SACRAMENTO — Lakers guard Luka Doncic will miss at least one week with a left finger sprain and a left lower leg contusion, the team announced Sunday before a road game at Sacramento.
The star guard suffered the finger injury early in Friday’s game against the Minnesota Timberwolves. It didn’t slow him down at all, though, as Doncic finished with 49 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists in a 128-110 Lakers victory. The 26-year-old is off to a blazing start as his 92 points in the first two games are the most in Lakers history to begin a season.
The Lakers announced Doncic will be reevaluated in about one week, but it will be a busy stretch without the five-time All-Star. Already without LeBron James as the 40-year-old deals with a sciatica injury, the Lakers have four games in six days this week. After Sacramento on Sunday, the Lakers (1-1) return to L.A. to face Portland on Monday and have road games at Minnesota and Memphis on Wednesday and Friday, respectively.
The Lakers will be down to just nine standard contract players Sunday as center Jaxson Hayes was also ruled out with left knee soreness. He will miss his second consecutive game. James and forwards Maxi Kleber (abdominal muscle strain) and Adou Theiro (knee) are also out.
Francis Ford Coppola wants an offer he can’t refuse — on his timepieces.
The Academy Award-winning director is selling seven watches from his personal collection, including his custom F.P. Journe FFC Prototype, estimated to sell for more than $1 million, according to a statement from Phillips, the New York City-based auction house. Phillips will hold the auction on Dec. 6 and 7.
The sale could help stanch losses from last year’s box-office flop “Megalopolis,” which cost over $120 million to make and was largely financed by the 86-year-old director. The movie grossed only $14.3 million worldwide.
The film, Coppola’s first since his 2011 horror movie “Twixt,” premiered at Cannes last year to largely negative reviews. The Times’ Joshua Rothkopf called it a “wildly ambitious, overstuffed city epic.”
At a news conference at Cannes, Coppola discussed the tremendous amount of his own money that he had sunk into the film, saying that he “never cared about money” and that his children “don’t need a fortune.”
Among the Coppola timepieces also going under the hammer are examples from Patek Philippe, Blancpain and IWC.
But the headlining piece is the F.P. Journe FFC Prototype that features a black titanium, human-like hand that resembles a steampunk gauntlet that articulates the hours when the fingers extend or retract.
Francis Ford Coppola’s custom F.P. Journe FFC timepiece uses a single hand to indicate all 12 hours.
(Phillips)
The watch was a collaboration between Coppola and master watchmaker François-Paul Journe that began following a conversation the pair had during a visit he made to the filmmaker’s Inglenook winery in Napa Valley in 2012.
Coppola asked Journe if a human hand had ever been used to mark time. That question sparked a years-long conversation during which the watchmaker grappled with how to indicate the 12 hours of the dial using just five fingers.
Journe found his inspiration in Ambroise Paré, a 16th century French barber surgeon and an innovator of prosthetic limbs in particular, including Le Petit Lorrain, a prosthetic hand made of iron and leather that featured hidden gears and springs enabling the fingers to move, not dissimilar to a watch mechanism.
“Speaking with Francis in 2012 and hearing his idea on the use of a human hand to indicate time inspired me to create a watch I never could have imagined myself. The challenge was formidable — exactly the type of watchmaking project I adore,” said Journe in a statement.
Journe eventually created six prototypes and delivered Coppola’s watch to him in 2021.
“I’m proud to fully support the sale of this watch through Phillips to fund the creation of his artistic masterpieces in filmmaking,” he said.
Coppola first became interested in the watchmaker when he gifted his wife Eleanor an F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance in platinum with a white gold dial for Christmas in 2009, prompting the director to extend an invitation to Journe to visit him at his Napa winery.
Eleanor Coppola, a documentary filmmaker and writer, died in 2024 after 61 years of marriage. Her F.P. Journe timepiece is also part of the auction and is estimated to fetch between $120,000 to $240,000.
Joe Swash didn’t have much luck when he tried to give wife Stacey Solomon a present for Valentine’s Day but it made the family laugh
Stacey Solomon and husband Joe Swash remain a close and loved up couple(Image: Lia Toby/Getty Images)
It was meant to be a declaration of his love for wife Stacey Solomon. But Joe Swash left his partner and their family in stitches after getting a tattoo on his finger.
The tattoo is meant to show a love heart that Stacey uses on social media alongside the letter S as a symbol of his love. But once he put his wedding band back over the top, the tattoo looks very different.
Stacey and husband Joe Swash continue to do well and are loved by TV viewers thanks in part to their family reality show on BBC1 and their down to earth nature. A second series of BBC’s Stacey And Joe began tonight.
A close up of how the tattoo looks with his wedding ring on
Explaining how much he loves her, Joe, 43, tells viewers: “She’s got just the most morally moral compass. Is that a word? The most morally moral compass I’ve ever come across. I want to show Stacy how much I appreciate her, and I think the best way to do that is to use my body as a canvas. I’m hoping she’s gonna love it.
“It is all good intentions but things don’t ever work out how I expect them to.”
In the second episode Joe then gets a tattoo for Valentine’s Day to show his love for her, but when he puts his wedding band back on over the ink, it makes the tattoo look like a man’s private parts.
“It’s not as romantic as I thought it was going to be,” admits Joe. “I knew it looked like a p*nis, I just didn’t want to believe it. It is a bit like a Transformer, it starts off as a truck and then when you put the ring on it looks like a c*ck and balls. Are we allowed to say that on the BBC?”
Joe tries to take Stacey on a romantic sunset date away from the kids during the skiing trip.
After she is shown the tattoo, Stacey burst out laughing: “That’s not the same as mine. Why did you draw a p*nis.
“Start thinking of a bigger design. Why didn’t you just get the name?”
Stacey had previously got a tattoo for Joe on her finger in 2023, with his name spelled out and joked it was her “midlife crisis” moment.
Despite the odd looking tattoo, Stacey is still impressed by the gesture. Hugging Joe, Stacey says: “Being married to you is a constant turn of event when I feel special.”
This is not Joe’s first tattoo and he has now ended up with three tattoos, none of which are perfect. As he was getting the third one done he explained: “My experience with tattoos ain’t great, so I’ve got one on my back. That was like for my dad, it said, Protected in love from above’ but it reminds me of Shooting Stars[TV show] like the dove from above and also the tattoo, sort of like dips into my bum, so it is a bit like I have farted it out.
“The other one I got when I was on holiday with the boys. I got drunk on an 18-30s holiday, and my mate’s paid for me to have a tattoo, it says something in Hebrew on my hip here.
“I haven’t really looked into what it says. I can only imagine It’s not something lovely. Why? Why anything? Why did I trust my friends? Why was I so drunk? Where was my mum looking out for me?”
Stacey and Joe married in 2022 and have been together nine years. They have filmed more of their home life for the BBC. After rising to fame on the X Factor in 2009, Loose Women star Stacey has become a national treasure and is best known for her bubbly personality and as the Instagram DIY queen.
She keeps her social media followers in the loop as she has transformed Pickle Cottage into a family home.
As well as her dream home which features in the series, Stacey has the dream family life too with former EastEnders actor fiancé Joe Swash, and her five children; Zachary, 17, Leighton, 13, Rex, six, Rose, three, and Belle, two.
In the opening episode she told how she thought she has “had her last baby”.
The cameras showed their youngest Belle going to nursery. And Stacey admits she gets “sad” as the kids grow up.
“Another one flies the nest. All the kids are at school, and we can have a lot of fun,” says Joe before asking: “D’you think that’s our last baby?”
Stacey replied: “I think that’s our last baby, bubs.”
Joe said: “I think what we need to do is start looking forward to the future bits of the kids growing up instead of it being like ‘awww’.”
Stacey replied: “Yeah, that’s why I’m getting more animals, to be honest with you!”
* Stacey And Joe is on BBC1 on Tuesday nights at 7pm and available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
It’s another dry, sweltering morning in Las Vegas, and the guitarist Zoltan Bathory has just left his Gothic castle. Bearded and dressed in black, with a bundle of dreadlocks piled high on his head, he’s now piloting a small boat across a man-made lake filled with tap water, on his way to breakfast at a nearby café.
The newly renovated replica castle is a recent project and perk of Bathory’s 20-year career as guitarist and founder of the multiplatinum heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch. But last year, as the metal act began planning to celebrate those two decades of action, Bathory discovered that their longtime former label, Prospect Park, had quietly sold the masters to the first seven 5FDP albums.
The group, which retained 50% ownership in the masters but not “administrative rights,” was not informed before the sale.
“We were not privy to the deal. It was completely behind curtains. That’s the annoying part of this,” says Bathory. “I wish they had a conversation because we could have done a deal together, or maybe we would have bought it. We didn’t even get an option. We found out from somebody else. Well, wait a minute, what’s going on?”
With that anniversary coming up in 2025, 5FDP adjusted after finding inspiration in the example of pop superstar Taylor Swift, who responded to the sale of her catalog with a hugely successful series of “Taylor’s Version” rerecordings of entire albums. Swift re-created four of her records, each one topping the Billboard Top 200, before she finally bought back the rights to her catalog this year.
Five Finger Death Punch decided to follow that lead, and in January began rerecording the band’s most popular songs. The first batch of new recordings arrived under the title “20 Years of Five Finger Death Punch — Best of Volume 1,” released Friday, to be followed by “Best of Volume 2” later this year.
“When this happened, it came up immediately: ‘Well, this happened to Taylor and what did she do?’” Bathory says of the plan. “She battle-tested it. And she’s a big artist. ‘OK, that’s your move? Now this is our move.’”
It is just the latest chapter in a sometimes turbulent career for the musicians, as the band rose to become one of the most successful hard rock/metal bands of their generation, boasting 12 billion streams, surpassed only by Metallica and AC/DC. During its first decade, 5FDP released four platinum-selling albums in the U.S., beginning with its second release, 2009’s explosive “War Is the Answer.”
The unexpected sale of their masters — to the independent music publisher Spirit Music Group — was perhaps the final round in a frequently contentious relationship with Prospect Park founder Jeff Kwatinetz. In 2016, the label sued Five Finger Death Punch in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging breach of contract over a coming greatest hits package and the recording of a new album.
That lawsuit got ugly, including an accusation in its initial filing that the band was “attempting to cash in before the anticipated downfall of their addicted bandmate,” a blunt reference to singer Ivan L. Moody’s period of self-destruction at the time. The band countersued. The cases were settled out of court the following year.
A request for comment sent to Kwatinetz through his attorney was not returned by press time, but he told Billboard last month that the band’s current management stopped cooperating, so “I sold my half.”
As he settles into the small lakeside café over a glass of organic matcha tea and avocado toast, Bathory expresses little real anger over the suits and the sale, and looks back cheerfully at the band’s long relationship with the label. The guitarist says he actually enjoyed their heated discussions, reflecting not only their conflicts of the moment, but a shared history as the band rose from clubs on the Sunset Strip to stadiums around the world.
“With our former label president, this is probably the funniest relationship. In the past, we were suing each other for various [issues],” Bathory says with a smile. “We get on the phone, and we’re talking about a lawsuit, and he’s like, ‘You guys lost this injunction.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, f— you.’ ‘Oh, f— you!’ We had this back and forth, and then it’s ‘How’s the kids?’ And then we just talk about albums and music and whatnot for like an hour.
“And then, ‘OK, see you in court.’ ‘F— you,’” he adds with a laugh. “It’s a game of life. And I believe in the way of the samurai. The saddest day in the samurai’s life is when your worst opponent dies, because that’s the guy who kept you on your toes.”
Sessions for the new recordings unfolded quickly from 5FDP’s current lineup that also includes baseball bat-wielding singer Moody, longtime bassist Chris Kael, and two newer members, drummer Charlie Engen and lead guitarist Andy James.
The musicians recorded their parts separately, re-creating songs some of them had by now performed live nearly 1,000 times around the world. The resulting tracks are not exact replicas of the originals, but are faithful to their spirit while leaving room for the natural evolution that happens through years of touring.
The result on “Best of Volume 1” is a potent representation of the band’s history, opening with the snarling riffs of “Under and Over It.” The first volume includes 13 rerecordings and three live tracks. When played side-by-side with the originals, the new self-produced songs never sound like tired retreads but are powered by some contemporary fire in the band’s performances.
The first public glimpse in the project was a rerecording of “I Refuse,” a power ballad from 2018, this time as a duet with Maria Brink (of In This Moment), released as a single in May.
Once news of the project, and its inspiration, began to spread, Five Finger Death Punch began to hear from a new constituency: Swifties.
“What’s kind of crazy is that I see Taylor Swift’s fans on our social media and bulletin board going, ‘Yeah!’ That’s the most bizarre thing,” Bathory says of the new voices cheering the band forward. “We are so far away from each other in style. But it seems like it hit a chord. I guess people who don’t necessarily understand or are privy to the music business and how it works still feel like this is not right.”
While the band is also six songs into recording its next album of new material, Bathory says the new best-of recordings are expected to be fully embraced by the band’s famously intense following.
“Our fans are pretty hardcore,” Bathory says. “They’re very engaged, and they know exactly why we did this. So I think, just to support the band, they will switch [their allegiance to the newer versions] anyway. But these recordings are going to live next to each other.”
Founded in 2005, Five Finger Death Punch was the culmination of the rock star dreams of Bathory that began as teen in Hungary, first as a fan of British punk rock, before turning to metal after discovering Iron Maiden (with early singer Paul Di’Anno). He built his own electric guitar to look like one used by the L.A. heavy metal band W.A.S.P., with a skull-and-crossbones painted onto the surface.
Rock music wasn’t played on TV or the radio in the then-communist country, so Bathory and his friends traded cassette tapes of any punk and metal they got their hands on. “Somebody always somehow smuggled in a record, and we would all copy it,” he remembers. “It created this subculture where we didn’t just look at it as music. It was the sound of the rebellion.”
Bathory also dressed the part, drawing attention for his Def Leppard T-shirt with the Union Jack flag, studded leather jackets and belts, and long hair. Kids who adopted that look and spoke in the language of Western hard rock actually risked arrest, he says.
“I’ve been chased around by the cops so many times,” he recalls with a laugh.
By his early 20s, Bathory moved to New York City with his guitar, about $1,000 in his pocket, and no English-speaking skills. While living in low-budget squalor, he slowly taught himself English, first by translating a random copy of the Stephen King novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.” He played with bands that got nowhere, and after six years relocated to Los Angeles, and things started to change.
For a year, he played bass in the L.A. hard rock band U.P.O., which enjoyed some chart success, then formed Five Finger Death Punch, with a name inspired by the 1972 kung fu film “Five Fingers of Death” and Quentin Tarantino’s two “Kill Bill” epics.
Zoltan Bathory, founder and guitarist of the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch, pilots a small boat on the man-made lake outside his Las Vegas house.
(Steve Appleford)
“I knew exactly what I wanted. There was a vision,” says Bathory.
That vision got clearer when he first saw singer Moody performing with the nu metal band Motograter. It was Bathory’s good fortune that Motograter would soon break up. He reached out to Moody in Denver.
“He was special — his performance, his voice. That star quality thing is a real thing,” notes Bathory of the growling, emotional singer. “You could tell he was a rock star, right? I’m like, OK, that’s the guy.”
In their first years as a band, the quintet played more than 200 shows annually. “We played every little stage that exists,” Bathory says.
Sitting beside the guitarist now in the café is Jackie Kajzer, also known as radio DJ Full Metal Jackie, who first spotted the band on MySpace. She soon caught an early set at the Whisky a Go Go and was immediately sold on their sound and potential. She was also a junior manager at the Firm, a leading management company at the time representing Korn, Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park.
Kajzer urged the company to sign the ominously-named Five Finger Death Punch, and after two showcase performances on the Strip, it did. The metal band was soon added to the side stage of the high-profile 2007 Family Values Tour, followed the next year by the traveling Mayhem Festival, leaving a powerful impression among new fans and fellow artists.
“When you find something that makes you feel something, it makes it worth fighting for,” says Kajzer, who has remained part of the band’s management team ever since, now at 10th Street Entertainment. “I had never felt it before. PS: I’ve never really felt that again, that same early feeling. You believe in it and you want to shake everyone else and make them get it as well.”
Five Finger Death Punch’s recording career began by uploading a few songs at a time — early versions of “Bleeding,” “Salvation,” and “The Way of The Fist” — to MySpace, then an essential platform for new acts, or what Bathory now remembers with a laugh as “the center of the universe.”
“It was extremely hard, but in the beginning we knew we had something because there was this instant interaction,” Bathory says of fan response. “We were all in bands before — many, many bands. We all recognized that, OK, there’s something different here. We didn’t have to convince people. It just started happening and it was growing really fast.”
Zoltan Bathory, stands beneath a Turkish lamp in his Las Vegas house.
(Steve Appleford)
“The ones that make it, they’re here for decade after decade,” he says of the larger metal scene, which enjoys a seemingly eternal audience. “The family [of fans] is extremely loyal and they’re there forever. Once you’re in, you’re in.”
The band’s first album, 2007’s “The Way of the Fist,” was largely recorded in Bathory’s apartment near the Sunset Strip. It reached halfway up the Billboard Top 200 album chart and eventually went gold, with 500,000 copies sold. While even greater success follower, there has also been the usual ups and downs in the life of a metal band, with group members coming and going, troubles with substance abuse, and arguments over creative choices.
After two decades together, the singer and the guitarist have survived.
“It’s still a tornado. It’s a band, a bunch of guys, so I don’t think it’s ever going to change. We built this freaking thing like it was a battleship,” says Bathory with a grin, sitting in the castle beneath an ornate Turkish lamp.
“It’s always going to be that we fight and argue, but at the end of the day, we always figure things out. We always climb the next mountain.”
India wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant struggles with finger injury as India keep England in sight on day two of third Test.
As his India teammates closed in on dismissing England in the third Test at Lord’s, Rishabh Pant gave himself one last personal fitness test.
When England were nine men down, Pant left the dressing room with bat in hand and walked the boundary for an impromptu net session on Friday.
He just wanted to be sure the left index finger he damaged while wicketkeeping on Thursday could handle his eccentric batting style.
The finger seemingly did.
He walked in as arranged at number five in the order and was still there at stumps after scoring 19 off 33 balls.
Although Pant was visibly in pain after some shots, England didn’t really test him.
India batsman Rishabh Pant gets some medical attention for his injured finger [Stu Forster/Getty Images]
He mainly faced tired medium-pacer Chris Woakes and spinner Shoaib Bashir, off whom he hit his three boundaries. He faced only one delivery from the faster Brydon Carse and got a leg bye.
The real test for Pant’s finger and tolerance for pain will surely come on Saturday when India resume on 145-3, trailing England by 242 runs, and he will have to face 145-kilometre-per-hour (90-mile-per-hour) zingers from Jofra Archer and Carse.
Pant was hurt after lunch on Thursday and never returned to keep for India. England wasn’t dismissed until after lunch on Friday, but Pant’s replacement behind the stumps, Dhruv Jurel, shone by taking three catches.
Pant, India’s vice captain, made back-to-back centuries in the first Test and a 65 in the second Test.
Fast bowler Jamie Overton has been ruled out of England’s remaining two one-day internationals against West Indies with a broken finger.
Overton suffered a broken little finger while attempting to take a return catch during England’s huge win in the series-opener at Edgbaston on Thursday.
The 31-year-old immediately left the field for treatment but came back on to bowl and took three wickets.
Overton is expected to be out for about a month, so will also miss the three T20s against West Indies that follow the ODIs.
No replacement has been called up for the second ODI in Cardiff on Sunday, when England could secure the series.
