely didn’t get the role. I would have known, I would’ve acted in it. I would have been in a f*cking harness hanging off a wire from a bridge or something. I definitely read for it, though, but it was bizarre. It was during COVID and the reading was over the phone. It was just a weird situation. I’m better in person, I have to charm you. You’ve actually got to see the whole me. It’s not good to just get a snippet of me over the phone, you know? You have to really take in the Baklava experience.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Bronson said owns over 5,000 VHS tapes, which is why he made many references to his favorite films in Only For Dolphins. “I was just nerding out. I’m a nerd when it comes to movies and shows,” he said. “I feel like I just know so many of them from back in the day and so many obscure ones too. I have over 5,000 VHS tapes in my possession. That stuff is easy for me. It’s low-hanging fruit.”
Only For Dolphins is out now via Loma Vista. Get it here.
Soccer Mommy released her sophomore album Color Theory in late February. While the singer’s tour was cut short behind the release, Soccer Mommy has managed to stay engaged with her listeners through a handful of captivating visuals. Now, the singer returns with a vivid video to her track “Crawling In My Skin.”
Directed by Adam Kolodny, the visual offers a look at Soccer Mommy through many colorful lenses but isn’t the first time she shared a video to the track. Back in May, the singer shared a series of 8-bit videos alongside the song that saw the band performing in various cities from Chicago to Seattle.
In an interview with Uproxx ahead of her Color Theory release, Soccer Mommy explained her inspiration behind the record:
“I’ve always been someone that just associates moods with colors. Like blue and sad, or gray and emptiness or darkness — those are obvious connections. When I’m writing a song, the mood is really important to me, the feeling it gives me. But I think when I’m writing, I’ll often be trying to think of album art, or a music video, and imagining how this sound would look; what would capture the feeling the same way with images, that the song does with sound? Usually it’s a very specific color palette, as a hue. Not just one exact color, but it has a tone to it, there’s always this sense of season, and color, and mood, in the images. I had written some songs already, maybe one or two had this summery, beachy blue going on, and others had something brighter.”
Watch Soccer Mommy’s “Crawling In My Skin” video above.
Color Theory is out now via Loma Vista. Get it here.
After another disappointing playoff exit in Orlando, the Philadelphia 76ers were due for a massive shake-up. Parting ways with Brett Brown was practically a foregone conclusion, and the organization wasted little time before hiring Doc Rivers, who was newly available after his own departure from Los Angeles.
Their next big splash was in the front office, when news emerged earlier this week that they were finalizing a deal to bring in former Rockets GM Daryl Morey as executive vice president of basketball operations to work alongside current GM Elton Brand. The details of the hiring have yet to be finalized or made public.
In an appearance on ESPN Daily, former Sixers GM and architect of The Process Sam Hinkie told Pablo Torre that he is “stoked” that his former colleague is joining the front office in Philadelphia. (Transcript via B/R)
“I was stoked,” Hinkie said. “I’m stoked now. I think it’s great news. He’s not a good hire. He’s a great hire. It’s a really big move for the franchise. For a franchise I care a lot about. With a bunch of people I care a lot about. I just think it portends really great things for the future, for the Sixers. Which remains meaningful to me. So I’m stoked.”
“I do talk everyday, I just don’t talk to you and your colleagues at ESPN on television every day,” said Hinkie to Torre. “It’s not everyday you get to gas up one of your friends that just had something awesome happen in their life that happens to coalesce with a bunch of my life.”
Hinkie resigned from the Sixers’ job in 2016 after ongoing controversy over his tactics, which included several losing seasons with the goal of obtaining high draft picks and other assets that eventually turned into the star duo they enjoy now in Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons.
The efficacy of his approach is still up for debate, but with Morey now in the fold, the Sixers now have an executive who in many ways shared a kindred spirit with Hinkie’s data-driven approach to front office management. It’ll be fascinating to see how Morey’s philosophy jibes with what they’re trying to accomplish and whether he can capitalize on the championship window that is still wide open for this version of the team.
Klutch Sports founder and NBA super-agent Rich Paul has long had a target on his back. Just last year, the NCAA enacted a rule that seemed specifically designed to restrict agents like Paul from representing college players who want to test the waters in the NBA Draft, requiring that they have a bachelor’s degree in order to be eligible to do so.
Paul, who worked his way up from selling throwback jerseys to become one of the most powerful sports agents on the planet, happened to have no such degree, and the rule was clearly and unfairly targeted at him and anyone else who may have taken a different career path that the NCAA eventually did the right thing and rescinded the rule.
Still, that’s done little to assuage the searing jealousy among his peers. Earlier this month, The Athletic published a piece featuring several anonymous agents who complained that Paul has leveraged his clout and his proximity to LeBron as an unfair advantage to poach players from the draft and free agency pool.
Those criticisms amped up once after the Klutch Sports Pro Day that premiered on ESPN2 this week, a televised pre-draft workout featuring future lottery picks — and Klutch clients — Tyrese Maxey and Anthony Edwards. LeBron, Anthony Davis, and several other Klutch clients were also in attendance. According to Marc Berman of the New York Post, some unnamed agents were, unsurprisingly, unhappy about the exposure they enjoyed.
By this point, both LeBron and Paul had heard just about enough. LeBron’s response was simple and to the point:
The criticisms and accusations are unlikely to go away, but the fact remains that Klutch is an industry juggernaut despite multiple efforts to tarnish its image and clamp down on how it operates.
Kai had already secured a Diplo collaboration, a Grammy nomination, and a slot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart before ever releasing a debut project. Following her breakout success, Kai has now finally released her first EP, Like Water. To celebrate, the singer has shared a surreal visual to her EP’s track “Fade Away.”
The “Fade Away” video launches the singer into a magical world. She begins by drinking a glass of water before shortly realizing that something seems different. Upon walking to the window, Kai notices the sky is falling with fish, then eventually turns into the creature herself.
About the EP as a whole, Kai said: “Like Water takes you on a visceral journey of a love found and a love lost with ebbs and flows in between. I believe that relationships are our greatest teachers. Some are meant to last forever, others are meant to teach us more about ourselves, even if only for a season. […] I follow what feels good to me and because of that, the music is a greater source of joy than it has ever been before. I’m finally making music I’m extremely proud of and truly want to share.”
Watch Kai’s “Fade Away” video above and see her Like Water cover art and tracklist below.
Kai
1. “Get Me Good”
2. “Fade Away”
3. “Good Day”
4. “A Little Too Much”
5. “In The Now”
6. “So Kind”
7. “How Are You”
Like Water is out now and independently released. Get it here.
The Portland Trail Blazers have a lot to look forward to in the coming season, whenever that happens. They may have fallen short in the Bubble to a superior Lakers team that went on to win the title, but their run in Orlando through the seeding games was a reminder of just how dangerous a team they can be when at or near full strength.
That’s where they should find themselves when next season kicks off. Jusuf Nurkic still had some rust to shake off when he took the court during the restart after a nearly 18-month absence, but his presence was a huge difference-maker for a team that sorely needed some bullishness on the inside.
Earlier this week, the team announced their new City Edition jerseys that honor the state of Oregon’s bucolic landscape and its Native American heritage, and on Friday, they had a special unveiling of their new floor design for next season, featuring a scale model off the court in Portland’s Mills End Park, which according to the Guinness World Records is the world’s smallest park.
Mills End Park is two-feet in diameter and, of course, comes with a fantastical local legend. It involves a local newspaper columnist and a tongue-in-cheek leprechaun story, and was dedicated in 1976 as the “only leprechaun colony west of Ireland.” In any case, it’s the perfect venue for the Blazers to debut their miniature new court before we get the full-scale version of it when the season tips off.
Last year, Helado Negro released his acclaimed record This Is How You Smile. The musician has since signaled the beginning of a new era with the quiet number “I Fell In Love.” Now returning with more music, Helado Negro put his own spin on a rendition of Neil Young’s classic “Lotta Love.”
To lend a hand on the lo-fi single, Helado Negro tapped Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak‘s side project Flock Of Dimes, as well as Devendra Banhardt. Over a watery guitar and soulful piano, the musicians layer their emotive vocals to sing of effectuating change by holding onto love.
In a statement about the cover, Helado Negro said: “I was captivated by the song’s sincerity and wondered how to make a version that compelled you to step closer to the words. I wanted it to be hymnal and spiritual outside of religion. I interpreted the theme of the song to be about protection. How do we protect each other? Creating this version helped me find some sonic respite and hopefully it does the same for others.”
Echoing Helado Negro’s words, Jenn Wasner said: “I was so happy when Roberto asked me to work together again—this song is a favorite, and I’d be hard pressed to think of a moment where it felt more important to return to the sentiment contained here. […] I’m sending all of the love and strength I can, and encouraging everyone to rise to the level of engagement that this moment requires. But pls remember that the love you show yourself—in not pushing yourself past your limits—is essential before you can direct your energy outward.”
Listen to Helado Negro’s “Lotta Love” cover above.
Neil Young is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music group.
There’s nothing better than bingeing some good scary movies on Netflix on a dark, stormy night. From ghosts to vampires and zombies just about every morbid fantasy that your demented mind can conjure has representation. We’ve watched the best horror movies on Netflix streaming right now, and here they are, in their beastly, blood-curdling glory. It’s perfect for that late night movie binge to keep you wide awake well past Halloween.
Writer/director Trey Edward Shults followed up his unnerving family portrait in 2015’s Krisha with a look at another family under the most desperate of circumstances. After an unknown illness has wiped out most of civilization, a number of threats — both seen and unseen — come for a family held up in their home out in the wilderness. It’s a subtle, dream-like tale that stars Joel Edgerton and Christopher Abbot as two patriarchs intent on keeping their families safe, no matter the cost.
Hannibal Lecter is one of horror’s most iconic characters, but it’s a testament to the creepiness of Anthony Hopkins in a leather muzzle that, no matter how many times the film gets quoted, hearing him tell Clarice Starling he’s having an old friend for dinner still sends chills up our spines. Jodie Foster plays the FBI agent tasked with catching another serial killer with Lecter’s same M.O. and she does it by striking up unnerving conversations with the guy, but Hopkins is the real star here, playing Lecter with a restrained insanity that makes his small talk of enjoying human liver with fava beans so much more nightmarish.
Before Ben Feldman played a lovable know-it-all on Superstore, the guy was surviving a terror-filled jaunt through the catacombs of Paris in this horror movie. Feldman plays George, a reluctant sidekick to Scarlett (Perdita Weeks), a young alchemy scholar and his former girlfriend. Scarlett convinces George a few others to venture into the famous Paris underground in order to find the fabled philosopher’s stone (Harry Potter kids should know all about this thing, we’re not explaining it here). What they find instead is basically Dante’s Inferno come to life as they face down cults, demons, ghosts, and all manner of horrific beings. Let this be a warning, children: Nothing good happens this far below street level. Nothing.
Allison Williams, who’s become something of a scream queen after her work in Get Out, continues her horror track record with this thriller about a gifted musician who befriends the talented student who replaced her. Strange happenings begin to occur, events that sabotage the young girl, but as terrifying as this story is, there’s absolutely no way you’ll be able to predict its ending.
This Spanish-language sci-fi flick is all kinds of f*cked up but in the best way. The film is set in a large, tower-style “Vertical Self-Management Center” where the residents, who are periodically switched at random between floors, are fed by a platform, initially filled with food, that gradually descends through the levels. Conflicts arise when inmates at the top begin eating all the food, leaving the people lower down to fight for survival.
This 2002 prequel to Silence of the Lambs features everyone’s favorite cannibal – Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) – and a copy cat serial killer played by Ralph Fiennes. The film follows a detective named Will Graham (Edward Norton) who gets roped into solving a string of homicides that are committed by a killer known as The Tooth Fairy, a guy who eats his victims in the hopes of transforming himself. Fiennes is chilling in his portrayal of a psychopath whose childhood trauma causes him to target the innocent and Norton is the kind of hero you root for in weird, terrifying stories like these.
This Netflix nightmare follows a group of friends who venture into the Scandinavian wilderness in order to honor their recently-murdered brother. The guys, Luke (Rafe Spall), Phil (Arsher Ali), Hutch (Robert James-Collier), and Dom (Sam Troughton) are forced to take a different path from the one planned, a mistake that leads them to cults and sacrificial offerings and an ancient being who prefers to stake its prey. The scenery is gorgeous, the chemistry of the cast is spot on, and the premise — how these men confront their fears and failures thanks to a supernatural being — starts out promising, though it could’ve delivered a better ending.
Keri Russell stars in this Blumhouse sci-fi horror flick about a happy suburban family terrorized by extraterrestrial beings. Russell plays Lacy, a mom to two boys, who begins to worry when strange occurrences start happening at home. The family discovers aliens have been paying them visits in an attempt to select one of the boys to abduct. Things just get weirder from there and while the plot sounds ridiculous on paper, there’s plenty of suspense here to rack up the tension.
Despite a cast that includes Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, and Glenn Close, this unusual, post-apocalyptic film got a bit overlooked during its brief theatrical release. It’s best enjoyed without knowing too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that Melanie (Sennia Nanua), the girl of the title, isn’t quite what she seems, and there’s a reason that she, and others her age, are kept in a secure military facility. But the best trick of the film, thanks in large part to Nanua’s winning performance, is the way its innovations go beyond just putting twists on a familiar genre and, instead, making us question where our sympathies ought to lie.
When a punk rock group accidentally witnesses the aftermath of a murder, they are forced to fight for their lives by the owner of a Nazi bar (Patrick Stewart) and his team. It’s an extremely brutal and violent story, much like the first two features from director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin and Murder Party), but this one is made even tenser by its claustrophobic cat-and-cornered-mouse nature. Once the impending danger kicks in, it doesn’t let up until the very end, driven heavily by Stewart playing against type as a harsh, unforgiving, violent character.
This dark fantasy film starring Daniel Radcliffe and Juno Temple imagines a nightmare scenario. Radcliffe plays Ig, a young man whose girlfriend Merrin (Temple) mysteriously dies. The morning after her death, Ig wakes up with a set of horns that seem to grow as time goes on. It’s a story tinged with horror elements and a surprising twist at the end.
The Handmaid’s Tale actress Madeline Brewer stars in this unnerving thriller that questions our collective reliance on technology and imagines the nightmare scenario if that same tech decided to royally f*ck with us. Brewer plays Alice, an ambitious, in-demand cam girl making money with her online hustle until one day she logs on to find her channel has been sabotaged by a woman who looks just like her. It’s a trippy, dark ride through some of the bleakest parts of the internet with just enough horror to make things interesting.
Strange, spooky sh*t happens when Tim Burton and Johnny Depp team up and that fact remains true for this re-telling of a particularly haunting legend. Depp plays Ichabod Crane, a detective of sorts who’s sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate three deaths by decapitation. What he ends up encountering instead is a malevolent specter known as The Headless Horseman who’s been terrorizing the town and now has his sights set on him.
This Thai horror film follows a young man named Tun and his girlfriend, Jane, who accidentally run over a young woman after a party and are haunted by her spirit. Hauntings and horror go hand-in-hand, but this film digs deeper into the supernatural trope by revealing a surprising, gruesome connection between the woman’s ghost and the film’s protagonist. We won’t spoil anything here, but let’s just say there’s a reason this death follows this guy wherever he goes.
This supernatural horror flick isn’t the best-rated fright-fest on this list but it does feature a superb performance by Florence Pugh (before she got big) which makes it worth a watch. You’ll still come away terrified watching Pugh play one half of a brother-sister duo scamming people out of their money by pretending to commune with the dead, especially when she starts actually conversing with some pissed off spirits.
Mike Flanagan, who directed Oculus and Ouija: Origin of Evil, expertly directs this simple tale of a deaf woman being menaced by a masked (and later unmasked) killer in her remote home. This is nothing you haven’t seen before, but Flanagan brings real panache and visual energy to a film that could have easily felt redundant in the hands of a lesser filmmaker.
Succession’s Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch star in this horror mystery about a father-son coroner team attempting to identify a Jane Doe who was harboring all kinds of dark secrets. When a corpse is brought into a small-town coroner’s lab, he and his son begin to experience supernatural phenomena. Tommy (Cox) and Austin (Hirsch) try to escape the lab but quickly realize that they’re dealing with something far more dangerous than a dead body while demonic spirits, old curses, and witches come to life.
This survivalist horror story starring Kiersey Clemmons is more than it appears. Sure, the main story follows Clemmon’s Jennifer, a young woman stranded on a remote island after the boat she was partying on with her white, privileged friends, sinks and it contains monsters — both fantastical and extraordinarily human — but it also trades in allegories about emotional abuse, class warfare, and believing survivors. Basically, it’s a horror flick that packs a savvy metaphorical punch.
Stephen King’s 1992 novel transpires mostly in one isolated lake house’s bedroom where its protagonist, Jessie, lies bound to a bed after her husband dies in the midst of a sex game. That makes it a tough story to film, which may explain why it took 25 years to get turned into a movie. But the wait was worth it: director Mike Flanagan delivers a resourceful, disturbing adaptation anchored by a great Carla Gugino performance (with some fine supporting work from Bruce Greenwood). Forced to find a way out of her situation, while confronting her own past, Gugino’s Jessie is made to go to extremes, which leads to, among other things, one of the squirmiest scenes in recent memory.
This Iranian horror flick manages to tie in relevant world events with a darker story of demonic possession. The film follows Shideh, a former medical student and mother trapped in her home during the bombings of Tehran with her daughter, Dorsa. The pair are soon haunted by a djinn, a malevolent spirit who can possess a human by taking what’s most important to them. For Dorsa, it’s her doll, for Shideh, it’s a medical textbook her dead mother gave her. The two fight to survive the bombs and this evil spirit, and you’ll be fighting to get to sleep after the nightmares from this one begin
After losing her father, young Veronica (Sandra Escacena) and two classmates attempt to contact the other side with a Ouija board during a solar eclipse. Something more sinister breaks through, though, as Veronica is haunted by a dark presence everywhere she goes. Veronica excels phenomenally in the cliche horror bits every viewer has seen a thousand times over, such as mishandled Ouija use, frightening entities that only the protagonist is privy to, and twisted dreams. Based on a true story, the film relies on the strong performance of newcomer Escacena, highlighted by her haunting expressions of terror and anguish.
This South Korean zombie flick imagines a very specific Millennial nightmare — a zombie apocalypse interrupting your video game live stream. The film follows Joon-woo, a kid who’s forced to barricade himself in his parents’ apartment when a zombie outbreak happens after his family goes on a grocery run. He survives hordes of the undead and a self-imposed quarantine by bonding with a neighbor in the building across the street. But both the living and the dead have some pretty gruesome plans for them so we wouldn’t count on a happy ending here.
This ’80s Sam Raimi creation launched the director’s career and has since become a cult classic. The story follows a group of college students vacationing in an isolated cabin in a remote wooded area when they find an audio tape that somehow releases a legion of demons and spirits. Most of the group suffer varying degrees of possession which leads to gory mayhem (hence the film’s NC-17 rating).
One of the better found-footage movies to come down the pike in Paranormal Activity‘s wake is this creepy gem about a videographer (director Patrick Brice) who answers a strange Craigslist ad from a man (Mark Duplass) who requests to be followed around with a camera for 24 hours. There are a few points late in the narrative where suspension of disbelief becomes an issue (a not-atypical problem for the genre), but if you can look past that, you’ll be treated to a very scary turn by Duplass and a supremely-unnerving epilogue.
(Spoilers for Creep🙂 What could have very well been a stand-alone character exploration in 2014’s Creep is heightened in Creep 2, which sees Mark Duplass’ chameleon-like killer seeking a different kind of self-portrait. Burned out on his string of murders, Aaron reaches out to a woman who’s looking for her own kind of story by meeting and filming the lonely people she meets online. Instead of a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing path the killer normally follows, he tells the woman what he is off-the-bat and what he wants: An ending to his journey. With all his cards (seemingly) on the table — and her hiding some of her own — it’s an even more fascinating tale than the original.
Netflix is running the market on creepy AF movies lately. This one comes in the form of a young kid suffering from a rare autoimmune disease that forces him to live life inside a bubble. When a new treatment option presents itself, his family sends him to a kind of safe house where specialist can test out the cure, but the boy quickly discovers things aren’t what they seem, that the mansion may in fact be haunted by past patients, and his doctors are probably trying to kill him. Yikes.
After back-to-back big studio bombs, Karyn Kusama returned to her scrappy indie roots with this contained, brilliantly suspenseful study of the darkness that can arise when people don’t allow themselves to feel. The Invitation isn’t a perfect film, but Kusama does a lot with the scant resources she had to play with here, and you have to appreciate her willingness to tackle grief so directly in a genre that tends to have little time for genuine human emotion.
A varied group of people is stuck in a bar after a man is gunned down outside. As the paranoia spreads and they turn on one another, they discover a mysterious sickness could be the culprit. It’s a bottle-type plot that has been done before — locking a bunch of frenzied folks in a cage and let instincts take their course — but this Spanish horror comedy injects its own dark humor and keeps the answers to a minimum, making an entertaining story that unfortunately favors the “dark” over the “comedy” in its final act.
Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper collaborate on this nightmare-inducing horror flick about a suburban family whose young daughter is kidnapped by malevolent spirits. Steven and Diane Freeling live a relatively normal life, taking care of their three children, the youngest of which begins conversing with a static television and issuing ominous warnings about ghosts. Steven and Diane hire a medium to figure out why their house is haunted and discover spirits are using the children’s bedroom closet to kidnap them and bring them to another dimension, forcing both parents to confront their own fears to save their family. It’s the ghost story that all other ghost stories are modeled after, and there’s nothing more terrifying than little blonde-headed girls that are possessed.
A man (Legion‘s Dan Stevens) travels to an island to infiltrate a brutal cult in the hopes of saving his kidnapped sister. As the group’s leaders close in on discovering his identity, the dark secrets of the island start to present themselves. Written and directed by The Raid: Redemption director Gareth Evans, Apostle is a tense, beautifully shot thriller that doesn’t even seem like a horror film from the get-go. Stevens provides another icy, powerful performance alongside Michael Sheen’s turn as the leader of the harsh cult. It’s certainly a highlight among the Netflix original films.
Rising singer Bakar is here to make a name for himself in 2020. Ushering in a new era of music, Bakar releases the lovestruck anthem “1st Time” alongside a cinematic visual.
The visual was directed by Hector Dockrill, who has previously worked with the likes of Jorja Smith, Ray BLK, and Skepta. The “1st Time” video documents the singer falling in love through a series of cinematic snapshots. Bakar falls head-over-heels after meeting his new love interest. The two can’t get enough of each other but, as the relationship progresses, both of their flaws begin to show and create inevitable tension. “The first time / I saw the fire in your eyes / I’d never really been tongue-tied / Until I fell into you,” he sings.
While “1st Time” follows his 2018 debut Badkid and marks the premier solo single of the year for Bakar, it’s not the only song the singer has worked on in 2020. Back in July, Bakar was tapped by breakout New Zealand singer Benee for her single “Night Garden” with Kennybeats. Bakar lent his vocals for a feature on the track, which Benee recently told Uproxx in an interview stemmed from her “complete fear” there was someone watching her every night.
Heading into the 2019-20 NCAA season, Nico Mannion was thought to be a clear top-10 pick in the NBA Draft, a one-and-done who hardly needed to prove himself. The Italian-born son of a basketball lifer, Mannion had dazzled in international competition, AAU ball, and won the Arizona high school title all before starting his leading one of the more starry recruiting classes in recent memory at the University of Arizona. Once the season started, though, Mannion could not live up to those lofty expectations. With the NBA Draft less than a month away, Mannion suddenly is not a lock to be drafted in the first round.
The 6’3 point guard sits at No. 25 on ESPN’s big board after a season in which he shot just 39 percent from the field and Arizona’s offense as a whole underperformed. In just about every close game of the season, Mannion’s inability to create advantages for himself and his teammates bit him.
Throughout the year, Mannion’s foibles routinely cost Arizona big games. The Wildcats lost by five to Baylor in a December game in which Mannion was 3-for-14 from the field. A couple weeks later, Mannion’s clutch mistakes and 3-for-20 shooting night cost Arizona a big game against Gonzaga. They dropped a clunker to St. John’s to finish out their non-conference schedule, with Mannion shooting 6-for-15 and notched only three assists. In just about every one, Mannion’s lack of burst and athleticism meant the Wildcats couldn’t create good offense late.
When Arizona could create turnovers, play fast, and generate threes for their deep collection of shooters, the offense looked great and Mannion was quite comfortable. Mannion deserves a fair bit of credit for proving himself to his coach so quickly in that regard. Arizona’s offense was in the 89th percentile in transition efficiency last season (per Synergy Sports) in large part because of Mannion’s effectiveness in the open floor. The problem is that NBA teams already knew they could trust that part of his game, and he failed to show growth in other areas as a freshman.
Plenty of NBA players succeed in spite of being relatively slow or ground-bound. The idea of Mannion as a prospect was that he could be Steve Nash without the generational basketball IQ, but over the course of his one college season, the biggest sign that he wasn’t at that level was that his jump shot never came along. Though he shot 80 percent from the free throw line — often a good indicator of a player’s shooting talent — and showed good touch on floaters and flips around the rim, the results just weren’t there from deep.
It will be hard for NBA teams to pull the trigger on a player who theoretically provides value as a shooter and play-maker when he’s never proven his shooting (the more valuable ingredient in that mixture) is real. Mannion shot just 33 percent from deep overall and put up an ugly 43.9 effective field goal percentage on jumpers coming off screens overall, per Synergy. Nothing really suggests his form is the problem, but rather his lack of confidence and ability to create separation seemed to have hurt him here as well.
Despite the way his offensive limitations showed up at Arizona, it’s not all bad with Mannion. He genuinely is one of the best passers in this draft class and his overall shot-making could become more valuable once he learns how to get past his man more often. There’s also the fact that Arizona head coach Sean Miller is hardly a creative offensive mind — he tends to hand over the offense entirely to the most basic skill set of his best players and relies on that over anything else. That hurt Mannion’s value to the team and draft stock even as it might have given him more confidence. A team and coaching staff that works harder to help him in the open court (even if that means playing off the ball more to better use his shooting) and is dedicated to playing fast when he’s on the floor would be a much better situation than what he was given at Arizona.
The other thing to keep in mind about the Arizona product is that unlike Trae Young or even Nash, defense is not a wash for Mannion. Of course, weighing in under 200 pounds limits his ability to switch or move around within a scheme, but when he defends point guards, Mannion gives multiple efforts, fights through screens, and rotates intelligently. For a team thinking about drafting him, that combined with his ability to shoot and good decision-making means you can trust him to stay on the floor as a rookie rather than thinking of him as a risky project.
Mannion’s trip to Tucson was tainted from the start, when pay-for-play drama around Arizona’s program created distractions all season long for the program’s talented freshman class, which included Josh Green and Zeke Nnaji, both of whom could join Mannion as first-round picks next month. NBA teams will have to decide whether the situation in college explained away Mannion’s problems enough to bet on their program being a boon for him, or whether he’s more of a toss-up unworthy of a first-round selection and fully guaranteed contract.
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