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"When we played the Lakers one of the years and they had Ron Artest... he looks at me and then looks back at Kobe and he's like 'Hey Kob, just throw me the ball in the post man. Look who's guarding me. I've got Bieber guarding me.'" @gordonhayward tells an incredible story about when Ron Artest and other NBA players would target him on defense because he was white.
"When we played the Lakers one of the years and they had Ron Artest... he looks at me and then looks back at Kobe and he's like 'Hey Kob, just throw me the ball in the post man. Look who's guarding me. I've got Bieber guarding me.'" @gordonhayward tells an incredible story… pic.twitter.com/pH05TFlUje
— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) August 7, 2024
Recently, Hayward recalled a hilarious story from one of those matchups, including Metta World Peace, then known as Ron Artest, comparing him to a prevalent pop star. “I remember, and this probably didn’t have to do with I was white, but maybe my face and hair and everything, but we played the Lakers, I think it was preseason,” said Hayward, via The Dan LeBatard Show. “They had Ron Artest and I checked in the game, and he like looks at me, then looks back at Kobe, then looks back at me, and he’s like, ‘Hey Kobe,’ and he’s pointing at me and says ‘just throw me the ball in the post, look who’s guarding me, I got Bieber guarding me.’ And sure enough he just posted me up, and this was when Ron Artest was really good, I had no chance of guarding him. I think coach took me out, sat right back down.”
The list of “promoter defendants” is extensive. In addition to Curry, Madonna, Paris Hilton, Serena Williams, Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, DJ Khaled, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jimmy Fallon (among others) are named. They’re described as company promoters who solicited sales of Yuga securities to the public. The core problem, the complaint maintains, is that Yuga Labs allegedly conspired with MoonPay, a company that facilitates the sale of digital assets, and another defendant to “discreetly pay their celebrity cohorts … without disclosing it to unsuspecting investors.”
Elite basketball skills trainer Chris Brickley recently caught up with HoopsHype to talk about his future plans with his clothing company. Brickley, who played D-I college basketball for the University of Louisville and was a player development coordinator for the New York Knicks, owns BlackOps Basketball. The gym has become the home of legendary pick-up games on Instagram featuring players like Kevin Durant as well as pop stars like Drake and Quavo. He also launched his own streetwear brand in 2016, called Color Blind, which has since been sported by the likes of world-famous celebrities including Justin Bieber and Khloe Kardashian.
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Booker’s digging led her to Nikuro, whose Tokyo-based creator bills the character as Japan’s first male virtual influencer. He’s a basketball fan who splits his time between Tokyo and Los Angeles. He loves music, including Bruno Mars, Justin Bieber and Kendrick Lamar. “He may be fake, but he has a real personality,” 1Sec CEO Hirokuni Genie Miyaji told the Japan Times last year. Like Wizards rookie Rui Hachimura, Nikuro is half Japanese, which made him an especially good fit for the team. “I just felt like that ties in perfectly with the story we’re building here with Rui,” Booker said. “He doesn’t have the millions of followers that some of the other virtual influencers do, but his story line is resonating [in Japan]."
Stephen Curry went on Instagram Live on Thursday to talk about the coronavirus with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Nearly 50,000 viewers tuned in — including former President Barack Obama, pop star Justin Bieber, rapper Common and former teammates Andre Iguodala and Leandro Barbosa. More will likely watch the archived version. Either way, they will have witnessed something that does not usually match what they see on social media.
The speakers in the Lakers’ weight room have been blasting “Available,” a song off Justin Bieber’s newest album, “Changes.” The song is the work of the team’s center, JaVale McGee. Yes, he’s the one that grabbed the auxiliary cord to play the song. He’s also the only one on the team who can take credit for producing it.
When did you sit down and create what we now know as “Available?” JaVale McGee: I was in the studio with Poo Bear around November of last year. I didn’t know who I was making music for. I was playing some songs and samples and he stopped on this one sample that I had made. He looped it, put it in the computer and we just started writing to it. We ended up writing the whole song, but there were no drums or anything. The original melody, when you hear it in the beginning of a song? That’s what I brought to the table.
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If you follow such things, you might have learned that pop star Justin Bieber has a new album, Changes, that is rapidly headed toward No. 1 on the Billboard charts. What you might not know, unless you’re a fan of reading song credits, is that McGee helped produce and write one of the songs on the 25-year-old’s latest effort.
For JaVale McGee, star collaborations are nothing new. So even though he’s not that well acquainted with his latest teammate, who is one of the most famous men in America and has a social media following that dwarfs even that of LeBron, McGee still keeps the playing field even. He doesn’t call him Bieber. He doesn’t call him Biebs. It’s strictly first-name basis. “I call him by his government name,” he said. “His mama call him Justin, I call him Justin.”
While his priorities are to the Lakers and his NBA career, he’s proud of how he’s grown as an artist. On the court as a center, he’s often dependent on someone else getting him the ball to score. In the studio, he becomes the person who initiates the project. “It’s definitely about placement,” he said. “It’s about getting a body of work. As a producer, the more music you put out there, the more exposure you get, and the more residuals you get — I guess that’s what really matters. … I feel like I’ve developed extremely well, because I’ve figured out how to collaborate and how to move him in the music game.”
Justin Bieber started a trend with some cartoon Kobe Bryant tribute art ... and now Kobe's foundation is reaping a sizable benefit. Here's the deal ... Justin bought some fresh Kobe-inspired artwork from Idiot Box Art owners Emily Bright and Tamara Martin, and then the artists started making and selling miniature versions for $200 a pop, with 24 percent of the profits going to the MambaOnThree Fund.
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