Our Longest Summer series will look at the eight teams whose seasons are now officially over, and will have to wait until mid-October to make decisions on what’s next and how to proceed after falling short of the cut-off for a continued 2019-20 campaign.

Following the acquisition of Thaddeus Young and Tomas Satoransky, as well as lottery pick Coby White, the Chicago Bulls were on the radar as a 2019-20 playoff sleeper in the Eastern Conference. Though that kind of push didn’t come to fruition, the Bulls were competitive at times and, with the acknowledgement of injuries to Otto Porter and Wendell Carter Jr. and a point differential much better than their record, Chicago wasn’t exactly lucky on the way to a 22-win showing.

Still, the Bulls have a lot of work to do in order to form a legitimate contender, as evidenced by the fact that Chicago was omitted from the NBA’s 22-team bubble restart. Along the way, there are key decisions to make for new front office chief Arturas Karnisovas, and Chicago’s 2020 offseason could be pivotal in outlining their immediate future as a franchise.

2020 Free Agents

Kris Dunn (RFA), Denzel Valentine (RFA), Shaq Harrison (RFA), Otto Porter (player option)

2020 Projected salary cap space (assuming $115 million salary cap)

None, per Early Bird Rights

Areas of Strength

While there are a few non-bubble teams that are generally void of talent, the Bulls don’t quite fit that description. Zach LaVine is a proven 25-point scorer, Lauri Markkanen is an interesting talent and the club also has recent lottery picks in White and Carter Jr. to feature in their rebuild. In addition, the Bulls were able to construct an average (or better) defense in 2019-20, based on an aggressive scheme that maximized their talent on that end of the floor. It wasn’t perfect, but things aren’t completely lost.

Areas of Need

The Bulls… probably need a franchise player. With all respect to LaVine, his flaws are such that it would be hard to envision a legitimate contender being built with him as the No. 1 offensive option. Beyond that, players like White, Carter and Markkanen have considerable talent, but none are likely to reach that kind of ceiling. The Bulls also struggled mightily on the glass this season, and it is a team that has desperate needs on the wing, especially if Porter’s injury woes continue.

Biggest Decisions

Chicago is set to operate over the cap this summer, indicating that they’ll be able to use their mid-level exception but not much else. Markkanen is extension-eligible and, if the Bulls are able to lock him in at a discount, that could be appealing. Aside from that, however, Chicago must try to acquire (likely via MLE) a starting-caliber wing/forward to deploy next to LaVine and help out defensively. The Bulls also have their own lottery pick and, on a lesser level, a decision on Kris Dunn will be needed, both in whether to tender a qualifying offer and how much monetary investment the team is willing to offer. There’s also the looming question of whether Jim Boylen will be the coach next season, or if Karnisovas will want to bring in his preferred coach during this lengthy offseason period.

Overall Offseason Focus

It would be fair to say that Chicago’s roster is a bit better than their 2019-20 record would indicate, especially if Porter Jr. opts in (likely) and stays healthy (less assured). The Bulls do need sweeping changes in order to really make a leap, however, and aiming for star power, either in the draft or via trade using that selection, is a necessity at some point in the cycle. Chicago does have a new front office structure as well, leaving even more uncertainty, but the Bulls are a team to closely monitor as they make significant decisions about their core in the coming months.

In light of what is going on in the US at the moment (one of the things, anyway), the country group formerly known as Lady Antebellum changed their name. In a move they admitted is long overdue, the group renamed themselves to Lady A, truncating “Antebellum” due to the word’s ties to slavery. Not everybody was happy with the change, though: A gospel singer who has performed as Lady A for two decades offered some strong criticisms of the band’s new name, especially due to the fact that she never heard from the group.

Now, though, the two parties have connected. The band shared a screenshot of a video call they had with the singer, and wrote on Instagram, “Today, we connected privately with the artist Lady A. Transparent, honest, and authentic conversations were had. We are excited to share we are moving forward with positive solutions and common ground. The hurt is turning into hope. More to come.” Also on the call were two artists who perform with the singer, John Oliver III of Gleanings Community Bible Church and Dexter Allen.

The singer also shared the post with the same caption. On her Instagram Story, she shared somebody else’s Story, in which they posted a screenshot of an article about the name controversy. The person wrote, “Do a song together? In the spirit of racial reconciliation? Be next Lil NazX and Billy Ray.” Lady A did not add a comment to the post.

Ahead of the call, Lady A the singer said of the band, “They’re using the name because of a Black Lives Matter incident that, for them, is just a moment in time. If it mattered, it would have mattered to them before. It shouldn’t have taken George Floyd to die for them to realize that their name had a slave reference to it. It’s an opportunity for them to pretend they’re not racist or pretend this means something to them.” Thankfully, though, it now appears the singer and the band have come to some sort of understanding.

For the first time in its decades-long history, there will be no San Diego Comic-Con this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But just like SDCC fixture Bender building his own theme park, Warner Bros. is hosting its own comic-con, minus the blackjack.

On August 22, Warner Bros will launch DC FanDome, a “free, global, 24-hour virtual convention” with “special programming, panels, and content reveals from a wide variety of films, TV series, and games,” according to the convention’s official website. Those who “attend” will hear from the cast and creators of DC titles, like Aquaman, The Batman, Black Adam, Doom Patrol, The Flash, Harley Quinn, SHAZAM!, The Suicide Squad, Supergirl, Teen Titans GO!, Watchmen, and Wonder Woman 1984, as well as the fabled Snyder Cut of Justice League. Just what it needs, more online attention.

“There is no fan like a DC fan. For more than 85 years, the world has turned to DC’s inspiring heroes and stories to lift us up and entertain us, and this massive, immersive digital event will give everyone new ways to personalize their journey through the DC Universe without lines, without tickets and without boundaries,” Warner Bros. CEO Ann Sarnoff said in a statement. “With DC FanDome, we’re able to give fans from around the world an exciting and unparalleled way to connect with all their favorite DC characters, as well as the incredible talent who bring them to life on the page and screen.”

Fans are being asked to “show us your cosplay, makeup, tattoos, and your own Batcave,” although maybe not that last one. No one needs to see this guy’s cave.

(Via DC)

DC’s most f*cked up group of superheroes is about to find a wider audience. That’s the goal for Warner Bros. Doom Patrol TV show (which is critically acclaimed but criminally under-watched on the DC Universe service) receiving a snazzy second home at HBO Max next week when its second season launches. For those of you who might have superhero fatigue, it’s worth noting that this show actually doesn’t feel very superhero-ey in the conventional sense. Yes, there are action scenes and world-saving stakes, but more prominently, this is a methodically paced show with character development at the forefront. It’s a buffet of complicated, traumatized souls, each bestowed with powers and unwittingly brought together for (some sort of) greater good.

You can also catch up on the show’s essential points with a recent trailer aimed at drawing in new eyeballs. There are rapid-fire introductions to Cliff Steele/Robotman (Brendan Fraser), Larry Trainor/Negative Man (Matt Bomer), Rita Farr/Elasti-Woman (April Bowlby), and Victor Stone/Cyborg (Joivan Wade). The most interesting player, however, would be Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero from Orange Is The New Black), who’s front and center in the above image. Sadly, we saw no Karen in the trailer, but I’ve got my fingers crossed for her return, so she can receive more comeuppance.

Karen, for the uninitiated, is one of Jane’s 60+ mostly abrasive personalities. She also happens to be the worst iteration of Jane that we’ve seen so far. Of course, recent news stories have been full of “Karens” — the slang term for insufferable white women who ask “to speak to the manager” and have been known to call police in a racially charged fit of hysteria — so this Jane incarnation (who first surfaces in episode 8, “Danny Patrol”) suggests shades of relevance to the Karen memes you’ve seen online.

She’s perky, she’s blonde, and she’s full of harsh judgments. Karen (who’s described as a “dangerous” presence as well as a “basic b*tch Barbie”) is insidious in a way that Rita didn’t quite grasp at first. She guessed that Karen only wanted to be happy, but it’s a front. In reality, Karen’s powerful enough to cast “love spells” in order to overtake Jane’s body forever and vanquish the other (diverse) personalities. She initially seemed harmless while enthusiastically gushing over marrying “Dougie!” but don’t be fooled. Karen’s a bad egg, and she later grew furious when her big day was ruined by the well-meaning Doom Patrol co-members who worked to resuscitate the “real” Jane.

Well, the group managed to knock Karen out of Jane’s body, and the bland and useless Dougie barely escaped with his life, but things only grew more complicated. Karen got whisked away to the Underground, where she was confronted and imprisoned by Jane’s other personalities in the next episode, “Jane Patrol.” There, the various forms of her being (including Scarlet Harlot, Mama Pentecost, Hammerhead, and The Nun) were represented in physical form, and oh boy, I can’t wait to get to know some of them further in future episodes. They were not at all thrilled at how Karen attempted to put an end to them with her marriage and dreams of a perfect Stepford-Wife life. Those hopes weren’t realized, and the show was better for squashing Karen’s intentions.

Is she actually gone, though? Nope. Karen very briefly surfaced in Episode 12 with another love spell before Jane broke through her consciousness and took charge once more. That can’t be the end of her, and having a “Karen” on this show — a character who aims to forever sideline any culturally diverse presences, even if she hasn’t said anything outwardly racist — couldn’t be more timely, given that the show’s not exactly politically correct but still aims to land on the right side of history.

By the way, I do wish that I could credit Doom Patrol for being prescient in highlighting Karen’s existence as a “Karen,” but the show’s timing won’t allow that leap. The first season aired in 2019, and the Karen memes have been circulating for at least a few years. And Guerrero’s Karen doesn’t seem as immediately horrifying as the Karens who get spotlighted on Twitter, but you can’t possibly look at these demonic eyes and imagine this personality by another name, right? Definitely a Karen.

Where she goes from here, I can’t guess. Season 2 has been throwing up Wizard of Oz vibes with the trailer, and Season 1 ended with The Chief (Timothy Dalton) revealing his Dorothy-like daughter (Abigail Shapiro). Each member of the Doom Patrol is also still sifting through their baggage and trauma while processing feelings of betrayal toward The Chief. I can only hope that Karen, who tends to surface when Jane is most stressed, will get more face time. There are certainly enough real-life Karens running around these days that could have inspired the writers to give her another antagonistic run.

‘Doom Patrol’s second season comes to HBO Max (and the DC Universe streaming service) on June 25.

Last month, Teyana Taylor teased that her album would be out at some point in June. Here in the middle of the month, we’re running out of Fridays (when most albums come out), so if she is sticking to her word, The Album has to drop either this week or next. Now Taylor has confirmed that The Album is in fact coming out this weekend, on June 19, which is also known as Juneteenth.

The release date reveal came as part of Taylor sharing the album’s 23-song tracklist. There are a lot of features on the record, including appearances from Rick Ross, Junie, Iman Shumpert, Erykah Badu, Quavo, Kehlani, Missy Elliott, Future, Davido, Big Sean, King Combs, and Lauryn Hill.

Check out the The Album tracklist below.

1. “Intro”
2. “Come Back to Me” Feat. Rick Ross and Junie
3. “Wake Up Love” Feat. Iman
4. “Lowkey” Feat. Erykah Badu
5. “Let’s Build” Feat. Quavo
6. “1-800-ONE-NITE”
7. “Mornin’” Feat. Kehlani
8. “Boomin’” Feat. Missy Elliott and Future
9. “69”
10. “Killah” Feat. Davido
11. “Bad”
12. “Wrong B****”
13. “Shoot It Up” Feat. Big Sean
14. “Bare Wit Me”
15. “Lose Each Other”
16. “Concrete”
17. “Still”
18. “Ever Ever”
19. “Try Again”
20. “Friends”
21. “How You Want It” Feat. King Combs
22. “Made It”
23. “We Got Love” Feat. Ms. Lauryn Hill

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Game Of Thrones‘ final season is still a point of contention, one year later, as HBO continues to develop a House Of Targaryen-focused prequel. The Thrones cast certainly didn’t shy away from offering their takes, with Kit Harington previously expressing disappointment that Arya was the one who killed the Night King since he wanted Jon Snow to take that trophy. However, The Eternals star seems like he’s found peace with where his character ultimately ended up, even if some viewers felt that Snow got the shaft by being sent into exile following Dany’s death and Bran taking the Iron Throne.

Granted, people may have felt sorry for Jon because of his perpetual grumpy face. Hey, it’s difficult to know how the guy felt! Even when he was in love, the dude seemed miserable. Yet Kit wants everyone to know that Jon’s fate was consistent with where he belongs. While speaking to Twitter user @purple_dwagon during a video chat,” Kit insisted that “Jon is always happiest” (although, again, it’s hard to tell when he’s experiencing palpable feelings) when he’s “north of the wall” because Tormund was correct when he said “You’re of the north.”

Harington maintained that he felt passionately on the subject and could continue arguing the point “for hours,” but he’s fairly certain that Jon would have been truly miserable sticking around in the south. Here’s why:

“He’s been saddled with this weight all the way through the series and he’s this heavy character – he’s literally got a cloak on and he’s heavy. And what I wanted with that last bit is for there to be this lightness about him. It’s all falling off, this terrible thing that he’s been through is all falling off as he goes north of the Wall.”

Sound reasonable? I think that Jon could have tried throwing off that massive cloak and heading out to sea with Arya, just to see if he was capable of happiness without being underneath a mountain of snow. Then again, Arya might have grown annoyed with his attitude and thrown him overboard. We’ll never know what could have been, but you can watch Kit dig back into Jon Snow’s psyche below.

(Via NME)

Trevor Noah wasted no time getting to the point during Monday’s The Daily Show. “Another Monday in the middle of corona and in the middle of protests about police brutality, and yet it’s another Monday of another police brutality incident,” the weary-looking host said. “Another story that has people going, how long? How much? When is it enough?” Noah could have been talking about any number of unarmed black men, women, and non-binary people who have been killed by cops, but in this case, he was referring to Rayshard Brooks, who was fatally shot last Friday in Atlanta.

After going through the details of the incident (Brooks had fallen asleep in his parked car while drunk), Noah said, “He’s broken some law, a law not worth dying for. I think we can all agree on that. The police approach him, and even then, I ask the question: why are armed police dealing with a man who’s sleeping in his car? He posed no threat to anybody… Why, why, why, why, why, why? Why are armed police the first people who have to go and respond to somebody who’s sleeping in their car who is drunk?”

The whole clip above is worth a worth, but the biggest takeaway is this:

“People always say the same thing. They go, ‘Well, you know, if you didn’t do that, then you would still be alive.’ They say this sh*t all the time. ‘If you didn’t do that.’ But the truth is, the ‘ifs’ keep on changing. If you didn’t resist arrest, then you’d still be alive. Or if you didn’t run away from the cops, you’d still be alive. Well, if you didn’t have a toy gun and were 12 years old in the middle of a park, then you would have still been alive. Well, if you weren’t wearing a hoodie, then you would have still been alive. If you didn’t talk back to the cops, you would have been still been alive. If you weren’t sleeping in your bed as a black woman, you would have still been alive. There’s one common thread beyond all the ‘ifs.’ If you weren’t black, maybe you’d still be alive.”

If this is The Daily Show‘s worst legacy, Noah asking the tough questions is the best.

The country has changed since the death of George Floyd. Protests against police brutality sprung up across the nation, and in the midst of all this, support has also been shown for the daughter Floyd left behind, Gianna. Kanye West, for his part, established a college fund for the six-year-old, and now Gianna has expressed her gratitude.

On her Instagram, Floyd shared an image of text that read, “Thank you Kanye for securing my college education,” and wrote in the post, “Thank You Kanye, Because of You I Will have a college Education… Mommy and I are so thankful for you and your family @kimkardashian.”

Kanye isn’t the only person who has helped make Floyd’s future better: Earlier this week, Floyd also took to Instagram to thank Barbra Streisand for giving her the gift of Disney stock.

Stephen Jackson, a friend of George Floyd and his family, recently spoke about the hole Floyd’s death has left in his daughter’s life, saying, “He will never see her grow up, graduate, he will never walk her down the aisle. If there’s a problem she’s having and she needs her dad, she does not have that anymore. There’s a lot of stuff you said that he’s gonna miss, that I’m gonna be there for. I’m gonna walk her down the aisle, I’m gonna be there for her. I’ma be there to wipe away her tears, I’m gonna be here for you and Gigi.”

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