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CP Source: Raptors’ Nick Nurse to coach Canada at 2019 FIBA World Cup

Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse has agreed to coach Canada’s men’s basketball team at the 2019 FIBA World Cup — and possibly beyond.

A source confirmed a media report to The Canadian Press on Sunday that said Nurse would serve as Canada’s head coach for the World Cup tournament, which begins August in China. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because Canada Basketball had not announced the hiring.

The World Cup is the main qualifier for the 2020 Toyko Olympics and Nurse would also coach Canada at the Summer Games if the team qualifies.

The media report first surfaced Sunday afternoon, hours after Nurse led the Raptors to their first Eastern Conference championship in franchise history on Saturday night. The Raptors will play the defending champion Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals beginning Thursday in Toronto.

Canada Basketball had been searching for a head coach for its senior men’s team for months.

Long-term head coach Jay Triano withdrew his name from the ongoing search for “personal reasons” in March. Canada Basketball’s CEO Glen Grunwald and general manager of the men’s program Rowan Barrett said at that time that they expected to have a coach in place by the end of the month.

Both Grunwald and Barrett replied “no comment” when asked by The Canadian Press about Nurse’s hiring.

Nurse is in his first season as head coach of Toronto’s NBA franchise. The former Raptors assistant coach was promoted after the team fired Dwane Casey at the end of the 2017-18 season.

The Raptors finished second in the Eastern Conference this season at 58-24, two wins less than the league-best Milwaukee Bucks.

Source:: Sportsnet.ca

In Washington, it’s now legal to compost your body after death

Enlarge / Mockup of a future Recompose facility. (credit: MOLT Studios)

This week, Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed a bill to allow the composting of human remains within the state. It is the only state in the US—and possibly the only government in the world—to explicitly allow “natural organic reduction” of human remains.

The bill also legalizes alkaline hydrolysis, a base chemical process that also uses heat, pressure, and water to liquify remains. Bone is not liquified in the process, so it can be crushed and given to loved ones. Alkaline hydrolysis is legal in 19 other states, according to the New York Times.

The new law, which will take effect in May 2020, is a boon for Recompose, an organization that wants to offer composting as an alternative to green burials and cremation. Traditional burials usually require embalming chemicals and caskets that will remain in the ground for centuries if not millennia. Green burials, which forgo elaborate caskets and embalming chemicals, still require some amount of land, which can be expensive, especially in urban areas. Cremation, on the other hand, requires a significant amount of energy (mostly from fossil fuels) to complete, releasing greenhouse gases in the process.

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Source:: Ars Technica

How do All in the Family and The Jeffersons translate to 2019? Surprisingly well.

Woody Harrelson and Marisa Tomei step into the iconic roles of Archie and Edith Bunker.

ABC hopped in a time machine to celebrate TV legend Norman Lear — and got terrific ratings.

Every week, we pick a new episode of the week. It could be good. It could be bad. It will always be interesting. You can read the archives here. The episode of the week for May 19 through 25 is the ABC special Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s All in the Family and The Jeffersons.

Is nostalgia all we have left? If you were to watch Live in Front of a Studio Audience — a hyper-earnest attempt to replicate episodes of two of Norman Lear’s hit 1970s sitcoms with popular, contemporary actors — without recognizing its source material, would it make any sense to you? Would you know who Archie Bunker was without me saying, “the bigot who represented greatest generation conservatism in the 1970s mega-hit All in the Family”?

Probably. The storytelling of these old shows is rock solid, and so long as you’re at least somewhat familiar with what America’s cultural and social mores looked like in the 1970s (although if that’s the case, you likely also know the shows of Norman Lear), you could follow along just fine.

But there’s something so fetishistic about TV’s increasing reliance on resurrecting its own past by any means possible. Live in Front of a Studio Audience almost reminded me of a high school play version of M*A*S*H I once attended, where every performance felt like a copy of a copy of a copy of Alan Alda. It felt reanimated, right down to the ways that the various performers were doing spins on what the original actors brought to the roles. It’s all a little bit ghoulish, right?

Nah. I kind of loved it!

America’s very overt longing for …read more

Source:: Vox – All

20 years ago: MVP Karl Malone an MIA as Jazz bow out

Portland Trail Blazers forward Brian Grant gets an elbow to his right eye from Utah Jazz forward Karl Malone (32) in the first quarter Tuesday, May 25, 1999, in Salt Lake City.
Associated Press

Editor’s note: Every Sunday, the Deseret News sports staff takes a look back into our archives.

NBA MVP Karl Malone had just 8 points and the Utah Jazz’s season ended in disappointment in a 92-80 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers in Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals.

He shot 3 of 16 from the field in what he called one of the worst …read more

Source:: Deseret News – Sports News