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Luka Doncic has attracted a whole lot of eyeballs for what he’s done in the NBA’s Orlando bubble. He’s stuffing the stat sheet for a Dallas Mavericks team that has pretty consistently played in entertaining, high-scoring games, and while it’d be a surprise if they end up winning the championship this year, Doncic is emphatically showing that he can play a major role in turning the Mavs into a contender.

He’s also using the bubble as a chance to work on his leadership skills, which led to a wonderful story from Chris Haynes of TNT. Doncic put together a player outing while the Mavs were in the bubble. The whole team was there without one extremely big exception: Boban Marjanovic. Doncic responded by calling him repeatedly, at which point he learned that the big man is getting into the advertising game.

“Luka called him three or four straight times,” Haynes explained. “Boban finally answered, explaining that he was in the middle of shooting a State Farm commercial.”

Now, it is very nice that Doncic is taking on a leadership role like this and trying to be inclusive with all of his teammates, but the thought of Boban being in commercials is something I am quite excited about. He hits the sweet spot of being incredibly personable and super likable, and I am extremely excited for him to become America’s next great pitchman.

As the NBA’s seeding games wind down in Orlando, not every contest features two teams with incentive to operate at the highest possible level. On Tuesday evening, however, a nationally televised match-up spotlighted a pair of teams with plenty to play for, with Damian Lillard and the Portland Trail Blazers taking on Luka Doncic, Kristaps Porzingis, and the Dallas Mavericks. After 48 entertaining minutes and plenty of drama, Lillard and the Blazers picked up the victory by avoiding a buzzer-beater. As a result, Portland inched closer to a playoff berth.

The Mavs came out of the gates firing on the offensive end of the floor, executing well and utilizing Doncic’s shot-making.

Dallas took an eight-point lead in the first period and, while the Blazers showed immediate signs of fighting back, Porzingis established himself in a hurry. The talented big man produced 16 points in the first quarter; tying his career high in an opening period.

Near the end of the first quarter, though, Portland took control, concluding the period on a 17-3 run to assume the lead.

The Blazers stayed in front for the entire second quarter, thanks in part to the work of Lillard. In the first half, he put up 25 points on 10-for-15 shooting, dominating the action.

Lillard’s quality work helped the Blazers to take an eight-point lead into the locker room, but the Mavericks were ready as play resumed. Dallas hung around early in the second half and, late in the third period, the Mavericks scored ten straight points to reclaim the lead.

As the fourth quarter arrived, tensions were high on both sides, including technical fouls for Doncic, Carmelo Anthony, and Maxi Kleber in a short period of time. While the margin was tight, the Mavericks did open the quarter with a slow-developing 11-2 run, taking their largest lead since the opening minutes.

Almost on cue, Lillard responded and, with more than five minutes remaining, the All-NBA guard reached the 50-point mark for the second straight game.

With the help of a three-pointer by Anthony and a tip-in by Jusuf Nurkic, Portland knotted the score at 117-117 with five minutes to go and the stage was set for a wildly intriguing, pressure-packed stretch run. Both offenses continued to cook, with Doncic pouring in a three-point play (that included the sixth foul for Nurkic) and Lillard answered with a triple.

Then, Kleber and Anthony traded triples, keeping the score tied at 127-127 with two minutes left. Keeping the pace, Porzingis knocked down a three-pointer, setting the stage for a wild connection by Lillard to tie the game with a little help from the rim.

On the ensuing play, Porzingis fouled out on something of a controversial and, after a review to confirm that decision, Lillard found Whiteside for a dunk to take the lead. Doncic then answered by drawing a foul but, after he split his attempts, the Blazers led by one point with 40 seconds to go.

After a rare miss from Lillard, the Mavs had possession with a chance to take the lead, but Trey Burke committed a bizarre offensive foul to negate a bucket in the corner.

Forced to foul, Dallas put CJ McCollum on the free throw line with three seconds to go. The veteran guard, who struggled mightily in the game, buried both and the Mavericks had one more chance to tie the game. After a timeout, Dallas did execute a solid play to engineer a look for Tim Hardaway Jr. but, when it went begging, Portland escaped with a badly-need victory.

Lillard was the story of the night, finishing with 61 points on 17-for-32 from the floor, 9-for-17 from three-point range and a perfect 18-for-18 from the free throw line. For good measure, he added eight assists and five rebounds, while also making history with another 60-point effort.

From a team perspective, this was an enormous win for the Blazers, with Portland now assuming control of the No. 8 seed in the West. The Blazers can now clinch a spot in the play-in tournament with a win over the Nets on Thursday and, if they pick up that victory, Portland would hold a key advantage in forcing their opponent to beat them in back-to-back games.

It’s a strange time in pro wrestling, but then it’s a strange time everywhere. Unable to tour or have fans attend their shows, and with some roster members unavoidably missing, the various wrestling companies are doing their best to get people to tune in to what we all know is a lesser show than the ideal.

Then again, WWE was in an uncomfortable spot even before the COVID-19 pandemic. They made a hugely lucrative deal to move Smackdown to Fox TV last year, but ratings have consistently been a problem (and even more so since the pandemic began) and they’ve taken an ongoing PR hit for working with the Saudi Arabian government. On top of that, for the first time in decades, they have a solid competitor in the field of mainstream wrestling, with AEW finding a major audience since its launch last year.

WWE and their fans will be quick to point out that All Elite Wrestling isn’t much of a competitor, since they’re just finding their feet and stand no chance of getting as many eyes or as much money as WWE anytime soon. The real risk is that AEW might get more attention, more critical affection, and more general “buzz” than WWE regardless of who’s bringing in the most cash. In short, WWE fears that AEW might be cooler than them.

A problem with being #1 in your field, especially by such a huge margin, is that you don’t get to be the underdog. You can’t really be anti-establishment when you are the establishment. And of course WWE and the McMahon family unavoidably seem even more like part of the establishment for as long as WWE Hall-of-Famer and close McMahon friend Donald Trump is President.

As far as wrestling storylines go, you can come at this problem from a couple of directions. WWE has chosen at least two.

First, there’s Retribution, a mysterious faction in black hoodies and masks who show up at Raw and Smackdown and do stuff like throw two cinder blocks through the same window and cut the ring ropes with a chainsaw. The aesthetics of the whole angle resemble the right wing nightmare version of Antifa, and currently the faction is presented as scary and villainous in exactly the way you’d expect from a company with WWE’s politics doing their take on leftist activism.

I guarantee you, however, as soon as those masks come off and we see who’s in the faction, as soon as the leader of Retribution stars cutting his first promo, WWE will be trying to convince us that these people are cool, even if they’re still heels. They’ll be selling T-shirts on the company’s website while rebelling against the company on TV, just like The Shield and DX and NWO and so on and so forth.

And then there’s Raw Underground. Hosted by Shane McMahon, Underground presents itself as an unauthorized, virtually lawless underground fight club, which seems to be held in the Performance Center basement. With people in street clothes fighting on a ropeless ring, it’s an attempt to be the opposite of everything Raw is, but on Raw.

Right now Raw Underground doesn’t really work that well, because they’ve never explained anything about it, and none of the fights seem to mean anything or lead anywhere. If they give it a little more structure and maybe a belt to fight for, it could actually be a fun addition to Raw. What it can never be, though, is underground. It’s hard to even seem that way, when the face of the whole thing is Shane McMahon, a born-into-wealth mogul of international cable TV whose theme song goes “Money money money, here comes the money!”

WWE would like fans to believe there’s a way to challenge the status quo of pro wrestling by watching WWE, as if they aren’t that status quo. And that’s really nothing new. Pro wrestling has always marketed itself with feelings and idea that aren’t exactly rooted in honesty. So there’s no reason to feel bad if you’re getting a kick out of Raw Underground, or if you’re into where Retribution is going (which might be more apt to happen when they have matches, or at least faces). It’s fine to enjoy that thing you enjoy, but along the way let’s try and keep our eyes open about what’s actually happening.

Though I didn’t know his name until recently, Greg Whiteley has been responsible for countless hours of my Netflix binging. Thirsty for something that would fill the Hard Knocks-sized hole in my television needs, I stumbled first upon QB1 (a documentary series about high school quarterbacks) and eventually a show Whiteley directs, Last Chance U, a series following a junior college football program.

There were colorful characters trying to fight their way into a Division I scholarship, school faculty desperately trying to get players to attend class and stay eligible, and an overweight loudmouth of a coach who seemed either like an unlikely mentor or an abusive tyrant, depending on the day. That goes for both coach Buddy Stephens of EMCC in Scooba, Mississippi in seasons one and two, and coach Jason Brown of ICC in Independence, Kansas in seasons three and four. Stephens was a Bible-thumping good ol’ boy and Brown a foul-mouthed, angry white boy ex-QB from Compton, but spiritually they were similar. Dare I say it, the show was even more addictive than Hard Knocks, the series that led me to it in the first place.

After that was Cheer, an arguably even more addictive series about a cheerleading team, also produced and directed by Greg Whiteley. Now Last Chance U is back with season five, following coach John Beam and the Laney College Eagles of Oakland, another team that is somehow both the exact opposite of previous Last Chance U teams and exactly the same. They’ve traded small towns in the south and Midwest for a gentrifying Oakland, dorms for commuters, fat white coaches for a skinny half-Korean one, and yet it’s still the same emotional ride, with a coach whose depiction alternates between “great guy helping the youth succeed” and “insufferable wet blanket asshole.”

As always, shooting it seems like a massive undertaking. I spoke to Greg Whiteley this week about how the sausage gets made, how colleges should treat their student-athletes, and the mixed emotions of being a football fan knowing what we know in 2020.

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In terms of which characters you focus on, is that something that you decide on before the season?

We usually make it in the first two or three days that we’re there. There are two or three people, four or five people that will pop during that first week of practices. There’s some pretty big debates that will happen in the hotel lobby at night over who those four or five players should be. Usually, at the end of the first week, there are about 10 people that are kind of on your list, but in my mind, there’s always a top five. Strangely in the five seasons that we’ve been doing that show, those top five have typically been the five that we end up focusing on.

How many hours a day are you shooting your main characters?

Well, we can’t go past a 12-hour shoot day and that includes travel time. I don’t know. Do the math. If you got two crews doing 12 hours, you’re not spending all 12 hours with one single person or it’s rare that you would ever do that. You’re doing your best you can to be in contact with the people that you are focusing on and learning their schedule. Somebody might be getting a haircut one day. Somebody might be going to a job interview. The other one might have an important final that they’re taking. The other one might be a meeting with Coach Beam to discuss their future. We are constantly looking for what are different events that are going to move this particular person’s story forward.

Then when you’re filming them in class, is it up to the teacher?

It’s always up to the teacher. When we get an idea of who our main subjects are going to be, we’ll get their schedules, then we’ll go and meet with those teachers. A football schedule is so demanding that a lot of times there’s a few select classes that the coaches really want players to take because it takes into account team meeting times, lifting times and all that stuff. Invariably, there’s a handful of teachers that ended up being teachers for all of the athletes with some exceptions, but we just always go and meet with those teachers. Sometimes the teacher is just not interested, they don’t want us in the classroom. We always respect that.

How do you choose which teams that you want to feature in the series?

Well, it’s sort of a combination of who will have us and who will let us come and give us the kind of access that we need to do this show. We’re also looking at things like, where have we been before? How is this place different? When we meet the coach, do you get the impression that they’re excited about doing the show? Because it’s a lot to ask of that coach to open up their program to us. Occasionally, we’ll meet with a coach and we can sense that there’s some hesitancy. I’ve learned the hard way to go where people want you to be and you’ll have a better show.

How do you think the season is different from the past few? Were there any new challenges for you?

We’ve never been someplace where there was no student housing, no central place where all the players live. Which was always a great advantage because after practice, we always knew where to find players, particularly in towns like Scooba and Independence where there wasn’t much to do. Oakland, we had to really be in close contact with everybody that we were following to know where they were going to be when they weren’t practicing football. That was a unique challenge.

Where are they all coming from?

I would say most were coming from what I would consider far away, sometimes as far away as two hours by commute each way. A lot of that was a function of… Back in the day in the ’70s and ’80s, everybody that was going to Laney Community College lived probably relatively within walking distance of Laney. That’s not true anymore. The cost of living has risen so much in the city of Oakland that the types of kids that are going and playing football at Laney are typically living, like I said, one to two hours away.

What were the things that you found compelling about shooting in Oakland?

Well, Oakland has such a rich history in sports and it has such a rich social justice history, which in our series those two themes seem to intersect a lot, so it was really was a good fit.

You say you choose who you’re going to feature on these a lot by the coaches. I feel like I always have a similar arc with the coaches, where I start out liking them. Then three or four episodes in I start thinking, oh man, I hate this guy. What kind of personality do you think that job requires and what types of people does it attract?

I think your experience probably mimics the experience of what players go through. I think a football season, it’s hard. I think football is a difficult sport, both physically and mentally. You’re asking a lot of an athlete in order to be able to do what you need that athlete do to put your team in the best position to win. As a result, there’s this culture of football that has developed where coaches will say and do things to players that you would never see a human being do in other academic spheres. You don’t see an English teacher yelling at someone in the same way a football coach yells at a player. Even in most other sports you don’t see that that kind of intensity.

I think it’s important to remember that these coaches, they grew up playing football. They’re a product of that culture themselves. Most of these players have played it most of their lives. This is not something that comes as a complete surprise to them. I think sometimes coaches will reach a level of intensity that even they themselves would admit crosses the line. Players were probably surprised by that. We were surprised by that because none of us were college football players that are making the show, but I’ve learned to be careful to not to judge these people too harshly. I try to shoot it with a cold eye and try to explain the context for why a coach or a player is behaving the way that they are in a way that an audience can empathize with. I feel like we try to be fair to this main subject who’s trusted us to tell their story.

When you’re there with them in those really intense moments, is it ever intimidating trying to get that shot?

Wherever we’ve gone and whoever is going to be on camera with us, we explain what we’re doing. We aren’t going to back away whenever there is a heated moment. That’s part of the show. If you’ve seen the show, they understand that. No. I’m not intimidated. I just sort of take that as part of my job.

There haven’t been moments where maybe you’re filming and they yell at you to leave or tell you to get out of there or something?

Oh, yeah. That’s happened.

Do you just respect that when it happens?

Yeah. We do. I try and go and talk to the coaches. The coaches that we’ve filmed have been really great about it. I would say more so in seasons one and two. I can’t ever remember a moment in seasons three or four or even five, but there were a couple of times in which a coach did not want us there. We always respected that, but it always prompted a conversation later saying, listen, this is what you signed up for. You’ve got to tell me, what are we doing wrong as a film crew? Are we somehow in the way? Can we change things so that you can allow us to be here that isn’t going to compromise your job? I felt like in every instance we had those conversations, it was really productive. Moving forward, we were able to get the moment that we felt like we needed to get to properly tell the story.

I also watched Cheer, another show you did. How do you compare shooting the two shows?

Football is different because there seems to be an easy chapter marker each week when you have a game. For us, the structure of the show was you have this main character. If something really good or really bad happens to them in this game, we could spend a lot of time on that episode going into that person’s story. With Cheer, there is one contest at the end. We felt like we had to do a lot more explaining to the audience just what cheer is because I don’t think your general population understood competitive cheerleading in the same way that your typical audience would understand football. That was fun. That was fun to expend some time explaining that because it’s an interesting story. The history is interesting. I didn’t know it before I started it. It was challenging to figure out, well, what’s the format of that show? But there was also a lot of similarities. They’re both very intense, very dedicated, focused, and top athletes. When you’re filming intense people who have a lot at stake, that’s a good recipe for compelling viewing.

Has doing Last Chance U affected your feelings about football? Do you find yourself liking it any more or less after having been around it so much?

I feel much stronger than I did before I began making the show that something had to be done at the collegiate level to… How should I put this? Here’s maybe the most efficient way I could put it: I think historically there is an exchange that’s being offered between a student-athlete and its institution. The exchange is, we will give you an education. We’ll educate you and you’ll play football for us. In return, you get that education for free. You can look at education as having some very long-term benefits. I think the sport of football in particular… You can maybe even argue basketball as well. It has grown. It’s grown in such a way that the demands of that sport are such that I think the educational component of it has been compromised. What the university is offering back to these kids is not the same deal it once was. You can’t be a normal college student like I was and take advantage of all a university has to offer and still be competitive as a football player. The demands of that activity are so severe. People know this. People that are now showing up with their scholarship in hand to play at a Power Five school say, they’re there largely to major in football. Given that, I think somebody’s got to do something to make that trade equitable. If an institution is making money off of the sacrifice and efforts of a young student-athlete, they need to be compensated for it.

On that note, how much does this COVID stuff bum you out? We talk a lot about staying safe and everything, but I also think about all these athletes that are maybe missing out on these huge opportunities right now not being out there.

Yeah. Because I’ve seen up close how difficult it is to pursue that dream of one day playing in the NFL, that you could even make it all the way to a Power Five Division I school and still your odds of making it on a game day NFL roster are so slim that I hope… During COVID-19 frankly, I just hope that there’s a reevaluation of the whole thing. I think there are all kinds of things that we should rethink and that’s one of them.

Just how much effort we put into getting to that level?

Yeah. College football is this extremely popular thing. It’s popular on the backs of a demographic of people who are making a sacrifice that in some cases is severe, both from a physical sacrifice and a mental sacrifice. I think we’ve got to rethink how we’re compensating those people for making that sacrifice.

Do you struggle with that as a viewer? I know I do, as much as I love the entertainment of it.

Yeah. I feel conflicted. I’ve grown up a Seattle Seahawks fan. I think I’m just sort of hard-wired to look forward to a season and to watch a Seahawks game when it’s offered on Sunday. It’s been such a part of my life for so long, but I do feel conflicted that I never had considered how much more sacrifice those players are making to provide me entertainment. It has given me pause.

‘Last Chance U’ season five is now available on Netflix. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Back in June, British rock band Idles announced that their third album, entitled Ultra Mono, would arrive on September 25. The release date comes just over two years after their sophomore effort, Joy As An Act Of Resistance. The announcement was paired with the video for the song “Grounds,” with a promise to release a total of four songs and videos before the album’s arrival. After the video for “A Hymn,” which came in July, Idles has dropped one for “Model Village.”

Directed by Michel Gondry, the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director who has also made videos for the likes of Daft Punk, Radiohead, and The White Stripes, the “Model Village” video is quite the surreal effort, pushing back against the idea of a city being “too small.”

“I hated growing up in a city that was really a town that was really a fishbowl,” Idles Joe Talbot in a press release statement. “I left as soon as I could, only to realize the fishbowl didn’t exist…just the fish, and they’re everywhere.” Talbot then went on to explain Gondry’s contribution to the group and how it lined up with a message he hoped the group could eventually live up to.

Michel’s work is handmade and it’s human and that’s something that our society pushes against: you need to be perfect. You need to look perfect and everything needs to be seamless and strong. But actually, vulnerability and naivety are strengths. To be vulnerable and to be naive is to have empathy. And so, to empathize with your adversaries and allow yourself to be naked on film or on record is a really strong thing to do. It liberates you and it also liberates your audience. That’s something that I hope that IDLES can do, and that Gondry’s been doing for years.

You can check out the “Model Village” video above.

Ultra Mono is out 9/25 via Partisan Records. Pre-order it here.

Camila Cabello closed 2019 with her sophomore album Romance, which arrived just a year after her self-titled debut. The album spawned her second and most successful single, “My Oh My,” which featured DaBaby and made for another top-five debut on the Billboard charts. In a perfect world, Cabello would have been touring the world on her Romance Tour, but just like the rest of the music industry, the pop star was forced to put her tour on hold as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The additional time to herself seems to have sparked her creativity, as Cabello revealed she is currently writing new music.

“Sending so much love to everyone,” Cabello wrote in an update posted on Instagram. “Been writing a lot of new music and it’s coming from a really pure place. reminding myself everyday that life is now; and not in yesterday or tomorrow. let’s be extra gentle, soft, and kind to ourselves and others today.”

Despite the pandemic, Cabello has stayed fairly productive, recently joining Khalid, Leon Bridges, and more for a Finneas-produced cover of U2’s “Beautiful Day.” Perhaps that will inspire her to give this new project a quick turnaround.

You can check out her Instagram post above.

One of the most amazing (and frightening) realizations one can have as a parent is that your child is always listening and they have incredible memories.

Alyssia, the mother of three-year-old Ayaan, was blown away when during their walk to school he began reciting positive affirmations she taught him a year earlier. When he was two she taught him to repeat “I am smart. I am blessed. I can do anything,” when he is stressed.

“Well he shocked me this morning. Out of no where he started repeating it, so I pulled out my phone,” Alyssia commented on her Instagram post. “He ended (with enthusiasm lol) once we made it to our destination. So proud of the little boy he is growing into.”

Alyssia shared the video on Instagram where it received nearly 100,000 likes.

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A year ago, Alyssia shared a video of herself teaching her son the affirmation, which made it extra special when he recalled the three powerful sentences all by himself.

“This morning we started Ayaan’s day with positive affirmations that he will repeat daily,” she wrote on the Instagram post. “Though he may not understand the words right now, he will grow to learn what they mean and how true they are. Positive vibes for our young King!”

Ayaan’s positive self-talk is a great reminder for all of us to be conscious of the power of our internal monologues. Research has repeatedly shown that the words we use when talking to ourselves can have a tremendous impact on our self-esteem and ability to achieve our goals.

A study in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience found that “a large body of literature” demonstrates that self-affirmations can decrease stress, increase well being, improve academic performance, and make people more open to behavior change.

Conversely, studies show that negative self talk, such as thinking phrases like, “I can’t do anything right” or “I’m a total failure” can limit our personal growth, lower our self-esteem and confidence.

The problem is that, according to Psychology Today, humans are much more prone to negative self-talk than positive, so many of us have to make a conscious effort to push back against debilitating internal monologues.

Researchers have found that one way to improve our self-talk is to include our name when pumping ourselves up. For example, Ayaan could make his affirmation even more powerful by saying, “Ayaan is smart. Ayaan is blessed. Ayaan can do anything.”

“In my experience, referring to yourself in the third person can have some powerful self-regulatory effects, such as stress reduction and anxiety regulation, as well as put distance between you and the situation,” female entrepreneurial coach, Teri Karjala, writes in Forbes.

It’s also very helpful to write down your goals on paper because it makes them more concrete. Karjala adds that it’s also important to practice visualizing achieving your goal and how you will achieve it. That is because our brains have a hard time distinguishing between reality and what’s imagined.

As the Buddha once said, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought,” so the question we should all ask ourselves is: Am I creating my best self though positive self-talk or limiting myself through negativity?

Guapdad 4000 has been enjoying his time in the spotlight. The Oakland rapper has released a slew of singles this year in addition to his Rona Raps series and his Platinum Falcon Tape, Vol. 1. With plenty of releases in store for the impending fourth quarter, Guapdad 4000 sat down with HipHopDX to reflect on a New Year’s party that may have led to what proved to be a phenomenal 2019.

Guapdad reminisced about a New Year’s party he attended with his dad and Drake, where he would also meet J. Cole at for the first time. “It was New Years and my dad flew out here and soon as he got out here, I said, ‘We about to do this Drake sh*t. C’mon,’” he recalled. “I don’t think he knew the extent of it but, I said, ‘F*ck it, I’ma bring my pops.”

After introducing his dad to Drake, Guapdad would wind up meeting another reveler, J. Cole, for the first time. “Cole was with two people from Drake team and Ib and some other dude and the other dude said, ‘Yo, you’re Guadpdad! You be funny!’” Guapdad remembered. “And Cole cut him off and said, ‘Nah, I just seen this n**** rapping. I seen a freestyle you did and you rapped hella good, bruh.’ And I said, ‘Sh*t! Thanks Cole!’”

That meeting preceded Cole’s involvement on the Revenge Of The Dreamers III project, which arrived six months later. Guapdad wound up contributing a total of four tracks on the standard issue of that album, and an additional two on the deluxe.

(via HipHopDX)

Guapdad 4000 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

On Tuesday, after days of promising he would reveal his running mate, Joe Biden finally delivered, revealing that the other half of his ticket would be California senator Kamala Harris. The news was met with much joy; she’s both the first African-American and the first Asian-American to be chosen as a vice presidential hopeful on a major party ticket, to name two things. Many people, though, couldn’t help but think of something a touch less serious: What does Maya Rudolph, the SNL vet who’s memorably played her on her former program, think about the news?

Well, now we know. The actress and performer was on a group Zoom call for Entertainment Weekly, alongside Angela Bassett, Wanda Sykes, Dan Levy, Ramy Youssef, and Giancarlo Esposito, when she learned the news. And here was her initial response: “Oh s*it!”

Granted, she didn’t have much time to prepare for a response, much less fully wrap around her head that she may not only have to reprise the role but do so during a pandemic. Still, she was able to respond to that possibility.

“I love going to the show. Any excuse I can get, I love,” Rudolph told everyone. “I just didn’t really anticipate traveling during a pandemic, but if there’s anyone that can work it out I’m sure Lorne [Michaels] has some sort of invisible helicopter that can get me there.”

She continued:

“Ever since I was a kid, truly, I wanted to be on any kind of SCTV, Saturday Night Live, and I can’t believe that I got to work there, and I can’t believe that it’s my family still … I’m so thrilled to even be associated with the show and that I got to go back. It’s like the gift that keeps on giving. Honestly, it’s my favorite place to play.”

Still, she couldn’t hide how flabbergasted she was by the news. “I’m as surprised as you are, guys,” Rudolph said. “That’s spicy.”

You can watch the full video of the moment during the Zoom call when Rudolph heard the news over at EW.

For each of the last two summers, the NBA has taken a contingent down to Disney World in Orlando. That, of course, is happening this summer as well, with 22 NBA teams in the Disney Bubble to try and play out the end of the 2019-20 season.

But while that’s going on, the NBA’s usual August trip to Disney is going on remotely. The league announced last month that the Jr. NBA Global Championship — which features 16 boys and girls teams, eight from the United States and eight from around the world — will go all-virtual this year. On the court, this means competing in virtual basketball competitions in a bracket-style tournament to crown world champions. Off the court, this means virtual sessions designed to take the athletes away from basketball and educate them on issues off the court and much more.

“It’s looked different than it has in previous years, but we’ve been able to achieve a lot of the same goals, to deliver strong, memorable, and developmental experiences connected to the game of basketball for thousands of young people around the world, and we’ve been able to retain what we think of as the four pillars of the Jr. NBA Global Championship.” David Krichavsky, the NBA’s Head of Youth Basketball Development, told Dime over the phone. “First, the on-court competition, secondly, life skills and leadership development training, third, community service and community engagement, and then fourth, creating these enriching cross-cultural experiences for young people. And through various innovations, we’ve kept all four of those pillars, which we’re really proud about.”

The tournament came to an end on Tuesday, when the team from Asia-Pacific was crowned the boys’ champion and the Latin America squad came out on top among the girls. Thanks to their wins, the two sides the opportunity to celebrate with the previous two champions — the boys from the U.S. West region and the girls from the U.S. Central region, respectively — by virtually sitting courtside for a pair of games on Tuesday. The two girls teams (along with the 2019 runners-up from Canada) will get to check out Blazers-Mavericks at 6:30, while the boys will watch Pelicans-Kings at 9.

Getting to this point was, understandably, quite the undertaking. The ball got rolling back in March on a number of initiatives — including the Jr. NBA At Home program — with an eye on how virtual programming could make all of these normally in-person events happen. When it came to the Global Championship, Krichavsky says the league was steadfast in making sure something could happen, even in our current COVID-19 reality.

“I think we feel a responsibility to the Jr. NBA community, and particularly in our current context, we think it’s more important than ever to stay connected and to provide fun opportunities for those that love the game,” Krichavsky says. “And so knowing that we could have success virtually and knowing that young players really relied on us for best-in-class programming, we were committed to bringing this tournament to life.”

This involved relying on the HomeCourt app as a way to foster competition between teams while they’re at home. In various skill competitions, the 500 or so 13 and 14 year olds compete in challenges like shooting, ball handling, and sprint speed with points accrued for speed and aptitude. Those points are added up across teams, which leads to winners advancing in a single-elimination tournament.

These games are only part of the championship. Off the court, conversations with current and former NBA and WNBA players have been a tentpole, and unsurprisingly, the conversations that have occurred this year have centered around the myriad of societal issues that everyone experiences.

“Here in the U.S. — or U.S. and Canada, we did together — we had Coby White of the Chicago Bulls and Napheesa Collier of the Minnesota Lynx last week do a session with young athletes about their experiences during COVID-19, how they’ve found their voices on issues of social justice, how young athletes can engage on broader social issues,” Krichavsky says. “And so it was a really rich and valuable conversation. And we saw the way that the kids really listened to these professional athletes. And we’ve done similar sessions around the world. In Africa, Dikembe Mutombo led a session. Greivis Vasquez in Latin America. Bruce Bowen, with more than a 1,000 players in our program in India. I believe Robert Horry in Asia-Pacific.”

It is not always easy to have these kinds of heavy conversations with children, and Krichavsky believes it helps for them to see that the issues impacting them also impact professional athletes. With White and Collier specifically, the conversation started with 60 children, but eventually got pared down to breakout groups with 10 young hoopers and one professional that involved “really candid conversations and some real sharing of personal information, of what people’s experiences have been in recent weeks and recent months.”

Community service and cross-cultural engagement are the final pillars of the experience. While the former isn’t a hands-on community service project this year, the players involved this year created pieces of art that exhibited what global unity and social change means to them. It was turned into a mural that will hang in the New Image Youth Center in Orlando. And on the latter, the Jr. NBA has taken a page out the league’s book and created a virtual campus for young athletes.

“It’s an interactive and immersive world where Jr. NBA players, represented digitally as avatars, have had a chance to go onto this virtual campus over the past several days and engage in all sorts of different, fun, engaging educational experiences with their peers from around the world,” Krichavsky says. “So it’s been really cool to see there’s well-known DJs performing. There’s guest appearances from NBA and WNBA player. There’s unique digital content, virtual instructional clinics.”

All of this has made for a unique experience. Like most things that have happened in 2020, the Jr. NBA Global Championship were interrupted, but those behind it figured out creative solutions to make something happen. The hope, of course, is that when the 2021 Championship rolls around, the August basketball taking place in Disney won’t be because the NBA season was altered by a global pandemic.

Still, this doesn’t mean there’s nothing to take away from this unique operation and apply it going forward.

“Regardless of what shape our events take going forward, the way that we’ve been able to engage young people through virtual programming, the way that we’ve been able to expand our reach in a global fashion, the way that we’ve been able to embrace technology, as I said before, we never anticipated having virtual basketball competitions,” Krichavsky says. “We never anticipated needing a virtual campus and creating an immersive virtual world as we’ve done for young people this year. These are experiences that have been extremely valuable in that we would look to recreate in future years, regardless of how robust our encore programming is.”