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The Boston Celtics had a disappointing end to their postseason run in Orlando when they were stunned by the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals, ending the chance for what could have been the latest chapter in a Lakers-Celtics rivalry that has been going almost since the birth of the NBA.

For many of the players on this Celtics squad, it’s simply allowed them to shift focus to some of the equal justice initiatives that were born out of the work stoppage during the opening round of the playoffs, namely the massive 10-year, multi-million-dollar program spearheaded by Jaylen Brown designed to focus on education reform and other social justice causes in the Boston area.

For Marcus Smart, it’s given him an opportunity to speak out on something more personal. In a piece for the Players’ Tribune this week, the Celtics guard opened up about an incident he had with a fan outside of TD Garden after a game. Smart was trying to help a woman and her young son safely cross a street through traffic, when the woman started hurling racial epithets at him.

Via The Players’ Tribune:

She swung her head around and it was….“F*** you, you f***ing n-word!!!!” And in an instant, just like that, I was made to feel less than human. I wasn’t a person to this woman. I was a form of entertainment. Nothing more. And, believe me, it took every ounce of restraint in my body not to curse her out. A few seconds later, I drove off. I just wanted it to be over.

Beyond the obvious pain and heartbreak of the situation, Smart says he was most affected by the fact this mother spewed this type of hatred toward someone like that in front of her small child and the long-term effects that parents have on future generations by virtue of their behavior and their words.

Still, Smart remains hopeful about what he’s seen throughout the protests and the marches this year, as he and the Celtics organization continue their efforts to affect change via their money and their influence.

(Players’ Tribune)

Board games are often assembled from the mechanics of games that have come before them. Certain rules and quirks remain because they’ve been proven to work, and gamers can intuit how those elements will impact a new game they’re learning based on how it’s worked in others. What makes them different is the packaging and context through which the game is built. The best ones take those elements and elevate them to something bigger, making you forget that you’ve used these tools playing other games in similar ways.

Strike is a game that adheres to the traditions of cooperative board games, but with a quirk: solidarity. In explaining the game to my comrades I often found myself comparing it to co-op games like Pandemic, explaining the drone mechanics like an outbreak. The four actions you can use is a tried and tested co-op gaming mechanic, so leaning on what you already know works here.

But Strike is also an attempt to make something new while providing the building blocks for a better understanding of the labor movement itself. And with any game that’s made with education in mind, it’s often hard to find the balance between adhering to the subject matter and making a seamless, always-fun experience for players.

Strike is billed as a “game of worker rebellion,” and as players working against a robot-armed corporate monolith, your goal is to move workers around the board in large enough numbers to “strike,” organizing labor while disarming robots meant to put down any uprisings. The city is split into 12 different districts, and eight possible characters start at different spots on the map and have unique abilities that help them recruit strikers, move them around the board or disassemble the drones and megabots that enter districts at the end of every turn.

Winning the game means reaching 15 victory points before those robots: workers get victory points for organizing strikes, while HappyCorp gets points for turning robots into megabots, which fuse after three are in the same district. It’s a game that walks the Pandemic-like line of accomplishing a goal while limiting the damage from a threat that also impacts your ability to reach that goal.

It’s an effective mechanism familiar to people who like board games, but much of Strike‘s appeal is in the world-building. It frames massive tech companies not as convenient saviors, but harmful monoliths that infringe on your rights and control your actions. The bad news at the end of each round is called a Commercial Break, and the cards cheerfully make your life significantly worse in various ways: more robots on the board, limiting your number of moves on your next turn or lowering your overall energy. That energy is used to unlock bonus abilities only each character has, and there’s a significant strategy to deciding which abilities are useful and who to provide with energy while organizing what choices to make.

Cooperative games can always slip into familiar problems of an “alpha” gamer making decisions for everyone, but Strike seems designed to unlearn that and genuinely have players work together. There are a lot of ways to win using a variety of abilities to move around the board, but no one can truly finish the job alone. It’s a game that advocates for action to its core, and that includes encouraging more reluctant players to take part in the strategy and use their unique skills each turn.

It’s faithful accuracy to the subject matter, though, is what can make the game turn into a slog on higher difficulties. That’s kind of the point: labor battles are time-consuming, and the odds are stacked heavily against individuals. Change takes time, hard work, and careful planning. What I truly enjoyed about Strike is that the work felt worthwhile and that progress —gradual as it may be — did feel like it was building toward something.

Two or three players makes Strike a fairly manageable experience and keeps players almost always involved. Playing with four, however, was a different experience that offered far less control of the game’s movement. It also didn’t help that one session started on a much higher difficulty level, which meant we played the entire game from behind and turned it into a certifiable grind. Taking away that intense starting difficulty led to more enjoyable games overall, but the challenge of a game like Strike seems to be fighting through that grind for incremental improvements against increasingly difficult opposition.

That’s not always the case in cooperative board games like this. Sometimes it just feels like you’re drowning or simply trying to run out the clock. Strike is a game that, as you move people around the board and work together to organize strikes, feels like you’re creating something while staving off the forces that are attempting to prevent just that. For some, that may be a bit too on the nose for life in the present moment. But a board game that actually appreciates the labor behind moments is certainly an accomplishment, especially when it makes beating back a mega corporation feel like one, too.

If nothing below suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now.

Welcome To The Blumhouse (Amazon Prime films) — Blumhouse rarely swings and misses, so this is promising news when big Halloween gatherings won’t be such a good idea in 2020. Stay safe everyone, and pop some popcorn for a quadruple feature for these movies that landed this month.

– Evil Eye — What looks like a perfect romance transforms into a nightmare when a mom believes that a dark connection is influencing her daughter’s boyfriend.

– Nocturne — An elite arts academy becomes ground central for a disturbing sibling rivalry, in which one sister becomes unnaturally inspired by a dead classmate’s notebook.

– The Lie — Joey King stars as a teenage daughter who confesses to killing her best friend. This, naturally, results in even more lies and deception.

– Black Box — Phylicia Rashad and Mamoudou Athie star in this story about a single father involved in a tragic car accident agrees to an experimental treatment that results in a terrifying identity crisis.

Swamp Thing (CW, 8:00pm EST) — Munson’s body is resurrected by bugs while Alex has suspicions about the identity of Swamp Thing.

Tell Me a Story (CW, 9:00pm EST) — Ashley’s struggling in a new situation while Beau has his own struggles but also wants to support Ashley. And Maddie’s having second thoughts about her marriage.

Kal Penn Approves This Message (Freeform, 10:30pm EST) — Actor turned Obama administration member turned actor Kal Penn (House, the Harold and Kumar trilogy) is here to celebrate the changes that young voters can make. This promises to be a non-partisan approach with comedic sketches and in-depth interviews that will help Gen Z be even more impactful than they already are. This week, Kal tackles the climate crisis with help from young Americans.

Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Dolly Parton, Dolla $ign

Jimmy Kimmel Live — Michael Keaton, Blackpink

Late Night With Jimmy Fallon — Natalie Portman, Billy Porter, Lous and The Yakuza

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Adam Sandler, Jason Alexander

Matthew McConaughey’s memoir, Greenlights, was published today, In it, he writes about his dad dying while having sex with his mom, turning down $14.5 million for a romantic comedy, and floating down the Amazon River because he was feeling “guilt-ridden over sins of my past, lonely, and disgusted with the company I was keeping, my own.” Greenlights is a must-have for the chest-thumping, Ladies of Tampa-loving, guy-losing McConaughey fan in your life, although I’d go a step further. The chapter where the Oscar-winning actor sets the record straight about his run-in with the cops while he was playing the bongos naked should be required reading for every American.

McConaughey was arrested “on suspicion of possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, and resisting transportation” on October 25, 1999, after police in Austin, Texas, found him “dancing naked and playing the bongo drums” in his own home, the Associated Press reported at the time. (I had yet to see a movie with McConaughey in it, but even I remember hearing about this story at middle school.) As McConaughey tells it in his book: “[I] just wanted to smoke a bowl and listen to the beautiful African melodic beats of Henri Dikongué play through my home speakers… It was time for a jam session. What I didn’t know was that while I was banging away in my bliss, two Austin policemen also thought it was time to barge into my house unannounced, wrestle me to the ground with nightsticks, handcuff me, and pin me to the floor.”

He describes the moment the police told him he was “under arrest for disturbing the peace, possession of marijuana and resisting arrest” to which McConaughey responded, “Fuck you, motherfucker! You broke in my house! Fuck, yeah, I resisted!” He refused to cover himself as a way to prove that he was minding his own business. “Before I’d taken three steps up the wall, the Cornhusker body-slammed me back down onto the brick footpath,” he recalls, adding that while being arrested, he saw “six lit-up cop cars and about 40 of my neighbors.”

Within two days of his arrest (he paid a $50 fine), McConaughey saw “BONGO NAKED” shirts all over Austin. As a current resident of Austin, I have one thing to say: I’ll take six of those shirts.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

As Disney+ began laying the groundwork for its debut in 2019, promises of a sequel series to the 1988 fantasy adventure film Willow were kicked about, and now, that day has finally come. Disney+ has officially confirmed that the series is a go for the streaming platform with original Willow director Ron Howard serving as executive producer and Warwick Davis reprising the title role of Willow Ufgood. Crazy Rich Asians director John M. Chu will direct the pilot, and he’s especially stoked to dive into the world of the classic film that he loved as child. Via Variety:

“Growing up in the’80s, ‘Willow’ has had a profound effect on me,” said Chu in a statement. “The story of the bravest heroes in the least likely places allowed me, an Asian-American kid growing up in a Chinese restaurant looking to go to Hollywood, to believe in the power of our own will, determination and of course, inner magic. So the fact that I get to work with my heroes from Kathleen Kennedy to Ron Howard is bigger than a dream come-true. It’s a bucket-list moment for me. Jon Kasdan and Wendy Mericle have added such groundbreaking new characters and delightful surprises to this timeless story that I can’t wait for the world to come along on this epic journey with us.”

Based on Variety‘s reporting, the Willow series seems to be lining up with the description Howard gave to the Happy Sad Confused podcast from May 2019. “I think it’d be a great way to go,” Howard said. “In fact, George always talked about the possibility of a Willow series, and it’d be great and more intimate, and built around that character and some of the others. And Jon Kasdan has, I think, an inspired take on it and it could be really, really cool.”

As Star Wars fans now know, a similar approach was taken for The Mandalorian, which launched later that year, and I think we all know how that turned out: Awesome.

(Via Variety)

Jordan Fisher knows where the future is heading, it’s just taken a different path than maybe we all expected this year. Twitch streams were hugely popular long before a pandemic kept everyone inside a lot more than they’d have liked. But life in quarantine has made streaming more popular than ever, and it’s also changed what people want to see played in some ways.

Among Us, for example, is a surprise hit two years in the making, proof that you never quite know what games will make it big and how audiences will grow. What will be big, though, is the technology that fuels those Twitch streams and the way we live our modern lives. Which perhaps is why Fisher — an actor with a dedicated Twitch following and a lifelong love of gaming — was perfect to help Verizon launch its 5G campaign earlier this month.

When Uproxx spoke to Fisher, he was in “an undisclosed location” filming a movie he’s producing. But the To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You actor and streamer is also big into gaming, and talked to us about what games he wishes got more run on Twitch, how he balances his serious gaming with relaxation and what he wishes more people would watch on Twitch so he could play it more often.

Uproxx: You’re a big gamer and I know that’s taken up a lot of your time during the pandemic, but what else have you been up to these days?

Jordan Fisher: Well, a lot. I’m executive producing a film and starring in it, so that is 90 percent of my days. Just production meetings and being on set, writing, doing the thing. Going over shot lists, et cetera et cetera. Other than that, I’m streaming a lot and going over a few other projects and wrapping up wedding planning. Just kind of little bit of everything. I’m kind of like chicken with my head cut off at the moment but I am happy. That’s probably the most important thing.

Basically everything you said there has had the level of difficulty ramped up these days due to the pandemic, especially with a wedding and filming. How stressful has that been for you? Any advice on how to juggle things in times like these?

Stressful is an interesting kind of term because there’s so much of everything that’s out of our control and I think the just relinquishing as much control and power as possible, letting it be what it is and understanding the everyone is trying to do their job.

We’re fortunate to be able to get married at this time, regardless. We’re fortunate to work at this time, to film at this time. Yeah, there are all kinds of things and precautions that are not a part of our muscle memory with our day-to-day lives, and how we function and our work. It doesn’t really matter what we do, if you work in an office or on a set or a construction site, whatever the case may be, there’s a lot of muscle memory that comes into play that has to be tamed. You have to figure out how to function in a new way but at the end of the day we’re fortunate that we get to continue to work and make a living. It’s all very important to remember and I count my blessings every day.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/757964392?filter=archives&sort=time&t=3h37m0s

With all that’s going on, do you find gaming and streaming to actually relaxing or is it just more work? I know I cover gaming for a living and sometimes struggle to see it as something that is the leisure activity it’s supposed to be for most.

Yes and no. Funny, I was just talking to somebody about that. It was always important to me, especially because I’ve been gaming for close to three decades now, this is my lifeblood. Gaming has always been my first language, whether I’m playing at a super high level competitively or if I’m just chilling with some friends and having some good conversation sipping some beers over Discord and hanging, having a good time. Gaming has always been the thing that’s been my alternate universe. For you, I’m sure you can say the same thing. It’s, to an extent, the thing that should be able to take you away from your real life and be a separation from work.

But when you are one of the two of us, for example, that work in the gaming industry, it’s really easy for it to feel like work. One thousand percent there have been times where I’m like ‘I don’t want to play this game today, I don’t want to be entertaining and get on camera today. I don’t feel like chatting, I don’t feel like blah blah blah.’ But you do it, because you have to do it. And oftentimes I feel, to be honest with you, I often find that the days where I’m not in the mood to stream, when I’m not in the mood to play comp on Valorant, all of these things: it ends up becoming a really good session. It ends up becoming a really great stream. Something happens in there and I kind of relinquish that control.

So it was really important to me and those really close to me, my family, my fiancé, my super close friends as I found myself further thrust into the gaming space on an entertainment level, that it didn’t feel like work. So I could continue to have that as an escape. And I’ve always worked really hard to make that stay the same. And I think I’ve found, probably over the course of COVID more so, is taking time to game with friends off stream. And play and hang off stream. That’s what’s really kept my love for video gaming as fervent as it is, taking that time to just be a gamer and play games.

For sure. And you can see on Twitch when trends pop up with certain games, people almost feel obligated to play titles that are popular just to attract eyeballs.

A thousand percent.

Is there a game maybe that you’re not playing on Twitch that is keeping you sane this year? Something maybe people aren’t paying as much attention to as you wish they would?

Yeah, there are probably a few. The mainstays right now, especially with it being Halloween time, it’s like clockwork every year there’s a new spooky party games that come around each year. I’m loving Phasmophobia at the moment. Obviously Among Us is the new big thing. But to be perfectly honest with you the game that I wish was more popular, the game I wish more people cared about in terms of watching it so that it was more successful on the streaming side of things is Overwatch.

Overwatch is, I just love it. I came in super late, I started playing it only last summer and I went on a bit of a grind. My community got to watch me go from placing in Gold my first round of placements to becoming a GM in DPS. To be able to go on that journey and watch that happen, watch me grow as a gamer and also to see me fall deeper and deeper in love with it has been a lot of fun. We’ll see with Overwatch 2. I know (Blizzard vice president) Jeff (Kaplan) wants to make it a little more viewable, a bit more watchable. Every studio and game developer knows very well now for the life of the game these days it has to be playable on YouTube, watchable on streams. We’ll see how they deconstruct and reconstruct Overwatch 2 and hopefully it becomes one of those Fortnite, Modern Warfare, League of Legends-type titans in the industry. It would make me very happy.

Oh, and World of Warcraft.

Obviously you have a deep connection to gaming and working with Verizon explaining how 5G works is something that isn’t much of a stretch for you. It must be nice to work with a company like this that’s tied directly to a passion of yours.

And actually cares about it? Yeah, 100 percent. Working with a company that actually, genuinely cares about gaming and gamers and understands the necessity for download and upload speed? One thousand percent. It’s one of those partnerships that just makes sense and I think you get to a point to where you start to be a little picky and choosey about who you align yourself with.

For me, any kind of partnership I take on I want to be fully and entirely authentic. I want it to really make sense and be a partnership I can actually be excited about and talk about with excitement. And this is that. I’m an absolute nerd, I love advancements in technology. I’m wired into, tapped into all of those different outlets and I want to see speeds be faster. I want to see things be more streamlined. I want to see, you know, hardware be sleeker and more sexy and all of these things.

And Verizon’s really doing that with data here. This is true 5G. Instantaneous access to things and especially for me, who travels a lot, to be able to get that kind of coverage and accessibility whether I’m on an airplane or train or boat or automobile, I want instant access to things I need whether they be for work or for pleasure. And I think that everybody wants it, even if you don’t know that you do.

It’s incredible what our phones are able to do and make happen through science. But we’re also only humans and we’re selfish and we want things to be faster than the day before and Verizon has raised the bar constantly in that. They really raised the bar with 3G and made it what it was, 4G LTE as well and 5G is going to be a massive game-changer and I’m excited to be one of the faces that helps spread the good news, if you will.

When you picture a ballerina, you may not picture someone who looks like Lizzy Howell. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.

Howell is busting stereotypes and challenging people’s ideas of what a dancer should look like just by being herself and doing her thing in her own body. The now-19-year-old from Delaware has been dancing since she was five and has performed in venues around the world, including Eurovision 2019. She has won scholarships and trains up to four hours a day to perfect her skills in various styles of dance.

Jordan Matter Photography shared a documentary video about Howell on Facebook—part of his “Unstoppable” series—that has inspired thousands. In it, we get to see Howell’s impressive moves and clear love of the art form. Howell shares parts of her life story, including the loss of her mother in a car accident when she was little and how she was raised by a supportive aunt who helped her pursue her dance ambitions. She also explained how she’s had to deal with hate comments and bullying from people who judge her based on her appearance.

“I don’t think it’s right for people to judge off of one thing,” Howell says in the video. And she’s right—her size is just one thing.

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Howell shares that she’s been bullied in dance since she was six, and how it still happens when she goes to dance conventions. She sees people staring at her and whispering about her, but she says the successes she’s had in dance and reassurances from other people keep her going.

“Most dancers are skinny, and I’m not,” Howell says. “I think a lot of people can relate to me in that sort of way. They see me as an inspiration because I’ve been told I’ve been told to quit dance multiple times and I haven’t.”

“Dance is what I love and it’s everything to me,” she says. “So I think that just keeps me going.”

Howell also has a message for people who might be tempted to say unkind things: “Whatever you say on social media is going to be seen by somebody and it could hurt their feelings. You know, you can’t just say something that you think is funny but it might affect somebody else’s feelings. I’m a very sensitive person, so I take everything to heart. There’s a bunch of people that are like me that take it the same way.”

Howell says dance is like therapy for her, which makes it all the worse for people to use her body size as a dancer as an excuse to be jerks. It might be surprising to see someone with Howell’s body type doing the kind of dance she does, but anyone who comments negatively on a person’s body—especially a young person has worked hard to train their body to create art—is a first-rate a-hole.

A few years have passed since Howell was interviewed for the “Unstoppable” video, and she’s still showing that she truly is unstoppable. She now has more than 200,000 followers on Instagram and regularly posts videos of her dancing in the studio.

Thank you for showing us what bucking the status quo looks like, Lizzy. Keep being bold, dancing beautifully, and showing the haters you won’t let them stop you.

Teyana Taylor shared her ambitious 23-track record The Album back in June. To further flesh out her songs’ concepts, the singer took on the role of video director and assumed the moniker Spike Tey. So far, Taylor has shared a handful of visuals, her sultry “Concrete” video being the latest. Now for her “Lose Each Other” video, Taylor was able to tap the legendary Elton John to lend a hand.

Directed by Taylor herself, the video opens with John sitting stoically behind the piano. Taylor adopts a handful of styles to illuminate the song’s meaning and calls upon two graceful dancers to move in unison to her soaring vocals.

In a statement about working with John, Taylor said, “‘Lose Each Other’ is such a special record for me, and I wanted the visual to feel just as big. I told my team ‘you know what would be dope? If I could have Elton John open the video on the piano!!’ […] Not that I thought it could really happen, but just putting it out there in the universe. So as we were working through treatment ideas and solidifying logistics for the video, an international phone number calls me…. and for a second I almost didn’t answer, but my intuition spoke, I answered. All I hear is…’Hello darling, it’s Elton. I’d LOVE to do your video!’ I FREAKED OUT!”

Echoing Taylor’s statement, John said, “When Teyana Taylor released her debut album, I became a huge fan. She was a guest on my Rocket Hour and I fell in love with her original spirit. Aside from her brilliant music, Teyana is one of the most visually dazzling artists working in music today. So I jumped at the chance to be in her latest video ‘Lose Each Other.’”

Speaking about her experience filming the visual, Taylor added, “As a director I wanted the imagery to be simple, yet powerful, which is why I choose an all-white background and bold looks. I wanted my audience to understand how love’s hardships can also be beautiful.

Watch Taylor and John’s “Lose Each Other” video above.

The Album is out now via Def Jam. Get it here.

As far as independent rappers go, Brooklyn’s Kota The Friend has been having a decent year, all things considered. His May album Everything was well-received, thanks to features from Bas, Kyle, Joey Badass, and Tobi Lou, while his “Trade Places With Them Jeans” freestyle with Guapdad 4000 capped off the latter’s Falcon Fridays series and helped raise both raise their respective profiles among fans with way more time for music discovery on their hands due to the economic shutdown caused by COVID0-19. Kota also celebrated an improved credit score; it may seem simple, but for a rapper working without the backing of a major label, it means a lot.

But time marches on and it’s apparently time for Kota to get right back to work. To that end, he’s returned to releasing music shortly after his 27th birthday with the release of “Dragon,” a spirited single in the same vein as his Lyrics To Go projects. Over a mellow beat, Kota imagines giving advice to his younger self, saying, “If I could go back, I would say to him / ‘Just focus on your spirit and you’ll make it, kid / And do right by the women that you make it with.’”

Kota didn’t say whether “Dragon” would be part of a larger release but he rarely does anything without a plan, so it’s probably a safe bet that more new music is on the way.

Listen to “Dragon” above.

2019 was a nostalgic year for Tegan And Sara. More specifically, September 2019, as that’s when they released both Hey, I’m Just Like You, which consists of re-recorded songs they wrote as teenagers, and their joint memoir, High School. The book apparently generated some buzz in TV circles, as it was revealed today that High School is being adapted into a TV series of the same name.

Deadline reports the show is being developed for IMDb TV (Amazon’s free, ad-supported streaming service) by Clea DuVall (who is wriing the series, Plan B Entertainment, and Amazon Studios. Tegan And Sara will serve as executive producers.

The publication describes the series, “High School is a transcendent story of first loves and first songs. Through a backdrop of ’90s grunge and rave culture, the series tangles itself in the parallel and discordant memories of two sisters growing up down the hall from one another. This is a story about finding your own identity — a journey made even more complicated when you have a twin whose own struggle and self-discovery so closely mimics your own.”

The memoir was initially announced in late 2018, and the sisters said of it at the time, “‘How did you start your band? When did you know that you were gay? What were you like before Tegan And Sara?’ We have spent twenty years answering those complicated questions with simple answers. […] Writing High School gives us the opportunity to tell the intricate stories that shaped our relationship as sisters, musicians, and queer girls.”

Tegan And Sara is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.