LeBron James Signs 4-Year, $154 Million Contract With L.A. Lakers
LeBron James chose the Lakers.
After five years of missing the playoffs, infighting, turmoil, bad contracts and snubs in free agency, the Lakers got the man whose opinion matters more than anyone else’s every four summers.
James agreed to a four-year deal worth $154 million. His camp let the Lakers know minutes before releasing a one-sentence announcement on the Twitter account of Klutch Sports, the agency that Represents James.
Late Saturday night, Magic Johnson went to James’ Brentwood home to court the league’s biggest star, according to a source not authorized to speak publicly. James slept on their conversation. Sunday evening, his camp let the Lakers know he’d chosen them, minutes before releasing a one-sentence announcement through the Twitter account of Klutch Sports, the agency that represents James.
After 15 years in the NBA, James didn’t need lots of convincing or elaborate proposals. He knew how much he loved living in Los Angeles, how his family enjoyed summers in Brentwood. He knew what the Lakers once meant to the NBA. He believed enough in this team’s future and its leadership to sign a four-year deal worth $154 million.
James’ decision changes the league’s balance of power and gives the Lakers front office led by Johnson and Rob Pelinka its long-anticipated offseason triumph.
In James, they get a four-time NBA most valuable player who’s reached the NBA Finals for the past eight years, winning with his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016 and with the Miami Heat in 2012 and 2013. He was named MVP of all three championship series.
Now he’ll try to match Johnson and Kobe Bryant, both five-time NBA champions, as a member of the team they made famous.
“Y’all really thought he was gonna pass up the greatest city in the world… #TheKingIsHere,” Lakers point guard Lonzo Ball wrote on Twitter.
“The SHOW is back,” teammate Josh Hart tweeted. Kyle Kuzma posted a video graphic of himself hugging James.
“Welcome to the family,” Bryant tweeted, and offered congratulations to Johnson, Pelinka and Lakers co-owner Jeanie Buss.
James’ agent, Rich Paul, had conversations with the Cavaliers and reportedly a meeting with the Philadelphia 76ers in Los Angeles. James flew into L.A. from Anguilla, where he and his family vacationed last week, on Saturday morning and spent the day at home.
That night Paul George, another free-agent star the Lakers were targeting to return to his L.A. roots, shunned the team, opting to return to the Oklahoma City Thunder on a four-year deal worth $137 million without even taking a meeting with the team he grew up dreaming he’d play for.
This is the second time James has left Cleveland. He did it before in 2010, making his announcement at the end of an hour-long show on ESPN. This time he left with much less fanfare, and having delivered in 2016 Cleveland’s first professional sports championship in 52 years.
That season James and the Cavaliers came back from down three games to one to beat the NBA champion Golden State Warriors, in the second of four straight Finals matchups with them. But last month, after being swept in the series, James seemed acutely aware of the chasm between the teams’ levels of talent, and his team’s increasing inability to topple the Warriors juggernaut.
Now, James comes to a Lakers team loaded with a young players that won just 35 games last year, well below the organization’s level of historic excellence.
For five years the Lakers wandered through an NBA desert, amid the twilight of Bryant’s career as his body no longer allowed him to be the player who helped lead the Lakers to titles. For five years the 16-time champions couldn’t make the playoffs.
In three of those years they set franchise records for futility. The 55 games they lost in the 2013-14 were the most in the franchise’s history. Until the next year when they lost 61 and the year after that when they lost 65.
No superstar free agent came to save them. But the Lakers front office kept hoping and assuming.
Dwight Howard, then a coveted center seen as the second coming of Shaquille O’Neal, arrived in a 2012 trade and left as soon as he could in 2013, unmoved by billboards the Lakers unveiled that said, “Stay.” Carmelo Anthony didn’t come in 2014. DeAndre Jordan didn’t come in 2015. LaMarcus Aldridge didn’t like what he heard that same year. Kevin Durant wouldn’t even listen in 2016.
Then the Lakers tied themselves up by giving long, bloated contracts to free agents Timofey Mozgov and Luol Deng, suffocating their own future. That summer, many teams did the same.
All of it fell on the heads of Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak, then the Lakers’ top front office executives. Buss fired them in the spring of 2017. She installed Johnson, one of her closest friends, as the president of basketball operations, fought off an attempted coup from her two older brothers Jim and Johnny, and then took a step back to see what her hand-picked team could do.
What she wanted more than anything else was to turn the team her late father, Jerry, left her and her siblings back into one that would make him proud.
Johnson and Pelinka came in with a plan to rid the team of bad contracts, assemble young talent and then attract stars starting in the summer of 2018. They traded Mozgov and D’Angelo Russell, freeing millions in salary-cap space. They traded Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr. to the Cavaliers, of all teams, freeing up more space to add stars.
What if they couldn’t do it?
Johnson wouldn’t even entertain the thought.
“Do you know how many Finals I have been in?” Johnson said last week. “So you think I am worried about this? I have played against Larry Bird in the Finals. I mean, come on man. I have been in nine Finals. I have been in college NCAA championships.
“I’m Magic Johnson.”
Then he gave himself an ultimatum. If two summers passed and no star free agents joined the Lakers, Johnson would resign from his position.
Anime N’ Chill Sunday Wolf Children
Just a beautiful story of life and death and how to move on. Streaming now on FunimationNOW Wolf Children.
Trump Has Lied And Twisted Facts To Justify His Harsh Immigration Policies
The Trump administration has repeatedly misled the public about undocumented immigrants, family separations and its zero tolerance policy.
The national outrage against the Trump administration’s separation and detention of migrant families at the southern U.S. border has not let up in recent weeks.
President Donald Trump’s zero tolerance policy ― which refers all unauthorized migrants crossing the border for criminal prosecution ― has led to officials separating more than 2,000 children from their parents. In an executive order last week, he halted family separations at the border, opting instead for locking up immigrant parents and kids together indefinitely.
In trying to justify the harsh immigration crackdown, Trump and top members of his administration have repeatedly lied or made unsupported claims about undocumented immigrants, U.S. immigration policy and what is happening at the border.
Here’s a fact-check on some of the misleading statements and outright lies that Trump and his officials have spread about immigration and the zero tolerance policy.
1. Trump has repeatedly exaggerated the scale of the “crisis” of unauthorized immigration on the border.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump said his administration was “acting swiftly to address the illegal immigration crisis on the southern border.” The president has also repeatedly used fearmongering language in tweets about immigrants, saying they would “invade” or “pour into and infest” the U.S.
White House legislative affairs director Marc Short has also defended Trump’s zero tolerance policy, saying in an interview on CNN: “We have a crisis at the border. We have a difficult choice.”
FACTS: According to a Customs and Border Protection report, the rates of unauthorized crossings at the U.S. border in 2017 were “at the lowest level… on record.”
When looking at the government’s statistics for the first half of 2018, the rate of unauthorized entries, while higher than last year’s, are consistent with rates over the past five years: The Border Patrol apprehended 51,900 people at the southwest border in May 2018, compared with 19,900 in the same month of 2017 and 55,400 in May 2016…..
READ MORE——> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-administration-lies-immigration-family-separations_us_5b3689cfe4b08c3a8f6a3b73?utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=main_fb
Idaho mass stabbing: Suspect accused of targeting 3-year-old’s birthday party
WBOISE, Idaho — A man who had been asked to leave an apartment complex in Boise returned the next day and stabbed children celebrating a 3-year-old girl’s birthday, authorities said Sunday. Six children, ages four to 12, were injured in the attack, along with three adults who rushed to their defense. Boise Police Chief William Bones said the victims are alive but some are gravely injured.
Timmy Kinner, 30, of Los Angeles, was arrested and charged with nine counts of aggravated battery and six counts of injury to a child, CBS affiliate KBOI-TV reports. Police said they had not yet identified a motive.
The attack took place at an apartment complex home to many refugees. Kinner is not a refugee, police said, but he temporarily lived at the complex until he was asked to leave on Friday. Kinner returned Saturday when the girl was having her party a few doors down from where he had stayed, police said.
“Our victims are some of the newest members of our community. They’re victims of their past homes who have fled violence from Syria, Iraq and Ethiopia,” Bones said at a news conference Sunday. “This was an attack against those who are most vulnerable — our children.”
Bones said investigators have not yet found “specific evidence” that would indicate the attack was a hate crime but said they would be looking into that possibility due to “the nature of the location and the victims.”…..
READ MORE—-> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/idaho-stabbing-suspect-timmy-kinner-arrested-in-mass-stabbing-that-injured-9/
What makes internet trolls so dangerous?
The internet trolls are only dangerous IF you respond to them. BLOCK is your friend. I’ve been trolled before and it was the most stressful experience in my life. But now that I’m older I’ve learned how to not get caught up in their game of how far can I go to make my victim leave the social media platform. I do realize in some cases it’s deeper and you do have to go deeper once the trolling becomes threating. We need to find a balance online. Social Media for me has become overwhelming . Within the last year I don’t comment as much. I’m more inclined to lurk. I don’t like to argue with people I don’t even know. A year ago yes I would have argued or maybe had a passionate debate on a topic that I’m passionate about . I sometimes still do but not often because I’ve started to realize most of these Trolls are not looking for a true discussion. They want to provoke a fight. They get an orgasm just knowing that the person they are trolling can’t punch through their smartphone,tablet , laptop or computer monitor and punch them in the face!
https://www.facebook.com/HuffPost/videos/184087545602418/
Gorillaz: The Now Now Review
After only a year, our favorite virtual band is back with new music. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, The Now Now.
This latest album is a definite change from the previous album Humanz, but that’s not to say it’s a bad thing. With the previous album having a lot of collaborations, this one mainly consist of Damon Albarn (voice of 2-D) singing on all the tracks save for Hollywood, Lake Zurich, and Humility.
I for one enjoyed this album a lot. While it doesn’t have as many songs as I wanted it to, it still doesn’t take away from album itself. In my opinion I’ve never heard a bad Gorillaz album. The theme of this album seems interesting as well. It seems to be about sticking together in troubled times but also the character 2-D enjoying his life while Murdoc is locked away in jail, as seen in the music video, Humility.
Apart from Humility, the other songs that I definitely have on repeat are Sorcererz, Fire Flies, Souk Eye, and Hollywood.
I’m conclusion, is this album worth buying and or listening to? Absolutely! If you haven’t heard it now, go listen to them, I give the album 9 out of 10!