3 Point Buzzer

Tiffany Lucci grew up in a sprawling house on Sierra Drive in the lush flats of Beverly Hills. From an outside perspective, it was a peaceful, luxurious lifestyle. But unfortunately, this picturesque life was yet another example to not judge a book by its cover. Tiffany, along with her three other quadruplet sisters Madison, Bianca and Paris, were consistently being physically and emotionally abused by their father. The damage was horrific, including broken arms, bloody foreheads, constant bruising, starvation and emotional neglect. The situation was untenable, with the Lucci’s mother eventually abandoning her children when one day she claimed she was going out Christmas shopping, only to never return again. The Beverly Hills community was vaguely aware of the girls’ situation, but on the rare occasions people reached out to help, their father threatened them. The abuse continued, until one day, Tiffany’s sister, Madison came to Hawthorne middle school with a noticeable gash strea...

Constantly updating. Some favorites that are off the air: Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Entourage, The Night Of, Vice Principals Better Call Saul The hit rate of successful sequels felt like zero before Better Call Saul graced our small screens in 2015, two years after its parent show, Breaking Bad, bowed out in spectacular fashion. Saul, which was originally theorized as a half-hour comedy by creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, has evolved into a fascinating show about ethics and how far a man can be dragged into the dirt before he becomes the dirt (horrible line, but stay with me). Jimmy McGill, played exquisitely by Bob Odenkirk, is a man constantly struggling to balance his inner moral compass, and usually failing to straddle the line between lawful and corrupt. His constantly evolving relationship with badass lawyer Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) has out-shadowed the gang-infested aspect of the show, which is very compelling in its own right. As Jesse Pinkman once succinctly p...

When Dwyane Wade and Dirk dropped 30 points in their final home games of their storied careers, 39-year-old Jamal Crawford poured in 51 points and Paul George delivered a 3-point dagger in an exhilarating clash against the Rockets, you'd think those would be the most talked about storylines of the second to last night of the regular season. Wrong. Magic Johnson dropped the hammer last night that he was stepping down as Lakers' President of Basketball Operations. He held an impromptu press conference. He claimed he didn't have the cojones to tell Jeanie Buss to her face. He alluded that he couldn't bear himself to fire Luke Walton the next day. He dropped hints that he wasn't a big Rob Pelinka fan. He vaguely spoke of "backstabbing" that he wanted no part of. In other words, he took a Lakers organization that was already teetering on the brink collapse, and decided to light the place on fire. When I see what Magic did last night, essentially quitting ...

The modern NBA has hammered home many new ways of thinking about the game, but perhaps the most universally agreed upon mindset is that you need superstars to compete for championships, and if you don't have a superstar, you better get one by tanking through the draft. Like any strategy, everything works and everything doesn't. The Philadelphia 76ers tanked their hearts out for five years and are now a juggernaut sporting three top-20 players in Hakeem Olajuwon-clone Joel Embiid, nightly triple-double threat Ben Simmons and the ferocious Jimmy Butler. Then there are the Orlando Magic, who have been drifting in a subdued land of nothingness ever since trading Dwight Howard in 2012. When a team lacking a superstar decides to jump the gun by siphoning off all their quality players in return for improved chances at a high draft pick, they are taking a risk that they can become the next 76ers, and not the next Magic. Sometimes staying in the middle can yield success as well. After...

With so much media attention and scrutiny, it's hard for any quality players to go unnoticed these days. It's like cheat sheets in fantasy basketball; every Schmoe on the block has one, but finding value in overlooked players can net fantasy owners (and real-life general managers) major return on investment.  Today's media algorithms are driven by page views. What draws views? Why, rim-rattling dunks, snazzy crossovers and nifty passes of course!  No matter how tangibly good a player is at basketball, if they unleash one of the above moves, it will make House of Highlights, SportsCenter, World Wide Wob's Twitter, you name it. But there are always undervalued assets among the masses. Always. That sentiment holds true not just in basketball, but for stocks, actors, writers, artists...everyone. There is always someone doing honest-to-goodness work out there and getting little recognition. It's just how the world works.  And now, I present to you my starting lineup...

The Dark Knight, written and directed by Christopher Nolan, was released ten years ago today in theaters, and it remains the greatest movie of all time. The film, which grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, was released during a meager and embarrassing time for traditional superhero movies (and no, the Dark Knight was not a superhero movie; I'll delve into that soon). The Dark Knight's release followed "Fantastic Four", "Hulk", "Hancock" and "Hellboy: The Golden Army", all of which were Darko Milicic-esque busts with convoluted and bland plot lines featuring vomit-inducing CGI that seriously damaged superhero movie's reputations. Nolan was already working at a disadvantage, having to release his film to a skeptical and worn out audience. However, through a brilliant marketing campaign that featured hidden websites and coded pictures, anticipation for the Dark Knight grew. And Nolan blew it out of the park. While the Dark Knigh...

The Daily Orange sports department is part of one of the most respected independent student newspapers in the country. The Syracuse-based paper has won countless awards throughout the years and consistently churns out quality journalists that have gone on to prosper in bigger markets. They are the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs of the college newspaper industry; fostering a culture of diligence, hard-work, resourcefulness and passion for the craft. Resourcefulness has been ingrained into the paper’s culture since it became an independent entity in 1971, severing ties to the university, meaning the school could no longer censure or control what content the paper published. Funded by a combination of alumni support and advertisements, the paper doesn’t exactly have a limitless budget, though those limited funds have led to some of the most memorable moments of these young, determined journalists’ lives. The pathway to becoming the next Pete Thamel, Greg Bishop or Eli Saslow (the full lis...