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Lauri Markkanen Reportedly Wants Out Of Chicago If There Aren’t Big Changes

The Chicago Bulls have been mired in turmoil in recent years. They’ve gone through coaching changes, front office discord, roster turnover, and a fan base that is growing increasingly impatient as the losses keep piling up without much tangible progress to show for it.

There have long been cries for major changes to their embattled front-office duo of VP John Paxon and GM Gar Forman, and earlier this week, the team announced that they were embarking on a formal search for a new executive that would control over all basketball decisions, while transitioning Paxon and Forman to different roles.

That still leaves head coach Jim Boylen on the hot seat, as the incoming exec will ultimately have the final say on whether he keeps his job. Beyond that, they still have the issue of disgruntled players who are unhappy with their roles and/or Boylen’s coaching style. Lauri Markkanen is apparently chief among them, and if there aren’t significant changes, he could be looking for a ticket out.

Via Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times:

And then there was the quiet storm, privately churning in the corner since early on in the season, keeping his frustrations as off-the-record one-liners, discrediting the direction of the offense, his role in it, and the highly embraced shot profile that Bulls analytics was stressing.

Make no mistake about it, third-year big man Lauri Markkanen was one unhappy camper before the coronavirus put the NBA on hiatus. Unhappy enough that if the direction of the organization was going to stay unchanged, he’d rather be elsewhere.

Markkanen had been sidelined for most of the previous season with an elbow injury, and his numbers were down all across the board before the league went on hiatus amid the coronavirus pandemic. With Markkanen, though, it’s all a matter of how he’s being used.

Markkanen is a prototypical offensive forward for today’s game, and the Bulls will have to figure out a way to maximize his talent moving forward and unlock the potential that exists in a two-pronged attack that features Zach LaVine. But the new executive will also have the tall order of finding free agents to come in and bolster their roster.

With the worldwide lockdown, who knows how long it will be before any of this can play itself out, but the Bulls have plenty to keep themselves occupied as they look toward the future.

(Chicago Sun-Times)

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Charlotte Flair Became A Two-Time NXT Women’s Champion At WrestleMania

Almost six years after first winning the NXT Women’s Championship May 29, 2014 at an NXT TakeOver that didn’t even require a subtitle, Charlotte Flair is holding that title again after beating Rhea Ripley in the first match on Night Two of WrestleMania 36. Of course the belt is different now — it was pink way back in 2014 — and the brand has considerably more prestige now that NXT isn’t “officially” considered developmental and airs on USA instead of the WWE Network.

The match was pretty brutal, and thanks to the lack of fans at the WWE Performance Center, you could hear not just every strike and impact, but lots of trash talk, especially from Charlotte. The Queen also played it smart, working Rhea’s leg throughout the match, including a shot from behind that made Rhea’s leg crumple pretty sickeningly.


Nevertheless, when Charlotte first applied the Figure 4, Rhea seemed determined to get out of it, striking at Charlotte with her fists. But once Charlotte bridged into the Figure 8, it was too much for Rhea, who had to tap, losing a title she won on NXT TV on December 18 of last year.

Now that Charlotte is NXT Champion, that presumably means she’ll be on NXT TV, although we don’t know exactly what that will look like after next week, considering the Coronavirus lockdown.

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24 Teeny-Tiny Details You Probably Missed In Your Favorite Pixar Films


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19 Things Movies Always, Always, ALWAYS Get Wrong About Real Life

*Types a few keys on a keyboard.* “Okay, I’m in.”


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The Best Places Places To Shop In Your Late Twenties And Early Thirties

Watch out world – we’re grown nowwww.


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Boris Johnson Has Been Admitted To Hospital For Tests After Having Coronavirus For 10 Days

The prime minister has gone to hospital as a precautionary measure and it was not an emergency admission, Downing Street said.


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10 Times The “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” Quarantine Episode Was Too Accurate

The episode came out in 2013 but it feels more relevant than ever.


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Queen Elizabeth Has Called For “Self-Discipline And Resolve” To Defeat The Coronavirus

“I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge.”


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Clairo Shares A Calming Cover Of Anna Domino’s ‘Everyday, I Don’t’

Last year, Clairo received critical acclaim for her debut album, Immunity. Produced by Vampire Weekend’s ex-member Rostam Batmanglij, the album was lush, its sonics filling every corner in the room. However, since the album’s release, things haven’t gone as well as Clairo hoped. The pop singer took a social media break at the beginning of the year after “a couple things happened recently where boundaries were crossed and my privacy was totally invaded.” Following the break, a number of dates on her tour with Tame Impala would be postponed as a result of the coronavirus. These setbacks, however, have yet to stop Clario from doing one thing: sharing her music.

Following her lo-fi demo, “february 15, 2020 london, uk,” which was about letting her guard down, Clairo returned last week with another minimalist effort: “Everything I Know.” The song brought listeners back to her early SoundCloud days. She continued to deliver more content to her fans, sharing a cover of Anna Domino’s “Everyday, I Don’t.” The song comes from Domino’s 1984 pop album East And West and, led by a steady drum pattern and gentle guitar strings, Clairo’s cover is quite the soothing release.

Listen to Clairo’s cover of Anna Domino’s “Everyday, I Don’t” in the video above.

Immunity is out now via Fader. Get it here.

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The Weeknd’s ‘After Hours’ Lives To See Another Week Atop The ‘Billboard’ Album Charts

Last week The Weeknd’s fifth record, After Hours landed atop the Billboard album charts, laying claim to the biggest opening week in 2020 so far, as well as the biggest streaming week ever for an R&B album. It was his third No. 1 album and his fourth release to claim the top spot overall.

Now After Hours has once again hit No. 1 for a second straight week, reeling in a total of 138,000 equivalent album units in the week ending April. Of the total, 86,000 were streaming equivalent album units and 47,000 were pure album sales.

Elsewhere, 5 Seconds Of Summer’s latest album, Calm, scored the No. 2 spot, with 133,000 equivalent album units. However, it wasn’t the album’s maiden voyage on the charts; last week a clerical error resulted in 11,000 CDs inadvertently sent out to customers, a week earlier than expected. That resulted in Calm debuting all the way down at No. 62.

Lil Uzi Vert’s Eternal Atake fell down just a spot, selling 84,000 units and coming in at No. 3. Rounding out the top five, Dua Lipa earned her first Top 10 album, with Future Nostalgia arriving at No. 4, while Pearl Jam made their first appearance on the charts since 2013, with Gigaton hitting No. 5 with 63,000 units sold.

Read our review of After Hours here.

[via Billboard]