The Last Dance has given us so many memorable moments over the past month, it’s hard to know how we’re supposed to fill the void after the upcoming finale this Sunday. In terms of sheer entertainment value, it’s no surprise that some of the best content has come from the bitter rivalry between Michael Jordan’s Bulls and the Bad Boy Pistons.

In a previous episode, Jordan balked at Isiah Thomas’ revisionist explanation about why he refused to shake hands with the Bulls after they ousted him from the playoffs in 1991, subsequently giving birth to the greatest MJ-related meme since the Crying Jordan.

But in hindsight, it’s impossible not to view the Pistons has a necessary evil and an inescapable part of his origin story, the perfect foils to push Jordan to even greater heights. It’s even gotten to the point where even Thomas and the Pistons take a certain amount of credit for Jordan’s greatness.

On the latest episode of People’s Party with Talib Kweli, John Salley offered up a slightly different take on Jordan’s feelings toward those notorious Pistons squads.

“[Michael] loved everybody,” Salley said. “He hated Bill Lambeer. Well, no one liked Bill Laimbeer at the time. I just started liking the cat like a week ago. But MJ loved our competitive spirit. He liked that that was a challenge. He liked that he had to get up for it.”

While it’s true that Jordan would later embrace former Bad Boys like Salley and Dennis Rodman, who would go on to help the Bulls win championships, there’s clearly no love lost between Jordan and Isiah Thomas or Bill Lambeer. Jordan put it bluntly in an earlier episode when he said the hate still carries “to this day.”

But given his penchant for using even totally imaginary slights as motivation, it’s not a stretch to think that Jordan likely appreciates all the fuel it added to his competitive fire.

The Trump Administration has approved the largest solar power project in U.S. history. The $1 billion Gemini Solar Project constructed by Solar Partners, XI LLC (Arevia) will be located in the desert just north of Las Vegas, Nevada. The plant will span approximately 7,100 acres of federal land and generate enough electricity to power 260,000 homes in the region.

When it’s completely finished in 2022, the solar project will become the eighth-largest solar-producing facility in the world.

The project will produce power for NV Energy, part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate. It will work to meet Nevada’s requirement to have 50% of the state’s energy produced by renewables by 2030 and 100% by 2050.

The solar farm’s energy may also be shipped out to Southern California.

via Bureau of Land Management

The project will annually offset over 380,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s the equivalent of taking 83,000 cars off the road.

The plant will have a 380-megawatt battery storage system that will hold power created during the day to be released when demand peaks in the early evening.

“Despite the challenges of the coronavirus, we’re pleased to see that Nevada will soon be home to one of the biggest solar projects in the world,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in a statement.

“The solar industry is resilient and a project like this one will bring jobs and private investment to the state when we need it most,” she continued.

The decision is surprising given Trump’s history of standing against renewable energy.

Trump has incorrectly stated that solar power is “not strong enough and it’s very very expensive.”

He also significantly hobbled the solar industry in 2018 by placing 30% tariffs on solar imports. The tariffs have since been reduced to 20%, but the economic damage has been significant. The tariffs cost more than 62,000 U.S. jobs and cost $19 billion in new private sector investment.

The goal was to inspire U.S. panel production but that has actually decreased since the tariffs went into effect.

The decision to build the solar panel farm show’s the administration’s lack of cohesive energy policy but it’s a definite positive in an era when the federal government has taken a firm stance against clean, renewable energy.

In spite of the Trump Administration’s war against renewables, the country had made significant strides when it comes to solar installations.

According to the EIA, a division of the Department of Energy, the U.S. produced about 11% of the world’s solar energy in 2018 and it accounted for about 1.8% of the U.S. energy mix in 2019.

“Solar accounted for 40 percent of all new electric generating capacity added to the grid in 2019, more than any other energy source,” the non-profit The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) said in a report. That was enough energy to power 14.5 million American homes.

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The Last Dance has kept sports fans captivated over the last month, as it’s the exceedingly rare new sports thing that folks can consume during the NBA’s COVID-19 hiatus. The 10-part docuseries will come to an end on Sunday evening, and ahead of the final two episodes, prop bets have popped up for those who want to channel their inner Michael Jordan and gamble on something that doesn’t necessarily call for gambling.

The reason props have been unveiled for the final two episodes is, unlike the first eight, screeners have not been sent out for the final two and, thus, there’s not any leaked footage on the interwebs.

All of the following prop bets come via BetOnline:

Episode 10 average viewership: Over/Under 6 million

Episode 9 and 10 metered market rating in Chicago: Over/Under 12 market rating

First person shown:
Phil Jackson, 3/2
Jerry Krause, 2/1
Scottie Pippen, 3/1
Jerry Reinsdorf, 4/1
Dennis Rodman, 5/1

How many people will be shown with cigar in mouth? Over/Under 3 different people

How many times will the “f” word be said? Over/Under 2½

Will Michael Jordan be shown in a Wizards uniform?
Yes +150 (3/2)
No -200 (1/2)

Will Michael Jordan cry while being interviewed?
Yes +110 (11/10)
No -150 (2/3)

Based on what we know about this series, it seems safe to say the ratings will be through the roof for the final two episodes (although the second episode each night has seen about a 200,000 viewer dip from the first, so 6 million might be tight), there will be a bunch of cigars (the real number is O/U 2 because Jordan is going to have a cigar in his mouth at some point and they’re showing them win a title, so there will be celebration footage that will surely feature cigars), and there will be plenty of profanity. Also, Jordan being shown in a Wizards uni seems like some solid value. Of course, prop bets on an ESPN documentary are not canon, but if you were to wager on anything, those in particular seem like the most sensible bets.

The best new hip-hop albums coming out this week include albums from the prolific Buffalo spitter Conway, Atlanta trap crooner Future, the witty and worldly Deanté Hitchcock, Chicago spark plug Polo G, and Brooklyn drill adherent Sheff G. As quarantine continues, it appears Drake has, as usual, led a trend of big-name artists throwing up their hands and unleashing their back-stocked material — social distancing-induced tour cancelations be damned.

While some of the biggest artists in other genres continue to hold back their new music in hopes of a return to normalcy (and the sort of promo tour that supports their entire operation and recoups their recording losses), the guerrilla nature of lots of rap recordings these days allows for rappers to cut costs and makes putting out records profitable (enough) to justify letting their latest work loose on the world. When Drake released his Dark Lane Demo Tapes a couple of weeks ago, it seems it was a signal to other rappers to open the floodgates, prompting a spate of releases from other established A-listers like Lil Durk, Future, Nav, and more. Projecting out into the near future (no pun intended), we can expect releases from Gunna, Run The Jewels, and others who have decided that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Here are all the best new hip-hop albums coming out this week.

Conway — No One Mourns The Wicked

Conway is living up to the “Machine” epithet of his moniker, as he’s already on his second release of 2020 after March’s Lulu EP with The Alchemist. This time around, he’s linked up with former satire blogger Big Ghost for a nine-song full-length project. If you haven’t gotten enough of Griselda Records’ grimy aesthetic from Westside Gunn’s Pray For Paris last month, this one is for you.

Deanté Hitchcock — Better

Atlanta’s own Hitchcock distinguished himself last year with a feature on Dreamville’s Revenge Of The Dreamers III compilation, locking down a major label deal and a string of high-profile feature credits from the likes of Childish Major, H.E.R., and more. That streak continues on his major-label debut with 6lack, JID, Miguel, and Young Nudy. He’s going to be one to watch, for fans of Dreamville, Outkast, and JID’s Spillage Village collective.

Future — High Off Life

Beginning with Drake collab “Life Is Good,” Future has low-key owned 2020, popping up on features from RMR, DaBaby, Nav, Drake, and more, all while re-releasing his most beloved mixtapes to streaming services for the first time since 2015. His new project is sure to extend the trap pioneer’s legacy, while recording in quarantine may have given him some new perspectives.

Polo G — The GOAT

Polo G was one of the breakout stars of 2019, exploding into the mainstream with his tracks “Finer Things,” “Pop Out,” and “Heartless,” and landing his debut album, Die A Legend, on numerous year-end lists. He seeks to repeat the feat with The GOAT, which finds him incorporating both turn-up party tracks like the Mike Will Made-It-produced “Go Stupid” with Stunna 4 Vegas and NLE Choppa and moody introspection on “DND.”

Sheff G — One And Only

Brooklyn, stand up. While the biggest borough may have lost its brightest breakout star earlier this year with the death of Pop Smoke, his fellow grime purveyors have picked up the torch to carry the subgenre forward. While Smoove L, Fivio Foreign, 22Gz, and others haven’t quite garnered the same level of attention as Pop, it’s only a matter of time until one of them breaks out and Sheff G has just as much opportunity as anyone if any of the songs from this set catch on the way “Welcome To The Party” did.

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

The 2014-15 Los Angeles Lakers were among the worst teams in franchise history, winning just 21 games that season as Kobe Bryant was limited to playing less than half the season due to injury and the rest of the roster struggled mightily.

That also happened to be Jeremy Lin’s lone season in Los Angeles, and even though Kobe was hurt and not around the team for a good portion of the season, he did make sure his presence was felt. Lin joined Danny Green on the “Inside the Green Room” podcast this week and recalled Kobe showing up to practice the day before the trade deadline to the surprise of his teammates, and when prompted on why he was there, he offered an extremely Kobe answer.

“He comes in, sweatsuit [on], he has a sling around for his hurt shoulder, he has his shades on, his Kobe shades,” Lin recalls. “And he walks in and everyone’s like, ‘Ohhhh’ and Booz, Carlos Boozer, is like ‘Kob! Good to see you bro! Dang, we haven’t seen you in a bit, how come you came today?’ And he was just stone-faced, and he was like, ‘I just came by to say bye to some of you bums who are going to get traded tomorrow.’ [laughs] And then he sits down at the table where you control the scoreboard at the practice facility and he said a couple words to the coach, and then he left. And I remember one of my teammates was just like ‘I lost all motivation to practice.’”

It is extremely on brand for Kobe, and is especially topical right now as we all just watched an episode of The Last Dance where they dove into Michael Jordan’s penchant for belittling teammates in practice. Kobe, of course, modeled so much of his game and mentality after Mike and picked up the mantle of being the most demanding star in the league when it came to how he treated and handled his teammates.

It’s a tactic that can only work for a select few that have such unimpeachable work ethic and the skill to match that their teammates can’t ever really fire back at them for being hypocritical with their demands — which is often lost in the deification of both — but it’s clear that, at least now, Lin can look back and laugh at the moment. It also could’ve just been Kobe cracking back at a question of why he was finally popping in to visit the team with a witty comeback, but somewhere in there was at least a little bit of seriousness from Kobe in calling them bums — although the funniest part of the story might be that the Lakers didn’t even make a trade that year,.

Hailing from Atlanta, R&B sister duo Chloe x Halle has been busy. Not only was Halle cast as Ariel in the upcoming live-action remake of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, but the sisters have been busy making music. Signed to Beyonce’s label, the duo tease a new era of music with the snapping number “Do It.”

“Do It” arrives as the lead single off Chloe x Halle’s sophomore record, Ungodly Hour. The duo’s mesmerizing harmonization melts over a fluttering backbeat. “I beat my face / Moving fast ’cause the Uber on the way / Taking pictures make sure you can’t see no lace,” they croon at the single’s hook.

Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about the project, Chloe said she and her sister aim to showcase their talent through a collection of catchy numbers: “My sister and I, we are such music heads of real musicality and I feel like we kind of showed that on our first album, The Kids Are Alright. And for this one, we really just wanted to show how we could pair our musicianship with a few bops and letting people enjoy themselves and have fun as well as the lyrics and the messaging of the album. We called it Ungodly Hour because it’s okay to not be perfect all the time. It’s okay to have those moments of self reflection when you just don’t feel okay.”

Listen to “Do It” above.

Ungodly Hour is out 6/5 via Parkwood Entertainment. Pre-order it here.

Since 2011, when the project was announced, multiple filmmakers have been attached to direct a “reimagination” of Scarface, including David Yates (Harry Potter), Pablo Larrain (No), and Antoine Fuqua (Training Day). They all dropped out for various reasons, but Universal thinks the retelling has finally found the right guy for the job: Call Me By Your Name and Suspiria director Luca Guadagnino.

Variety reports that Guadagnino will board the project, with a script “off of Joel Coen and Ethan Coen’s version, who’ve been with the project for at least three years, with earlier drafts by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, Jonathan Herman and Paul Attanasio,” according to Deadline. A Coen Brothers-Guadagnino joint project? Say hello to my little… Oscar???

The story has been adapted a number of times, most recently in the 1983 classic starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer with Brian DePalma directing. The new pic is a reimagining of the core immigrant story told in both the 1932 and 1983 films, and will be set in Los Angeles. (Via)

If it’s not too much to ask, I would like to request that Tony and Elvira be played the millennial Pacino and Pfeiffer: Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan. They had natural chemistry in Lady Bird and Little Women, and he’s already got the dance moves down.

Timmy Montana, imo.

(Via Deadline and Variety)

The Trump Administration has approved the largest solar power project in U.S. history. The $1 billion Gemini Solar Project constructed by Solar Partners, XI LLC (Arevia) will be located in the desert just north of Las Vegas, Nevada. The plant will span some 7,100 acres of federal land and generate enough electricity to power 260,000 homes in the region.

When it’s completely finished in 2022, the solar project will become the eighth-largest solar-producing facility in the world.

The project will produce power for NV Energy, part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate. It will work to meet Nevada’s requirement to have 50% of the state’s energy produced by renewables by 2030 and 100% by 2050.

The solar farm’s energy may also be shipped out to Southern California.

via Bureau of Land Management

The project will annually offset over 380,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s the equivalent of taking 83,000 cars off the road.

The plant will have a 380-megawatt battery storage system that will hold power created during the day to be released when demand peaks in the early evening.

“Despite the challenges of the coronavirus, we’re pleased to see that Nevada will soon be home to one of the biggest solar projects in the world,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in a statement.

“The solar industry is resilient and a project like this one will bring jobs and private investment to the state when we need it most,” she continued.

The decision is surprising given Trump’s history of standing against renewable energy.

Trump has incorrectly stated that solar power is “not strong enough, and it’s very very expensive.”

He also significantly hobbled the solar industry in 2018 by placing 30% tariffs on solar imports. The tariffs have since been reduced to 20%, but the economic damage has been significant. The tariffs cost more than 62,000 U.S. jobs and cost $19 billion in new private sector investment.

The goal was to inspire U.S. panel production but that has actually decreased since the tariffs went into effect.

The decision to build the solar panel farm show’s the administration’s lack of cohesive energy policy but it’s a definite positive in an era when the federal government has taken a firm stance against clean, renewable energy.

In spite of the Trump Administration’s war against renewables, the country had made significant strides when it comes to solar installations.

According to the EIA, a division of the Department of Energy, the U.S. produced about 11% of the world’s solar energy in 2018 and it accounted for about 1.8% of the U.S. energy mix in 2019.

“Solar accounted for 40 percent of all new electric generating capacity added to the grid in 2019, more than any other energy source,” the non-profit The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) said in a report. That was enough energy to power 14.5 million American homes.

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