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Chris Wallace Is ‘Disappointed’ With The Way The First Presidential Debate Went Down

It’s safe to say Tuesday night’s presidential debate pleased just about no one — not fans of either incumbent Donald Trump, not fans of former vice president Joe Biden, and certainly not anyone who wanted a civil or at least non-noisy discussion. What everyone got instead was over 90 minutes of migraine-inducing crosstalk, with the sitting president constantly interrupting either Biden, who occasionally lost it, or moderator Chris Wallace. Another person who didn’t enjoy it? Chris Wallace.

Speaking to The New York Times the day after, the Fox News anchor — widely seen as one of the few genuinely bipartisan voices on the right-leaning news network — said he was “just sad with the way last night turned out,” calling it “a terrible missed opportunity.” He added, “I never dreamt that it would go off the tracks the way it did.”

The debate started off quietly, with both parties respecting the rule granting each one two minutes to speak, uninterrupted. That lasted about one volley. The infamously testy Trump quickly threw off the shackles of decorum, proceeding to interrupt either Biden or Wallace, by Slate’s estimate, at least 128 times. Wallace frequently had to chastise the president, ordering him to let Biden speak, but to no avail.

Wallace, who has been praised for standing up to Trump during rare non-softball Fox News interviews, was roasted online, but while he, too, deplored the end results, he didn’t think he was to blame.

“I’ve read some of the reviews, I know people think, Well, gee, I didn’t jump in soon enough,” Mr. Wallace said, his voice betraying some hoarseness from the previous night’s proceedings. “I guess I didn’t realize — and there was no way you could, hindsight being 20/20 — that this was going to be the president’s strategy, not just for the beginning of the debate but the entire debate.”

Recalling his thoughts as he sat onstage, with tens of millions of Americans watching live, Mr. Wallace said: “I’m a pro. I’ve never been through anything like this.”

He added, “Generally speaking, I did as well as I could, so I don’t have any second thoughts there. I’m just disappointed with the results. For me, but much more importantly, I’m disappointed for the country, because it could have been a much more useful evening than it turned out to be.”

The debate was so poorly received, so trying on the patience and the ears, that the Commission on Presidential Debates put out a statement, saying that “additional structure should be added to the format of the remaining debates.” (They did praise Wallace, though, thanking him for bringing “professionalism” to a debate that sorely needed more of it.) Of course, you try to tame Trump.

(Via NYT)

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The Heiress At The Center Of HBO’s True-Crime ‘Sex Cult’ Series ‘The Vow’ Is Headed To Prison

HBO’s The Vow is cracking up to be the strangest and most talked-about documentary series since Tiger King. While its final episode doesn’t air until Sunday, there’s one twist in the story that happened after the filmmaker’s stopped filming: on Wednesday it was reported that one of its bigger stars is going to jail.

According to The New York Times, Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman was sentenced to six years and nine months for her role as a funder and leader in NXIVM, an alleged cult that has been accused of, among other things, coercing female members into sexual slavery. A number of its leaders, among them founder Keith Raniere and top recruiter Alison Mack, have been convicted of various charges and are awaiting sentencing. Bronfman is the first NXIVM higher-up to be sentenced.

Founded in 1998, Nvixm sold itself as a self-help group that, as per NYT, “purported to help people achieve their personal goals through ‘executive success’ workshops.” But as the years went on, it evolved into something darker, with leaders using it as a recruiting platform for a secret society referred to as either “DOS” or “The Vow.” A number of leaders and members are former television actors.

During the hearing, former NXIVM members detailed their abuses:

In an emotional hearing on Wednesday, nine victims of Nxivm spoke about how their lives had been destroyed by Ms. Bronfman. Some of them said Ms. Bronfman sued them relentlessly for years after they left Nxivm and even persuaded local prosecutors to initiate criminal charges against them.

Earlier Wednesday, one NXIVM devotee, former Battlestar Galactica actress Nicky Clyne — who is married to Mack, herself a former actress on Smallvilletried to defend the group. “It’s very unfortunate the way that the word ‘NXIVM’ has been applied and is now synonymous with the term ‘sexual cult,’ which I don’t even know how to define what that is,” Clyne told CBS’ This Morning. She and for other former NXIVM members even brought a formal petition to prosecutors, alleging prosecutorial misconduct against Raniere, who was convicted in July of racketeering, sex trafficking, fraud and other crimes.

“We’re not denying that certain things took place,” Clyne, who has never been charged with a crime, added. “There’s evidence that certain things happened. How they happened, why they happened and why certain people chose them — that’s a whole other conversation.” She added, “I wouldn’t trade my experiences for anything.”

(Via NYT and Page Six)

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WWE And AEW Have Been Left Scrambling To Book Shows Amid COVID-19 Outbreaks

Wrestling fans are fond of saying that WWE in particular does their best booking when they have to cancel things, think on their feet, and react quickly to circumstances. I’m not sure that idea holds much water anymore, in an era when Vince McMahon tearing up the RAW script hours before air has become the (rumored but widely accepted) norm. In any case, it’s definitely not true of the particular chaos that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to bring to the pro wrestling world.

Sunday’s Clash of Champions PPV was supposed to feature three women’s matches: Zelina Vega versus Asuka for the Raw Women’s Championship, Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler versus the Riott Squad for the Women’s Tag Team Championship, and Nikki Cross versus Bayley for the Smackdown Women’s Championship. When Baszler, Jax, and Cross were all quarantined, the division was left in disarray. Since Jax and Baszler are the current Champions, and the whole gimmick of Clash of Champions is that every match is for a Title, they just had to cancel the women’s tag mach.

Honestly, even if they’d been willing to do a non-title match, WWE breaks up female tag teams so fast that there’s hardly room for understudies. There are no more IIconics, Golden Role Models, Fire & Desire, Kabuki Warriors, or even Bliss Cross Applesauce (leaving aside that Nikki was also unavailable), and I don’t think many people would have been excited to see the Riott Squad fight Lana and Natalya on PPV.

Left without an opponent, Smackdown Women’s Champ Bayley issued an open challenge that was answered by… Raw Women’s Champ Asuka. We know Bayley and Asuka can work well together (if only because we’ve seen it more than once very recently), but it kind of just felt like there weren’t any other women backstage? Except of course for Sasha Banks, who was waiting to make her post-mach attack (which presumably still would have come if the challenger was Nikki Cross).

Then on Monday Night Raw, Retribution wasn’t around to cause their usual chaos, reportedly because they’ve also been quarantined due to COVID exposure. Now on the one hand, a couple of weeks off may be just what WWE needs to figure out how to redirect the widely mocked angle and move past fans’ initial negative reactions to the faction’s silly made-up names and cut-rate Bane masks. On the other hand, it might be the first step in Retribution being dropped all together, which wouldn’t bode well for the five wrestlers who got brought up from NXT for the angle.

Speaking of which, I hear a lot of people saying that the masks and silly names could be to those wrestlers’ benefit in the long run, because they can get repackaged under their own names after Retribution falls apart. It would be great if that’s true, but when I look at past NXT call-ups like Sanity, the Ascension, and AoP, it’s hard to get my hopes up.

Raw Underground was also left off the show, apparently because the COVID outbreak at the performance center left them without enough Superstars to crowd around that ropeless ring and make it look like a fight club. Considering Raw’s ratings without the Underground segment were better than they’ve been with it, it makes you wonder if we’ve seen the last of Shane McMahon’s little experiment.

This weekend is NXT TakeOver 31, and we’ll see how things go there. According to an interview with PWInsider, Triple H seems confident that it will be fine, and that they’re doing all they can:

As for right now, I’m very confident in that – that this Sunday’s card will [go on as announced], but this is a very sort of touch-and-go time, and at any given time, things can change, and you’ve seen that recently. The Performance Center is back functional. The talent is – you know, nobody can control this situation, and nobody’s going to be able to stop this pandemic, and COVID. We’re doing the best we can to keep our performers safe, our staff, our crew – everybody safe. So these situations where positives come up and we then go back and very, very extensively contact trace, and go back and quarantine those people – this is all for the safety and wellbeing of everybody.

And of course WWE isn’t the only wrestling company dealing with the effects of a pandemic. AEW’s Lance Archer has revealed that he tested positive for COVID-19, and there were a bunch more people conspicuously missing from last week’s AEW Dynamite, including Nick Jackson, the Butcher and the Blade, and Archer’s own manager, Jake the Snake Roberts. We’ll see who shows up tonight, on Dynamite and NXT respectively, but each of them seems to be just trying to come up with a full show each week.

Hopefully we’re getting closer to a day when things become normal again, when wrestling shows can tour before big live crowds, and roster members disappearing due to illness won’t stop happening, but it will stop seeming like a regular weekly event. In the meantime, here’s hoping both companies can get their current outbreaks under control, and go back to telling the stories they want to tell, instead of the stories they’re left with.

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Cardi B Shoots Down Rumors She Was Shelved By Her Label

Even though Cardi B was the first female rapper to reach No. 1 on the Hot 100 in 20 years, one of the few to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and the first to achieve multiple No. 1 singles, there are apparently still some listeners out there who don’t accept any of these milestones as markers of success. At least, according to Cardi herself, who recounted some of the more outlandish critiques she’s received online over the past two years in an interview with Sirius XM.

Per Cardi, some critics took her year-long break from releasing new music as evidence that Atlantic Records had shelved her album, calling her “a flop.” While some of those were undoubtedly Nicki Minaj fans, who are known to lash out at Cardi, any other female rapper they perceive as Nicki’s competition, and even Nicki’s collaborators, a quick browse of any comments section online is sure to reveal that her detractors aren’t quite living in the same reality as the rest of us.

“Throughout this [break] people was making rumors, like, ‘Oh, she’s having problems with her label, her label is shelving her, her label is tired of her, they’re getting more female talent,’” Cardi explained. “Then it’s like, no, they’re never tired of me.” She also pointed out the double standards involved in those criticisms and why they couldn’t force her to rush out another song she wasn’t in love with.

“There are male artists who will go two years without putting out a song and [the fans] don’t be like, ‘Oh, you’re irrelevant, it’s over for you’. Me, I didn’t put out songs for nine months and it’s like, ‘Oh, she’s irrelevant, she’s over, she’s a flop, we told you that’. And I’m like, ‘Yo!’ That type of shit started to get to me but I’m not gonna let that shit get to me to the point that I’m going to put out a song that I’m not really in love with.”

Considering her first new song since 2019’s “Please Me” with Bruno Mars was the No. 1 “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion, a song that has launched a lexicon and dominated pop culture since its release, those folks who called her a flop might have to continue to indulge their wishful thinking.

Watch the full Cardi B interview with Sirium XM above.

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

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Frotcast 453: Vin Diesel’s New Single And Matt’s Unified Theory Of ‘Karate Kid’


Click to download here.

This bonus episode of the Frotcast is now live on Patreon. To hear the whole thing, sign up on Patreon at Patreon.com/Frotcast. I promise, you won’t regret it! Or maybe you will. Hell, I don’t know. Honestly, who can say these days.

This week on the Frotcast, everyone’s favorite, Jessica Sele is back, and she’s helping Vince and Matt discuss all the latest developments in the world of film and culture. For instance, Vin Diesel has a new single out, that he introduced on the Kelly Clarkson show. We discuss the way Vin Diesel has taught himself to speak in Mongolian throat singing, and how his social media posts full of ellipses actually mimic his true speaking voice. That leads us into a breakdown of the Vin Diesel/The Rock beef, Jessica talks about surfing as part of recovery, and Matt reveals that he has spent the past week watching all of Cobra Kai and the first three Karate Kid movies and now has some theories. In fact it turns out, Matt may have become radicalized by Karate Kid.

We finish things up with some of your emails and voicemails, and answer your question about which Hollywood star would be the best replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. As always, thank you for listening.

EMAIL us at frotcast@gmail.com, leave us a voicemail at 415-275-0030.

SUBSCRIBE to the Frotcast on iTunes.

SUPPORT at Patreon.com/Frotcast. You can add the bonus feed to regular podcast app!

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Katie Porter And Her Whiteboard Just Destroyed A ‘Price-Gouging’ Pharma CEO

Look, watching politicians peacock their way across our TV sparks joy in no one right now — unless that politician is Katie Porter and she’s got a whiteboard in her hand.

The U.S. Representative and tenured law professor has gained a bit of a fandom for her use of props you’d be more to likely find in one of her classrooms. She sent the CDC Director home with his tail between his legs earlier this year (and scored a promise of free COVID-19 tests) when she whipped out her dry erase secret weapon, and she completely decimated USPS Postmaster Louis DeJoy over the price of a postage stamp. So you’d think Mark J. Allies, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company called Celgene, would’ve been a bit more prepared when he Zoomed into a House Oversight Committee meeting to defend his latest multimillion-dollar paycheck.

You’d be wrong.

Porter began her questioning by writing a fairly innocuous number on her trusty whiteboard — 13 million. She then proceeded to drag Allies for taking home over $2 million in bonuses after the company decided to raise the price of a cancer treatment drug called Revlimid. And in case watching this guy stumble over his explanations for why he was taking home millions when so many people struggle to now afford that life-saving treatment just wasn’t entertaining enough, she broke that number down further, showing that Allies got half a million dollars just from tripling the price of that drug.

That’s called price gouging, folks, and the honorable Katie Porter is not having it — though Twitter seems to be pretty pleased watching her make Big Pharma’s insides shrivel up and die.

Here’s hoping Rep. Porter keeps wielding that whiteboard like a Congressional Captain America.

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Dog owner gets an assist from Florida shelter after she couldn’t pay the fee to get her pet back

Losing a beloved pet is one of the most painful experiences a person can have. Suffering the loss of their companionship is only compounded by the feeling of helplessness and worry over whether their friend is safe and happy.

If the animal is found and taken to shelter, it’s obviously a relief, but it can cost a lot of money in redemption fees to get the animal back.

Some shelter charges can run as much as $300 if the owner refuses to have the animal spayed or neutered or if the dog has been picked up by the shelter multiple times. While others charge as little as $15 if the animal is picked up promptly.


It’s understandable that the shelters charge a fee to temporarily take care of the animal, but the fees also lead to an increase in the number of animals in shelters.

This creates a real dilemma in a system that’s designed to reunite people with their lost family members.

A shelter in Florida is receiving a lot of love on social media for waiving the fees for a woman to retrieve her dog.

Jessica Jade, the manager of operations at Santa Rosa County Animal Services, shared a post on Facebook about how an owner came crying into the shelter with the vet papers for Glock, a sweet dog that’s deaf.

″She says, through her sobs, ‘Can I please have my dog? I don’t have any money to get him out.’ When I ask who her dog is, she continues to cry and beg, telling me she can’t afford to get him out. I tell her, ‘it’s okay, we got you. You’re getting your dog back,'” Jade wrote on Facebook.

“We bring Glock back to her. He was jumping and prancing he was so happy to see her, and she was crying and hugging him. Their love and bond are deep,” Jade recalled. “We provided her with some dog food and a neuter voucher, which she was grateful for.”

The shelter also learned the woman had kittens at home that needed to be spayed and neutered, so they gave her some vouchers for that service as well.

Jade used the situation to call attention to the problem of shelters charging redemption fees for lost pets.

″Glock wasn’t a dog who needed rescue; he was a dog who needed to go back to the loving home he already had. Inflexible redemption fees and policies prevent animals from returning to their homes and unnecessarily add to shelter populations,” Jade wrote.

“Innovative shelters remain flexible to ensure as many positive outcomes as possible, ensuring animals go back to the families they belong to where they are already loved,” she continued.

The problem with redemption fees is tied to a deeper economic problem in America.

The Federal Reserve’s 2017 Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households found that when faced with an unexpected $400 expense, about 40% of adults said they’d either either not be able to pay it or would do so by borrowing money.

The best way to make sure you don’t lose a loved one is to make sure they either don’t get out of your home or that, if they do, they are able to be brought home safely.

Here are five ways to make sure your pet doesn’t go missing:

1. Your pet should wear a collar and ID tags at all times.

2. Have your pet microchipped

3. Spay/neuter your pet

4. Leash your animal while outside

5. Buy a GPS trackers to help you locate missing pet for as little as $30

You can help Santa Rosa County Animal Services by making a donation or purchasing something off their Amazon Wish List.

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What’s On Tonight: “South Park’ Will Deal With You-Know-What, And Netflix Unleashes A True Crime Documentary

If nothing below suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now.

South Park: The Pandemic Special (Comedy Central/MTV 8:00pm EST) — Trey Parker and Matt Stone are back with an hour-long episode to, uh, deal with the pandemic. It’s about time that someone dealt with it, right? Other than a “making of” video, the dynamic duo’s remained pretty close-lipped on what we’ll see tonight, but we can expect all of 2020 to hit the audience in the face.

American Murder: The Family Next Door (Netflix documentary film) — Director Jenny Poppelwell cobbled together a feature-length examination of what happened after Shanann Watts and her two young daughters disappeared in Colorado in 2018. In short, Chris Watts confessed to murdering his family, but he did so in a few different ways, and this film aims to give a voice to the victims of his crimes. Through archival footage, home videos and law enforcement accounts, Poppelwell paints a portrait of a collapsing marriage and the police investigation that followed.

The 100 (CW, 8:00pm EST) — Is this really the final battle? After loads of fighting and loss, it might be that time for Clarke and her friends.

Late Show With Stephen Colbert — John Lithgow, Jonathan Alter

Jimmy Kimmel Live — Julie Bowen, Travis Scott

Late Night With Jimmy Fallon — BTS, Chris Colfer

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Tyra Banks, Surfaces

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Taylor Schilling, Brian Stelter

And in case you wanted to catch up on what happened last Wednesday:

Enola Holmes (Netflix film) — Netflix loves Stranger Things‘ Millie Bobby Brown, who’s now making her turn as Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister Enola Holmes. As a bonus, The Witcher‘s Henry Cavill is onboard to play Sherlock with Sam Claflin stepping in as Mycroft Holmes, and between the two of them, they have the fancy hair and twirling-of-mustaches quotient covered. Fleabag director Harry Bradbeer should make this an even more interesting affair, especially given the story: after Enola’s mother (Helena Bonham Carter) disappears without a trace on her daughter’s sixteenth birthday. Sherlock and Mycroft determine to ship the teen off to finishing school, where she’d become a “proper” lady. She’s not having it and strikes out on her own find her mother.

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After A Long Search, Disney+ Casts Newcomer Iman Vellani As Its ‘Ms. Marvel’

After announcing the show over a year ago, Marvel has finally cast the lead for its upcoming Ms. Marvel series for Disney+. Newcomer Iman Vellani secured the coveted role and will be under the direction of Bad Boys for Life filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. Via Deadline:

Ms. Marvel first appeared in 2014 as Marvel’s first Muslim character to star in her own title, and she will become Marvel Studios’ first onscreen Muslim hero. Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige has said that in addition to appearing on the small screen, Kamala Khan will be included in future Marvel films.

Vellani’s casting sparked an emotional response from Marvel’s Eternals actor Kumail Nanjiani who tweeted that he got “teary-eyed” after reading the news. “Your work is going to mean so much to so many people, myself included,” Nanjiani wrote.

Nanjiani has been a vocal supporter of seeing more diversity in superhero movies. Back in May, he revealed to a Variety virtual panel that he once turned down a role in a major comic book film after being asked to play up his accent. “So there was a really, really big movie, actually, that I auditioned for, and I was a taxi driver, and the director was like, ‘Hey, could you play up the accent a little bit?’ And I was like, ‘I’m sorry, I won’t.’” Nanjiani said. “And then the guy felt really bad.”

Nanjiani has also opened up about his risky gamble of turning down small Marvel roles until he was offered a chance to be an actual superhero, which finally happened with Eternals. After landing the part of Kingo, Nanjiani immediately got to work transforming his body because he knew how important this role would be for representation. “I’m playing the first South Asian superhero in a Marvel movie,” Nanjiani said. “I don’t want to be the schlubby brown guy—I want to look like someone who can hang with Thor and Captain America.”

(Via Deadline)

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We Used ‘NBA 2K21’ To Simulate The 2020 NBA Finals

There are, at most, seven more games standing between us and the end of the weirdest NBA season of our lives. In a series that is ripe with intrigue for a handful of reasons, both in terms of what will happen in the coming games and the histories of a handful of individuals on both sides of things, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat will meet on the hardwood at the NBA’s Orlando Bubble.

That experiment has generally been a success, and as a result, we get to watch a Finals that pits LeBron James against one of his former squads. But before things tip off on Wednesday evening, we decided to fire up a copy of NBA 2K21 and see what the future might have in store.

I used the Playoffs mode on 2K, selected the Lakers and the Heat as my teams, and simulated to the Finals. While the path was left up to chance — i.e. there was no guarantee it would be exactly the same as the ones they went on based on the teams they beat and how many games they played — I did what I could to game the system by moving all of the sliders all the way in one direction or another as I simmed and putting the Simulator Difficulty down to 0. I also didn’t touch the rotations until I got to the Finals, because whatever, man. I also turned off fatigue and injuries, because the first time I did this, Anthony Davis got hurt and I felt like a big freakin’ idiot.

Here were the roads both teams traversed to the Finals:

NBA 2K21

Go Nets! Once this was all done, I set the difficulty to Hall of Fame, made all the sliders normal, tweaked the rotations to look as close as I could to what the minutes distribution has been during this postseason, and got to simming. Here’s how it went down.

Game 1: Miami 132, Los Angeles 113 (Heat lead, 1-0)

NBA 2K21

Despite Anthony Davis (42 points, 12 rebounds, four blocks) and LeBron James (31 points, six rebounds, six assists) having monster games, Miami was able to come out on top, bookending things with dominant first and fourth quarters. This was thanks to four Heat players absolutely exploding: Goran Dragic (32 points, seven assists, six rebounds, four steals), Tyler Herro (27 points, zero rebounds/assists/steals/blocks, strictly buckets), Jimmy Butler (24 points, seven assists, six rebounds), and Bam Adebayo (22 points, 19 rebounds, six blocks). As a team, Miami led by as many as 23 and hit 17 threes and got to the free throw line 30 times, converting 27 percent of their attempts.

Game 2: Los Angeles 124, Miami 93 (Series tied, 1-1)

NBA 2K21

The Laker defense, so porous in Game 1, extinguishes the Heat in Game 2. Miami could not get to the free throw line, getting seven total attempts from the charity stripe, while the team hit on just 33 percent of its threes. Davis (36 points, 16 rebounds, two assists, two steals, two blocks) was again magnificent, while James (19 points, 11 assists) took a more subtle role in the proceedings and Alex Caruso (15 points, four assists, two steals, two blocks) gave the team a boost off the bench. Dragic (24 points, nine assists) and Adebayo (21 points, eight rebounds, two blocks) were both solid, but Butler and Herro combined to score 24, nowhere near enough to topple a Laker side that was firing on all cylinders.

Game 3: Miami 96, Los Angeles 83 (Heat lead, 2-1)

NBA 2K21

An eight-point quarter! We don’t need a ton of details here, but everyone on the Lakers played horribly. Davis and James combined for 30 points on 11-for-34 shooting. As a team, L.A. shot 34 percent from the field, 31 percent from three, and shot 12 free throws. The Heat weren’t exactly stellar outside of Butler — 24 points, nine rebounds, five assists, and three steals — but this is the exact kind of game that probably had Pat Riley doing backflips from his private box in the Bubble. (Are they doing private boxes in the Bubble? I should look into this once this whole experiment ends.)

Game 4: Miami 117, Los Angeles 108 (Heat lead, 3-1)

NBA 2K21

Our biggest Adebayo-Davis battle of the series tilts towards Miami. Both were brilliant — Adebayo had 27 points, 15 rebounds, and four blocks, Davis scored 30, reeled in 16, and blocked two — but ultimately, the Heat were able to hit four more threes and five more free throws. It’s probably not all that much unlike what we can probably expect in the real version of this series, where Miami will have to rely on hitting more threes and getting to the line more in order to pick up the win. Oh, and having Adebayo helps a whole heck of a lot, too. Los Angeles absolutely hammered Miami on points in the paint, outscoring them 44-26, but Erik Spoelstra’s bunch did what they had to do to win better than Frank Vogel and co. As a result, they’re only one win away from a championship, although as the Golden State Warriors will tell you, beating a LeBron James team that is down 3-1 in the NBA Finals isn’t always easy.

Game 5: Los Angeles 125, Miami 105 (Heat lead, 3-2)

NBA 2K21

Hey, remember my last sentence? James had 43 points, eight assists, and seven rebounds. Things looked pretty bleak for the Lakers through three, then a monumental team effort in the fourth got them to a crucial Game 6. Davis was quite good (29 points, 11 rebounds), and Miami had five players in double-digits led by 25 points from Dragic, but you’re not beating a LeBron team if he goes for 43-8-7 in a Finals game. As such, the Heat have to wait another game to potentially secure a ring.

Game 6: Miami 119, Los Angeles 117 (Heat win series, 4-2)

NBA 2K21

A game fitting of a championship coronation. The Heat’s two veterans at the center of everything — Dragic (32 points, seven made threes) and Butler (24 points, 13 rebounds, five assists, three steals, a block) — ultimately get them over the line, while Herro gives them 19 off the bench and Adebayo stuffs the stat sheet with 15 points, nine rebounds, four assists, and three blocks. Davis (29 points, seven rebounds, two blocks, two steals, an assist) was once again magnificent, as was James (27 points, 11 assists, six rebounds, three steals), while the team shot a remarkable 34-for-40 from the free throw line. But once again, the three-point line was the equalizer: Miami hit 15 shots from deep, while Los Angeles shot nine. Oh, and go to back to the whole coronation thing to close, your NBA Finals MVP is Bam Adebayo, who played 38 minutes a game and went for 19 points, 13 rebounds, 3.2 blocks, 1.8 assists, and 1.2 steals a night while connecting on 54.1 percent of his shots from the field.