Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 album To Pimp A Butterfly earned the rapper a number of accolades. The record was certified Platinum, awarded a Grammy for Best Rap Album and Album Of The Year, and then-president Barack Obama even named “How Much A Dollar Cost” as his favorite song of 2015. Now, people across the nation are finding the album still resonates amid the protesting taking place in response to police brutality and the murder of George Floyd. As a result, the album has impressively reentered charts this week.

To Pimp A Butterfly has managed to climb to No. 76 on Apple Music’s Top 100 charts and clocked in at No. 44 in the hip-hop charts, according to HotNewHipHop. The album’s charting placement arrives just behind Joyner Lucas’ ADHD, which was released just last week. Lamar’s album returning to the charts is an impressive feat, seeing as the album is five years old.

To Pimp A Butterfly is now heralded as a classic, but the recording process featured a few improvisations. One of Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly producers, jazz musician Robert Glasper, stopped by the Uproxx offices to speak with Talib Kweli on an episode of People’s Party last year. Glasper said that he was originally only supposed to work with Lamar on one song, “For Free? (Interlude).” But, after hearing his chops, Lamar eventually asked Glasper to lend a hand on nine tracks. Glasper also revealed that the piano solo on “These Walls” wasn’t was an improvisation. Unbeknownst to Glasper, Lamar had recorded his warmup and “they ended up cutting my warmup into the song and using it as a solo.”

Previously on the Ins and Outs of AEW Dynamite: Chris Jericho started (continued?) a feud with the final boss from an old NES game, Matt Hardy brought back OMEGA superstar The Surge, and the got damn Revival showed up.

If you’d like to keep up with this column and its thinly veiled Best and Worst format, you can keep tabs on the Ins and Outs of AEW Dynamite tag page. You can keep track of all things All Elite here.

Follow With Spandex on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter, where everything and everyone is terrible.

And now, the Ins and Outs of All Elite Wrestling Dynamite for June 3, 2020.

All In: Roll Model

You know you’ve got serious character momentum when you get injured and you’re still one of the best parts of the show.

Almost every second of Dr. Britt Baker’s inspirational recovery video is funny to me. The fact that her wheelchair says “roll model” to begin with. Then there’s the gentle leg exercises, her dragging a single small weight behind her, needing a heavy weight switched out with a light one so she can feel good about herself, doing battle ropes by barely moving them up and down, and one final motivation in the form of Tony Schiavone to get her up a wheelchair ramp. I love that her leg is so injured she’s can’t use her arms, either. And then she turns around and does the Rosie the Riveter pose. Super funny.

If that’s not enough, she shows up in the crowd in the bed of a golf cart outfitted with feathers and sparkles, with a little sign on the back that says, “ROLE’S ROYCE.” Whoever’s in charge of the Britt Baker role model puns is working overtime. It has to be the same person who does Hangman Page’s chyrons. Somebody in the AEW creative hierarchy is truly funny as shit. 20 years of unchallenged WWE’s “humor” is one of the reasons I look at a flower now and go, “UGH, THESE FLOWERS ARE SO GROSS, I HATE FEELING GOOD AND BEING HAPPY. R-TRUTH DRESSED UP LIKE SHERLOCK HOLMES TO DO PHOTOSHOP JOKES ABOUT HOW SOMEBODY’S A HIPPO AND A CRYING BABY. AND HE SAID THEIR BREATH SMELLED BAD, AND THEN HE FELL DOWN. I DON’T WANT TO BE ALIVE.”

Sorry, I think I passed out there for a second.

But yeah, after Big Swole’s tough loss to Nyla Rose, Baker interrupts Swole’s interview by getting her assistant, Reba, to aggressively back up the vehicle into the security railing so she can puff up her chest from, again, a wheelchair on the bed of a sparkly golf cart. Before Swole can even finish fishing out a chair from under the ring, Baker’s tone turns to, “you can’t hit me, I’m injured!” She’s straight up fucking magical right now, and maybe the only thing that’s put a legitimate smile on my face all week. Thanks, Doc.

All In: After The Party It’s The Hotel Lobby

Speaking of Tony Schiavone, here he is interviewing the artists formerly known as The Revival in a hotel lobby. This does four really good things: establish who FTR f-t-are to an audience who might not know them, explain why they feuded with the Young Bucks for years only to end up in the same company and not fight each other, tie in the “fuck The Revival” gag from Being The Elite that created the “FTR” initials in the first place, and remind us that AEW’s tag team division is really damn good. In just this interview we get the thought of The Revival vs. Kenny Omega and Hangman Page, The Revival vs. Private Party, The Revival vs. LAX, and The Revival vs. the Lucha Brothers. I’m not sure my brain ever processed the fact that we’re gonna watch Rey Fenix bounce and tumble his way into a Shatter Machine, but holy shit am I ready for that match. I’m ready for all of them.

Also, you know, the Bucks. They didn’t attack them right out of the gate because they want them to heal up and be 100% so there are no buts or excuses. It’s an easy way to explain why they saved them from The Butcher and The Blade, too. It was their first day at work, their goal is to defeat The Young Bucks at 100%, and they need to make sure the Bucks don’t pull a Diamond Dallas Page and spend the rest of their careers wearing rib tape. Plus, that pivots right into FTR vs. the weird post-Memorial Day versions of Butcher and Blade. Love it.

Plus, like Dr. Britt, their interview connects to some in-arena content. Much like how DBBDMD was in the crowd watching the Nyla Rose vs. Big Swole match, FTR’s one of the many teams in the crowd watching Elite Wolfpac defend the AEW World Tag Team Championshp against Kip Sabian and Jimmy Havoc, who picked a really terrible couple of weeks to debut a team name with “Death Squad” in it.

Havoc and Sabian take the champs to something approaching The Limit, which probably shouldn’t happen given the established tier rankings and power levels of the champs in comparison to the challengers, but ultimately makes the Supabad Death Squad* look great in a loss. Now they can go into a match with, say, the Best Friends, and the competitiveness will seem a little more legit. I don’t know, it will in my mind, at least. At the same time I kinda feel like Kenny Omega should be able to beat Kip Sabian and Jimmy Havoc by himself, just in there spamming V-Triggers and Snapdragon Suplexes. Omega’s moveset has turned into Finn Bálor’s, where he finds a couple of moves that work — Dropkick! Sligblade! Dropkick! — and wins like 80% of his matches doing only those moves. Hey, I don’t blame him. Go with what works.

*call the team “Normal Adolescent Behavior,” because they’re the Havoc 2**
**how are these timely Havoc 2 references working out for you?

Mostly In: The Baddest Man On The Planet

As much as I’d like to see the UPROXX logo pop up on the spiritual successor to WCW Monday Nitro, I’d 100% rather see Chris Jericho vs. Orange Cassidy than Chris Jericho vs. Mike Tyson.

Quick real-life politics aside you can skip if you disagree or aren’t interested, I promise it’s okay: Just want to say how sad I am that Chris Jericho is an “all lives matter” guy who blocks folks on social media for mentioning how black people are human beings and should be treated as such. It’s a sad followup to him having Don Jr. as a guest on his podcast and presenting dumb conspiracies and “alternative facts” while saying he’s “not a political pundit.” I will continue trying to disassociate non-fictional politics from the fictional characters I enjoy, and trying so, so hard to never learn what my favorites think about anything in real life.

Okay, you can read about wrestling again: Anyway, back to Orange. Orange Cassidy is great. I want to see random-ass bored Orange Cassidy be the Sting to the Inner Circle’s nWo. Just the one guy they don’t know how to figure out, because he won’t fall for their bait or goofy tricks. I also want to quickly note that I really liked the finish to the Cabana/Jericho match. Cabana did his Colt Cabana thing and was doing really well throughout most of the match, but he tried that corner bounce misdirection, slipped, and caught a Judas Effect to the face for it. I don’t know if the slip was intentional or not, but it really informed the finish.

Also Mostly In: Pretty Hate Machine

Brian Cage makes quick work of Captain Shawn Dean — Shawn Dean and Orange Cassidy should team up as “Naval Orange,” don’t @ me — to set up a Taz promo on Jon Moxley. There are very few people in the modern era of wrestling better at the “be threatening while standing with your nose practically touching the camera lens” style of promo than Taz, and he’s continuing to nail that Freddie Blassie type of manager who talks a big game not only because his guy could kick your ass, but because HE could as well. Adding Taz’s voice and storytelling know-how to Brian Cage’s athleticism and stupidly impossible action figure physique was a magnificent decision.

Surprisingly it was Moxley’s side of the promo I didn’t enjoy. He’s a great talker and carries his weight, but when he starts talking about “different things entirely” it sounds like he’s forgotten his lines and is trying to work through it as he goes. It was a mic drop that didn’t really deserve a mic drop. I dunno, maybe that’s just me. Not the best he’s been.

All In: Jungle Blood

oh wee oh wee oh

Finally we have the first defense of the TNT Championship, with Cody Rhodes going full tilt boogie to get the championship over, get his opponent over, and prove to the haters and doubters that he’s as good and vicious in the ring as his biggest fans say he is. As you might know from reading these columns, I’m a big fan of Cody’s work and don’t need convincing, but I like that he’s lacing up his worker boots and dedicating the next however many weeks of his life to making a name for his championship, and writing that name in his own blood.

Literally. Because of course literally.

The Rhodes bleed like most people sweat, it’s all good. Honestly though, it’s Cody’s fault for putting a guy against a wall and then trying to headbutt him. What was the POSITIVE outcome of that? You’re either headbutting a wall or headbutting a skull with a wall behind it. Punches, my dude, punches!

As for Jungle Jack Perry Boy, this was a really good episode for characters who don’t normally get the spotlight getting bigger spotlights. Colt Cabana got a competitive match with Chris Jericho, Orange Cassidy’s about to get one, Big Swole got TV time and a post-match promo, Jimmy Havoc and Kip Sabian came closer than you’d expect to winning the tag titles (not that AEW doesn’t love them some Kip Sabian content), and Jungle Boy got to take it to the EVP of the promotion and bloody him up in a title match main event. FTR used the week after they debuted to put over the entire tag division by names. It felt like a very subtle restructuring of the hierarchy. And yeah, there are still some people who don’t seem like they’re ever getting the opportunity they deserve — Sonny Kiss, I’m looking in your direction — but it accomplishes a hell of a lot of world building that doing The Elite vs. The Inner Circle over and over doesn’t. Plus, you might as well get some eyes on these people while the casual interest of Mike Tyson fans is still happening.

I don’t think I’ve talked enough about the match, but it’s good. It’s another one of those matches where Cody starts getting super aggro in situations where he doesn’t really need to, which I continue to hope is subtle ground work for an eventual (and inevitable) heel turn. With The Revival around, I want to see Shawn Spears finally get under Cody’s skin enough to turn him, giving us Cody plus Shawn Spears plus The Revival with Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson managing them.

P.S. every time a smaller guy isn’t afraid to bump on the top of his head for the Cross Rhodes, the move looks like a world-ender. You know you’re a rogue deep down when you’re wrestling a guy who’s smaller than you and calls himself “Jungle Boy” and it ends up involving top-rope-to-the-floor table falls and a straight-up brain spiking:

Hype to see who challenges for the TNT Championship next. Give me Cody vs. Sonny Kiss, Cody vs. Pentagon … honestly as long as you stay away from Jake Hager and maybe like, Luther, you’re going to make that title into can’t-miss TV. Cody vs. Marq Quen next week is going to BANG.

All In: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Caz

JR: up next on TNT, Jungle Jack Reacher!

Jae-Su

Cody is basically becoming Bo Dallas and I’m ALL IN for that.

FeltLuke

The thing is, Rhodes men suffer from a rare condition called “Too Much Blood.”

SexCauldron

If Billy Gunn could read he could peek at Arn’s gameplan

JayBone2

Arn carries around his playbook/Waffle House menu everywhere he goes cause it’s still only open for curbside pickup and Cody is tired of waiting at least 20 minutes each time for him to decide on what to get.

The Real Birdman

Welcome to the jungle, we’ve got fun sized games
We got a guy named Jungle Boy, but JR never knows his name
We got a dinosaur you can find, whenever you may need
If you got the money, honey here’s the son of Luke Perry

Wendell Baugh

Best part of Dynamite is the show always feels like it has forward momentum. Very few wasted motion. A backstage segment with Private Party ad Matt Hardy leads into Marq Quen being the first man to answer the open challenge next week. OC last week led to this segment leading to Best Friends and OC vs Inner Circle next week. An FTR sit down set the stage for a tag match next week. Always feels like things happen to build to the next thing.

That shouldn’t be praise, but it is given the alternative.

Mr. Bliss

Colt! The Dark Order literally turns people into furniture. Summer is coming and your name is Cabana! Put two and two together.

Baron Von Raschke

Alex is too big of a loser for the Dark Order to even consider recruiting

Dave M J

Person responsible for “Days since Cody has bled” sign: …sigh ::changes number to 0::

Additional notes:

• The Dark Order wants to recruit Colt Cabana, presumably so he’ll start the Dark Order podcast. “When Mr. Brodie Lee eats first, he always eats Omaha Steaks …”
• Fyter Fest is now a two-night, Clash of the Champions (or, more accurately, AEW Bash at the Beach)-style event happening over two Dynamite episodes in July. Good to know we’ve got something to look forward to between now and the next pay-per-view, which isn’t until September
• Next week’s show features Colt Cabana vs. Sammy Guevara, Marq Queen vs. Cody for the TNT Championship, FTR debuting against The Butcher and The Blade, and a trios match between the Inner Circle and the Best Friends + Orange Cassidy

That does it for this week’s column. Thanks for reading about Dynamite! Not the best episode they’ve ever done, but the main event did it for me and even the more milquetoast episodes of Dynamite are fun to watch. Leave us a comment below, give the column a share on social media, and make sure you’re here next week. See you then!

The free tier of the WWE Network was introduced earlier this week and with it, a staple of the streaming service was lost. The Network has dropped its “first month free” offer.

PWInsider pointed out this change, noting that the service’s billing page now says that “Billing starts on the date you subscribe or reactivate your account subscription.” So while a variety of older WWE-owned programming is now available without a subscription, those who want to subscribe to the Network to see the latest PPV will have to pay $9.99 for it.

The ads for the Network on the website reflect this new billing system, promoting that the WWE Network “includes every live WWE pay-per-view event at no additional cost – a great value each month” and “unlimited access to WWE’s premium content.” It also advertises “exclusive access to in-ring premier shows like NXT, where new Superstars amaze the WWE Universe every week and 205 Live” even though weekly NXT TV can be seen on USA as well as the WWE Network now.

This doesn’t impact the billing of regular WWE Network subscribers, but it ends the era of hearing those “get your first month free” sales pitches on Raw, Smackdown, etc., especially as pay-per-views approach. What’s next? No more $9.99?

The world of eSports is beginning to look more like the traditional sports landscape in a variety of ways. Competitive video games like Overwatch League and League of Legends are getting more airtime on TV, and the absence of sports in recent months thrust sports sims like Madden and NBA 2K on ESPN and showcased pro gamers in a new light.

As eSports leagues get bigger, though, one emerging trend is that they’re actually starting to look a lot less like the sports we’re familiar with. When it comes to fashion in particular, the eSports world has seen an influx of luxury brand influence and streetwear collaborations that have changed the look of competitive gaming in a big way. Some of these changes are more subtle than others. Louis Vuitton, for example, in 2019 made a case for the League of Legends World Championship trophy and released a digital capsule collection designed by Nicolas Ghesquière.

The trophy case is literally ceremonial, but the Summoner’s Cup joins other trophies like the FIFA World Cup, the Davis Cup and the trophies awarded to winners of the French Open at Roland Garros as prizes wrapped in the company’s signature wordmark. Deals like these work both ways: it legitimizes eSports in a distinct visual way, and these luxury brands see the huge streaming numbers eSports events get as an opportunity to get more eyeballs on their products.

“The eSports audience is global, highly engaged, and has grown to a scale that is on par with some of the biggest sports and entertainment audiences in the world,” said Naz Aletaha, head of global eSports partnerships and business development at Riot Games, which owns League of Legends. “Brands see value in reaching this increasingly hard-to-reach, digital-first audience by connecting with their passion points and elevating their gaming and eSports experiences.”

Aletaha related it to how companies partner with traditional sports leagues and teams. But for streetwear designers, the relationship is often more personal. Streetwear and music artist Joe Perez cited his love of Call of Duty first and foremost when it came to his decision to partner with its eSports league on a design project.

“I kind of got involved myself about a year and a half ago and kind of got lost in the world,” said Perez, Kanye West’s former art director who has also designed album covers for stars Billie Eilish and Janelle Monáe. “I started learning about the culture that’s involved in Call of Duty and how it brought in people from different cultures and backgrounds together. And I really liked that part of the game and the platform.”

Perez designed a limited run hoodie for Call of Duty League’s inaugural season, which had a worldwide tour moved online-only due to the coronavirus pandemic. The two working together is another example of a mutually beneficial partnership at play. His name is significant in the streetwear scene, which lends the upstart Call of Duty League some credibility in a highly competitive fashion world. And for Perez, it’s a chance to transform an industry whose early eSports “jerseys” looked more like NASCAR fire suits or ad-filled pro bowling gear than something LA Lakers star Kyle Kuzma would wear casually.

“When it came to eSports and Call of Duty League, it is like a startup,” Perez said. “It gave us a starting point where we could built it up and kind of cross-pollinate the two cultures: this second culture kind of being the streetwear that I help build with Virgil (Abloh) and Kanye while I worked at Kayne’s studio.”

Perez noted his work with Virgil, the Pyrex and OFF-WHITE founder, and the “design language” that comes with streetwear. Bringing that influence to a largely unexplored market, the thinking goes, would undoubtedly stand out against other products leaning heavily on traditional sports design.

“A lot of esports leagues had jerseys and tee shirts and merch that felt very sports-oriented. And, well, that’s great, but what does the eSports language look like? We already know what the sports language looks like, from anywhere from Formula One racing to NASCAR to football. We know that language,” Perez said. “But here what was an interesting challenge was we had the ability to build that from scratch. That’s why I really wanted to get involved.”

One particular advantage was the time he had to develop something that felt authentic to both the pros competing and the fans who have grown up watching Call of Duty evolve into a pro touring league. Other projects he’s worked on develop at a much faster pace — album art often needs to come together in a matter of days, and tour merchandise sometimes gets a week of break-neck development at most. But Call of Duty League offered more time to build something new and apply it to other pieces of merchandise that reflected what many fans are already wearing.

“We have liberties to kind of redefine what (Call of Duty) looks like. The one-off special drops of this nature and each platform has its own personality and culture that comes with it,” Perez said. “So it’s really important to kind of digest that and put that into the merch so the fans feel like they’re getting not only a piece of the league and a piece of the brand but the personality of the game.”

And to be sure, the sheer variety of games and players in the eSports scene does make for different results across the industry, letting companies and sponsored gamers create special collections that cater to their own fans and causes. Call of Duty League’s Chicago Huntsman may honor Michael Jordan with a shirt extremely influenced by Chicago Bulls nostalgia, for example, but FaZe Clan’s merch runs a much more varied gambit in the different leagues in which they own teams.

Andbox, which owns Overwatch League’s New York Excelsior, has even developed a line of apparel and fragrance around Overwatch star Jong-ryeol “Saebyeolbe” Park. The SBB Collection includes a cherry blossom-inspired hoodie, bomber jacket and shirt. To his fans, the limited run of merchandise is instantly recognizable and contributes to a good cause, but to those outside of the eSports world it would look nothing like sports merchandise.

Andbox designed the collection to release much like major fashion houses reveal their products, and the limited run of merch follows streetwear sensibilities more than anything you’d see from the traditional sports world. And for designers like Perez, the merging of eSports and high-end fashion has been a long time coming.

“This is something that I’ve expected for years, quite honestly. I knew that in entertainment there’s this evolution going on that’s emerging between films and interactive and this culture that’s emerging with video games online and with Twitch,” Perez said. “It’s the most exciting as a designer and creative director to see a new frontier kind of blossom. Obviously you want to be a part of that and help define that. And through that you can kind of inspire and dictate the language for another generation so that challenge always excites me.”

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Thanks in part to social media, many things that would have been considered non-controversial in the past have now been given greater meaning. More access to information — and the need to project the right “brand” — means almost everything is politicized, from the music we listen to, to the food we eat. DaBaby is finding that out now, as a recent post of his on Twitter has many fans crying “fowl.”

The North Carolina rapper probably didn’t mean to make any political statements when he posted himself cuddling up with a freshly-bought bag of Chick-Fil-A on Wednesday, but thanks to increased awareness of the restaurant’s founders’ political donation history, there are many in the hip-hop community who consider the chicken shack persona non grata (Kanye notwithstanding). Those fans let DaBaby hear about it in their replies to his post, calling him out for “supporting” the brand — especially at such a sensitive time when protests against police brutality continue across the nation.

DaBaby responded to the backlash, wondering whether his critics were just bored and joking that “I ain’t know n****s couldn’t eat Chick-Fil-A during the protests,” setting off another round of angry replies from his followers.

See DaBaby’s original post, the responses to it, and his eventual reaction above.

Saints quarterback Drew Brees took to Instagram on Thursday morning to apologize for an interview he gave to Yahoo! Sports this week in which he said he wouldn’t respect anyone who protested during the upcoming NFL season, even in the wake of another onslaught of deaths at the hands of the police this spring. Yet even in the apology was not enough to satisfy many, who felt it came across as empty after the uproar this week.

As many have said in recent days, words are empty without action. They seem even more empty when they come only in the face of backlash.

Booger MacFarland of ESPN, who is also a native of Louisiana and NFL veteran, was succinct in his frustration, tweeting that he believed Brees said, “Im sorry for the way that America is crucifying me , I’m not sorry for what I said. Got it.”

New York Giants running back Jonathan Hililman one-upped MacFarland’s comment by noting Brees, in his eyes, only felt the need to apologize after teammates responded with disappointment.

This is in reference to comments from a handful of teammates like Michael Thomas and Alvin Kamara, who made their feelings known about Brees’ stance shortly after he gave the interview.

In question here is why Brees continued to hold onto the idea that players’ protests, from Colin Kaepernick and beyond, are about the American flag or U.S. military, when these players have been quite vocal about the intention behind their protests and the strategy of doing it the way they do.

Others were frustrated that while Brees had no qualms about getting on TV to relay his opinions in the first place, his apology only came via social media, finished off with a picture that many have discovered might be a stock photo.

To that end, 76ers forward Tobias Harris, who had previously wished that Brees would avoid making a statement altogether, urged Brees to “take your ass on camera and apologize” if he wanted to make true inroads and critiqued his photo choice.

At the same time, Saints linebacker and Brees’ teammate, Demario Davis, called Brees’ apology “leadership at its finest” in a CNN appearance on Thursday morning.

Another Saints player, left tackle Terron Armstead, put up a Twitter thread shortly after Davis’ TV appearance and wrote, “Speaking with him and a few of my teammates we know that accountability and responsibility is the only way to move forward from this.”

Some NFL reporters noted that the Saints’ locker room was not pleased in general with how Brees spoke out, but Davis and Armstead’s comments indicate something of a pacification, at least for now. The rest of the sports world seems to want more out of Brees to atone.

Earlier in the week, animal rights activists Carole Baskin was awarded full control of the infamous zoo featured in the Netflix series Tiger King. Baskin had successfully sued Joseph Maldonado-Passage, a.k.a. “Joe Exotic,” and the animal trainer isn’t taking the decision lying down.

According to CNN, Exotic’s legal team plans to file an appeal to fight the lawsuit decision and take back control of the animal sanctuary, but not before drumming up public support by referencing the death of George Floyd? That’s an awkward approach to say the least:

“While we again acknowledge it is truly time to pray for justice for George Floyd’s family as well as an end to systemic racism in America, we must address Carol [sic] Baskin’s treachery before it goes unchecked,” a tweet from an account run by Maldonado-Passage’s management team read.

Of course, it doesn’t bode well for Exotic’s case that he’s currently serving a 22-year sentence for animal abuse and attempting to have Baskin killed in a murder-for-hire plot that was prominently featured in the Netflix docuseries. However, Baskin has recently ran into some trouble of her own.

As part of the ongoing investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Baskin’s husband Down Lewis, the Hillsborough County sheriff’s department has confirmed that the strange will leaving Baskin her husband’s fortune is “100% a forgery.” The will had raised eyebrows from the start due to the fact that it contained a line about making Baskin the beneficiary if Lewis should ever disappear. Experts have said that wills don’t normally predict that a person will go missing before it happens, but nothing in the Tiger King world has ever been normal.

(Via CNN)

The NBA’s return from the COVID-19 pandemic appears slated to begin on July 31 in Orlando. Twenty-two teams will make the trek down to Disney — the 16 playoff squads, plus five additional teams that were on the outside looking in from the West and one, the Wizards, from the East — with eight regular season games and a play-in tournament eventually occurring for the 8-seed.

There are obvious logistical questions that come with this, like where all of these teams will be housed, how they will avoid individuals who enter Disney World’s gigantic complex in some form or fashion as it begins readmitting park-goers, and most prominently, what happens if someone contracts the virus that has killed more than 100,000 Americans? From a pure, basketball perspective, there is a gigantic ask being put on players, as there is a scenario in which a team could be asked to play a monstrous 36 games in 73 days.

This season is already one of the strangest, if not the strangest, in league history. It is fair to believe, as I do, that coming back at all is misguided, while others will argue that this season’s champion will carry an asterisk next to its name until the end of time. There’s also another question looming less large: What the hell is next season going to look like?

What we know so far is that the league plans on finishing up the 2019-20 regular season no later than Oct. 12 and, uh, that’s it. This is not meant to be a knock on the league, because so much of this is being figured out on the fly, as is oftentimes the case in rapidly-changing and unprecedented situations. Perhaps Adam Silver, the NBPA, and the Board of Governors have spent substantial amounts of time discussing how 2020-21 will play out, but given the complexity of the task at hand, it’d be hard to blame them if they put that on the back burner for the time being.

As such, we wanted to map out what things could look like in a perfect world from the day this season ends, leading into the 2020 offseason, training camp, and next year. As an added twist, this hypothetical included one stipulation: Next season must begin on Christmas Day, in large part because that is the marquee day on the league’s regular season calendar and this gives the NBA the opportunity to test out a Dec. 25 start date, a permanent alteration to the schedule that gives them the flexibility to avoid overlapping with the NFL for nearly four months. (You’re currently saying “they can start on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to further avoid this,” but don’t worry, we’ll get there!)

Let’s jump ahead to Oct. 12, 2020, where the [spins a big wheel] Memphis Grizzlies just beat the [spins another big wheel] Indiana Pacers in a seven-game Finals slugfest. In a normal offseason, things would wrap up in mid-June, followed by the NBA Draft several days later and free agency beginning about 10 days after that. This time around, with the draft lottery and combine having already occurred (something Shams Charania of The Athletic says is the plan), we can try to follow this, with the 2020 NBA Draft taking place on Oct. 16 (a Friday) and free agency beginning at 6 p.m. EST on Oct. 30, exactly two weeks later.

The next month or so is a standard offseason on a shorter timetable. Teams are afforded the chance to build via trades and free agency throughout November. At the start of December, training camp and preseason begins, with the league easing back into regular season basketball on Dec. 25, with the gigantic caveat that this would be much easier to pull off in the event a vaccine is found for COVID-19. And to be clear, that caveat applies to everything in this post.

Vaccine aside, this is going to be an awfully tricky needle for the league to thread. Some teams will have 1.5 or two months worth of an offseason depending on how far they make it in the playoffs. Others — and this is an important thing to remember in this entire conversation — will have gone nine and a half months without playing a competitive basketball game. It will be unfair, one way or another, to have an offseason that is too short for the best teams or too long for the non-Orlando ones.

The potential solution I would like to propose is stretching out the 2020-21 season as much as possible while making permanent shifts to its calendar so that we’re not rushing to stay within the nominal NBA schedule — think back to 2011-12, when the league played 66 games starting on Christmas, wrapped up the regular season by the end of April, and crowned a champion on June 21. This does not, however, mean that the league has to play a full, 82-game schedule.

Instead, we take a page out of the conversation that consumed the restart discourse this year and play a 70-game season, as to satiate regional sports networks. This would roll into June, with an All-Star Break sometime in April, and with 12 games lopped off the schedule, the league could seriously limit things like back-to-backs and make the workload easier on players. There is, of course, an issue that would need to be sorted out with regards to things like paying stadium workers and gate revenue, along with lost money from games not taking place in arenas during this postseason. Going to 70-games is a suggestion, but it’s also extremely flexible if it is determined that a full, 82-game season is best.

What this does let the NBA do, though, is own the biggest gap in the sports calendar. Football is a monolith that dominates the discourse from September until the first week in February. Currently, the NBA spends nearly four months going head-to-head with the NFL, and with how much air the NFL sucks up, I hypothesize that distancing it from that could help with those pesky television ratings. That’s especially true if the NBA comes back right around Week 16, when football is wrapping up its regular season, and gives the league the chance to iron out wrinkles during the NFL playoffs, when people have their eyes locked on football games, anyway.

But once the Super Bowl wraps up, the NBA, theoretically, is kicking into high gear come February and March. The rust is gone, the kinks are all worked out, and with its only competition being hockey and soccer, there is space for the NBA to more or less flood the airwaves. Major League Baseball, despite the best efforts of its baseball-hating owners, would begin its season in late-March or early-April, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who believes the NBA would have an easier job boosting its ratings going head-to-head against the NFL than it would against MLB, MLS, and the NHL.

This would roll into the postseason, which would begin in early-June, a time in the sports calendar when there is no football — American or European (save for MLS) — baseball is doing its thing, and the NHL is finishing finding a home for the Stanley Cup. Over the next two months, a generally barren wasteland in the sports world as we wait for football season to get here, the NBA is the biggest show in sports by a mile. For the league that is so completely aware of how it is able to shape the sports discourse, one has to assume that the possibility of being able to hold its postseason largely unopposed in the world of sports from June to August would be an enticing proposition. It could even try to pack the draft and the start of free agency into the window before the NFL kicks off, should that be on the table.

Next year would present a unique hurdle in the form of the Olympics, which are expected to run from July 23 to August 8. This would be a tricky situation once every four years (or three, given the timeline of the 2020 Games) should this alteration to the schedule become permanent, and various international squads could either use European players and/or amateurs, but there is a pride that comes from donning national team gear and competing for international glory. Perhaps the league can load up on back-to-backs during the regular season and go best 3-of-5 in the first round of the playoffs to lop off a few days, or perhaps some players would just have to come to grips with the fact that a deeper postseason run could cost them the chance to go to Tokyo next summer.

All of this is quite tricky to map out. We have no idea what this season will look like when it resumes, we have no idea how the pandemic will ebb and flow in the coming months, and we have no idea what anyone’s priorities will be once conversations ramp up about the next campaign. If the NBA wants, though, the 2020-21 campaign could be the dawn of a new era, one in which the league’s calendar shifts forever.

It’s not often that a 25-tweet thread is worth reading, but trust me, this one, from comedian Kenny DeForrest, is worth it. Back in January 2015, Dave Chappelle was in New York to support his buddy and that week’s SNL host Kevin Hart. DeForrest was doing some hosting of his own, at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, when he reached out to fellow comedian Joyelle Nicole Johnson to see if Chappelle might want to drop by.

“We start the show thinking he MIGHT come,” he tweeted. “A couple comics in, he sneaks in like a boxer with his hood up. We’re in the green room smoking, drinking & joking. The dude is a machine. Every topic that came up, he had something profound for. We bring him up last, the crowd LOSES IT.” Chappelle asked the crowd for “headlines” to riff on, and someone in the audience suggested “police brutality.” This was, as DeForrest pointed out, “days after the cop that choked Eric Garner to death in Staten Island (you know, murder) was not indicted by a grand jury,” so tensions were high:

“Chappelle starts talking about Eric Garner and wathching him get murdered in cold blood on camera and how it makes him scared for his children… He said “I thought body cams would help, but what good is video evidence if y’all don’t care?” A clearly privileged white girl (she had a wide brimmed felt hat for chrissakes) shouts ‘Life’s hard, sorry ‘bout it!’ and it takes the air completely out of the room. A collective gasp. Chappelle zeros in on her. ‘What did you say?’ She repeats it. Chappelle starts going in.

He doesn’t go in by making fun of her hat, however. He enlightens her, and everyone else in attendance, about systemic racism. “He starts educating the crowd on the history of black people and the police. He talked about slave patrols and Rodney King and Watts and Emmett Till and Black Wall Street. He talked about Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and he talked about John Crawford III,” and apartheid ending in South Africa due in part to “critical mass,” DeForrest tweeted. Chappelle then told a story about getting pulled over by a cop in Ohio… the same cop who would go on to murder John Crawford III. He got off with a warning, though, because the police officer recognized him; his takeaway: “I shouldn’t have to be Dave Chappelle to survive police encounters.”

After the set, Nicole Johnson told Chappelle that the “dumbass white girl” wanted to talk to him. She and her friend come back to the green room and they’re both “humiliated,” DeForrest wrote. “Hat girl speaks first: “I just wanted to say I’m sorry for what I said and thank you for educating me. I was ignorant before, but I want you to know I learned from you tonight and I won’t say things like that anymore.” Chappelle’s response:

“You’re ok. That’s all we can ask. Know better, do better. I want to thank YOU for hearing me and listening. That’s your role. And now you know. Now you’re part of that critical mass we talked about and next time you hear a friend say some ignorant sh*t like you said, it’s your job to correct them and share with them what you learned tonight. THEN, you’re no longer part of the problem, you’re part of the solution.”

You can read the entire thread below (and follow Joyelle Nicole Johnson here).