The explosive expansion of dockless e-scooters from startups like Lime and Bird in cities all around the world has made it super easy to get around. But you know what’s not so great about the two-wheelers? When you inevitably face plant into the ground.
E-scooter injuries are on the rise and now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wants to better understand how riders are hurting themselves as well as the severity of their injuries while scooting around town. And surprise: the reasons are super obvious.
Contrary to popular belief, most e-scooter-related injuries don’t happen at night and don’t involve collision with a car, according to Jeff Taylor, manager of the Epidemiology and Disease Surveillance Unit with Austin Public Health.
“Our study will show they occur during all times of the day,” Taylor said. “People may also perceive there’s typically a car involved. But our study finds most of the time the rider may hit a bump in the road or they simply lose their balance.”
The CDC’s study, which will be released in the spring, showed fewer than 1 percent of e-scooter riders wore helmets.
Similarly, the University of San Diego Medical Center’s tracking of e-scooter-related injuries showed 98 percent of patients who got into accidents didn’t wear a helmet, 48 percent of them were drunk, and 52 percent tested for substance abuse.
UCLA researchers who looked at data for patients admitted to its medical centers between Sept. 2017 and Aug. 2018 also found most e-scooter injuries were from falls.
One person profiled by CNBC said she landed in the emergency room with a busted lip when she hit a pothole.
So who’s to blame for the increase in e-scooters? The e-scooter startups that are taking over cities? Irresponsible riders? The cities for not creating proper pathways (like bike lanes) to accommodate e-scooters?
That’s what the CDC’s hoping to figure out. But from what little data that already exists, it’s clear everyone shares a little bit of the blame. Riders for not wearing helmets and riding on scooters when they’re under the influence. Scooter companies for not creating protections that check for things like intoxication and helmets (a difficult undertaking, but with great power comes great responsibility). And of course, cities also share the blame for not adapting quickly enough to changing transportation trends.
“We’re taking this issue seriously. We’re doing all that we can to work with cities, education and technology to address these accidents and it’s encouraging the medical community is as well,” a Lime spokesperson told CNBC. “We absolutely support the CDC study and would love to contribute in any way through data sharing.”
E-scooter startup Bird also told CNBC it’s spoken to the CDC researchers and doesn’t disagree with its early assessment. “People will always make mistakes on the road, but it’s not about perfecting human behavior. It’s about designing streets so when people make mistakes those mistakes aren’t fatal,” a Bird’s safety policy director Paul White said.
As we said, these findings are sorta obvious. So be smart and safe and wear a helmet, and never ride a scooter if you’re wasted. Just don’t do it. You risk hurting yourself and others. It’s no different than the rules that apply to driving a car.
Nick Friedell of ESPN.com provided comments from the outspoken three-time NBA champion, who doesn’t think it’s fair Cousins received so much criticism during the team’s recent rough patch but little credit for his strong showing against the Nuggets.
“Everybody wants to talk s–t about DeMarcus’ defense,” Green said. “I told y’all last game, we haven’t played with energy—or at practice. Everybody wanna [say], ‘It’s a problem when DeMarcus is out there.’ Yet everyone picked the energy up, all of a sudden no one is talking about DeMarcus’ problems defensively. Now it’s a good matchup for him. That’s bulls–t to me.”
Pat Beverley Has the Clippers Stealing the LA Shine
LeBron Keeps Shredding NBA Record Books
Young’s Hot Streak Is Heating Up the ROY Race with Luka
LeBron and 2 Chainz Form a Superteam to Release a New Album
Wade’s #OneLastDance Dominated February
Warriors Fans Go Wild After Unforgettable Moments with Steph
Eight Years Ago, the Nuggets Traded Melo to the Knicks
Two Years Ago, the Kings Shipped Boogie to the Pelicans
ASG Will Be Competitive Again If the NBA Raises the Stakes
Will Harden Burn Himself Out Before the Playoffs?
When MJ Wore #12 After His Jersey Was Stolen Before a Game
15 Years Ago, LeBron, Wade and Melo Took Over All-Star Weekend
14 Years Ago, Iverson Dropped Career-High 60 Points
The Kyrie and LeBron Bromance Is Back!
Bats Have Become an Unexpected Attraction at Spurs Games
KD Giving Back to His Hometown with Durant Center
Four Years Ago, Klay Drops Record 37 Pts in One Quarter
Remembering the Night Kobe Scored 81 Points
Happy 37th Birthday Dwyane Wade
Steph Is a Few Shots Away from NBA 3-Point History
Right Arrow Icon
Cousins’ defense was a point of contention as the Warriors dropped five of their previous eight games heading into the high-profile clash with Denver, which could have tied Golden State for the top spot in the Western Conference with a win Friday.
The 28-year-old University of Kentucky product responded by tallying six blocks and three steals in addition to 13 points, six rebounds and six assists in the triumph over the Nuggets.
“I thought DeMarcus was great,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said, per Friedell. “Six blocks, three steals. He was all over the place defensively. And then he finally got that three to go down and put his hands to the heavens. He’s been great, his approach, his attitude.”
Cousins missed the season’s first three months while completing his recovery from a torn Achilles after signing with Golden State as a free agent.
He ranks a modest 31st among centers in ESPN’sReal Plus-Minusacross 18 appearances since his return.
The two-time reigning champion Warriors are likely far more concerned about his level of play once the playoffs roll around compared to his current form, though.
Cousins’ performance against the Nuggets was a major step in the right direction.
Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN.com provided the full remarks from George, who said, “There’s gotta be a change, but there’s nothing that I can do,” after the Thunder incurred a 34-26 foul disparity in the contest. George, point guard Russell Westbrook and center Steven Adams all fouled out during the fourth quarter.
“It’s just bad officiating. I’m sorry, just bad officiating. We don’t get a fair whistle. We haven’t gotten a fair whistle all year. … Somebody’s got to look into this. It’s getting out of hand, where we somehow just walk teams to the line. And there’s nobody that gets more contact. If I don’t speak for myself, I speak for Russ. There’s nobody that gets more contact than Russ going to the basket. And it’s just crazy.
“I don’t understand it. It’s a piece of s— being on that floor. We giving everything we got. We’re playing hard. We’re getting grabbed. We’re getting scratched, clawed, held, shoved. And there’s nothing for it. The officials just get to walk out, and there’s nothing that penalizes them for not officiating the game the right way.”
This article will be updated to provide more information on this story as it becomes available.
Get the best sports content from the web and social in the new B/R app. Get the app and get the game.
Abuja, Nigeria – Millions of eligible voters in Nigeria stayed away from casting their ballot to elect governors and state assembly members, amid reports of heavy military deployment and violence.
“I came out to vote but the place is empty as you can see and the low turnout shows a major trust deficit about the electoral process,” housewife Mary Suleiman told Al Jazeera.
“Abuja residents are not as interested in the local council elections as compared to the Presidential polls, but the outcome of the last polls led to today’s turn out,” Suleiman said.
There was delayed voting in some cities due to late arrival of materials, according to election monitors.
There were reports of allegations of vote rigging in southern Abia state.
Election observers also reported incidents of vote buying was across the country as politicians tried to sway voters.
President Buhari’s win challenged by Nigeria’s opposition
About 120,000 polling stations opened at 07:00 GMT across Africa’s most populous nation and leading oil producer, but idle electoral officers waited for voters in most polling units in the capital city, Abuja and across the country.
More than 84 million voters registered to take part in the elections but only 35 percent of that number took part in last month’s presidential and National Assembly elections.
A total of 1,063 candidates are running for the governorship elections in 29 states and 991 members of state houses of assembly as well as the six chairmen and 62 councillors for the area councils in the capital Abuja.
Violence and armed thugs
In Lagos State, the commercial city of Nigeria, some voters also stayed away from Saturday’s exercise after the February 23 polls were marred by violence and armed thugs burnt and snatched ballot boxes.
“I did not vote because last two Saturdays, the violence in my polling unit scared me away. After voting [thugs] came and burnt our result sheets,” Chinedu Obiora, a business man told Al Jazeera.
“I don’t trust the system to conduct the elections and I couldn’t have risked my life as a result of today’s exercise, I stayed home with my family monitoring on TV,” Obiora said.
Observers advocate transparency in Nigeria’s electoral process
There appeared to be far fewer people taking part in Saturday’s governorship and state assembly polls compared to the February 23 presidential and National Assembly elections when electoral officers in some polling areas were overwhelmed with large numbers of voters.
“The turnout of voters in the five polling units we visited today was abysmal, at some polling units, the election officials especially the party agents, were more than the voters,” Chioma Agwuegbo, an Election Observer told Al Jazeera.
“Voters, especially young people, feel betrayed by the electoral commission. They believe that their votes did not count in the elections from February 23rd, and don’t trust the system enough to come out again,” Agwuegbo said.
The main opposition presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar is challenging the outcome of the recently-concluded presidential election which he claims was rigged in favour of Buhari.
“There is low voter turnout and I believe it’s because of the last election which was marred by a lot of irregularities,” Atiku told journalists after voting in his Adamawa home in northeast Nigeria.
Atiku has approached the court to begin the process of auditing the results of the presidential vote which he says were manipulated.
In the pinnacle moment of Captain Marvel’s final fight sequence, Gwen Stefani’s “I’m Just a Girl” starts playing as Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers kicks everyone’s ass.
The subtext, in case you missed it, is that Carol Danvers might just be a girl. But being just a girl is pretty kick ass.
This moment — and every other one when Marvel seems to suddenly rememberthat Captain Marvel is its first movie with a solo female lead ever — summons the same feelings of a modern Dove commercial. It’s a cloying sensation, the off-putting suspicion that your own crushing sense of disempowerment is being exploited to sell you soap.
And it’s kinda working, despite you knowing better.
There is without a doubt a guttural emotional response to the movie’s overtly feminist scenes. And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with feeling empowered by Captain Marvel, which many critics and audience members have already expressed. I mean, even my own jaded heart swelled over the montage of Danvers falling again and again, from girlhood through womanhood, only to get back up as the music soared and she bests her gaslighting male superior.
It’s almost enough to bring an unbidden tear to your eye, as you remember all the times you were like her, humiliated for your ambition and gender. A large part of you wants to believe in whatever empowerment Captain Marvel is selling because it’s such a rarity to be offered any form of empowerment, whether in a superhero movie or soap commercial.
But a larger part of you feels your eyes roll right out the back of your head, when a man in the Air Force tells Danvers, “It’s not called a cockpit for no reason!”
The only thing that feels truly retro about Captain Marvel is its shallow take on feminism.
The only thing that feels truly retro about Captain Marvel‘s ’90s setting is its shallow take on feminism that we should be moving away from, not using as a crutch. It’s not just that so many of the movie’s heavy-handed Feminist Moments come across as disingenuous. Those moments also tap into an old conceit of equality as a sort of revenge fantasy, mixed with the undertone of a battle of the sexes.
It’s telling that, throughout the showdown between Danvers and Jude Law’s Yon-Rogg, my mind kept recalling yet another commercial. This time Gatorade’s 2006 spot titled “Michael Jordan vs Mia Hamm,” where the two athletes compete to the tune of “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better).”
I’ve never been able to forget that commercial after seeing it as a young girl. And it’s for the wrong reason.
The feminist-ish sentiment of “girls are just as good as boys” defines and measures women’s empowerment as it compares to men. Consequently, it devalues and trivializes feminine power in its own right.
In the Gatorade ad, audiences are expected to think, “Wow, Mia Hamm is as good as Michael Jordan! How empowering to women!” rather than, “Wow, Michael Jordan is as good as Mia Hamm! Look how far men have come!” In a similar vein, Captain Marvel banks on its audience seeing Danvers at the height of her powers to be thinking, “Wow, isn’t it amazing that a woman is just as, if not more, powerful than the men around her?!”
For this and so many other reasons, Captain Marvel‘s feminism feels not only like a step backwards, but reactive to the male superheroes long-since established in the MCU.
Danvers feels like an afterthought, a deviation from the main storyline. To be fair to Captain Marvel‘s creators, they had their work cut out for them telling an origin story for a brand new character a mere month before the release of the final Avengers: Endgame.
Captain Marvel‘s feminism feels not only like a step backwards, but reactive to the male superheroes long-since established in the MCU.
As a result, I can’t shake the sense of Captain Marvel as a retrofit, the result of an executive realizing midway through phase three, “Oh shit — we don’t have our feminist icon!”
In the movie’s last-minute scramble to justify adding Captain Marvel to the Avengers’ boys club, it fails to let Danvers’ story stand on its own two legs. The movie never rises above the level of an advertisement cashing in on #feminism because it stinks of corporate-mandated female empowerment. And also, because it feels an awful lot like Marvel’s half-hearted, long overdue apology for ignoring women’s superhero fantasies for a whopping 20 movies released since 2008.
Though I hesitated to do so, I only really started to understand why Captain Marvel’s feminist branding felt so hollow when I compared it to Wonder Woman‘ssuccess with an equally heavy-handed and fantastical lady-power narrative. Or, to bring it back to Marvel, why Black Panther managed to feel endlessly more empowering to women than a single second of Captain Marvel.
Black Panther portrays several different types of ways women’s empowerment strengthens Wakanda’s evolved, egalitarian society. Meanwhile the Wonder Woman comparison bears consideration because it taps into a similar theme of women’s superpowers not only being brute strength, but emotions and empathy. Yet Captain Marvel‘s fundamental storytelling issues make it impossible for the movie to deliver meaningfully on that.
The foundation for Danvers’ character is built on a false backstory that makes her less relatable than an Amazon warrior princess. She spends most of the movie an amnesiac motivated by blind loyalty to some far-off alien race’s space mission in some random space war we’ve never heard of. All the while she’s bewilderingly less concerned with figuring out her own identity.
It’s not just the lime green costume that stinks up the first half of ‘Captain Marvel.
The convoluted plot setup makes it difficult to attribute any real convictions, drives, or strong personality traits to Danvers.
We’re told again and again she’s a rogue type, but we don’t actually see that in a significant way until the flashback to her failed mission with Annette Bening’s Dr. Wendy Lawson at the very end. Even her major turning point is muddled by these unclear stakes and motivations, since the empathy she develops for the Skrull is thrust upon her at gunpoint rather than a result of her own agency.
But ultimately, the gross superficiality of Captain Marvel‘s feminism comes down to paying lip service to women’s issues — liberally using them as topical window dressing — while never actually engaging or wrestling with them.
Its answer to that sexism is that she is just too damn cool to be affected by it.
There might’ve been a decent feminist subtext to the Kree brainwashing as a metaphor for the damaging effects of gaslighting. Certainly, that’s what the movie wants us to read into the final Yon-Rogg showdown. But again, that falls woefully flat when the solution to Danvers’ gaslighting is to remove some unexplained device from her head.
Longterm effects of systemic sexism and having your mind warped by years of gaslighting be damned! Ladies, all we need to do is flip a switch to unleash the power that was inside us all along to kick abusive men’s asses!
Similarly, some douchebag at one point tells Danvers to smile, and you half-expect Larson to turn directly to camera and go, “Urgh men, am I right ladies?!” There’s another brief mention focusing on the fact that Air Force women aren’t allowed to fly combat planes, so testing Lawson’s experimental planes was the only way Danvers and her co-pilot Maria can do anything “important.”
I’ll talk 70 percent less space stuff and 100 percent more Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch).
Captain Marvel repeatedly and pointedly places Danvers inside the context of real-world sexism. But its answer to that sexism is that she is just too damn cool to be affected by it. It’s a nice fantasy, I guess, but as empty as it is false.
By contrast, Wonder Woman’s feminist themes are entirely organic to the main character’s origins and backstory. And the equality fantasy Wonder Woman represents is far greater than just beating men that were mean to her.
The difference lies in how Captain Marvel presents femininity as a gender-specific weakness to overcome and grow from, versus Wonder Woman‘s world where feminine traits are a universal necessity for the survival of all humankind.
The peak of its feminism comes from just letting Danvers be a really rad superhero, who happens to be a woman.
It makes me wonder why Marvel felt the need to shoehorn these half-assed Feminist Moments in, which read like an executive’s creative note to, “Do more lady stuff. Bitches (or rather the box office) love lady stuff.” But what Captain Marvel actuallymakes crystal clear is that not all female-led superhero movies need to or even should be pigeonholed into of-the-moment feminist narratives.
Captain Marvel is at its most empowering when it forgets to applaud itself for being Marvel’s first movie with a solo female lead (Ant-Man and the Wasp had a female title character). The peak of its feminism comes from just letting Danvers be a really rad superhero, who happens to be a woman.
At times, Captain Marvel even allows Danvers to exist in Wonder Woman‘s more universal view of equality, like when the Supreme Intelligence tells her she’s weak because she’s human (and not because she’s a woman). That is, until the montage that follows drags her back down to that “I can do anything a man can do” bullshit.
I hate that I didn’t love Captain Marvel. I hate holding it up to a level of scrutiny we’d never hold other equally OK Marvel movies like Ant-Man up to. And my intention is not to pin the only two female-led superhero movies against each other like its some sort of cat fight to see who wins the spot for the One Female Superhero Allowed To Exist.
‘Captain Marvel’ is stuck in the ‘G. I. Jane’ era of feminist storytelling.
What I wish instead is that we’d allow female superhero stories to be dictated by who they are as characters and people, rather than their status as the only women protagonists in their cinematic universe.
I’m glad Captain Marvel exists. And its faults largely trace back to the faults of an industry that tasks female-led superhero movies with living up to the enormous pressure of making up for so much lost time.
I’m over the moon that so many women and girls love Captain Marvel anyway. And there’s inherent value in girls getting at least one non-sexualized Avengers costume to wear on Halloween this year. I eagerly await the day when there isn’t a huge gender disparity in superhero movies, when we can appreciate and criticize female-led ones without the anxiety of what they say about an entire gender.
But we’re not there yet. And when it comes to Marvel, they haven’t done enough to earn that goodwill.
It was after a deflating loss to the Indiana Pacers in Game 3 of the first-round series in the 2018 playoffs when LeBron James memorably took umbrage with the idea that he’d willingly and publicly criticize his teammates.
This was a series that the Cleveland Cavaliers were trying not to lose control of, at a time in James’ second Cleveland tenure when he was required to carry a Herculean burden. Asked about the lack of contributions he was getting from his supporting cast to that point in the series, James snapped: “What are you guys looking for? You want me to throw my teammates under the bus? No, I’m not going to do that. I’m not about that.”
Almost a year later, in new surroundings with a whole new set of challenges piling up on James’ broad shoulders, his tune has changed.
Playing with LeBron has always been demanding, the way playing with the great ones always is. His booming voice has always carried, from the practice court to the locker room to the huddle on game nights. In addition to dictating and dominating the action on the floor, James has had a tendency to “suck all of the oxygen out of the room,” one of his former assistant coaches told Bleacher Report.
But as this Lakers season continues to spiral toward the likely possibility that James will not make the playoffs for the first time since his second year in the league, James has grown increasingly vocal in challenging his teammates publicly.
He has stepped out of character, and it does not seem to be helping. The Lakers (30-35) have lost four in a row and six of seven, putting them 6.5 games out of the eighth seed in the West. Most of the analytics gurus put L.A.’s chances of making the postseason at less than 1 percent. Las Vegas is equally bearish, making the Lakers a plus-600 bet to make the postseason as of Sunday, according to the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook.
“I’ve never seen him like this, and I’m a little shocked because I’ve been around him and thought he was more of a leader,” a Western Conference executive said. “All of a sudden, I’m seeing a different LeBron. Dude, don’t do that; you’re hurting yourself. The best thing he can do is tell everybody, ‘My guys have been great, I can do better, and we need to continue to improve as a team.’ He hasn’t done that. Instead, he’s throwing people under the bus.”
Perhaps the clearest signal that James was changing his usual approach came in a calm but biting postgame interview after a 128-115 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on Feb. 23. New Orleans was playing without Anthony Davis, whom James’ agent, Rich Paul, had unsuccessfully tried to steer to the Lakers via a bold and public trade request prior to the Feb. 7 deadline.
Though LeBron James traditionally has been openly supportive of his teammates no matter their play, he has become increasingly critical of the motivations of his teammates in Los Angeles this season.Yong Teck Lim/Getty Images
“Basketball—is that the most important thing?” James told reporters after the loss. “Why are we doing this? Is this the most important thing in your life at this time? … If you feel you gave it all [in that game], then you have nothing to look back on. You can go on and do other things. But if you feel like you’re not giving as much as you can, then you can’t focus on anything else.”
It came across as a lecture, a loaded statement suggesting James believed his teammates’ focus was not where it needed to be. He also questioned his teammates’ experience and “sense of urgency.”
“How do you know what’s at stake if you’ve never been there before?” James added, according to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin.
After the Lakers’ next game—a 110-105 loss at lowly Memphis—James issued his now-much-talked about “distraction” diatribe. The context, provided by ESPN’s Rachel Nichols, was a question from a reporter about whether the Lakers’ push for a spot in the playoffs was causing distractions that were affecting the team’s performance.
“At this point, if you are still allowing distractions to affect the way you play, then this is the wrong franchise to be a part of,” James said. “… Just come and do your job.”
Why the about-face from LeBron on his supposed rule to never publicly criticize his teammates? Why all the angst?
It all started on Christmas Day, when James went down with a strained groin in a victory over the Warriors. The Lakers were 20-14 at the time and well positioned to make the playoffs—as if James or anybody else would expect any different given that he’s made it to the NBA Finals eight years in a row. Since the injury, the Lakers are 10-21 and on postseason life support.
While it’s fair to criticize James’ leadership style and level of engagement at times this season, a person familiar with James’ approach said: “I think all of that is far and away less significant than the injury. I think the injury is about 70 percent of it.”
Still, it’s not hard to see something appears off. Just check any of the clips making the Instagram rounds showing James taking plays off on defense—including an especially damning one in which Kyle Kuzma literally forced James to close out on Danilo Gallinari by shoving him in a loss to the Clippers on Monday night. This is not James Harden we’re talking about; LeBron has been a lot of things in his career, but a loafer isn’t one of them.Indeed, the Lakers all but admitted James needs a break when Yahoo! Sports’ Chris Haynes reported the 34-year-old four-time MVP would be on a minutes restriction the rest of the season and might be held out of any remaining back-to-backs.
House of Highlights @HoHighlights
Kyle Kuzma pushes LeBron on defense and Patrick Beverley flexed on the Lakers as they lost again. https://t.co/dBP0zzXzry
It’s also difficult to ignore the lingering impact of the power play James’ agent tried to pull with Davis’ trade demand, which resulted in most of the Lakers’ useful players having their names dragged through trade rumors for days.
“How would you feel if you’re Kyle Kuzma and you’re living in L.A.—where it’s 75 degrees every day—and you think this is going to be your home for the next 15 years?” another Western Conference executive asked. “Those guys don’t want to go to New Orleans.”
But the broader topic is what leadership means today for the modern NBA superstar. In ancient times (like, you know, 15 years ago), leadership meant that NBA stars embraced the challenge of making those around them better. Now, in large part due to the player-movement era that James ushered in when he left Cleveland to team up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami in 2010, superstars have been conditioned to give up on their current circumstances and demand better teammates, a new home or both.
“Now it’s all about deferring and putting blame on somebody else,” one of the Western Conference executives said. “Instead of being like an old-school guy and saying: ‘I’ve got to do a better job. I’ve got to make my teammates better.’ Great players and great leaders, that’s what they do. That’s what Kobe [Bryant] would’ve done. That’s what Michael Jordan would’ve done.”
Not to get romantic about the Jordan era, but in those days, the likes of Bill Cartwright and Steve Kerr needed Jordan to elevate them. How well the biggest star on your team did that defined how effective a leader he was. Today, with star players perpetually angling for better teammates and more attractive markets, the narrative has shifted. Suddenly, it’s become the job of the supporting players to make the superstars better. And if the superstar struggles, it must be his teammates’ fault.
And it’s not only LeBron’s teammates who are getting the blame. Just this week, in a subtle backhanded slap at the team’s decision-makers, he told reporters, “You have four guys in our top-eight rotation that you have to really rely on, and it’s unfair to them to ask for so much when they’re in their second or third year.”
“These new-school guys always want to put it on somebody else,” one of the Western Conference executives said. “It’s an immediate-gratification society, and it’s always someone else’s fault.”
To be fair, Bryant also made a public and messy trade demand in 2007. And it’s not implausible to think that Jordan’s approach might have been different if he had to go through a team like the Warriors—with five All-Stars and two former MVPs—just to make it to the Finals. But that’s also part of the problem James is facing. In some ways, he’s experiencing the boomerang effect of the team-jumping, ring-chasing NBA culture that he helped create.
Rich Paul’s (third from left) attempts to maneuver Anthony Davis to join James in L.A. has left some of LeBron’s current teammates wondering about their future with the Lakers.Dominique Oliveto/Getty Images
“That’s going to taint him now when he finishes,” one of the execs said.
Is this about LeBron James? A lot of it is. But it’s also about a generational shift in the definition of superstar leadership in the NBA. Why bear the burden of elevating others when you can just make a lot of noise and force the front office to get you better teammates…or go find a place that already has better players and join them?
“Is everyone just a pawn to help the great players achieve success?” one of the execs asked. “Or is the great player the genesis of that success?”
I think we have our answer. And so does LeBron James.
Ken Berger covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KBergNBA.
This is One Good Thing, a weekly column where we tell you about one of the few nice things that happened this week.
There are grand tales all across the internet of underdog stories, triumphs of the human spirit, heroes who saved the day. But there are also the little victories that remind that success can be found even in the smallest of places.
Two-year-old Clarissa has graced the internet with her personal win in a viral video her mother, Natalia, posted to Twitter. In the video, Clarissa can be seen trying to stack some colorful plastic nesting cups together in the correct order.
She’s in full-on concentration mode, arranging and re-arranging the stacks in quiet thought. But then suddenly — she gets the stack to fit in the right order! Breaking in a little celebration dance and giggling with glee, Clarissa celebrates while Natalia can be heard congratulating her, saying “yeah, you did it!”
Her win was a significant one too, as Natalia describes. “Just so you guys know,” she wrote in a follow-up tweet, “Clarissa is 2 and is a little behind on certain things so shes had therapy for a few months.”
“This to me and my family is EVERYTHING,” she wrote. “We are so proud of her.”
The internet is also, of course, insanely proud.
Even celebs like Ellen Degeneres, Zendaya, and Michael B. Jordan are out here showing their support for Clarissa. What can we say? Game recognizes game.
But the wins don’t stop there — Natalia has since posted a second video of Clarissa, this time successfully pairing up shapes and colors. It might just be that the internet loves cute kids doing anything, but the love and support poured into Clarissa’s milestones have shown that the internet can be a truly uplifting place.
Thank you Clarissa, for reminding us to keep moving forward and never stop trying. We raise a cup to you!
2019 is turning into some sort of comedy killer. We’re losing some iconic shows this year. If, like me, you’re not ready to mourn the loss of The CW’s underrated gems like Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or entertainers like Broad City and Veep, I’ve got you covered.
Here’s a very specific guide for what to binge when your already binge-able faves wrap up.
UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT
A breakout in the genre for Netflix in 2015, this Ellie Kemper-led comedy ended its four-season run in January. For lovers of its quirky humor, Santa Clarita Diet is the perfect follow up.
Also housed at Netflix, Santa Clarita Diet stars Drew Barrymore as realtor-turned-zombie Sheila Hammond. As she learns more the complex world of the undead, she pulls her husband Joel (Timothy Olyphant), daughter Abby (Liv Hewson), and teenage neighbor Eric (Skylar Gisondo) into the mystery.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Santa Clarita Diet both rely on strong, bizarre female protagonists trying to reclaim life after tragedy, heightened comical circumstances, and an excellent supporting cast.
Santa Clarita Diet Season 3 drops on March 29. Seasons 1-2 are available to stream on Netflix.
BROAD CITY
Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson’s exceedingly funny comedy will end this spring after five seasons on Comedy Central. If you’re going to miss watching a show about best friends trying to adult and occasionally smoke pot, HBO’s Insecure is your best bet. Both shows are adapted from earlier versions of their web series.
Insecure often puts its leads — BFF’s Issa (co-creator Issa Rae) and Molly (Yvonne Orji) — in tough spots but much like Broad City, it takes the notion of perfunctory millennial friendships and turns into something resilient while being relatable and funny.
Insecure Season 4 will premiere in summer 2019. Seasons 1-3 are available on HBO.
YOU’RE THE WORST
Stephen Falk’s comedy about dysfunctional couple Jimmy (Chris Geere) and Gretchen (Aya Cash) did the impossible: make us care about two fairly unlikeable characters. That’s why, when it wraps its five-season run on FX, you should run to another show that does the same: The End of the F*cking World.
The dark British comedy focuses on runaway teenagers James, who believes he is a sociopath, and Alyssa. They embark on a twisted yet absurdly funny journey to find her birth father. It leads them to self-discovery and love. Much like Geere and Cash in You’re the Worst, James Lawther and Jessica Barden really sell their warped romantic chemistry.
The End of the F*cking World Season 1 is available to stream on Netflix. A release date for Season 2 is TBD.
CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, through the power of satirical music and well-written characters, deals with mental health, female friendships, and complicated love affairs. To compensate for its loss when it ends in April, I’d recommend watching BoJack Horseman on Netflix.
It centers on Will Arnett-voiced half-human, half-horse BoJack and his detrimental Hollywood world. Obviously, Bojack Horseman is animated and contains no whip-smart songs. It makes up by offering another complex protagonist who goes through some dark shit and is clinging on friends for a way to recover. There’s also a solid discussion on mental health.
It won’t soothe your craving for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend-style music, but it will soothe your need for worthwhile storytelling.
Bojack Horseman Seasons 1-5 are available on Netflix. Season 6 arrives in the fall.
VEEP
It’s hard to compare anything to Veep with the Julia Louis-Dreyfuss of it all. Now more than ever, the political satire of this comedy will be missed when it ends this May.
Instead, spend your time with late-night hosts like John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, Jimmy Kimmel and Desus & Mero. You’ll get the sharp and objectively funny commentary on the country’s many, many, many issues.
If Veep was about the fictional madness of Washington D.C., the late night hosts make sure you know that IRL D.C. isn’t so hot right now, either. (duh!)
JANE THE VIRGIN
The comical wizardry of Jane the Virgin is rare and genre-bending. Intertwined amidst the laughs is a story about a family going through and talking about things like immigration, abortion, grief and trauma. That’s why Netflix’s One Day at a Time is your best bet post-Jane.
A modern upgrade of the Norman Lear’s classic sitcom, ODAAT is very representative of the Latinx community. In a perfect blend of heartwarming comedy and drama, it also tackles powerful topics like PTSD, anxiety, gun control, addiction.
While it doesn’t possess overdramatic tones, there are still enough emotional plot twists and laughs to keep you going. Machado, who actually recurs on Jane, carves out her space as a terrific leading lady here.
One Day at a Time Seasons 1-3 are streaming on Netflix.
CATASTROPHE
Rob Delaney and Sharon Hogarth created and star in Catastrophe, which will drop its fourth and final season in March. If British comedies about miserable people attempting to sort out their lives is your thing, let me point you to Fleabag.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the mastermind behind the sensational Killing Eve, plays the titular role in this very relatable dark comedy, Fleabag constantly breaks the fourth wall to communicate with the audience. It’s an inventive way to tells a story we’ve seen played out before but through a distinctive voice, much like Catastrophe.
Season 1 of Fleabag is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. Season 2 premieres on March 4.
When the credits rolled on Us, I realized I needed a minute.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like the film – quite the opposite. It was that the film, written and directed by Jordan Peele, is so rich, so layered, so diabolically clever and emotionally astute, that it felt an enormous undertaking to process in a single sitting.
Several hours and many conversations later, I’m still convinced this film has secrets I haven’t uncovered yet, and I’m just eager for my next chance to go digging through it again.
Which is not to say it’s without surface-level pleasures. Moment to moment, Us is a film designed to make you react – to get you to giggle at Winston Duke’s extreme dad-ness (“You don’t need the internet. You have the outernet!” he tells his exasperated teenage daughter), or scream at a villain silently materializing in the corner of a frame. And it shapeshifts so frequently, and so deftly, that it’s a fool’s errand to guess at any moment what might happen next.
But it quickly becomes obvious that Us has a lot more on its mind than making you jump. Every detail here seems carefully considered, down to the amount of dust gathered on a coffee table in a rarely used living room. In the hands of a filmmaker this precise, much of the fun is in waiting to see just how his intricate puzzle will come together.
Family bonding time can be sweet *and* sinister.
Image: Universal
Duke, Lupita Nyong’o, Shahadi Wright Joseph, and Evan Alex are instantly winning as the Wilson family, whose beach vacation is cruelly interrupted by funhouse-mirror versions of themselves. These strangers – clad in blood-red jumpsuits and armed with gleaming gold scissors – are hell-bent not just on killing them, but on explaining exactly why they’re doing so.
Each star of Us also plays their own warped double, but across the board, the transformations are so dramatic that it’s easy to forget. I had to keep reminding myself that, for instance, the blank-eyed brute scowling down at a terrified Duke was, in fact, also Duke. Even as I told myself this, I couldn’t quite believe it.
Lupita Nyong’o bears most of the story’s emotional burden, with astonishing versatility and force.
It is Nyong’o, however, who bears most of the story’s emotional burden, and she does so with astonishing versatility and force, employing what must be every single bone and muscle in her body. It becomes impossible to separate oneself from whatever she’s feeling at any given moment, whether it’s brittle panic or all-consuming fury. Her very soul seems to become our own for the duration of the movie.
Her assuredness, and Peele’s, keep Us on an even keel as it winds through different tones and modes and influences. It’s a home invasion thriller and a social commentary, with the graceful timing of a veteran comic. It might be an ancient fairy tale made new, or a modern legend made timeless. Or maybe none of those descriptions are quite fair, since above all, Us just feels like itself.
To say too much about what it all might mean would be to reveal too many of the twists and turns. In any case, being shocked in the moment, sitting with it afterward, arguing its finer points with friends, and figuring out when you can re-watch it already, are all part of the experience.
Suffice it to say there is real anguish here, and not always from the obvious directions. That pain, even more than the terror of shadowy doubles lurking around every corner, is what has haunted me since I saw the film.
But I’m still going to sleep with the lights on, lest I die of fright after catching my own dark reflection in a mirror.
When I first started covering Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in 2015, I thought it would be a relatively short assignment. He jumped into the Democratic primary with low name recognition, a campaign infrastructure dwarfed by Hillary Clinton’s, and a message many observers deemed too radical to ever succeed nationally.
I was wrong.
Story Continued Below
My “short assignment” turned into several months on the road with Sanders and his team. By the time he dropped out of the race at the Democratic National Convention in July 2016—after winning 43 percent of the primary vote nationally and outraising Clinton on the strength of his small-dollar donations—he’d become one of the most popular politicians in America.
The Bernie Sanders who announced last month that he is again running for president is in a very different position than the one I reported on four years ago. The party he was trying to pull to the left seems to have caught up with him, with proposals like “Medicare for All” fast turning into litmus tests for 2020 candidates. He’s still a democratic socialist and still running on the same message, but he is no longer an underdog; he’s a front-runner.
And yet, while much has changed for Sanders, some of the same questions that dogged him in the 2016 race will again be asked by Democratic primary voters over the next few months. Perhaps the biggest of those is whether he can convince enough of them that he isn’t a single-issue candidate—and whether he realizes that even as the Democratic Party has moved closer to him on economic issues, it has grown increasingly vocal on race and identity, issues that even some of Sanders’ supporters concede is a blind spot for the candidate.
“Bernie’s central concern has always been with the condition of what he calls working-class families. He is consumed by the need for economic justice,” Huck Gutman, a University of Vermont professor and Sanders’ former chief of staff, said in an interview with NPR early on in the senator’s 2016 campaign. “[Sanders’] central concerns have never been war or civil rights or gay rights or women’s rights.”
That’s a potential problem for Sanders in the 2020 campaign. His defining issue—economic inequality—has now been co-opted by just about every other serious candidate for the nomination. And that in turn means that the likely areas of contrast between Sanders and his primary opponents will come elsewhere—potentially on issues that touch on race and identity, which have never been the senator’s strong suit.
That said, the conventional narrative around Sanders and race paints his 2016 efforts as a failure, but that’s not accurate.
From the start of his campaign, Sanders and his aides tried to respond to criticisms on race. They were quick to note his history in the civil rights movement at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, framing it as the formative event in his political awakening: “His activism and when it occurred, as a young college student, set in motion the direction of his life,” Sanders adviser Tad Devine told the Chicago Tribune. After Black Lives Matter activists targeted Sanders early on for being tone-deaf about policing, he appointed Symone Sanders, an African-American woman who had been an activist on issues of race and criminal justice, as his national press secretary—ostensibly his most visible messenger on TV. And he made it a point to visit parts of the country where racial disparity is on full display, like West Baltimore, the home of Freddie Gray, a young black man who died in the back of a police vehicle in 2015 and whose name became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Though Sanders lost a majority of the black vote in the 2016 Democratic primaries, he did win a majority of black (and Latino) voters under age 35 in several states. All over the country, when I talked with black voters, they revealed the same generational differences you’d expect to hear from, well, white voters. Like any other group, the way black voters think about issues like the economy or policing is directly influenced by the times in which they came of age. Living through the war on drugs or the economic boom of the ’90s might mean you see the world a bit differently than younger voters who grew up during the Great Recession and birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. (Any candidate who wants to win, say, the 2020 South Carolina primary, needs to understand the nuance that can exist within a voting bloc that many outside observers deem monolithic.)
Even so, the questions about Sanders and race never faded. And already, issues of race are again dogging him as he mounts a 2020 effort.
In a recent interview with Vermont Public Radio, Sanders said of his place in the 2020 race as a 77-year-old straight white man, “We have got to look at candidates, not by the color of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or their gender and not by their age.” It was a statement that would have seemed innocuous in years past, but in a primary with one of the most diverse candidate rosters in recent memory—and at a time when Democratic politics are wrapped up in issues of race and identity—many Democrats saw this as a misstep and a sign that Sanders’ rhetoric on race and identity needs more workshopping.
These aren’t topics that will fade away anytime soon. Already, the 2020 Democratic contenders are being forced to grapple with the way race affects economic inequality, and how the two issues intersect—as in the simmering debate over economic reparations for the descendants of slaves. In 2008 and 2016, it was a proposal too hot for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or Sanders to support. But at this point in the 2020 cycle, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Julián Castro have already voiced their support, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced she’ll take up a bill to study the issue further, which will likely only increase its salience on the campaign trail. Asked about reparations earlier this week on an episode of “The Breakfast Club” radio show, Sanders said he was opposed to such cash payouts, but instead wanted to “change the banking system so that we end racism”—again, a pivot to his comfort zone of economic inequality. And on ABC‘s “The View” this month, Sanders said of reparations, “I think there are better ways to do that than just writing out a check.”
To be fair, Sanders’ messaging on race has shifted. In the past few weeks, he’s called President Donald Trump a racist, talked about voter suppression and discussed the need for policing reform. But to broaden his appeal to black voters, he’ll have to work harder on racial issues than he did four years ago. Then, his only real opponent was Clinton, whom young black voter after young black voter on the trail called out for her “superpredators” comment from 1996, which many interpreted as a slur against young blackpeople. For many primary voters—especially young ones—it wasn’t too hard for Sanders to be better than that on race.
The 2020 primary will be different. Sanders is running against the likes ofCory Booker, Harris and Castro and many other candidates who lack Clinton‘s baggage with voters of color (though some, such as Harris, with her long record as a prosecutor, may have their own).
Even younger black voters who backed Sanders in 2016 aren’t yet fully on board with his 2020 campaign.
Dallas Fowler, a political consultant and strategist in Southern California, was a Sanders delegate at the 2016 Democratic National Convention—one of a relatively small number of black women at the event who were pledged to support Sanders. I interviewed her several times over the course of the 2016 election cycle, and we spoke again after Sanders’ announcement.
Fowler told me that Sanders’ “revolution never ended,” and that she’s happy to see him run again, even though she’s not guaranteeing him her vote just yet. “The race is different,” Fowler told me. “This is not 2016.”
Fowler says of the former Sanders delegates she talks to—they all stay in touch, she says—maybe a third still are undecided who they’ll support, while the majority say they’ll back Sanders again.
She says she still likes Sanders, but she’s waiting to see what he and all the other Democratic contenders have to say. He hasn’t won her over yet. Especially when it comes to race, Fowler said, “I need to hear a few different things from the last time.”
Daily Trends Hunter 