From 'The Blind Side' bombshell to an NBA star standoff, here's what's happening in entertainment.
Blind(ed) Side
Michael Oher, former NFL tackle and the focus of the hit 2009 film The Blind Side, has alleged the couple that took him in during his teenage years lied about adopting him. In a Tennessee court filing, Oher said the couple, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, did not tell the truth about his adoption status and instead tricked him into signing papers that made them his conservators.
He asked a judge to terminate the conservatorship and to require the couple to turn over a full account of money they made off of his name. Oher also requested the Tuohys face some sort of sanctions and be required to pay compensatory and punitive damages, according to the Associated Press. The filing also revealed that Oher only learned of the status of his adoption this year.
ESPN x NBA
ESPN analyst and color commentator Doris Burke will be making history come the NBA finals. She will become the first woman to serve as TV analyst during a championship final for any of the four major U.S. sports.
The network announced she'll be calling the game along with former Philadelphia 76ers coach Doc Rivers and long-time commentator Mike Breen. The news comes just weeks after the network cleared the house of some of its most tenured analysts, like Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson.
Rivers joins the analyst team after losing his coaching job when the 76ers failed to reach the NBA finals this year.
Harden Drama
Also, in NBA news: what's beef? 76ers star James Harden is in a standoff with the team that he clearly wants to leave. Harden, who headed to Philly in 2022 after his 1-year stint on the Brooklyn Nets, wanted to head to the L.A. Clippers, but talks between the teams didn't pan out.
This weekend, during a promotional even in China, Harden called 76ers owner Daryl Morey a liar. The declaration comes after the 76ers announced that they stopped entertaining trade offers for Harden and would retain him for the upcoming season. It's unclear what happens next with training camps scheduled to start in October.
Mark Drumheller, betting analyst for Yahoo Sportsbook and The Sharp App, dives into an icy matchup between the Vikings and Packers, as well as other must-watch games including a potential trap in Baltimore.
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Trysta Krick, Host of 'BetMGM Tonight' helps clear up a very crowded playoff picture by making selections for Week 17's top games while pointing to to an AFC West matchup for her lock of the week.
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Trysta Krick and Mark Drumheller give viewers their winning picks ahead of Week 17 of the NFL season, while Brandon Marcello dissects each of the College Football Playoff semifinal matchups.
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The National Women's Soccer League is partnering with Voyager Digital as its first-ever cryptocurrency brokerage in a multi-year deal. Marla Messing, interim CEO of the NWSL, and Steve Ehrlich, CEO of Voyager Digital, joined Cheddar to discuss benefitting the league and educating players and fans as a way of democratizing cryptocurrency. Messing explained that the players themselves will own half the assets as part of how the deal is structured. "My hope is, just in terms of the expectations of crypto over the long term, that I hope a lot of them are able to just let it sit there," she said. "And that one day this will be a nice retirement account for them."
Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini joined Cheddar's Kristen Scholer to discuss plans for the future even as COVID-19 upended Barstool's sponsorship of the Arizona Bowl featuring the Boise State Broncos and the Central Michigan Chippewas due to the spreading omicron variant. "In our case as a company, coronavirus has been a big boom for us," she noted. "We've been able to create a lot of new programming, launch a lot of different personalities, and frankly take share from traditional media, and that's what we've done the entire pandemic." While she admitted to taking a hit on the canceled Bowl game, live events aren't completely off the table for Barstool in 2022. Nardini also talked about potential sports betting expansion following its partnership with Penn National Gaming.
Five women have been named to the U.S. short-track speedskating team for the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Among those five, there was only one returning Olympian of the group, Maame Biney, who competed in the 2018 Olympics as the first African-American woman to ever qualify for the U.S. short-track speedskating team. JD sat down with Biney to discuss how she's preparing for the games.
