The trailer for F9: The Fast Saga has arrived, with all the adrenaline, car grease, and testosterone a Fast and Furious fan could ask for.
F9 is really the 10th movie in the mighty Fast and Furious franchise, following 2019’s lackluster spinoff Hobbs and Shaw. For whatever the franchise cares about continuity at this point, F9 is a direct sequel to 2018’s Fate of the Furious, which saw Vin Diesel’s character Dominic further expanding his huge found family through the tried-and-true method of bonding over car racing while conducting international espionage.
The formidable ensemble cast now includes Michelle Rodriguez, Ludacris, Charlize Theron, Michael Rooker, John Cena, and Helen Mirren, most of whom are back from previous installments. (Two people who won’t be returning are The Rock and Jason Statham, who were busy filming Hobbs and Shaw instead; as a trade-off, there’s a brief cameo from Cardi B.) This time, Dom and the gang are facing off against a surprising new villain: Dom’s own younger brother, a vengeful John Cena who’s out to take his brother down.
Recruiting him into a larger plan is Cipher (Theron), the cyberterrorist who blackmailed him into working for her at the start of Fate of the Furious, only to wind up murdering his ex-girlfriend (and the mother of his son). Suffice it to say, she’s not on Dom’s list of friends.
The trailer also offered a major twist for longtime fans of the series, bringing popular character Han (Sung Kang), who supposedly died in 2006’s Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift, officially back from the dead. But everything else was blessedly familiar: flying cars, cars turned into improbable weapons, lots of fighting, and an endless series of car races.
The Fast 9 trailer debuted on Friday afternoon during an unusual livestreamed concert from Ludacris and other artists, including Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth, who performed their massive 2015 hit “See You Again” from the Furious 7 soundtrack.
At the Miami, Florida-based event, which looked back at the people, places, and cars that had appeared in the series over the years, longtime cast member Tyrese Gibson noted that 2021 will mark the franchise’s 20th anniversary. “We appreciate you, the fans, always coming out for us,” he told the crowd.
Holding an entire concert for a trailer is unprecedented, and it may seem weird — but it fits right in with the nontraditional marketing that the Fast and Furious series has deployed from the beginning. Long overlooked by mainstream Hollywood despite its perennial success, the Fast saga became one of the most successful film franchises in history, largely by emphasizing diverse casting and marketing to nontraditional demographics. A Friday afternoon, pre-Super Bowl concert in Miami is fully in keeping with the series’ optics: unpretentious, laid-back, multi-lingual, and very self-congratulatory. “There’s so much diversity and inclusion [in the cast],” Gibson said. “It’s the thing to do.”
Fans at the event spoke on camera about how much the franchise’s overarching theme of found family meant to them, with several audience members mentioning the franchise’s original co-lead, Paul Walker. Walker’s tragic death prior to the seventh film left the fanbase in mourning and further deepened the overall feeling that the franchise is less a series of blockbuster films and more of a tight-knit, diverse community with very high-budget reunions.
“You all know we make these movies for you,” Diesel added.
Last year, “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” got a jump on its Super Bowl movie-ad competitors, releasing a trailer on the Friday before the NFL championship game. The movie went on to gross more than $750 million worldwide.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The next film in the “Fast & Furious” franchise, “F9: The Fast Saga,” has unleashed its first promo two days before this year’s Super Bowl. This one doesn’t feature Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) or Shaw (Jason Statham), but Vin Diesel returns as Dominic Toretto, a reformed criminal and ex-street racer who has settled into retirement with his wife, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), and their young son, Brian — named after the late co-star Paul Walker’s character.
Perhaps trying to make up for the absence of Johnson, “F9” has recruited another wrestler-actor, John Cena, to join the cast as Jakob, Dominic’s younger brother. Described as a master thief, an assassin and a high-performance driver, he’s sent by the cyberterrorist Cipher (Charlize Theron) to kill his sibling.
Also added to the ensemble are a pair of musicians, the reggaeton star Ozuna and rapper Cardi B, as yet-to-be-disclosed characters. The trailer does contain one major reveal, though: Sung Kang reprises his role as Han Lue, a driver who had apparently died in the 2006 “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.”
Directed by Justin Lin (returning to the series for the first time since “Fast & Furious 6” in 2013), “F9: The Fast Saga” hits theaters on May 22.
The Fast and the Furious franchise is one full of improbability, a place where the laws of physics, science, and logic are thrown aside in favor of the inexorable powers of things like muscle cars, nitrous, and “family.” But the newly released trailer for F9 (the official name for the ninth Fast and Furious movie) may have just revealed the most fantastical thing of all: it appears to take place in a world where the failed RED Hydrogen One phone is a hit, with multiple characters appearing to use the phone in the upcoming film.
Both Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and the newly returned Han Lue (Sung Kang) are seen driving vehicles in the trailer using RED’s $1,200 smartphone mounted to their dashboards (presumably as GPS units). And make no mistake, it’s definitely RED’s phone, down to the giant logo, unused pogo pin receptacles for the expansion modules that never arrived, and the lackluster camera whose hyped “4V” (RED’s brand for stereoscopic 3D) images never really took off.
Obviously, the product placement here is sadly too late for the doomed phone — F9 began shooting in June 2019, back when RED was still selling its smartphone and even announcing plans for the since-canned Hydrogen Two. By the time RED canceled the entire Hydrogen phone project in October, it was already too late: most of the film was shot, leaving the Hydrogen One trapped in cinematic amber even as it imploded.
In a way, it’s sort of fitting that Dom and the gang would be using the Hydrogen One, a phone whose every facet was designed to be as bombastic and extreme as possible. If the Fast and Furious saga was distilled into a phone, it would probably look something like the Hydrogen One, all sharp edged and aggressively testosterone fueled.
There’s only one brief shot of the actual display of the phone in the trailer, which appears to be showing some sort of radar system — not exactly a standard feature on the real-world Android phone. But, if nothing else, the titanium-framed model could probably serve as a blunt weapon in one of the series’ signature set pieces.
F9 hits theaters on May 22nd, 2020. It’s unclear yet the extent to which the RED Hydrogen One will factor into the plot.
Considering how large the Fast and Furious universe has become, it’s fitting that the first trailer for F9, the ninth installment in the mainstream series, debuted on Super Bowl weekend after an hourslong music festival dedicated to the movie.
It was worth the wait, though. F9’s first trailer brings back some familiar faces including Dominic Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) sister, Mia and friend Han. Introduced in the first movie, Mia became a main character in the franchise as it developed, and entered a long term relationship with Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker).
When Walker died, it seemed unlikely that she would return to the franchise after not appearing in the eighth movie, but F9 changes everything. Han, who died in Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift but appeared in later movies, is also back. The rest of the Fast and Furious crew is back, too, along with some new faces. Former wrestling star and actor John Cena is also joining the franchise as Dominic Toretto’s brother.
If history repeats itself, F9 will be a major blockbuster win for Universal Studios. The company has planned for at least one more installment in the main franchise, but the Fast and Furious franchise is bigger than Dominic Toretto. There’s an animated series on Netflix, as well as the popular Hobbs and Shaw spinoff that was released last year. Hobbes and Shaw made $758 million worldwide in 2019 — more than Fast Five, largely considered one of the best in the series.
Actor Vin Diesel has talked about wanting to continue the role, and Universal Pictures isn’t giving up its cash cow anytime soon. It’s unclear whether we’ll get a Fast and Furious after the tenth installment (whose tagline must be “Fas10en your seatbelts”).
It’s been a few years since we last saw the full Fast and Furious family on the big screen. The Fate of the Furious – perhaps better known as Fast 8 – hit theaters back in 2017 and was the first film in the franchise made after the death of Paul Walker. It was certainly an action-packed car flic worthy of its Fast predecessors, but it stretched reality even further than previous films had, and it was ultimately met with very mixed reviews. With three years to ponder the future, will the new film fare better?
The full trailer will drop at 3:00 PM today, and you can watch it live right here. For now, we know Dom is daddy Dom now, and though he says he can’t live his life a quarter-mile at a time anymore, we suspect that will change real quick if his son is threatened.
We also have boots on the ground at the Fast 9 party happening in Miami right now, so we'll do our best to grab photos and pry secret info from the celebrities around us. Considering John Cena is among them, we're not optimistic about our intimidation techniques being effective. Stay tuned.
Speed has never mattered more. Increasing velocity to a near-breaking point is celebrated in business and sports both for its own sake and for the damage it does to slow-footed competitors — so much so that speed has become a strategy in its own right. Although said more quietly than in years past, the mantra of Silicon Valley's boardrooms and engineering teams continues to be "move fast and break things."
As a result, in the last decade we've seen incredible technological innovations leading to just as incredible economic and political disruptions. Consider that barely more than a decade ago, Uber and Airbnb were just small startups, social media had virtually no impact on national security, electric cars were rare enough to be a curiosity (and self-driving vehicles were more dream than reality), and we talked to each other on our phones instead of having our phones talk to us. But according to two influential observers of technology and society, when it comes to change and disruption, we ain't seen nothing yet.
In their new book The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives (Simon & Schuster), Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler are unequivocal about not only what is coming but, more importantly, how fast it will be here. The cite the work of the inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil and forecast that, because of converging technologies and exponential growth in computing power, we will experience "twenty thousand years of technological change over the next one hundred years. ... This means paradigm-shifting, game-changing, nothing-is-ever-the-same-again breakthroughs — such as affordable aerial ridesharing — will not be an occasional affair. They'll be happening all the time." Then, in either an exciting or ominous prediction depending on your faith in humanity, they add, "It means, of course, that flying cars are just the beginning."
And flying cars are just the beginning. The authors fly through life-and-society-changing disruptions that they see on the horizon, from gene editing to touchable holograms to the doubling of lifespans. As a human being, many of these innovations are exciting. As a policymaker, each is mind-bending for its implications for governance, funding and the social contract.
Consider, for example, increasing longevity through such emerging technologies as gene editing and the printing of replacement body parts. If in the not-so-far future people will be living 20 or 30 years longer, what does that do to Social Security, the environment, the health-care system, housing and jobs, the family structure, politics, and so much more? And what if it's only a small percentage of the population who can afford these interventions and life expectancy for the poor continues to fall?
None of these questions are answered in the book, nor could they be. After all, many of the biggest impacts of any innovation will be unintended or inconceivable. Who would've thought that a site to connect Harvard students would later become a company that dwarfs most national economies and can be manipulated by Russian bots, all while rewriting the social lives of a generation?
For those of us in policymaking, the question is whether we can keep up. First, can we bring our own processes up to the modern expectations? When companies are anticipating their customers' needs and wants and delivering them near instantly, government can't continue to take weeks and months to respond to paper forms delivered only during business hours — often closed during lunch — to a clerk in an inconvenient and unwelcoming government building. Not only will we anger our constituencies but also will, if we haven't already, be seen as irrelevant and obsolete.
Second, what we do as regulators is even more important. As the authors make clear, in a globalized and convergent world, there is very little change that can or will be stopped. But speed for speed's sake will not produce great or equitable solutions. Government will need to understand, engage and iterate policies quickly with each disruption.
At the end of the book, the authors warn, "Now, for certain, trying to grope with a century's worth of technological change unfolding over the next decade is a tall order, and trying to do this with our local and linear brains makes it ever more complicated." It's crucial that we, as policymakers, understand the changes coming to nearly every aspect of our lives and society. It's even more crucial that we, in partnership with the inventors, companies, ethicists and watchdogs, develop iterative processes to manage these changes with equity in mind — even if it slows things down a bit.
And just like that, pasta is now a fast-food “thing” in Charlottesville. Following the late-October opening of Luce, a sliver of space on the Downtown Mall, a new instant-gratification, fresh-pasta shop has opened on the Corner in the spot that formerly housed Revolutionary Soup.
Prontois the brainchild of Daniel Kaufman, who also owns Public Fish & Oyster, and Johnny Garver, former head chef of now-closed Parallel 38. Stop by, and you’ll find a variety of fresh pastas–including gluten-free and zucchini zoodles–and eight different preparation styles, ranging from bolognese to pesto. Rounding out the menu are salads, garlic sticks, macaroni and cheese, and housemade tiramisu.
At your fingertips
Sandwiches like the Jefferson (maple turkey, cheddar, cranberry relish, lettuce, and herb mayo on French), the Ednam, and other local classics have long been beloved staples at Bellair Market and related gas station delis around town. NowTiger Fuel, which runs the markets, is rolling out a new mobile app and (coming soon) online ordering, making getting your hands on a quality sandwich even easier.
Valentine’s Day trifecta
Even if you consider Valentine’s Day to be a Hallmark holiday, there’s still something to be said for wine, chocolate, and art. From 5:30–7:30pm on Friday, February 14, The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia will offer $10 tastings of four Early Mountain Vineyards wines with chocolate pairings from Gearharts. If that isn’t enough to convince you, did we mention there will be live jazz? 21-plus only, uvafralinartmuseum.virginia.edu
Whiskey and music
And if you want to keep the Valentine’s Day action going, head toVirginia Distillery Companyfor its annual Dram of Love on Saturday, February 15. Singer/songwriter Sue Harlow will be performing from 2-5pm, and whiskey tastings (starting at $10 a flight), seasonal cocktails, and light snacks will be available for purchase.
Winery getaway auction
Wine lovers, this is not your typical auction. Nancy Bauer, owner of the website and app Virginia Wine in My Pocket and author of the book Virginia Wine Travel Journal, has put together the firstGreat Virginia Wine Country Travel Auction, an online-only event that will run from February 3-10. Auction items include getaways like a spring adventure and tailgate wine picnic at Ankida Ridge Vineyards, quality time with winemakers, and wine and food pairings. Interested in bidding? Visit auctria.com/auction/VAWineTravel and pre-register so you’re all set and ready to go when the auction goes live.
JA MORANT WON'T admit it, but Jaren Jackson Jr. is certain that his fellow 20-year-old Memphis Grizzlies cornerstone circles one type of game on his calendar. Morant craves the moments against the league's elite point guards.
And he didn't have to wait long for his first.
It was Oct. 27, and the Grizzlies were trailing by eight points late in the fourth quarter against Kyrie Irving's Brooklyn Nets. It was just the third game of Morant's career -- the Grizzlies had started 0-2 -- but he was about to put the team on his slender back.
Morant checked back into the game with 3:23 remaining in the fourth quarter and scored eight points during the Grizzlies' 10-2 run -- driving for a layup and finishing through contact, getting a pair of free throws after picking off an Irving pass and attacking in transition, gliding into the paint for a pretty scoop, and finally tying the game by slicing through the Brooklyn defense and finishing over shot-blocker Jarrett Allen with seven seconds remaining.
Grizzlies fans, braced for a rough season in the early stages of a rebuilding process, feared what might come next. Irving, one of the NBA's premier closers, had plenty of time for the potential game-winning shot.
After years of film study on the perennial All-Star guard, Morant couldn't wait.
When Irving caught the inbounds pass on the right wing, Morant's feet (clad in Kobe 4 Protros instead of the Kyrie Nike models he often wears) remained on the floor as the 2012 Rookie of the Year pump-faked after a hard dribble to his left.
"He came out and it wasn't about, 'Aw man, I look up to you. I'm wearing your shoes,'" Grizzlies forward Solomon Hill said. "It's about, 'I'm trying to get this W.'"
But the rookie's job wasn't done yet.
The Grizzlies would earn the W only after Morant, who had several highlight finishes while scoring 17 of his 30 points in that comeback fourth quarter, pushed the ball from one 3-point line to another in about two seconds, drew two defenders, dribbled behind the back and passed the ball back to Jae Crowder for a 3-pointer that barely beat the overtime buzzer.
A milestone occasion in Memphis, the first taste of success for Morant and a glimpse into the potential of the electrifying rookie point guard.
"It's just my edge. The chip I have on my shoulder from what I had to go through to get to the NBA," said Morant, an unheralded recruit out of high school who became the No. 2 overall pick after two seasons at mid-major Murray State and has emerged as the clear Rookie of the Year favorite.
"My dad always told me that I was trained to go, basically that I'm built for the moment. And my mom always told me I'm beneath no one."
They sensed that Morant possessed a rare basketball intelligence and feel for the game, much like Chris Paul, whose wisdom Morant soaked up when he attended the CP3 Elite Guard Camp a couple of summers ago. (Tee Morant remembers his son excitedly reciting some of Paul's talks almost word-for-word during the three-hour drive home from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after the camp.)
His crunch-time domination of Irving, though, confirmed that the easygoing kid with the big smile underneath his wispy mustache possesses a killer instinct -- one groomed on the concrete court in the backyard of his family's home in tiny Dalzell, South Carolina, and now nurtured by his extended basketball family inside FedExForum.
"He doesn't shy away from those moments," Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins said of Morant. "He's here to be great."
Later that night, Morant celebrated after his first professional win the same way he did after hundreds of games while growing up in the South Carolina country.
He went home and watched film with his mom and dad.
AS SOON AS Morant knew he was going to be drafted by the Grizzlies, he made plans for his parents to move with him. Along with a few others.
Like his little sister, Teniya, a high school freshman who plays basketball at Briarcrest Christian. And his Uncle Phil, Tee's brother. And his girlfriend, KK Dixon, who gave birth to their daughter, Kaari, in August.
Morant bought a house on the edge of the Memphis suburbs, about 35 minutes from the Grizzlies' arena and practice facility, with a comfortable country setting and familiar family vibe.
"We're out by ourselves, not too many people around," Morant said. "That's how our house was back home. It's just always us there. We all just sit around, laugh, joke, watch TV, movies. My dad and my mom still cook dinner every night, breakfast [every morning].
"It's the same thing. It's just that the house is bigger."
The dynamic during the family film sessions, which occur after every Grizzlies home game, hasn't changed much, either. Tee is as tough as ever on his son. ("He did have six turnovers," Tee noted about the win over the Nets, and they reviewed each one in great detail.)
Morant's mom, Jamie, is a counterweight, inclined to rewind the highlights and occasionally offer excuses for his mistakes.
"It's almost like good cop/bad cop with his mom and me," said Tee Morant, who played at Claflin University in South Carolina and had a brief pro career overseas before his son was born.
"With Mom, her baby can do no wrong. With me, it's like, 'Boy, you're stinkin' it up!'"
With a laugh, Tee added, "I had a whole lot of nights of cold beds because of that."
"I tell him he be fallin' like Allen Iverson. He has that kind of swag to his game just like A.I. But I don't think A.I. was jumping like that."
Jaren Jackson Jr., on Ja Morant
Morant said he doesn't mind the constructive criticism. In fact, he's hungry for it. He frequently comes out of the family film sessions with a list of discussion items for his meeting with Jenkins the next morning.
"The first time we sat in a film session and I went after him about something probably defensively," Jenkins said, "he was like, 'I want this, Coach. I need this, Coach. More, more.'
"He texted me after games early in the season: 'I gotta be better.' He wants that interaction, wants that dialogue. He has this curiosity about how he can be better and how we can be better."
His parents and uncle try to do everything they can to allow Morant to dedicate as much focus and energy as possible to his new job, from helping care for his baby girl to driving him to and from practices and home games.
"I'm 20 years old; I mean, I can handle my own, but help is never wrong," Morant said. "They help me each and every day."
It's not all tough love from Tee with basketball, either. He at times serves as his son's hype man.
"His dad is in his corner and gassing him up every day," Crowder said.
Case in point: Morant's game-winning shot against the Charlotte Hornets on Nov. 13, the moment that both father and son call their favorite of the season.
It was as close to an NBA hometown game as it gets for Morant. With Dalzell about two hours away, dozens of friends and family members packed the stands. Tee had courtside seats in the corner.
And when the Hornets hit a 3 to tie the score with 23.4 seconds remaining, Tee said he was actually happy. He was ready to see his son go to work in another clutch-time opportunity.
"Y'all gonna see iso 12 now!" he told anyone within earshot.
Sure enough, after getting a switch, Morant blew by his defender and drove down the middle of the lane, finishing with a lefty scoop in traffic with 0.7 seconds remaining. Tee reacted by high-step strutting up the sideline, pumping his fist as he made his way toward half court.
"I tell everybody it was an out-of-body experience," Tee Morant said. "When he hit that shot, I just lost it. That's one of the times I can actually say I turned into a fan."
THE FATHER HAD always been a driving force in his son's development, putting Morant through daily drills in their backyard, working on his skills on the concrete court and his hops by jumping on tractor tires. But Tee couldn't give his son the wisdom that comes with NBA experience, which he knew would be critical to Morant's leap to the league.
So Tee Morant personally asked Crowder to look after his son like a little brother, making the request over breakfast in the team's dining room one morning before training camp began.
"He'll listen to you," Tee told Crowder, pointing at his son, who nodded. Crowder's chest puffed out, knowing that the Morants had conversations at home about Memphis' old head -- the 29-year-old Crowder is the oldest on the Grizzlies' active roster -- being a good mentor for the rookie.
"He's very confident in himself, respectfully. But to his teammates, he's open," Crowder said. "He's not one of those I-know-it-all guys. Some guys tend to have that in their head, but he's just open to learn. He's someone you want on your team."
Crowder does wish Morant would heed his advice about spending more time in the trainer's room postgame. Plus he already has witnessed his rookie pupil taking one too many spills during some of his most electrifying -- if not a bit reckless -- plays of the season, such as December's poster slam against Aron Baynes and non-dunk of the year over Kevin Love.
"You definitely hold your breath a few times with him taking flight and not knowing how to fall yet," Crowder said.
"When I go up, no telling what happens," Morant said, matter-of-factly.
"I tell him he be fallin' like Allen Iverson," Jackson added.
"He has that kind of swag to his game just like A.I. But I don't think A.I. was jumping like that."
You probably have to go back to Iverson to find a player so slight -- Morant weighs 175 officially but is actually "160-something soaking wet," as Grizzlies backup point guard Tyus Jones put it -- with such an exhilarating blend of explosiveness and fearlessness.
But Iverson was a scorer first and foremost; Morant is a pure point guard, seeing plays a few steps before they develop, changing speeds, flashing flair and sometimes even hanging in the air to set up defenders before delivering dimes.
Consider a play during a Jan. 14 win over the Houston Rockets, when Morant stole a pass, pushed the ball up the floor in transition and dribbled behind his back at the free throw line to draw the defender and buy time for his teammates to run the floor. He hopped into the air and dished the ball to the trailing Jackson, who threw down a nasty dunk over Houston's Danuel House Jr.
Morant made a point to give props to an unheralded piece of the play: the 28-year-old journeyman, Hill.
When asked about the play after his 26-point, eight-assist, nationally televised performance that had the basketball world buzzing, Morant noted that Hill filling a lane on the fast break forced House to hesitate, clearing the runway for Jackson.
"He's one of those guys that you love playing with," Hill said of Morant. "It's always 'we,' not me. That's how he plays the game. He's not a guy that you have to worry about, 'Aw man, he's selfish. He's going for his.' Coach actually has to do a job of letting him know that we want him to score, that in order for him to be able to find guys and get them going, he has to continue to be that threat down in the paint.
"And it's a joy watching."
But Morant doesn't pretend to have all the answers, something the Grizzlies' veterans appreciate. It has become a source of pride for them to play roles in his development.
Jones is only 23, having signed with the Grizzlies over the summer after spending his first four NBA seasons in Minnesota, but Morant respects his knowledge of the game.
Morant constantly peppers Jones with questions, such as asking what he's seeing in the opponent's pick-and-roll coverages during timeouts. "He's helped me more than people know," Morant said.
Morant's numbers are impressive -- he's on pace to join Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas and Trae Young as the only 20-year-old rookies to average at least 17 points and seven assists per game.
Those are proving not to be just empty stats, either. Memphis is 18-8 since Morant's return from his four-game injury absence, putting the Grizzlies in pole position in the race for eighth place in the Western Conference a couple of years before anyone expected them to compete for a playoff spot.
And the chemistry between Morant and his teammates has clicked, particularly with his co-star Jackson, who fought through a bit of an early sophomore slump as Morant established himself as the clear Rookie of the Year front-runner.
Jackson, an athletic and skilled big man, has embraced being a floor-spacer, taking more 3s than 2s, averaging a team-high 18.8 points while shooting 41.9% from long range during that span. Brandon Clarke, the No. 21 pick, complements the pair with a knack for scoring without needing plays called for him. Shooting guard Dillon Brooks, at the ripe old age of 24, provides another versatile scorer, a threat off the dribble and from deep range.
Still, Morant, the face of #GrzNxtGen, is the one who makes it all go, the point guard who has become a League Pass darling just a few months into his career.
Make no mistake, these are not the Grizzlies from the Grit 'n' Grind era of recent lore, a group that famously thrived on dragging opponents into the mud. With Morant running the show, this Memphis squad, currently sitting fourth in the league in pace, plays a fast and pretty brand of basketball.
It's a style that his dad doesn't mind breaking down from his spot on the couch.
"I love the nucleus," Tee Morant said. "They're going to have to change the [nickname] of the arena from the Grindhouse to the Fun Factory."
This arid border town in the far western reaches of Texas hardly seems to scream Bloomberg Country.
The billionaire former New York mayor has had a rocky history with minority constituents. His Spanish is bad enough to be the subject of frequent parody. The Wall Street culture on which he built his fortune couldn’t be more foreign.
Yet when Michael R. Bloomberg jetted here this week, many in this predominantly Latino community welcomed him like a hometown hero.
“The Russians put Trump in office,” said Roberto Abalos, a 61-year-old who was among the crowd of 300 who turned out to see Bloomberg at El Paso’s old rail depot. “But the American people, the Hispanic community especially, are going to put Mike in office.”
Fueled by a bottomless bank account, an advertising blitz of unprecedented size and scope and armies of organizers in vast regions other candidates don’t have the resources to staff, the Bloomberg presidential campaign is taking off in unlikely places — like West Texas.
His recent rise in polls — he’s surpassed former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and businessman Andrew Yang in polling averages nationwide — and his focus on amassing a big advantage when California, Texas and other big, delegate-rich states vote on “Super Tuesday,” March 3, is turning political forecasting on its head and unnerving rivals.
“I struggle with how to answer where this is going,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a University of Virginia publication that tracks campaigns. “It is different than anything we have seen before.”
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Rivals are increasingly vocal about their agitation. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren criticized him recently on MSNBC, noting that Bloomberg, who doesn’t hold regular town halls, hasn’t yet disclosed his tax returns or financial holdings and oversees a media empire where reporters are directed to not investigate the boss.
He’s “skipping the democracy part of this,” she said.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a large group on the left that backs Warren, has taken to trying to force Bloomberg into the televised Democratic debates.
Most candidates covet the exposure debates give them. Bloomberg has kept himself off the stage by refusing to do any outside fundraising, which means he can’t meet the requirement of having a certain number of donors.
“He is both escaping the scrutiny of Iowa and New Hampshire voters who are known for their role in vetting candidates, and he is escaping the scrutiny on the debate stage,” said Adam Green, a co-founder of the group.
Bloomberg aides say their candidate would be happy to debate, but soliciting contributions — even ones as small as $1 — is against his principles.
American elections are littered with political carcasses of rich folks who tried to use cash to power their way into office. But none ever spent at this scale.
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Bloomberg had poured more than $263 million into television and online ad spending by Jan. 24, according to the ad tracking firm Advertising Analytics — nearly 10 times more than any non-billionaire Democrat in the race. On Superbowl Sunday alone, he is spending $11 million to claim a full minute of ad time.
The only candidate even approaching his level of spending — Tom Steyer, also a billionaire — has pursued a very different strategy aimed mostly at the first four states to vote and designed to get him on the debate stage. Bloomberg’s fortune, estimated by Forbes at nearly $60 billion, is more than 30 times larger than Steyer’s.
The Bloomberg campaign is scaling up at an unprecedented pace. It has 1,000 staffers working from dozens of offices — many signed to contracts running through November. In El Paso on Thursday night, Bloomberg launched the opening of another of what will be 17 Texas offices.
“I like that he is here,” O’Rourke said during a brief interview. “I strongly believe we have a chance to deliver the [state’s] 38 electoral college votes to the Democratic nominee. But it won’t happen of its own accord. It’s going to take a massive level of organizing and a significant investment.”
“The fact that he’s willing to do that … bodes very, very well for the state, and may bode well for his candidacy.”
O’Rourke hasn’t endorsed anybody. But his presence at the event reassured more than a few that Bloomberg is worth their support.
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“It’s a good sign,” said Alexis Archuletta, a 20-year-old student who had hoped to vote for O’Rourke and is now bullish on Bloomberg. “Bloomberg is like the cream of the crop.”
After spending so much money over the years on liberal candidates and causes — and suggesting he might spend $1 billion to defeat President Trump, whether he wins the Democratic nomination or not — Bloomberg has an intimidating network of political heavyweights speaking highly of him.
Bloomberg ads are saturating Facebook, and his army of techies are spending with abandon to vacuum up every available byte of data they can use to fine-tune the campaign’s targeting and expand its reach.
But there is one crucial variable Bloomberg can’t control: Joe Biden.
Bloomberg’s strategy makes a big bet that Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont or Warren will best the former vice president early on from the left, leaving many centrist voters looking for a viable pragmatist to back.
“All of this investment has gotten him in the anteroom to the nomination,” said Robert Shrum, director of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future. “If the door opens, it will be because Biden falters or falls apart.”
Bloomberg’s allies are open about this: “One thing you don’t want to happen is one of the moderate candidates sweeping through the early states,” said Bradley Tusk, a longtime advisor to the billionaire.
“But if Bernie Sanders is surging and he wins Iowa and New Hampshire, Mike could become the only obstacle between Sanders and the nomination.”
Voters like 82-year-old David Buchmueller in El Paso are already looking to Bloomberg as the salvation for moderates.
“I’m really afraid that Joe Biden, who I like, has been passed by life,” Buchmueller said. “That brings me to Mayor Bloomberg, who had a spectacular record as mayor in New York City.”
The mayor’s comments at the El Paso event were tightly scripted and, as is often the case, he didn’t stick around to mingle with voters or gaggle with reporters. But the message — pillorying what he called Trump’s cruelty toward immigrants and empowerment of white supremacists, along with the unveiling of his economic plan for Latinos — was well received.
Here, and at other stops, he made a particular point of appealing to nonwhite voters — trying to shore up a weak spot in his support.
In Houston before a large audience of African Americans at the AME Church’s Future of Black America Symposium a few hours before his El Paso event, Bloomberg talked about his white privilege.
“If I had been black, I wouldn’t have had the same opportunities, and my life would have turned out very differently,” he said. “Many black Americans of my generation would have ended up with far more wealth if they had been white.”
The steady increase of support for Bloomberg among nonwhite voters worries rivals. With racial justice and law enforcement accountability front and center in this primary, many thought the aggressive policing methods Bloomberg backed as mayor would disqualify him with voters.
Nina Turner, a national co-chair of Sanders’ campaign, took a pointed jab at that history when she followed Bloomberg on Wednesday onstage in Houston.
“No ‘stop and frisk’ on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ watch,” she declared.
But a formidable slate of black leaders allied with Bloomberg have helped drown out such criticism. San Francisco Mayor London Breed, former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, who endorsed Bloomberg last week, have spoken on his behalf, arguing that he has done more to empower minorities than any of the other candidates.
The endorsements bolster the biographical sketch voters targeted by Bloomberg are being inundated with, one that stresses the immense investment Bloomberg’s philanthropies and advocacy groups have put into fighting the gun lobby, curbing climate change and renewing urban economies.
Many of the endorsements have a transactional scent — the mayors backing him often represent cities that won lucrative grants from Bloomberg’s foundation. But that hasn’t blunted their appeal.
“All black voters are not the same,” Nutter said, arguing that the Democrat who is going to win over the most black voters is the one voters are most confident can win the White House. He recalled a house party he was at this week in Charlotte, N.C., with dozens of African Americans.
“The primary concern of the overwhelming majority of the folks in that house,” Nutter said, “was who can beat Donald Trump.”
But Grand Forks Central senior William Lawson-Body doesn't need much of an opening.
Lawson-Body's breakaway in the opening three minutes highlighted a strong start for the Knights in a tight 2-1 win over Grand Forks Red River on Thursday night in a packed Purpur Arena.
With the win, Central secured the Gambucci Cup, which is awarded annually to the top Greater Grand Forks boys hockey team.
"I think we just came out trying to get goals early and settle the crowd down," said Lawson-Body, who scored his team-best 17th goal of the year. "Zach Larson made a nice play on the wall, and I had a breakaway. Credit to him."
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The Knights (15-3-0) tacked on a second goal thanks to a nice power-play setup from Joey Kennelly to Braden Panzer at 10:30 of the opening period.
"I thought we had a good start, then maybe gave up a little in the second but had a few momentum shifts there in the second," Central coach Grant Paranica said. "We gave it right back in the third, so it was really an even game all around."
The Roughriders (10-4-2) pulled within a goal midway through the second period. Jake Grandstrand scored on the power play to make it 2-1, on assists from Connor Arel and Mason Thingvold.
"I'd say the first 17 minutes -- credit to Central," LaMoine said. "They came out and played, and we were a step slow. In the second period, we started to catch up and the third period started to play how I think we can play. But that's too late. We can't play a team like that and only play one good period of hockey."
The Roughriders played the final 80 seconds with an empty net but were unable to put another one past Kolby Elseth, who finished with 21 saves.
Red River goalie Noah Burger made 19 stops.
Paranica said the Riders, who lost to the Knights 3-1 before Christmas, made it difficult to find Grade A opportunities.
"They get sticks in lanes and have five guys buying in to a great defensive system," Paranica said. "They're keeping pucks to the outside. It's hard to penetrate into the slot and the high-scoring areas. It showed. We made plays when we had to, but it was an exciting game."
LaMoine, though, wishes the Riders would've kept better tabs on Lawson-Body early.
"You definitely have to have an awareness," he said. "I think we've done that with other fast players this year. Tonight, I think we had a lapse. When you give him time and space, he'll take advantage. I'd like to see us tighten that up a bit."
GF Central 2,
GF Red River 1
First period -- 1. GFC, William Lawson-Body (Zach Larson) 2:45; 2. GFC, Braden Panzer (Joey Kennelly, Chase Spicer) 10:30
Second period -- 3. RR, Jake Grandstrand (Connor Arel, Mason Thingvold)
What exactly is this new infection epidemic called the coronavirus and could it spread to many other countries causing a pandemic where hundreds of thousands or even millions are infected and potentially die?
Well that's a big unknown right now. Before we get all worked up and worried, let's build some important facts around the news reports.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), coronaviruses are a group of viruses that cause diseases in many species of mammals and birds. Rarely, these coronaviruses can evolve and infect humans and then spread between them. Recent examples of this include SARS-CoV (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS-CoV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome).
While four older human coronaviruses commonly cause mild to moderate illness in people worldwide, the two newer human varieties, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV, have been known to frequently cause severe illness. Coronaviruses are named for the crown-like spikes on their surface.
In cows and pigs coronaviruses typically cause diarrhea, while in chickens it can cause an upper respiratory disease. In humans, the virus causes respiratory infections which are typically mild including the common cold, but again, rarer forms like SARS and MERS can be lethal. There are no vaccines or antiviral drugs that are approved for prevention or treatment.
The incubation period of the virus (from exposure to symptoms) is between 2 and 10 days and it remains contagious during this time. Symptoms include fever, coughing and breathing difficulties and it can be fatal.
A Severe Health Crisis for China
The newest coronavirus, designated 2019-nCoV, was first identified in Wuhan, a city of 11 million in the Hubei province of China, after people developed pneumonia without a clear cause and for which existing vaccines or treatments were not effective.
The virus early on showed evidence of human-to-human transmission via coughing as it could be found in respiratory fluids. The rate of infection quickly escalated this month, with several countries across Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific reporting cases. As of January 29, there were still only five known cases in the US: Chicago, IL; Everett, WA; Maricopa County, AZ; and two in Los Angeles.
As of January 29, approximately 6,000 cases of infection had been confirmed across China. The first death from the infection occurred on January 9 and since then over 130 deaths have been confirmed.
Easily 40 million people have been placed under what might be called "soft" quarantine in Wuhan and 15 other cities in the surrounding Hubei province, involving the termination of all public transportation and obviously all outward transport by train, air and bus. Wuhan is racing to build two dedicated hospitals with over 2,500 beds for those infected.
Geometric Infection Spread?
The number of cases in China now exceeds the approximate 5,500 infected with the SARS coronavirus that killed about 800 people globally in 2002 and 2003. The rate of spread is probably of concern to officials in China and in the West, though the World Health Organization (WHO) has stopped short of declaring it a global health emergency.
According to Bianco Research in Chicago, based on official China National Health Commission data, the geometric rate of transmission (about 53% daily) where every infected person can infect 2 to 2.5 people, we could be looking at 88,000 sick by February 3 and 315,000 ill by Feb 6.
Jim Bianco, president of the eponymous research firm, asked "Does the mkt understand this growth rate? Or will it freak?"
If you follow Jim Bianco on Twitter at @BiancoResearch, you'll get to see more data modeling like that. On January 27, he built a graph with the "hard" quarantined number at just over 44,000 and posed the question "Are people under quarantine the inventory for future infection growth?"
This harder definition of quarantine from China is those with flu symptoms isolated and monitored. It was up over 30X in just a week, from 1,400 to 44K! "This is the inventory that will feed the continued geometric of infection rates," Bianco tweeted.
During the same period, Jan 21-27, reported infections were up over 10X to cross 4,500. With the "inventory" growing faster than the confirmed cases, this could explode to pandemic spreading levels very quickly. Over 100K infected next week equals nearly 10 million by Valentine's Day.
Again, these are not predictions but simply mathematical projections based on the current rates of acceleration in confirmed cases and those with symptoms. If these slow down, the picture becomes much more optimistic.
When confirmed cases grew to 5,974 as of Jan 28, slightly less than the model projected, Bianco surmised "China Health might be underreported as some areas are running out of testing kits."
But the math of the geometric expansion still speaks, with quarantined "inventory" rising to 60K on Jan 28 and infection cases doubling every 1.7 days. If these numbers don't slow down, the WHO may have to update their classification.
In Search of Data and a Vaccine
For a broader perspective on the data and to stay up-to-date on the latest information, here is the CDC homepage on Coronavirus with many resources and references.
Another resource I recommended on my Mind Over Money podcast on Tuesday is STATnews.com for their excellent medical and biotechnology reporting. They are offering all coronavirus-related articles in front of their pay-wall at this time to help as many people as possible understand the disease and the latest assessments of the crisis.
In an article I share from STAT by Sharon Begley, she talks about the advantage scientists and public health officials have now that they didn't two decades ago: fast and affordable genome sequencing power from equipment like that built by Illumina ILMN.
In the video that accompanies this article, I also glance at some of the companies who might be involved in an eventual vaccine. Early in the week, the Wall Street Journal reported that shares of companies including Inovio Pharmaceuticals INO, Moderna MRNA, and Novavax NVAX were surging as the coronavirus spread further.
The rallies were sparked last week when the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a public-private nonprofit based in Norway, announced that it would provide as much as $11 million in funding to Inovio and Moderna to develop vaccines against the coronavirus.
The CEPI aims to derail epidemics by speeding up the development of vaccines. But Jefferies analyst Jared Holz threw some cold water on the big buzz in these small companies in a research note on Monday where he wrote, "Companies stating their interest in development vaccines for coronavirus are likely too late, as we saw similar commentary around SARS and other similar situations."
Pandemics: The Black Death and The Spanish Flu
In my podcast Coronavirus: Epidemic or Pandemic?, I thought it would be interesting to look at past pandemics to see what is possible and probable. Even though developed nations have historically robust levels of sanitation and disease control that prevent flu epidemics, the pace of spreading for 2019-nCoV is clearly on its way to exceeding prior epidemics like Ebola and SARS.
According to the WHO, a pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease. An influenza pandemic occurs when a new "flu" virus emerges and spreads around the world, and most people do not have immunity. Viruses that have caused past pandemics typically originated from animal influenza viruses.
The last great pandemic that killed tens of millions was the 1918 influenza pandemic, commonly known as the Spanish flu. It was the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus and infected 500 million people around the world, killing an estimated 50 million and possibly much more. This death toll would have been three to five percent of Earth's population at the time, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history.
Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill the very young and the very old, with a higher survival rate for those in-between. However, the Spanish flu pandemic resulted in a higher than expected mortality rate for young adults. (Source: 2013 research paper linked on Wikipedia page for Spanish flu, "Age-specific mortality during the 1918 influenza pandemic: Unraveling the mystery of high young adult mortality").
For a great 5-minute video on the highlights of the Spanish flu, check out History.com.
The Greatest Empire of 1400
Did you know that the "big daddy" of pandemics, The Plague of the 14th century, originated from China? Killing anywhere from 75 million to 200 million, the Black Death probably came cruising along the Silk Road after the Mongols and Marco Polo got traffic and trade rolling to connect East and West.
But let's try to end on a good note about China today. In last week's Cook's Kitchen video Tesla to $6,000 and SpaceX to the Moon?, I showed off a great new book I'm reading by SpaceX mission manager Andrew Rader. His Beyond The Known: How Exploration Created the Modern World and Will Take Us to the Stars is a blast because to make his argument for colonizing space he first gives us a 220-page tour of history's great explorers including the Polynesians, Phoenicians, Vikings, Italians, Chinese, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and British.
Upon further progress in Rader's book this week, I am reminded of what a great power China was in the early 15th century with the largest city, Beijing at almost a million, and the largest and most advanced navy in the world. Rader makes a long list of Chinese inventions including the magnetic compass, various ship rudders, crossbows, flush toilets, dental fillings, hot-air balloons, hydraulics, negative numbers, paper money, and the printing press, which they never found much use for with over 25,000 characters in the language.
Rader writes, "In stark contrast to the opulence of China, Europe at the time was a miserable backwater still recovering from the ravages of the Black Death, which had recently reduced the population by a third."
He goes on to suggest that the idea an isolated and impoverished Europe would eventually come to dominate the world would have seemed crazy at the time. "China, far more than Europe, was poised to discover, settle, and conquer the world." To learn why they didn't, be sure to grab Rader's book!
Complexity Science: Climate, Population, and Space
In the Coronavirus podcast, since we are talking about global populations potentially affected by a disease pandemic, I found that Rader's book is the perfect jumping off point for all discussions about why we need to explore and colonize the solar system as soon as we can (I'm talking in decades here).
With projections of 9 billion plus on the planet in three decades by 2050, things are going to get tighter from resource, food, and land perspectives. Getting ready and having options on the moon and Mars is our natural, no-brainer destiny as explorers.
Coincidentally as I'm reading Rader, I came across Dr. Jane Goodall's comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos where climate change and global warming were the hot discussion topics. The wonderful primatologist "remarked at the event that human population growth is responsible, and that most environmental problems wouldn’t exist if our numbers were at the levels they were 500 years ago," according to TheConversation.com.
This conclusion seems somewhat self-evident, almost tautological by definition. So, then, here we are. Humans do what we do and we can't stop breeding any more than inventing and exploring. Carry on. To Mars... and beyond.
Competition: A New Science?
Finally in today's video, I introduce an important 2007 book I would bet 99.5% of my audience -- or the USA, whichever is bigger -- has never heard of. Applied mathematician James Case wrote Competition: Birth of a New Science to tackle the preposterous assumptions and predetermined certainties (not subject to testing) of pseudo-sciences like economics.
It's fascinating to me that he published the same year as my other favorite econ-dismantling book The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Both credit Benoit Mandelbrot, author of 2004's The (Mis)Behavior of Markets, for his original ideas about the limitations of standard deviation in markets and Modern Portfolio Theory models.
He opens with the 1997 victory by IBM's IBM Deep Blue computer over world chess champion Garry Kasparov, handing him his first professional defeat. And then he puzzles over how hard it might be to "crack the code" to play Go and beat a human champ.
Little did he know that companies like Google, DeepMind, and NVIDIA NVDA would soon be building the foundational parallel processing essential to machine learning and eventually bring more complex games like Go and Texas Hold'em poker under control.
Case is also a big fan of physicist Richard Feynman and I share some of his observations about the quantum maverick's 1974 commencement address to the graduates at CalTech. My favorite Feynman-ism is this...
“I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything.”
And Case plucked this gem from the 1985 book by Ralph Leighton, Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!...
"After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. But not fooling yourself is far from easy because, liking your own ideas, you are the easiest one to fool."
Kevin Cook is a Senior Stock Strategist for Zacks Investment Research where he runs the Healthcare Innovators service. Click Follow Author above to receive his latest stock research and macro analysis.
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