Category: Worldwide

One of the greatest coaches in NBA history is not going anywhere. The San Antonio Spurs announced on Saturday evening that Gregg Popovich, who has been at the helm since 1996, signed a 5-year contract to stay on board as the team’s head coach.

While the team did not announce the terms of the deal, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reports that Popovich is in line to make $80 million over the life of the contract.

Popovich, who will turn 75 next season, has done just about everything there is to do in the NBA, as he’s led the Spurs to five championships over the course of his career — only Phil Jackson (11) and Red Auerbach (nine) have won more. While San Antonio has fallen on hard times in recent years and have not made it to the NBA playoffs since 2019, the team was able to select Victor Wembanyama with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. Plenty of former Spurs players have expressed their excitement over Wembanyama ending up with the team, while Wembanyama expressed his belief that basketball fans in France wanted him to end up in San Antonio.

Over the course of his head coaching career, Popovich has accrued a 1366-761 record. In addition to his work with the Spurs, Popovich — who was technically out of contract following the 2022-23 season — is the head coach of the United States men’s basketball team.

Elly De La Cruz very well may be the coolest baseball player on the planet right now. Ever since getting called up to the majors back in June, De La Cruz has been nothing short of electric for the Cincinnati Reds, and has been a big reason why the team finds itself at 49-40 and in first place in the NL Central entering Saturday.

The thing that makes De La Cruz so remarkable is he’s good at basically everything, and when he steps up to the plate, odds are he’s going to do something spectacular. That happened in the seventh inning of the Reds’ game against the Milwaukee Brewers, as De La Cruz singled to drive in T.J. Friedl to give Cincinnati a 6-5 lead. But he was not satisfied with that, so De La Cruz stole second to get into scoring position. On the very next pitch, De La Cruz stole third … and then, while the Brewers weren’t paying attention, he stole home.

Stealing all three bases like this is nothing short of amazing, and to do it the way he did — namely by catching everyone off-guard and stealing home — is the sort of thing that has immediately made him one of baseball’s most promising young stars.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Season 2 of The Bear, so look out.

The second season of The Bear was longer than the first, with 10 episodes instead of eight. One of them was even its own little movie, running just over an hour. That one wasn’t just super-sized; it also packed in one famous face after another. Bob Odenkirk! John Mulaney! Gillian Jacobs! Sarah Paulson! For the chaotic mom of the Berzatto siblings, they went with someone huge: recent Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis. But the show almost went with an equally awesome actress.

Vulture spoke with the FX show’s casting director Jeanie Bacharach, who told them (in a bit caught by The AV Club) that before they sought out Curtis, they actually first asked no less than Michelle Pfeiffer. They almost got her, too. Pfeiffer “was a huge fan of the show and really, really considered it,” Bacharach explained. But it was not to be. “We went back and forth and back and forth, and ultimately her schedule didn’t allow for it.”

Apart from her early, pre-fame days, when she appeared on episodes of Fantasy Island, CHiPs, and the short-lived Animal House spinoff Delta House, Pfeiffer hasn’t done a ton of TV. (Although she has done The Simpsons not once but twice.) Her only semi-recent small screen credits have been the Bernie Madoff HBO movie The Wizard of Lies and playing Betty Ford on last year’s The First Lady.

How would Pfeiffer have been as Donna Berzatto, who has a nuclear meltdown over the course of Season 2, Episode 6? Probably amazing! She’s an incredible actress with huge range, able to play Edith Wharton heroines and Catwoman and do both with equal aplomb. Curtis did knock it out of the park, though, so it’s not worth brooding over what could have been.

(Via Vulture and The AV Club)

The Mission: Impossible film series started out relatively short. The 1996 original runs a tight 110 minutes. Over a quarter century later, much has changed. Hollywood blockbusters are real, real long these days — nearly as long as its various Indian counterparts, whose films (like last year’s delightful RRR) routinely run in the three, even four hour range. Even John Wick entries now take forever to watch.

But back to the Mission: Impossible films, that series has seen ballooning runtimes over the last 27 years — creeping over two hours with number two, inching past that with number three, and so on. By 2017, entry number six, Fallout, had grown so long that it was a mere two minutes shorter than Goodfellas (with epic modern end credits, of course).

But what of Dead Reckoning Part One, the first part of the series’ (alleged) final bow? How long will it take to watch that?

Surprise surprise! It runs a gargantuan 163 minutes, or two hours and 43 minutes. (Again, with epic modern end credits). For some context, that’s four minutes shorter than John Wick 4. And it finds the franchise crossing the Goodfellas Rubicon, running 17 minutes longer than Martin Scorsese’s very long, very filling modern gangster classic. (Also worth noting: M:I 7 is nearly a half hour longer than the exceedingly popular Top Gun: Maverick.)

Can you withstand watching nearly three hours of Tom Cruise nearly killing himself to entertain us? Find out when Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 12.

The Houston Rockets will go through the remainder of Las Vegas Summer League without the services of the No. 4 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. According to Marc Spears of ESPN, Amen Thompson suffered a sprained ankle during the Rockets’ Summer League opener against the Portland Trail Blazers on Friday night, and as a result, he’s getting his foot put in a boot and will miss the next 2-3 weeks.

Per Spears, the expectation is that the injury will prevent Thompson from taking the floor again during his time in the desert.

Thompson suffered the injury while both teams were trying to corral a loose ball. After hitting the deck, Blazers forward Jabari Walker went to grab the ball, fell, and landed right on Thompson’s feet, which left him in considerable pain. Here’s a video of the incident.

It was a freak accident that, unfortunately, will probably keep one of the brightest young stars in Las Vegas from taking the floor again. Prior to getting hurt, Thompson impressed in what ended up being a 100-99 win for the Rockets, as he showcased the athleticism and feel for the game that made him such a promising prospect out of Overtime Elite. In just over 28 minutes of work, Thompson scored 16 points on 6-for-13 shooting with five assists, four rebounds, four blocks, and three steals.

In the second season of HBO’s hit teen drama, Euphoria, Elliott (Dominic Fike) is intrigued by Jules (Hunter Schafer). The two begin a brief fling, against the knowledge of Jules’ then-girlfriend, Rue (Zendaya).

In real life, Fike, who just released his third album Sunburn, and Schafer had an actual showmance, however, in an interview with Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe, he revealed that they are no longer together.

While Fike didn’t directly name Schafer, he noted that he is taking a break from dating.

“I’m just done being in relationships right now, and I’ve always been in these public relationships, dude,” Fike said. “Have you noticed that? Jesus f*cking Christ. Can I give it a break? It’s not that hard to not date a f*cking other famous person… I’m always folding on that because every time I go through a breakup, now it’s like I got to see somebody on a damn billboard.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Fike revealed that he was under the influence of drugs throughout much of the filming of season 2 of Euphoria. But now that he’s sober, he admits that he has a “better dynamic” with “almost everybody” involved in the show.

Fike, however, doesn’t anticipate that his and Schafer’s breakup will make things awkward on set as they return to film season 3.

“I think it’ll be fine,” said Fike. “We’re all adults. I’m trying.”

You can watch the interview above.

Sunburn is out now via Columbia Records. Find more information here.

The Atlanta Hawks have been busy this offseason, as the team pulled off a trade with the Utah Jazz that finally saw the John Collins era come to an end in exchange for Rudy Gay and a future second-round pick. Not long after that, there was yet another trade, this time with the Houston Rockets that got them a pair of young players (TyTy Washington and Usman Garuba) along with a pair of second-round picks in exchange for the draft rights to Alpha Kaba.

Now, all of those players are going somewhere else. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Atlanta is taking the trio of Gay, Garuba, and Washington and sending them to Oklahoma City for Patty Mills, whom the Thunder acquired from the Rockets, which got him from the Brooklyn Nets in a deal earlier in the offseason. To sweeten the pot and help the Thunder in their apparent quest to have every draft pick in the league, the Hawks are throwing in a future second.

It’s unclear how the Thunder plan to deal with the NBA’s most bloated roster, as the team has 21 players after this deal. If they were to stay, Washington and Garuba are both buy-low talents, while Gay brings a veteran presence to have around the team’s young core. As for the Hawks, Mills is a useful veteran guard who — if he sticks around — should serve as a backup to Trae Young and the recently extended Dejounte Murray.

It looks like season 2 of the critically acclaimed Max original, Rap Sh!t is finally on the way. Created by Issa Rae, Rap Sh!t tells the story of friends Shawna (Aida Osman) and Mia (KaMillion) reconnecting to form a rap duo. The first season ends on a cliffhanger, with Mia and Shawna about to go on tour to support a rapper named Reina Reign (Kat Cunning). As they are celebrating at the hotel where Shawna works, a group of cops shows up at the hotel, with the intent to question Shawna. Throughout the first season, Shawna, with the help of her co-worker, Maurice (Daniel Augustin), funds her and Mia’s studio and production costs using credit card numbers of various hotel guests.

With this ending, fans were left wondering: Will Shawna go to jail? Did Maurice rat Shawna out? Will Mia be forced to hold the group down while Shawna’s locked up? Does Shawna somehow manage to get away with it all?

But first and foremost, fans are wondering when Rap Sh!t will return.

Is there a Rap Sh!t season 2 release date?

Max shared some exclusive first-look photos with Complex, who reported that Rap Sh!t “will return this summer.”

A premiere date for season 2 has not yet been announced.

A lot of shocking details have emerged since the OceanGate tragedy last month. Many of them concern the actions — and non-actions — of CEO Stockton Rush, who was among the victims aboard the imploding submersible. He ignored warnings. He cut corners. He also seemed to know (or at least joke about) what a death trap he’d built.

Insider spoke to Brian Weed, a veteran camera operator who boarded the doomed Titan for an (ultimately aborted) episode of Discovery Channel’s Expedition Unknown. He and host Josh Gates were part of a test dive that was to be a “precursor” to the trip down to the Titanic wreckage. Passengers aboard the Titan were infamously bolted inside, making it difficult to get out.

Not long after being bolted inside, Weed asked a pertinent question: What would happen in case of an emergency and they had to quickly flee the Titan. Rush’s alleged response, as relayed by Weed, did not exactly inspire confidence:

“’Well, there’s four or five days of oxygen on board,’ and I said, ‘What if they don’t find you?’ And he said, ‘Well, you’re dead anyway.’”

The statement understandably unnerved Weed. “It felt like a very strange thing to think, and it seemed to almost be a nihilistic attitude toward life or death out in the middle of the ocean,” he said.

Weed summarized Rush’s response like so: “If you’re out there, and they don’t find you in that many days, you’re just going to die anyway — it’s over for you, so what does it matter if you can’t get out of the sub on your own.”

On top of Rush’s comments, the test dive was plagued with mechanical and communications issues. Eventually it was called off. Weed even wound up pulling out of the documentary show over safety concerns.

“That whole dive made me very uncomfortable with the idea of going down to Titanic depths in that submersible,” Weed told Insider.

Even after the accident, OceanGate was still advertising trips to the Titanic up until last week, when they finally suspended all operations.

(Via Insider)

We’re one week out from the WNBA All-Star Game, as the league will make its way to Las Vegas in the coming days ahead of the game on July 15. We already know the players who will make up the two teams, which are captained by A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart, but before that, we needed to figure out who will suit up for which squad.

That got all taken care of on Saturday afternoon on ESPN, with Stewart and Wilson sitting down and drafting their two teams. Here’s how the draft went for the starters, with Wilson getting the first pick and unsurprisingly selecting all of her teammates from the Las Vegas Aces.

1. Chelsea Gray (Team Wilson)
2. Brittney Griner (Team Stewart)
3. Jackie Young (Team Wilson)
4. Jewell Loyd (Team Stewart)
5. Aliyah Boston (Team Wilson)
6. Satou Sabally (Team Stewart)
7. Arike Ogunbowale (Team Wilson)
8. Nneka Ogwumike (Team Stewart)

And here’s how the the reserves were split up, with Stewart getting the first pick here.

9. Courtney Vandersloot (Team Stewart)
10. Kelsey Plum (Team Wilson)
11. Sabrina Ionescu (Team Stewart)
12. Allisha Gray (Team Wilson)
13. Ezi Magbegor (Team Stewart)
14. Alyssa Thomas (Team Wilson)
15. Napheesa Collier (Team Stewart)
16. Cheyenne Parker (Team Wilson)
17. Kelsey Mitchell (Team Stewart)
18. DeWanna Bonner (Team Wilson)
19. Kahleah Copper (Team Stewart)
20. Elena Delle Donne (Team Wilson)

The full teams look like this, and unsurprisingly, Wilson and Stewart preferred to draft players from their college and pro teams.

The 2023 WNBA All-Star Game will be broadcast on ABC on July 15, with coverage beginning at 8:30 p.m. EST.