Turner

With a sixth year of basketball eligibility at UC Irvine, former St. Francis High guard Andre Henry has become so familiar with coach Russell Turner that both consider each other family.

Henry, who was injured last season after nine games, is back healthy, and Turner thinks he’s ready to be a standout on offense and defense this season.

He calls Henry one of the finest recruits he ever signed out of St. Francis in 2020. In 2023-24, he was the Big West Conference defensive player of the year.

“Andre was probably the top-ranked recruit we ever got,” said Turner, in his 16th season. “I watched him elevate his team at St. Francis and he’s still that type of personality. I’m thrilled where is right now and he’s going to have a great season on both sides of the ball. There’s not a limit he can accomplish.”

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UC Irvine men’s basketball coach talks about how Andre Henry has become a standout on the court for the Anteaters.

Turner said he’s grateful for Henry’s loyalty and commitment to the UC Irvine basketball program.

“Andre has become family with me and my staff,” he said. “He’s made great sacrifices to remain in our program. I think he sees we’re committed to him and I certainly see how committed he and his family have been to us. Hopefully, we can write the end to a great story in his sixth year.”

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PHILADELPHIA — This is over.

Or, from the perspective of the Dodgers, this is just starting.

Because the Dodgers are returning to the World Series.

Technically, they still have to close out their National League Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies. They still have to win the NL Championship Series.

But they will.

They will because they won’t blow the two-games-to-none lead they have after their 4-3 victory over the Phillies on Monday in Game 2 of their best-of-five series.

They will because the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs don’t have the firepower necessary to take down these Dodgers in the next round.

One victory at Citizens Bank Park would have sufficed. The Dodgers won two, and now they’re on the verge of sweeping the greatest threat they will encounter in their title defense.

“To get two in this environment is obviously massive,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “You can’t understate it. This is a really hard place to play in the regular season, let alone here (in the playoffs).”

The Dodgers can officially eliminate the Phillies on Wednesday.

They will be playing at Dodger Stadium. They will have their best pitcher on the mound in Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Call in a priest — or a padre. The time has come to read the Phillies their last rites.

The Dodgers didn’t come close to winning 120 games, and they were underwhelming in the regular season, which explains why they were unable to secure either of the first-round byes that were claimed by the Phillies and Brewers. They entered the postseason with an alarmingly untrustworthy bullpen, and that bullpen nearly blew a four-run lead in Game 2.

But in stealing two wins at Citizens Bank Park, the Dodgers demonstrated they still have that championship something that no other team in baseball has.

That something emerged on Monday night in the six scoreless innings pitched by Blake Snell, the run-scoring slide by Teoscar Hernández on a slow roller by Kike Hernández, the two-run single by Will Smith that broke open the game, the insurance run driven in by Shohei Ohtani. That something was reflected in the two innings contributed by converted starter Emmet Sheehan, and game-saving defensive plays made by Mookie Betts, Max Muncy and Miguel Rojas.

“It’s huge,” manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s obviously huge. Guys are really stepping up.”

The Phillies aren’t stepping up, and their championship window that was opened by the likes of Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber could soon be closing. The urgency of the situation was recognized, with Phillies manager Rob Thomson making no effort to downplay the importance of Game 2, saying before the game that Ranger Suarez and Aaron Nola could pitch in relief.

Suárez and Nola were two candidates to start Game 3 (the Phillies announced after the game Nola would get the nod).

Thomson was prepared to deploy Suárez in a high-leverage situation. He was ready to call on Nola if the game went into extra innings.

“And we’ll figure out Game 3,” Thomson said.

The home fans comprehended the stakes. Citizens Bank Park was a madhouse in Game 1, but the crowd for Game 2 was comparatively toned down.

The nervous tension in the stadium quickly morphed into unbridled frustration, as the Phillies’ lineup was unable to do anything against Snell.

There were boos when batting champion Trea Turner struck out in the third inning. There were boos when Brandon Marsh was caught stealing on a pickoff by Snell to end the inning. There were more boos when Alec Bohm struck out for the final out of the fourth.

The first hit Snell gave up was with two outs in the fifth inning, a flare single to center field by Edmundo Sosa. The very next batter, Marsh, grounded out. More boos.

How nervous were Phillies fans? When a warning on the public-address system about streaking was followed by a bare-chested Philly Phanatic running across the outfield before the sixth inning, they offered no reaction. Baseball’s most iconic mascot was completely ignored.

Up to this point, the Dodgers were equally unproductive against the Phillies starter Jesús Luzardo. Betts singled and Teoscar Hernández walked in successive at-bats in the first inning, only for Luzardo to retire the next 17 batters in a row.

The Phillies threatened Snell for the first time in the sixth inning when Turner and Kyle Schwarber drew successive one-out walks. Up next: Harper, a two-time NL most valuable player.

In almost any other postseason, this is where Roberts would have instructed one of his coaches to phone the bullpen. But Roberts wasn’t about to replace Snell, not at this stage of the game, not with the combustibility of his relievers.

Snell struck out Harper and forced Bohm to hit a sharp grounder to Rojas at third base. Once Rojas secured the ball, he dived to the nearest bag, his outstretched glove touching the base before the hand of a sliding Turner.

The defensive stand set the stage for a four-run seventh inning that decided the game.

Thomson inadvertently assisted the effort but not because he removed Luzardo. His error was in the pitcher he chose to replace Luzardo with runners on second and third base with no outs. With closer Jhoan Duran available, Thomson went with Orion Kerkering.

Nothing could stop the Dodgers — not even their own bullpen.

Sheehan pitched the seventh and eighth innings, over which he limited the Phillies to a run.

Reluctant to use rookie Roki Sasaki twice in three days — Sasaki closed out Game 1 — Roberts gambled by calling on Blake Treinen to pitch the ninth inning. The slumping former World Series hero failed to get a single out, giving up a pair of runs on a double by Nick Castellanos. What was once a four-run lead was suddenly down to 4-3.

With Alex Vesia on the mound, the Dodgers executed a wheel play that resulted in Muncy fielding a bunt by Bryson Stott and throwing to third base, where Betts applied a tag on Castellanos. The play potentially saved a run, as well as the game.

Vesia was replaced with two outs and runners on the corners by Sasaki, who forced Turner to ground out.

The game was over.

Unofficially, the most important series of the postseason was, too.

Ike Turner Jr., the son of Ike and Tina Turner who won a Grammy for traditional blues album in 2007 as a producer on his father’s album “Risin’ With the Blues,” has died. He was 67.

Turner died Saturday at a Los Angeles hospital from kidney failure, family member Jacqueline Bullock told TMZ. She said the musician had been battling heart issues for years and had a stroke last month.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of my cousin, Ike Turner, Jr.,” Bullock said in a statement to the New York Post. ‘”Junior’ was more than a cousin to me, but rather a brother, as we grew up in the same famed household together.”

“As the son of Tina and Ike Turner, from an early age, his talents were evident as there wasn’t an instrument he did not want to play,” the statement continued. “Eventually, Junior would end up helping to run Bolic Sound Studios, the recording studios founded by his father, Ike Turner.”

Ike Turner Jr., and friend Mary Ellis at a memorial service for his father in 2007.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

A musician, producer and sound engineer, Turner was pulled into the music business by his father when he was 13.

“My father took me out of [the] house and out of school and I traveled [with them],” Turner said in a 2017 interview on “The Bobby Eaton Show.” “That wasn’t no easy work.”

In that same interview, he also shared the role his mother Tina played in the instruments he picked up in his youth.

“My first instrument was drums, until my mother started making me break my drums down every day,” he said. “The piano was always there in the family room, so I started playing piano. I play guitar and bass. Everything except horn because horn used to make me dizzy from blowing air.”

Turner was one of four children associated with Ike Sr. and Tina Turner’s famed union, which ended with the latter filing for divorce in 1974 (finalized in 1978). The couple performed together from 1960 to 1976 as the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, but their musical achievements were often overshadowed by the former’s abuse.

Born in 1958 to Ike Turner Sr. and Lorraine Taylor, Ike Jr. and his brother Michael were adopted by the “What’s Love Got to Do With It” singer upon her marriage in 1962 to their father. Their siblings also included Ronnie and Craig.

“Tina raised me from the age of 2,” Ike Jr. told the Mail on Sunday in 2018. “She’s the only mother I’ve ever known.”

Over the years Turner had commented a number of times on his estrangement from his mother since his parents’ divorce. In 2018 he said he had not spoken to her in nearly 20 years.

Turner was preceded in death by both of his parents and two of his siblings. His father died in 2007 of a cocaine overdose and Tina died in 2023 after a long illness. Craig Turner died by suicide in 2018 and Ronnie Turner of complications related to late-stage cancer in 2022.

Great Britain’s Ben Turner produced a stunning sprint finish at the Vuelta a Espana to claim his first ever Grand Tour stage win.

Turner won the fourth stage of the race – a 206.7km medium mountain route from Susa to Voiron – from Belgian duo Jasper Philipsen and Edward Planckaert, who finished second and third.

The 26-year-old – a late call up to the Vuelta when Ineos team-mate Lucas Hamilton pulled out through illness – powered to victory on a long, rising finish.

“It’s a crazy feeling. I really believed in myself today and trusted what I had to do,” said Turner, who picked up his third win as a professional.

France’s David Gaudu, who won the third stage, leads the overall standings having finished enough places in front of Jonas Vingegaard of Denmark to take the red jersey on count-back.

More to follow.

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Wales News Service

Wales News Service

‘Gut-wrenching and sickening’

Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan’s “Washington Black,” a prizewinning story of race, romance, friendship and identity set in the early 19th century, has been translated by Selwyn Seyfu Hinds and Kimberly Ann Harrison into a Hulu miniseries. Unsurprisingly, it plays more like a miniseries than a novel, amplifying the action, the drama and the romance; beefing up lesser characters; drawing lines under, after all, valid points about prejudice, inequality and injustice; and dressing it up with Hollywood musical cues. Taking the show as a sometimes fantastic historical adventure, those aren’t bad things, but, unlike the book, subtlety is not the series’ strong suit.

Written in the first person, the novel proceeds chronologically, while the series, which follows other, sometimes added characters into interpolated storylines, switches between 1830 — when our hero, George Washington Black, called Wash, is 11 years old and enslaved on a Barbados sugar plantation — and 1837, when he lives as a free young man in Halifax, Nova Scotia, drawing beautiful pictures and designing a before-its-time airship. (For the benefit of American viewers wondering why we’re in Halifax, opening narration helpfully identifies it as the last stop on the Underground Railroad.)

The split timeline does make Entertainment Sense. We don’t have to wait around for young Wash (Eddie Karanja) to grow up into older Wash (Ernest Kingsley Jr.), and we are immediately introduced to Tanna Goff (Iola Evans), arriving from London with her father (Rupert Graves) for a “fresh start.” (There was a scandal back in Britain.) Unbeknownst to Tanna, her father plans to marry her off to a young Canadian bigwig (Edward Bluemel), for what he believes is her own security. This is new, if very familiar, material.

Wash and Tanna meet-cute at the docks where he works, when based on her skin, he mistakes her for a servant — she’s been passing for white, but he (and we) recognize her as a person of color. (Melanesian, to be exact.) In the coming days, he’ll contrive to meet her here and there, until they get friendly, and friendlier. Like Wash, she’ll be a voice for living free, “to be myself, to live in my own skin.” (“We’re both dreamers,” she muses. “Can’t we dream up a different world?”) Coincidentally, and not unfortunately, her papa is a marine biologist, the author of a book Wash, who has a keen interest in the subject, knows well. Wash’s gift for capturing the essence of living things on paper may prove useful to him.

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1. Eddie Karanja plays young Wash in the series. (James Van Evers / Disney) 2. Sterling K. Brown, an executive producer, also stars. (Chris Reardon / Disney)

Meanwhile, if that’s the word, back in 1830, the future looks dim for young Wash under the harsh rule of plantation owner Erasmus Wilde (Julian Rhind-Tutt), a situation eased only by his beloved caring protector Big Kit (Shaunette Renée Wilson). (Ironically, the end of slavery throughout the British Empire was just around the corner.) One day, Erasmus’ brother Christopher (Tom Ellis), called Titch, arrives driving a giant steam-powered tractor for no practical reason other than to announce him as a somewhat eccentric inventor, like Caractacus Pott; but it provides a point of connection between Titch and Wash, who becomes his assistant. Another character who had to leave London, Titch plans to use an island hilltop to launch his “cloud cutter,” a flying machine that won’t exist in the real world for many years but which looks cool. (Steampunk is the applicable term.)

When an incident on the island threatens to paint Wash, wrongly, as a murderer, Titch takes him up, up and away in his beautiful balloon. It’s in the supercharged spirit of this adaptation that when they crash into a sailing ship, it should be full of pirates, and not merely pirates, but pirates who have stolen from the British a new sort of craft powered by a dynamo that looks heavy enough to sink it. This passage is crafted to show us a self-determined society, multiethnic and multigendered. When the pirates mutiny (bloodlessly), the new captain is a woman. They like Wash more than Titch, whom they throw in the brig, but they are nice, relatively speaking.

Titch is an avowed abolitionist who won’t use the sugar the plantation produces, and though we are called upon to note small hypocrisies or to question his motivations — is he trying to assuage his 19th century white liberal guilt even as he uses Wash to his own ends? — I will declare him sincere, if also a man of his time. The showrunners put him into a (very) brief debate with fierce figure from history Nat Turner (Jamie Hector), opposing Turner’s militarism against Titch’s less persuasive “reason, logic and the appeal to man’s better nature,” an argument suspended when Turner holds a knife to his throat. (Wash intercedes on his behalf; he is more than once his mentor’s protector.) It also adds a shot of American history into this Canadian story.

Sterling K. Brown, an executive producer, plays Medwin, a character much expanded from the novel, the unofficial mayor of the Black community who will swashbuckle in when a day needs to be saved. (There are bounty hunters from down south, looking for Wash; Billy Boyd, former Hobbit, is wonderfully creepy as Willard.) As to Wash, it’s not enough that he’s a gifted artist and scientist; the show introduces him as “a boy brave enough to change the world.”

The novel trots the globe, from Barbados to Virginia to Nova Scotia to the Arctic to London to Morocco, and besides the hot-air balloon, includes the invention of the public aquarium. Though only four episodes of the series were available to review, photos indicate that lands of snow and sand are indeed on the itinerary (not sure about the aquarium), and as a fan of 19th century globe-trotting adventures, I do remain eager to see what the series makes of them. Kingsley and Evans, in their blossoming love story and otherwise, are good company throughout.

Edugyan ends her book on a suspended chord, a note of mystery I don’t imagine will be definitive enough for the filmmakers. But we shall see.

A huge British actor, who starred in Masters of the Air, is a fan-favourite option to take on the role of James Bond in the upcoming instalment

A huge British star with a pop singer girlfriend is in the lead to take on the role of James Bond for the next instalment of the 007 franchise. There have been many rumours on who could be taking on the coveted role, including Saltburn star Jacob Elordi, Spider-Man’s Tom Holland and Babygirl actor Harris Dickinson.

It is now being said Hammersmith-born star Callum Turner could also be in running for the role. In new odds from Heart Bingo, the Masters of the Air star, who is engaged with Dua Lipa, is being lined up as the next 007. Sarah Caskie, Head of Brand for online website Heart Bingo, said: “The masses have spoken on X and we’ve collated the data to find that Callum Turner is the people’s choice to replace Daniel Craig, with 63% of posts concerning his potential role in the next film being positive, while 0% were negative.”

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She added: “Henry Cavill’s 34% positivity put him second in the eyes of the public, but 3% didn’t seem too keen on him being the next Bond.”

Callum is best known for his role as Theseus Scamander in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Frank Churchill in Emma.

He also starred in The Boys in the Boat, and TV shows Masters of the Air and The Capture.

Amazon completed its massive $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM Studios just over three years ago, which included the James Bond franchise. Fans of the movie haven’t seen a new James Bond film since 2021, when No Time to Die was released as the final movie with Daniel Craig playing the lead role.

Amazon recently announced that Denis Villeneuve has signed up to direct the movie. He is best known for directing the Dune movies.

Tanya Lapointe will serve as executive producer, and Amy Pascal and David Heyman will serve as producers.

Upon taking the role, Denis emphasised that he is a huge fan of the franchise and that it is a ‘huge honour’ to take on the role of director.

He said: “Some of my earliest movie-going memories are connected to 007. I grew up watching James Bond films with my father, ever since Dr. No with Sean Connery.

“I’m a die-hard Bond fan. To me, he’s sacred territory. I intend to honour the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come.”

He continued: “This is a massive responsibility, but also, incredibly exciting for me and a huge honour. Amy, David, and I are absolutely thrilled to bring him back to the screen. Thank you to Amazon MGM Studios for their trust.”

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“Untamed,” a quasi-police drama premiering Thursday on Netflix, is a vacation from most crime shows, set not in a big city or cozy village but in the wilds of Yosemite National Park. (Never mind that the series was shot in British Columbia, which has nothing to apologize for when it comes to dramatic scenery, and whose park rangers are not threatened by draconian budget cuts nor their parks by politicians’ desire to sell off public lands.)

The mountains and valleys, the rivers and brooks, the occasional deer or bear are as much a part of the mise-en-scène as the series’ complicated, yet essentially straightforward heroes and villains. Lacking big themes, it’s not so much meat-and-potatoes television as fish and corn grilled over a camp fire, and on the prestige scale it sits somewhere between “Magnum P.I.” and “True Detective,” leaning toward the former.

Created by Mark L. Smith (“American Primeval”) and Elle Smith (“The Marsh King’s Daughter”) and starring Eric Bana and Sam Neill, Antipodean actors wearing American accents once again, it’s a limited series, though, for a while, it has the quality of a pilot, introducing characters that could profitably be reused — with perhaps a little less of the trauma peeking out at every corner. Of course, if the show becomes a fantabulous success, the Netflix engineers may contrive a way to make it live again; it’s happened before.

“Untamed” starts big. Two climbers are making their way up the face of El Capitan when a woman’s body comes flying over the cliff, gets tangled in their ropes and hangs suspended, dead. She is hanging there still — the climbers have been rescued — when Investigative Services Branch special agent Kyle Turner (Bana) rides in on his horse.

“Here comes f—ing Gary Cooper,” mutters grumbling ranger Bruce Milch (William Smillie) to new ranger Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago), a former police officer (and single mother, with a threatening ex) newly arrived from Los Angeles. (The horse, says Milch, who regards it as a high horse, gives him “a better angle to look down on us lowly rangers.”) What are the odds on Vasquez becoming Turner’s (junior) partner? And on a difficult relationship developing into a learning curve (“This is not L.A. — things happen different out here”) and turning almost … tender?

More heroically proportioned and handsome than anyone else in the show, a man of the forest with superior tracking skills, Turner is also a mess — a taciturn mess, which also makes him seem stoic — barely holding himself together, drinking too much, living in a cabin in the woods filled with unpacked boxes, undone by the unaddressed family tragedy that broke him and his marriage. (The dark side of stoicism.) Sympathetic remarried ex-wife Jill (Rosemarie DeWitt, keeping it real), who herself is only “as happy as I can be, I guess,” and sympathetic boss Paul Souter (Neill), try to keep him straight.

“You’ve locked yourself away in this park, Kyle,” Souter tells Turner. “It’s not healthy.” Turner, however, prefers “most animals to people — especially my horse.” Nevertheless, he has a couple of friends: Shane Maguire (Wilson Bethel), a wildlife manager — that means he shoots things, so be forewarned — also living in the woods, but without the cabin, is the toxic one; Mato Begay (Trevor Carroll), an Indigenous policeman, the nontoxic one. And he’s sleeping with a concierge at the local nice hotel, just so that element is covered; it’s otherwise beside the point.

If the dialogue often has the flavor of coming off a page rather than out of a character, it gets the job done, and if the characters are essentially static, people don’t change overnight, and consistency is a hallmark of detective fiction. The narrative wisely stays close to Turner and/or Vasquez; there are enough twists and tendrils in the main overlapping plots without running off into less related matters. (Keeping the series to six episodes is also a plus, and something to be encouraged, makers of streaming series. Your critic will thank you for it.) Still, between the hot cases and the cold cases, with their collateral damage; hippie squatters from central casting chanting “Our Earth, our land;” a mysterious gold tattoo, indigenous glyphs and old mines — there is an especially tense scene involving a tight tunnel and rising water — the show stays busy. Though last-minute heavy surprises don’t register emotionally — trauma overload, maybe — you will not be left wanting for answers, or closure.

And you will learn quite a bit about vultures and their dining habits — not what you might think.

Myles Turner has agreed to a four-year deal to join the Milwaukee Bucks, who waived nine-time All-Star Damian Lillard to make the acquisition happen, a person with knowledge of the moves told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

Turner is agreeing to a deal that ends with a player option, after spending the entirety of his first 10 seasons with the Indiana Pacers, who went to the NBA Finals this past season. The remaining $112.6 million owed to Lillard will be paid out over the next five seasons via the NBA’s stretch provision, according to the person who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because neither move was announced by the clubs.

ESPN, which first reported the plan by the Pacers and Bucks, said Turner agreed to a contract worth $107 million.

In both cases, Achilles tendon injuries played a role in the surprising moves.

Indiana expects to be without star guard Tyrese Haliburton for the entirety of next season because he ruptured his Achilles tendon in Game 7 of the NBA Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder while playing through what was diagnosed as a calf strain. Earlier in the playoffs, Lillard ruptured his Achilles tendon while playing for Milwaukee in Round 1 against Indiana.

Lillard is likely to miss most, if not all, of next season. He will be free to sign with anyone he chooses, and teams could simply sign him now, give him a chance to continue his recovery and do so with hope that the seven-time All-NBA selection is ready to go by the start of the 2026-27 season.

“This is an opportunity for Damian to stay home to continue his rehabilitation, take time to decide where he wants to play next, while still being paid his entire contract,” said Aaron Goodwin, Lillard’s agent.

Turner has averaged 14.1 points and 6.8 rebounds in his 10 seasons with the Pacers, who had to make a decision this summer about whether to surpass the luxury tax threshold with the knowledge that Haliburton likely will not play this coming season.

Lillard, who turns 35 this month, has averaged 25.1 points and 6.7 assists in 900 regular-season games over 13 seasons — the first 11 with Portland.

The Bucks lost Brook Lopez to the Clippers when free agency opened Monday.

SGA gets extension

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder have agreed on a record-setting four-year, $285-million contract extension that would give him the highest single-season average salary in NBA history, a person with knowledge of the agreement said Tuesday.

He is coming off a season when he became the fourth player in NBA history to win MVP, Finals MVP and a scoring title while playing for a champion in the same season. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did it once, Michael Jordan then did it four times and Shaquille O’Neal was the last entrant into that fraternity until Gilgeous-Alexander joined the club.

Schröder to Kings

Veteran point guard and German Olympic team member Dennis Schröder has agreed to join the Sacramento Kings on a three-year deal, the third of which is not fully guaranteed, a person with knowledge of that agreement said Tuesday. ESPN reported the total value of the deal is $45 million.

Schröder, who is entering his 13th NBA season, is joining his 10th club — and ninth in the last seven years. He spent the first five seasons of his career with Atlanta, then has been with Oklahoma City, the Lakers (twice), Boston, Houston, Toronto, Brooklyn, Golden State and Detroit at various times over the last seven seasons.

He has averaged 13.9 points and 4.9 assists in 849 regular-season games.

Reynolds writes for the Associated Press.