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The Portland Trail Blazers entered Sunday’s game against the 76ers desperately needing a win to keep pace in the race for the playoffs in the West. Entering the game tied with San Antonio for ninth and just a half game up on Phoenix in 10th, a loss would’ve put the Blazers behind the proverbial 8-ball entering the final week of the seeding round.

Despite Joel Embiid playing just six minutes before exiting with an ankle injury, Philadelphia gave Portland all it could handle, and the Blazers had to call upon Damian Lillard to go deep into his bag of tricks to pull out a come from behind win. Lillard did just that, finishing the game with 51 points on 16-of-28 shooting (4-of-12 from three) along with seven assists, three boards, and a pair of steals, including this ridiculous 4-point play late to give the Blazers the lead for good as he had 18 in the final quarter.

Dame followed that up with another three and a pullup two to make it nine-straight points to give Portland the necessary cushion to get a win they desperately needed to claw back within a half-game of Memphis for 8th — and a half game clear of San Antonio for ninth.

The Sixers had a shot in the air to tie it, but Josh Richardson’s shot went begging as he was unable to add three more points to a highly productive 34-point outing to force overtime. The Blazers saw a regression to the mean from three-point range on Sunday, as the bubble’s hottest shooting team only hit 31.4 percent of their shots. Still, Lillard was able to put the team on his back and get to the rim and the foul line, assisted by a strong 20-point night from Carmelo Anthony (in 36 minutes), 16 points from C.J. McCollum, and 15 points — including two key free throws late — from Jusuf Nurkic.

It was some redemption for Lillard after missing a pair of key free throws late in a loss to the Clippers earlier in the weekend — which led to an Instagram comment battle with Paul George and Patrick Beverley. His 51-point outing showed exactly why the Blazers are considered a threat should they make it to the 8-seed, although the flipside of that coin is that they seem to need him to produce that level of heroics on far too consistent a basis to have a shot in a seven-game series.

For those counting at home, the Portland win officially eliminated the Kings and Pelicans from playoff contention in the West, leaving Phoenix, San Antonio, Portland, and Memphis (who lost to Toronto on Sunday) to battle things out this week for spots in a play-in series.

It’s been almost three years since it was revealed Louis C.K. engaged in multiple cases of sexual misconduct, and after laying low for some time, he has gradually re-emerged on the comedy scene. He even released a comedy special in the early days of the American quarantine, for “those who need a laugh.” More recently, word broke that he made two separate appearances at Dave Chappelle’s summer stand-up series, although it’s not clear yet if he performed or was merely a guest.

This comes from Entertainment Weekly, which showed that the comic appeared in two separate Instagram images related to Chappelle’s series. The first appeared last Tuesday, with C.K. standing alongside comics Michelle Wolf and Mo Amer at a show in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The other came Saturday night, also in Yellow Springs, via another photo, this time with Sarah Silverman, Tiffany Haddish, Talib Kweli, and Common in attendance.

The second image was re-grammed by Chappelle’s tour DJ, DJ Trauma, who wrote in the caption that “Louis CK came thru and rocked with us!!!”

That’s pretty vague, and C.K. may have just been hanging with longtime friends, many of whom have stuck with him after his actions were made public. Chappelle has been one of his most vocal defenders, talking about it in his special Sticks & Stones:

“Louis C.K. was a very good friend of mine before he died in that terrible masturbation accident…He didn’t do anything you can call the police for,” the comedian said in the August special. “I dare you to try….They ruined this n—’s life, and now he’s coming back playing comedy clubs and they’re acting like if he’s able to do that that’s going to hurt women. What the f— is your agenda, ladies?”

Chappelle’s summer shows have been held for small crowds of under 100. Viewers at home got a glimpse of what they’re like in his esteemed special 8:46, released shortly after the killing of George Floyd.

(Via EW)

The Cardi B-Megan Thee Stallion collaboration “WAP” may be an instant summer jam, but it’s had its share of vocal detractors. Some Republicans came out against its proudly risqué lyrics, prompting their own backlash. Another person who’s nonplussed: animal rights activist and Tiger King stand-out Carole Baskin. Her issue? That the song’s equally outré video features a pair of wild cats, and while they were obviously CGI’d in, she still thinks they probably weren’t treated well.

“My guess is that most people won’t even see the photoshopped cats in the scenes because the rest of it is so sexually explicit,” Baskin told Entertainment Weekly in a statement. “I was happy to see that it does appear to all be photoshopped. It didn’t look like the cats were really in the rooms with the singers.”

She continued:

“That being said, you have to pose a wildcat in front of a green screen to get that image and that doesn’t happen in the wild. It can’t happen in sanctuaries like ours where cats have plenty of room to avoid a green screen (or would shred it if offered access and could die from ingesting it). That tells me they probably dealt with one of the big cat pimps, probably even one of the ones shown in Tiger King, Murder, Mayhem and Madness, who make a living from beating, shocking and starving cats to make them stand on cue in front of a green screen in a studio. That’s never good for the cat.”

There’s another issue that enraged Baskin: the idea that it “glamorizes the idea of rich people having tigers as pets.” She doesn’t think any good can come out of wild cats being featured in a video by two of the most popular musicians out right now, even though few of their followers could get their mitts on them.

“That makes every follower of these artists, who doesn’t know better, want to imitate by doing the same … After tigers are too old for pay to play sessions by people like Joe Exotic, Bhagavan [Doc] Antle, Marc McCarthy, Mario Tabraue and others, they become a liability instead of an asset. While I think most are destroyed behind closed gates at that point, some end up being given away to people who want to have a tiger to show off. That never works out and the cats either die or end up dumped in sanctuaries or worse yet, breeding mills. There have been some accounts of tigers just being turned loose on communities when they no longer served as ego props. No matter how you cut it, it’s always abusive to the cat and dangerous to the public.”

So there you have it. Obviously Baskin does not know details of the shoot, so her complaints may wind up being moot. As of this writing, neither Cardi B nor Megan Thee Stallion have responded to Baskin’s criticism.

(Via EW)

The Philadelphia 76ers entered the bubble looking to capitalize on the layoff that allowed Ben Simmons to get himself healthy and back into the starting lineup for the restart after missing time with a back injury in February and March.

Unfortunately, the Sixers saw Simmons go down with a knee injury during the seeding round that has forced him to go get surgery and leave the bubble — and one would expect, end his season. That obviously put a dent in the Sixers hopes of toppling the top teams in the Eastern Conference, but on Sunday things got even worse for Philadelphia.

Playing the Portland Trail Blazers, Joel Embiid left midway through the first quarter with an apparent lower leg injury and was in the locker room for some time before word emerged from the team that he would miss the remainder of the game with an ankle injury.

At this time, the severity of the injury is unknown as Embiid checked out of the game, got his ankle looked at, and then went to the locker room. The hope, of course, is that the Sixers are just being understandably cautious with their star big man given the situation and he will be able to return soon. Still, we’ll provide updates when they are available on the All-NBA center who has been dominant in the bubble.

When Joe Kelly received a 10-game suspension for throwing behind — and then mocking — the Astros earlier this season the message from Major League Baseball was pretty clear. In the midst of a pandemic that is ravaging the country and has already led to a pair of teams having to shut down this season, baseball is walking a fine line already playing baseball in a non-bubble atmosphere.

As such, escalating situations into the potential for a brawl between teams is being policed strongly by the league in an effort to keep teams from the kind of face-to-face contact that could lead to inter-squad spread. On Sunday, the league’s nightmare situation came to life as the Oakland Athletics and Houston Astros squared off in the Bay, as the A’s Ramon Laureano got hit by a pitch and then was hearing it from the Houston dugout.

Laureano, being egged on by someone on the Astros bench, took off from first base to charge the dugout, where he was tackled and set off a subsequent benches clearing brawl.

The suspensions for this incident figure to be heavy, but what baseball will be most concerned with is if something happens in the coming days in terms of a positive test on either team, because it would almost surely force a shutdown for both. They’ll hand down suspensions tomorrow and then keep their fingers crossed for the next few rounds of testing, hoping that this simply ends at bad optics and doesn’t lead to anything worse.

Taylor Swift’s eighth album Folklore came as a big surprise to her fans, arriving with just 24 hour’s notice and less than a year after her Lover album. Despite the short notice, the album set records and quickly reached a number of milestones in its first week. Selling a million copies worldwide within the first day, Folklore would give Swift her seventh No. 1 album, tying her with Janet Jackson for the third-most no. 1 albums. Sure enough, in its second week, Folklore held onto the top slot.

Swift’s latest added another 135,000 equivalent album units, 102,000 of it are streaming equivalent album units, and 30,000 pure album sales. Right behind Folklore is Pop Smoke’s Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon, which jumped two spots to come in at No. 2, with 97,000 equivalent album units. Dropping down a spot from last week is Juice WRLD’s posthumous album, Legends Never Die, which clocks in at No. 3 with 88,000 units sold. Rounding out the top five is the original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton: An American Musical at No. 4 and Lil Baby’s My Turn at No. 5.

Newcomers in the bottom half of the top-10 include DaBaby’s Blame It On Baby album, which comes in at No. 6 thanks to its deluxe re-issue, and Beyonce’s The Lion King: The Gift, which also received a deluxe re-issue. (Surely her new film, Black Is King, available on Disney+, drew even more people to the album.)

You can read our review of Taylor Swift’s Folklore here.

(via Billboard)

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Baseball continues rolling along with its shortened, 60-game season despite some hiccups in the form of teamwide outbreaks in Miami and St. Louis. One of the fascinating parts of the shortened season is how, in a sport that is typically defined by being a marathon of 162 games, every game and every key moment is magnified — for better or worse.

On Sunday, for the Los Angeles Angels, Jo Adell had one of those unfortunate moments that may turn out to be painful for his team when Nick Solak hit what should’ve been a fairly innocuous fly ball to the warning track in right field, with Texas up 5-2. However, as Adell tried to reel in the ball for an out, he somehow not only dropped it but slapped the ball up in the air and over the fence for a home run to give the Rangers a 6-2 lead.

It’s the absolute nightmare of every outfielder to have their Jose Canseco moment — although at least this one wasn’t a ball bouncing off his head and over the wall — and while the Angels would get that run back in the top of the sixth, it gave Texas an added insurance run as a gift that L.A. really didn’t want to provide them.

Life in the bubble is hard for everyone, which means things could get pretty weird in Orlando, Toronto and Edmonton over the next few months. The NHL and NBA are in it for the long haul when it comes to their bubble leagues, with the playoff picture in both leagues just getting settled over the next few days. Which perhaps makes what the NHL did on Sunday to thank its “fans” a bit more concerning when put in that context.

The big narrative out of hockey’s two bubble cities was all the Settlers of Catan players hoped to get in while they didn’t do much outside of eat and play hockey, and maybe that confinement is one reason for a very silly joke that happened on Sunday during NBC’s broadcast of a game between the Dallas Stars and St. Louis Blues. A graphic that read “THANK YOU FANS” appeared on the video board above the ice, while a narration from the National Hockey League thanked “fans” for all their support during the league’s return in the bubble.

“The National Hockey League thanks ALL of their fans for their support during the NHL’s return to play,” the narration read while the camera panned to the seats in the arena, empty save for four standing fans positioned there as mechanical spectators.

It’s a really strong visual joke right out of the old British shows Adult Swim used to air at 3 a.m.

It’s the kind of perfect dry humor that we need to get through this thing. So thank you, hockey. Thockey.

2 Chainz has been fairly busy this weekend. Kicking things off Thursday night, the Atlanta rapper was joined by Rick Ross for a Verzuz battle. The following night, 2 Chainz shared his “Money Maker” single with Lil Wayne, signaling that his Collegrove 2 effort with is, indeed, nearing an arrival. Closing his productive weekend, 2 Chainz officially joined Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote nonpartisan initiative with a message directed at the formerly incarcerated.

In his two-and-a-half-minute message, 2 Chainz urged former inmates to look into laws in their respective states and confirm whether or not they are able to vote in this upcoming election. It’s an effort to clear up a misconception in some cases that former inmates are no longer able to vote following their convictions. In the statement, 2 Chainz lists the main things that are the deciding factors for whether or not a former inmate will be able to participate in an election. While voting rights differ from state to state, 2 Chainz mentions that in most states, ex-inmates will have their rights restored following their release from prison. If ex-inmates see that they do qualify to vote, the rapper urged them to register if they have not in order to participate in the upcoming election.

2 Chainz’s message comes after Snoop Dogg revealed in an interview on Big Boy’s Neighborhood he never voted simply because he was unaware that he could. “I ain’t never voted a day in my life, but this year I think I’m a get out and vote ’cause I can’t stand to see this punk in office,” he said. “For many years, they had me brainwashed thinking that you couldn’t vote because you had a criminal record. I didn’t know that. My record’s been expunged. So now I can vote.”

Listen to 2 Chainz’s message in the video above.

Back in December 2018, Juelz Santana was sentenced to 27 months in prison following a March 2019 incident at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport where a loaded handgun and nonprescription oxycodone pills were found in his carry-on bag. After the discovery, the rapper was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and carrying a weapon on an aircraft. Completing 19 months of his prison sentence, the Dipset rapper was freed last week and according to a report from TMZ, he owes Meek Mill a big thank you.

Sources told TMZ that Mill wanted to ensure Santana’s early release request was filed correctly and that the entire process was followed in the best manner. To make sure this happened, the Philly rapper connected Santana’s wife, Kimbella, with a lawyer who made sure the entire process was smooth-sailing. As a result, Santana was able to come home early and steer clear from serving any time at a halfway house, seeing that most are closed because of the pandemic. He is now on supervised release and must submit to a drug test within 15 days of his release.

In other news, Santana has also committed to giving back to inmates by working with non-profits who aim to overturn sentences for wrongfully convicted inmates. He also aims to create a platform to share the music and movies written by inmates during their sentences.

(via TMZ)

Meek Mill is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.