The focal point of Episode 6 of The Last Dance was Michael Jordan’s gambling, and the controversy that surrounded him in the 1993 playoffs after he took a trip to Atlantic City during the Eastern Conference Finals.

Jordan, infuriated by constant questions about his gambling habit and whether he had a problem, resulted in him going media silent for two weeks ahead of the NBA Finals. However, as they arrived in Phoenix for those Finals, Jordan called up Ahmad Rashad of NBC Sports — who was also his close friend — and said he wanted to do a sitdown interview before the game and talk about his gambling and get it all out there.

Rashad remembers scrambling to get a camera and get set up, but also wanted to do everything he could to make sure he didn’t look like a “homer” in giving Jordan an easy interview. As he recalled when speaking to Greg Braxton of the Los Angeles Times, Rashad asked NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol to write the questions for him, so as to ensure they got everything they wanted out of the interview.

“I said to Dick, ‘Here’s what I want you to do for me. I want you to give me the questions. You give me what you want out of this interview. That way it won’t look like I’m taking it easy on my friend.’”

What most remember about the interview is Jordan denying he had a gambling problem while wearing a pair of sunglasses indoors, which didn’t exactly help his case. Rashad said he and Michael laugh about it now, but not convincing him to take them off is his one regret about the entire thing.

“The only thing I wished, I wish he had taken those glasses off. I said, “Mike, can you take off the sunglasses?’ He laughed and said, ‘Aw, man, let’s just do this.’ ”

Having Ebersol write the questions — which neither Ebersol nor Rashad told anyone at the time — didn’t stop Rashad from getting criticized by his colleagues in the media for being too easy on Jordan, or simply being jealous of his access and wondering how he got the interview in the first place. Rashad’s friendship with Jordan is fascinating — and we really could use a documentary on Rashad’s life because it’s incredible — but in this instance he tried to go above and beyond to ensure he wasn’t giving Jordan an easy way out of what needed to be a strong interview.

After a viral TikTok dance helped Doja Cat’s Hot Pink song “Say So” go from underground fan favorite to Billboard behemoth, Nicki Minaj seems determined to cut out the middle man with her remix. The Queen Barb employed a “dance visual” after the remix’s release to help promote it, featuring a trio of women showing off synchronized moves inspired by the disco theme of Doja’s original music video for the track. The three women alternate between blond afros and cotton-candy pink wigs and outfits referencing Nicki’s look from her “Super Bass” video.

While it remains to be seen whether Nicki’s remix sparks its own viral dance trend, it did do what Nicki songs do best: Set off a wave of speculation that Mrs. Petty was again shading a nemesis — in this case, Wendy Williams. Nicki responded via Instagram, letting her fans know that the final shot on her second verse wasn’t aimed at Williams. Incidentally, the song itself arrived as a sort of peace offering between Nicki Minaj and Doja Cat after the Barbz lashed out at Doja Cat for calling the more toxic members of the fan club “Twitter gangsters.”

Meanwhile, “Say So” has seemingly become a go-to song for remixing; R&B singer PJ recently covered the song for her The Quarantine Tapes campaign.
Watch the dance visual for “Say So” above.

May the 4th won’t be greeted this year with Star Wars cosplay in a mass gathering of nerd camaraderie, but Disney and Lucasfilm are still marking the day in a social distancing way. Disney+ is streaming The Rise of Skywalker a few months ahead of schedule, and the site’s received an old-school makeover for those who wish to binge into oblivion. In addition, the official Star Wars “May the 4th” video has arrived, and it’s all about hope. A New Hope? Yes, that movie (in which Princess Leia famously called Obi-Wan Kenobi her “only hope”) gets face time in a montage that features ghostly Luke Skywalker and dances through several messages of hope from the four-decade movie and TV franchise, both on the live-action and animated fronts, including the following:

– “We have hope, hope that things can get better, and they will.”

– “Stand up together, because that’s when we’re strongest. As one.”

– “You had each other, that’s how we won.”

Yes, Baby Yoda makes an appearance, as does nearly every notable character of the franchise. The reason for this extra-positive May the 4th video never receives mention, of course, but it’s on everyone’s minds already. George Lucas’ wild cantina of characters can help connect people when we’re all separated from each other, if only by providing inspiration about how people and aliens have come together in miraculous ways throughout the franchise. Sure, we’d probably all prefer to be in a far-away galaxy right about now, but here on Earth, we’ve simply got to keep hope alive.

Since all pro sports have gone dark due to COVID-19, there’s not much for athletes to do than to sit around on social media, just like the rest of us. (It’s a nice reminder that no matter how freakishly talented someone can be, they’re spending most their days getting their thumb-swipe on.)

Over the weekend, the official WWE On Fox Twitter account posed the following question: What are your top 5 WWE Superstars of all time?

Needless to say, this caught on like wildfire, not just with the WWE Universe but with Twitter as a whole — and you better believe plenty of pro athletes from the NFL, NBA and MLB chimed in with their picks. Let’s see who chose what, shall we?

We’ll start with the NBA and 10-year veteran Derrick Favors, who has spent the vast majority of his career playing for the Utah Jazz (a team who has a long history with pro wrestling) and has been seen marking out next to John Cena:

Favors split the difference between retired Attitude Era stalwarts like Steve Austin and the Rock and their WCW counterparts Goldberg and Booker T, with active roster member the Undertaker securing the fifth spot. (What? It’s true.)

Pivoting to Major League Baseball, we find a few different players chiming in with their answers:

San Diego Padres prospect Taylor Trammell gave props to high flyers like Rey Mysterio, Kofi Kingston and Jeff Hardy before closing with Shawn Michaels and acknowledging he was one of a slew of kids who got in trouble doing D-Generation X crotch-chops in school. His picks even earned praise from Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Cole Tucker:

Relief pitcher Rob Whalen (currently signed with the Mets, and a hell of a smark) provided a list that solidly straddles the line between the Attitude and Ruthless Aggression Eras:

The top-five lists really caught on with NFL players, though. Let’s start with NFL rookie Isaiah Wilson, who was just taken in in the first round by the Tennessee Titans:

Rob Van Dam! Nice choice, sir. Fellow rookie Jonathan Taylor, who was drafted in the second round by Indianapolis Colts, provided his top five, which is a murderer’s row of WrestleMania main eventers:

Moving from rookies to Super Bowl champions, let’s check in with Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Mecole Hardman, whose list features the two Superstars who had WWE’s longest-running feud in the 2000s, John Cena and Randy Orton:

Hardman’s choice to include Cena and Orton over Attitude Era legends like Austin and the Rock led him to issue a mea culpa:

Ravens quarterback (and former WWE Champion) Robert Griffin III shared his thoughts on the topic, splitting his picks between big men like Goldberg and underdogs like Rey Mysterio:

Last but not least: While he is no stranger to delivering pick-sixes, Raiders QB Derek Carr limited himself to picking just five this time around, turning in a list that is probably the most well-rounded of the bunch, including legends like Bret Hart and Hulk Hogan:

His choices ruffled the feathers of Bray Wyatt, a current WWE Superstar and a longtime Raiders fan, who simply replied “bruh.” Carr wrote back, channeling his inner John Cena:

Wyatt wouldn’t take the dig lying down, so he shot back with his top five Raiders quarterbacks of all time — and Carr didn’t make the cut:

Carr quickly realized the error of his ways and revised his list accordingly:

Smart move, Derek — stay out of the Firefly Funhouse unless you want to relive that leg injury from 2016.

Marvel Studios took a calculated risk by hiring Taika Waititi to write and direct Thor: Ragnarok, as his highest-grossing film before joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe was Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which made all of $23 million. (Hiring an indie director counts as a risk for the mega-conglomerate.) But the bet paid off: Ragnarok belongs in the top-five of any best MCU movies list, and Waititi, who also wrote and directed the excellent What We Do in the Shadows, later won an Oscar for Jojo Rabbit.

Waititi is currently working on Thor: Love and Thunder, but he’ll hop over to another Disney property for his next film: Star Wars. According to a press release, “Academy Award winner Taika Waititi, who recently won Best Adapted Screenplay for Jojo Rabbit and directed the widely-acclaimed first season finale episode of The Mandalorian on Disney+, will direct and co-write a new Star Wars feature film for theatrical release.” He will write the screenplay with BAFTA winner Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917).

There’s no word on what the film will be about, but I hear Korg is available. Korg and Miek are my Han and Chewie.

In other exciting Star Wars news, Disney also confirmed that Russian Doll co-creator Leslye Headland is, indeed, working on a series for Disney+, which will reportedly be a “female-centric series that takes place in a different part of the Star Wars timeline than other projects.” Good people making (hopefully) good Star Wars stuff, what a concept!

(Via Star Wars)

Michael Jordan’s intensity is legendary and that wasn’t just reserved for games. The Last Dance has dipped its toe ever so slightly into practice footage of Jordan, both with the Bulls and the Dream Team, but if there’s one criticism for the incredible documentary it is that they haven’t utilized the footage of practices they had at their disposal enough.

Next week, we’ll get to the story of the 1995 practice fight with Steve Kerr, as ESPN teased late Sunday night, and hopefully this will be coupled with some more footage of Bulls practices that are legendary for their intensity. Jordan punching Kerr in the face is the most famous example of that, but it wasn’t the only time Jordan, in his words, “hauled off” and hit someone in practice.

Former Bulls center Will Perdue joined CBS Sports HQ on Sunday, along with Scott Burrell, and was asked if he could confirm whether Jordan had, indeed, punched him in a practice as well. Perdue said that did indeed happen, and that fights were fairly common by that point, so practice didn’t even end after the punch.

While 10 hours seems like a ton for a documentary, with how much footage they had — and how many interviews they did — the filmmakers have done a great job simply picking a track and not deviating from it. Still, there’s so much left on the floor that you could do even more installments, and one that I know I personally would love to see is simply a supercut of the best practice footage they have.

Dua Lipa’s new album, Future Nostalgia, put her on top of the pop world: The album peaked at No. 4 on the US charts, and “Don’t Start Now” is her most successful single yet in the states thanks to its No. 2 peak. The record is an undeniable success, and it turns out it may not have happened if Dua Lipa hadn’t taken some time to step away from social media.

Lips guested on a recent episode of Adwoa Aboah’s Gurls Talk podcast, and on the program, she said she needed a break from the internet because the things being said about her were so upsetting: “In all honesty, I don’t think I could have done my second record if I hadn’t taken a step back from social media. When you first start, when I first started putting new music out, everything was super positive and I had lots of nice messages. I think the more stuff you do, then there is criticism and comments and it all comes in thick and fast, and for a while it was really getting to me. I just felt like people had nothing but mean things to say or I was being picked on. It did upset me, it made me feel I didn’t deserve to do certain things.”

She also discussed what it was like to release her album during the coronavirus pandemic, saying, “It’s weird to have had such a clear plan and it all goes out [of] the window, but [then] realize that it’s all OK and that maybe we need to slow down a bit, take a bit [of time], have some patience with ourselves.”

Listen to the full Gurls Talk episode here.

Dua Lipa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

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Despite being stuck on lockdown along with (most of) the rest of the country, Megan Thee Stallion found herself having a great week last week, as she released the charity-driven remix to her viral hit “Savage” featuring Beyonce to widespread approval and welcomed a new addition to her family. Meg, who already owns a French bulldog named 4oe, posted a photo to her Instagram introducing her fans to her “newest son” Dos. Another French bulldog, Dos appears to have been embraced wholeheartedly by his “big brother” 4oe, who makes an appearance in the final slide showing the new puppy some love.

Megan previously told fans how overjoyed she was to get Beyonce to feature on her “Savage” remix during an Instagram livestream. “I just really can’t believe it,” she said. “I heard it for the first time and I called my grandma, and I was like in f*cking shambles. I was really crying, I was like, ‘I really got a f*cking song with Beyonce.’” 4oe also got an extra 15 minutes of fame when Megan brought the Frenchie on screen during a recent video interview with Jimmy Fallon.

However, there was one misstep Thee Stallion made during quarantine, taking flak from fans for failing to properly distance herself during a livestream with Tory Lanez. However, that turned out to only be a minor bump in the road, quickly forgotten in the wake of her “Savage” remix, which now has its own dance challenge to rival popularity of the original.

See Megan Thee Stallion’s new puppy above.

As Kodak Black serves out his 46-month prison sentence for criminal weapon possession, he has reportedly found himself in yet another violent incident, reaching out through representatives to claim that he was brutally beaten by seven prison guards at United States Penitentiary, Big Sandy in Kentucky. He also claims he’s being denied phone and visitation privileges.

“We just heard from fellow inmates at Max. Penitentiary Big Sandy KY,” reads the caption of a post on Kodak Black’s Instagram page. “He couldn’t call himself as he is not allowed phone or visitation for 6 months as punishment for the incident in Miami, even though that has been the case since September, they refuse to give him credit for that time.” The incident in Miami being referenced allegedly took place in November 2019, when Kodak reportedly attacked a guard after being pepper-sprayed, resulting in the guard requiring hospitalization with crushed testes.

The post goes on to describe Kodak’s latest attack, saying, “Friday night he was badly beaten while in cuffs, by 7 guards at Big Sandy KY. They struck him in the head repeatedly with a metal object then after, one of the guards flicked his genitals and said, ‘You’re not so gangster now, you’re gonna need bigger balls to survive.’” The post reports that Kodak’s attorney was notified and is requesting an FBI investigation.

Kodak originally pled guilty to the charges against him, resulting in the 46-month sentence and a 2022 release date, however, additional charges surfaced that nearly tacked on more time. That time is scheduled to be served concurrently to his existing sentence so it seems likely he’ll get to see his original release date but he still has yet to go on trial for his 2017 sexual assault case, which could see him facing even more time.

Read the full post above.

Kodak Black is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.