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The long-rumored trade between the Houston Rockets and the Washington Wizards that featured a pair of high-profile point guards has finally happened. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Russell Westbrook is headed to D.C. in a trade that will see John Wall go to the Lone Star State. In terms of added compensation to make the move happen, the Wizards attached a future first-round pick.

Shams Charania of The Athletic confirmed the trade, noting that the first is a protected selection in the 2023 NBA Draft.

Rumors had been swirling for some time that Westbrook wanted out of Houston, with word leaking that he wanted a deal shortly after a story went public about him and James Harden having concerns about directions of the franchise. Wall came into this soon after, with his contract being such that he could be flipped for Westbrook. Following word of talks about this sort of move hitting the internet, word then came out that Wall wanted out of the nation’s capital.

It’s a fascinating trade of two highly-paid athletes with questions about what they can do in the NBA in 2020 — Westbrook struggled until the Rockets embraced microball and then struggled in the NBA’s Orlando Bubble following a bout with COVID-19, while Wall has been dealing with injuries for years and has not appeared in a game since late 2018. Now, the pair are getting moved for one another, and in the aftermath, all eyes will turn to their star running mates — Harden in Houston and Bradley Beal in Washington — about what the future holds for them.

Because Beyonce is so much smarter than the rest of us, she has long abandoned social media platforms like Twitter, and primarily uses her own personal website to communicate her thoughts and feelings to the world. (Yes, I know she uses Instagram, but mostly just to flex.) In the spirit of Tumblr days, Bey often changes the cover of her site to celebrate special events or promote new material. Today, she used it to wish Britney Spears a happy birthday:

Spears is turning 39 today, and has recently been making headlines, not for her Vegas residency or new music (although she did put out a new song today to commemorate the occasion), but because she’s been trying to get released from a conservatorship that’s been legally imposed on her for quite a while now. But her father, Britney’s current conservator, thinks the #FreeBritney movement formed to advocate for the singer to control her own affairs is a joke, and courts recently ruled he would remain in charge of her estate until at least next year.

But some might take this show of support from Beyonce as a sign she’s on Britney’s side when it comes to ending the conservatorship and being released from her father’s control. After all, Beyonce’s career didn’t kick into overdrive until she dismissed her father from working on her career, so who knows the situation better? Either way, it was a classy, gracious move by Beyonce, as usual.

On Wednesday, G Herbo found himself in hot water after being named in a federal fraud case brought up in Massachusetts. According to the Chicago Tribune, the PTSD rapper, whose real name is Herbert Wright III, his music promoter, and other members of his crew are accused of fraud and identity theft. The case alleges that Herbo and his crew used stolen IDs to access more than one million dollars worth of luxury items over a four-year period.

According to court documents, Herbo and company allegedly used the money for private jets, limousine rides, car rentals, a villa in Jamaica, and the purchase of two designer puppies. The charges were initially filed in September through a Springfield, Massachusetts U.S. District Court, but the court documents were not made public until Wednesday. The 14-count indictment charges all members with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Herbo also faces an additional charge of wire fraud as well.

Antonio “T-Glo” Strong, who is Herbo’s music promoter, was, as per the Tribune, “alleged to be the ringleader of a $1.5 million fraud” by U.S. District Judge Robert Dow. As for Herbo himself, it’s unclear if he’s made any plans to appear in court to face charges. The charges also come days after he was included on the 2020 issue of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

(via Chicago Tribune)

The Godfather Part III never got the love its two predecessors did. Quite the contrary: Its reputation is so bad that Francis Ford Coppola went back, three decades later, to make a new (and many say better) cut. But when it came out, the reaction wasn’t so hostile. It even received seven Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. Another was for Andy García, who played Michael Corleone’s hotheaded nephew Vincent, and received across-the-board raves. It was a big moment for García, and he, at least, has never understood the hate.

In a new interview about the new cut — entitled The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone — with The Hollywood Reporter, García defended the film that helped make him a star. “I never had an issue with the first one, but I am very close to it,” he said, saying that the negative press it received — especially re: Sofia Coppola’s performance — was not always fair. “I thought a lot of things were unjust about it, especially how Sofia was treated.”

García does admit that the new cut is excellent. “There is a clarity to this version that Francis wanted,” he said. But he hopes people will give the original version another chance. “I think if people revisit this film, they will see a very honest, deep and soulful performance by Sofia. I think there is great tragedy in the character, a very courageous performance, and I am very proud of the work we did.”

You can see for yourself on Friday, when Coda hits whatever theaters are open, or on December 8, when it arrives on VOD.

(Via THR)

The NBA brought players back to their home markets last week and began to administer COVID-19 testing in preparation for facilities opening up and training camp beginning on December 1. The league’s efforts to start a season outside of a bubble atmosphere presents a precarious situation with the understanding that positive tests will happen, and it’s simply a matter of the league and teams trying to do their best to mitigate positive tests and the potential spread through a team.

On Wednesday, the league announced the results from their first round of testing last week and, unsurprisingly, there were a fairly significant number of positive tests. The NBA said 48 players tested positive out of 546 tests (8.8 percent positivity rate) and those players are now in isolation and will follow CDC guidelines prior to their return to team facilities. Positive tests were expected, so this is not something that is catching the league off guard, and the upcoming rounds of testing will be far more indicative of whether this season is able to begin as planned and have any kind of successful start. The Warriors have already announced they had two of those positive tests and as a result have pushed the start of their full team workouts back a day from Sunday to Monday of next week.

The positivity rate should begin to decline, particularly during camp, but this will be an ongoing issue for the league as they begin traveling and playing games. We have seen how difficult it has been for the NFL to get through this season, and they have the benefit of playing games just once a week with significantly less travel. The NBA schedule will tell us a lot about how the league plans to handle the travel load of teams and while they’ve been insistent on having as normal a season as possible, how they set up team travel schedules for road trips is more important than ever to try and limit the possibility of spread.

Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down…in the most delightful way.

There are certain songs from kids’ movies that most of us can sing along to, but we often don’t know how they originated. Now we have a timely insight into one such song—”A Spoonful of Sugar” from “Mary Poppins.”

It’s common for parents to try all kinds of tricks to get kids to take medications they don’t want to take, but the inspiration for “A Spoonful of Sugar” was much more specific. Jeffrey Sherman, the son and nephew of the Sherman Brothers—the musical duo responsible not just for “Mary Poppins,” but a host of Disney films including “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” “The Jungle Book,” “The Aristocats,” as well as the song “It’s a Small World After All”—told the story of how “A Spoonful of Sugar” came about on Facebook.

He wrote:

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“When I was a kid, they rolled out a vaccine for polio. We were given it at school on a sugar cube. I went home and my dad, who was working on Mary Poppins, asked how my day was.

What I didn’t know was that Julie Andrews who was hired to play Mary had not really liked the song my dad and uncle had written -‘Through the Eyes of Love’ – and it was rejected. It was their favorite song for the movie.

Walt asked the Sherman Brothers to come up with a new song that would be in line with Mary’s //Julie’s philosophy.

Dad asked me how my day was and I told him about getting the polio vaccine at school.

I was known for rejecting the booster shots at my doctors’ office and running away.

He said, ‘Didn’t it hurt?’

I told him they put it on a sugar cube and you just ate it.

He stared at me, then went to the phone and called my uncle Dick.

They went back to the office and wrote -‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ (‘Helps the Medicine Go Down.’)

It’s my little corner of film music history I suppose. Inadvertently.”

Sherman added a timely note about our current circumstances as well:

“For anyone I know here on FB, trust the doctors. When the vaccine for Covid comes out, get it.

We are all codependent on each other in this pandemic. Trust science and doctors and epidemiologists.

We are a small world and we will beat this enemy if we listen to those who know.

Be safe. Wear a mask. Be kind and thoughtful and considerate to your fellow man and woman.

We will beat this.”

It’s good to recall how devastating diseases like polio and smallpox have effectively been eradicated through widespread vaccinations. Most of us aren’t old enough to remember when polio was around in the U.S. (we haven’t seen it here since 1979), but talk to older folks who lived through people being disabled by it and they’ll tell you it wasn’t fun. It’s easy to take for granted the fact that we don’t have to worry about our kids contracting polio, but that’s not something that just miraculously happened. Smallpox and polio vaccines are great success stories of modern medicine. Time will tell, but the COVID-19 vaccine may end go down in history as one of humanity’s most impressive scientific achievements as well.

Unfortunately, a spoonful of sugar won’t help make the COVID-19 vaccine. But if we’re able to safely return to normal life in the near future, the outcome will be sweet indeed.

The gang that couldn’t shoot straight are at it again. Since Donald Trump lost his bid for re-election almost a month ago, his legal team — so fierce he dubbed them an “Elite Strike Force” — has done their best to prove widespread voter fraud and hand the election to their client. Their best just happens to be pretty bad. They’ve been a joke, their surreal press conferences mocked online and their cases laughed out of one courtroom after another. And if bungled location scouting and Rudy Giuliani’s melting mystery goo wasn’t enough, now they’re actually telling Republican voters not to vote at all.

The Strike Force was at a rally in Georgia on Wednesday, spreading their baseless conspiracy theories and attempting to rally their base in an upcoming runoff election that could very well flip the Senate to the Democrats. Or maybe getting out the vote is the opposite of what they wanted. Lawyer Lin Wood has taken his unproven claims of a “rigged election” so far that he’s been telling Republicans to not vote. And he did the same on Wednesday, attacking Republican candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Purdue for not…well, for not repeating their own empty accusations.

“This is Georgia — we ain’t dumb,” Wood told the crowd. He then took a problematic swing at the nation that made the Dominion voting machines, which have been the subject of debunked claims of malfeasance:

“We’re not going to go vote on January 5 on another machine made by China. You’re not going to fool Georgians again. If Kelly Loeffler wants your vote, if David Purdue wants your vote, they’ve got to earn it. They’ve got to demand publicly, repeatedly, consistently, [for] Brian Kemp [to] call a special session of the Georgia legislature. And if they do not do [that], if Kelly Loeffler and David Purdue do not do it, they have not earned your vote. Don’t you give it to them. Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election for god’s sake! Fix it! You gotta fix it! You gotta fix it before you do it again!”

It’s certainly an interesting strategy! Even a lot of people who don’t like Trump agreed with what Wood said. In a sense.

Anyway, keep it up, we guess? We’ll see on January 5 if their plan to win by losing works out. In the meantime, perhaps Sam Rockwell — who played Wood in last year’s Clint Eastwood picture Richard Jewell — can return to the role in the movie version of all the silliness that’s happened since Trump lost.

(Via The Daily Beast)

History was made at the United Nations today, when the UN’s Commission for Narcotic Drugs narrowly voted to remove cannabis from a list of drugs previously judged to have little-to-no medicinal benefits. Vice reports that in a 27 to 25 vote victory, the US and UN cast the final two deciding votes to now officially remove cannabis from Schedule IV of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs — potentially opening up the plant to increased medicinal access throughout Europe, along with additional scientific research.

Translation: Your stoner cousin was right — weed is medicine. And now we’re a significant step closer to being able to get the type of research funded that will tell us precisely how it’s best used. The legal status of cannabis has always been a major hurdle when it comes to funding meaningful scientific research studying the long term medicinal benefits of THC, so the United Nations recognizing the medical value of weed remedies some of the unjust prejudice that has been unfairly placed on the plant, despite the historical use of cannabis as a medicine that stretches back to ancient Greece and Egypt. And, as we’ve covered before, medicinal recognition leads to medical legalization which always, always leads to eventual recreational legalization. So this move is a big win for weed worldwide.

To date, 50 countries worldwide have adopted medicinal cannabis programs, and the plant is now fully legal in Canada, Uruguay, and 15 US states. Mexico and Luxembourg are also expected to join the countries that have legalized weed in the near future, with the vote passing Mexico’s senate just days ago.

Luka Doncic, just two years into his NBA career, has established himself as one of the top players in the league, emerging as one of the elite offensive forces with his abilities as a scorer and passer. Those qualities as a point-forward have earned him comparisons to some of the game’s all-time greats, particularly his passing, as people will at times compare him to the likes of Magic Johnson and, more recently, LeBron James.

He obviously has a long, long way to go to reach the heights those two have, both individually and in leading teams to titles, but even LeBron understands the comps and admits to seeing some of himself in Luka’s game. James, who appeared on a Road Trippin’ special on Spectrum Sportsnet this week with Richard Jefferson and Allie Clifton, explained why Doncic has become one of his favorite players in the league and offered a previously unknown nugget of information about how he wanted to sign Doncic to be the face of “Team LeBron” with Nike when the young star was negotiating a new sneaker deal, which he eventually signed with Jordan.

“Luka is one of my favorite players in the NBA today. From the simple fact of, the way I play the game is exactly how I love the way he plays the game,” James said. “Team first, gets his guys involved, if you challenge me to score, I’m going to score. At the same time I’m going to score, but I’m going to keep my guys involved. But I play for the team and I play with a sense of joy.

“When Luka was going through his contract negotiations with Nike, and you saw him at one point he was wearing Jordans, other brands during practices, I wanted to begin Team LeBron and have Luka as my first signing with Nike,” James continued. “This is what I wanted, and I don’t believe that my guys at Nike was ready for that, and obviously they were not because he went to Jordan. And I don’t know if Luka knows this, but he will know it now. I wanted Luka to be the first signee with Team LeBron when he was going through his situation, and it didn’t happen but he’s still under the same umbrella of Nike with Jordan but I wanted him to be — and that’s how much I believed in him. And I feel like it’s going to haunt me a little bit, but I wanted him to be my first guy because I love what he stands for. I love everything about him, on court and off court, he’s just a great guy.”

It’s incredibly high praise from LeBron and certainly an interesting bit of information about his hopes to launch Team LeBron the same way Team Jordan did two decades ago with a rising star like Doncic. Luka himself has said he idolized James as a kid, so this surely will mean a lot to him as he enters Year 3 in Dallas with hopes of continuing his rise and the Mavs rise as a Western Conference contender.

The Los Angeles Clippers will enter the 2020-21 season with a bad taste in their collective mouths. The team did not ever really gel last year, with continued reports coming out of L.A. about discontent within the Clippers locker room, and as a result, they blew a shocking 3-1 series lead in the Western Conference Semifinals to the Denver Nuggets. They’re considered a title contender entering this campaign, but that reputation is going to follow them until they get over the hump.

As one of the team’s two All-Star selections, a lot of the onus to get over said hump is going to be on the shoulders of Paul George. Whether he’ll be able to answer that call remains to be seen, but as he explained during a cameo on the All the Smoke podcast, George does think he’ll be put in a better role this season. George believed that now-former Clippers coach Doc Rivers had an idea of how he wanted to use him, and while he believes he has that in his skill set, it wasn’t a perfect match.

Now, George did have the highest mark of his career in terms of the percentage of threes he took, but as Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer noted, comparisons to guys like Allen and Redick aren’t totally accurate.

The good news for George is that the Clippers hired a pretty good offensive tactician in Ty Lue to replace Rivers as head coach, and he will probably figure out ways to get George in the offense that play to his strengths. At the very least, he almost certainly will not be used like Allen or Redick, which he’ll appreciate.