DENVER — Nikola Jokic had 25 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists before the NBA MVP was ejected for violently slamming his shoulder into Markieff Morris, and the Denver Nuggets beat the Miami Heat 113-96 on Monday night.
The Heat said Morris has an apparent neck injury. Jokic said he saw a replay of the altercation and recoiled when he saw how hard Morris’ head hit the floor.
“I felt bad, really bad,” Jokic said.
Will Barton scored 25 points and Jeff Green, who started in place of an injured Michael Porter Jr., added 13 points for the Nuggets. Denver held the opposition to under 100 points for the seventh time this season.
Jimmy Butler had 31 points to lead the Heat, and Duncan Robinson had 13.
With 2:39 remaining, Morris elbowed Jokic in the midsection at half court. Jokic retaliated with a hard shove from behind with his upper arm/shoulder that knocked Morris to the floor. Morris rolled in pain as teammates pushed Jokic away. Medical personnel brought a stretcher onto the floor but Morris was able to get up and walk off the floor on his own.
“We wanted to make sure Kieff was and is OK. We’ll find out more,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of the apparent neck injury. “He’s moving around right now in the locker room. But that was a very dangerous, dirty play.”
Morris was assessed a flagrant foul and ejected, Jokic also was ejected and Butler received a technical foul.
Spoelstra said Jokic’s actions were “absolutely uncalled for.” Jokic, on the other hand, said Morris’ hit went beyond a hard foul.
“I felt I just needed to protect myself but on the other hand I’m not supposed to react that way, get thrown out of the game,” Jokic said.
USA Today Sports (2), AP
Green called it “a play that shouldn’t happen.”
“I think Markieff just went and tried to make a hard foul. I don’t think he had any intention of hurting Joker,” he said. “But sometimes when things like that happen, you don’t know the intention of the other person and you just react and that’s what Joker did.”
Up by 15 at the half, the Nuggets scored 11 of the first 16 points in the third quarter, pushing their lead to 75-54 on a driving layup by Green off a feed from Jokic. Denver took a 91-70 lead into the fourth quarter.
Butler hit successive 3s around a basket by Jokic as Miami pulled to within 105-92 with jut over four minutes remaining before Barton connected on successive 3s to seal the win for Denver.
The Nuggets built a 64-49 lead at halftime, fueled by Jokic, Barton and Morris, all of whom were in double figures scoring by the intermission.
A trial among about 1,500 patients in Brazil showed those who took the drug, known as fluvoxamine, were less likely to progress to severe disease and to require hospitalization.
The drug, sold under the brand name Luvox, is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) most often used to treat obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and depression. But it can affect inflammation, said Dr. Angela Reiersen, an associate professor of psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis who worked on the study, published in The Lancet Global Health.
“Fluvoxamine may reduce the production of inflammatory molecules called cytokines, that can be triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection,” Reiersen said in a statement. The drug may also reduce blood platelets, which may affect the clotting effects of coronavirus infection.
Reierson and colleagues gave 741 volunteers with Covid-19 100 mg of fluvoxamine twice a day for 10 days while 756 volunteers got a placebo.
Among the patients who got fluvoxamine, 79 — or about 11% — needed treatment in an ER or hospital room compared to nearly 16% of those given placebos. It was a 5% decrease in absolute risk and a 32% decrease in relative risk.
More study is needed to see if the drug might be added to the treatments given to coronavirus patients, but it’s cheap. “A 10-day course of fluvoxamine costs approximately $4 even in well-resourced settings,” the researchers wrote.
It’s not a cure, but if the drug can help keep patients out of the hospital, it would be useful.
“Given fluvoxamine’s safety, tolerability, ease of use, low cost, and widespread availability, these findings might influence national and international guidelines on the clinical management of COVID-19,” they concluded.
A related drug, Prozac, or fluoxetine, is also cheap and even more widely available, and the researchers said this drug should be studied to see if it might help.
“It is now crucial to establish whether a class effect exists and whether these drugs can be used interchangeably for COVID-19,” they wrote.
It wasn’t a perfect study, they noted. It was done in Brazil, and the patients had a higher rate of hospitalization than Covid-19 patients in other clinical trials.
“There is no standard of care that exists for early treatment of COVID-19 and various advocacy groups promote different interventions, including some of those evaluated in this and our previous trials. Furthermore, there is little understanding of who is at greatest risk of disease progression from this disease as some patients with numerous risk factors do recover quickly whereas some others with less established risk factors might not,” they wrote.
Priced for young, first-time car buyers, the ID. Life will cost about €20,000, the equivalent of just under $24,000 at current exchange rates. VW did not say which specific markets the new model would be offered in.
Since it’s just a concept vehicle, the ID. Life’s designers have included some features that might not appear in the actual production vehicle.
For instance, the car is made fromseveral differentrecycled and renewable materials. Wood chips were used as a coloring agent in the car’s paint, VW said, and the lightweight removable roof is made from recycled bottles. The tires are made from biologically based oils, rice husks and natural rubber, VW claimed.
The open-topped steering wheel has atouchscreen at its center to control a number of driving features, including the gear selector. The driver’s own cell phone can be used like a center touchscreen.
The concept vehicle also includes a number of features that, essentially, turn the car into a mobile entertainment center.
“The customer of tomorrow won’t simply want to get from A to B; they will be much more interested in the experiences that a car can offer,” said Volkswagen brand chief executive Ralf Brandstätter. “The ID. Life is our answer to this.”
The little crossover even has a video game projector along with a projection screen that rises from the dashboard. The front and back seats can fold down flat to be used as beds or to make room for large cargo.
The ID. Life is based on the same electric car engineering as some current VW models, such as the ID.4 crossover SUV. The ID. Life is smaller, though, and it has front-wheel-drive instead of rear-wheel-drive like VW’s other ID models. The car can go from zero to 60 miles in under seven seconds and will be able to travel about 248 miles on a single charge based on European testing parameters, according to VW.
The Indo-Pacific Command chief pushed lawmakers to boost Guam’s defenses against threats from China.
He said that Aegis Ashore would better protect the strategic territory from missiles.
“Guam is a target today,” he stated, noting that Guam will face greater threats in the future.
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The top US commander in the Indo-Pacific pressed lawmakers on Tuesday to support the fielding of additional air-and-missile defense capabilities for Guam given China’s growing ability to threaten the important territory.
“Guam is a target today,” US Navy Adm. Philip Davidson, the commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It needs to be defended, and it needs to be prepared for the threats that will come in the future.”
“Guam is not just a place that we believe that we can fight from, as we have for many decades,” he said, telling the Senate panel that “we are going to have to fight for it.”
The admiral, who has made the defense of Guam a top priority, said that this strategic US territory would benefit from Aegis Ashore. He argued that the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system in place to defend Guam is incapable “of meeting the current trajectory of threats from China.”
Davidson called attention to a Chinese propaganda video that showed an H-6 bomber strike on Andersen Air Force Base on Guam as evidence of China’s strategic thinking. The video was mocked for shamelessly ripping footage from Hollywood films like ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”
The Pentagon’s most recent China military power report noted that Chinese “H-6K bomber flights into the western Pacific Ocean demonstrate China’s ability to range Guam with air-launched [land-attack cruise missiles]” while the DF-26 mid-range missile nicknamed the “Guam Express” is “capable of conducting precision conventional or nuclear strikes against ground targets, which could include US bases on Guam.”
Davidson said that Guam would be better to prepared to defend against these threats with Aegis Ashore, an air-and-missile defense system based on the system the US Navy has installed on a number of its guided-missile destroyers and cruisers.
Davidson said Tuesday that America has “to demonstrate that any ambition China might have and any threat it might put forth toward Guam would come at cost.”
“That would be really by the collection of not only this defensive capability, which I think is so critical because it prevents a cheap shot,” but also other capabilities “to let China know that the cost of what they seek to do are too high and give them doubt in their success,” he said.
The admiral told lawmakers that putting Aegis Ashore on Guam would show China that “it “can’t knock Guam out with an easy shot and keep us out of the fight to present a fait accompli” in a regional crisis, such as a conflict over Taiwan.
Davidson’s Aegis Ashore proposal is part of the broader Pacific Defense Initiative expected to require an estimated $4.6 billion in defense funds in fiscal year 2022 and $27 billion over the next five years as the Pentagon makes competition with China a priority.
Department of Defense leadership has repeatedly identified China as the “pacing threat,” and the Biden administration has singled China out as America’s most challenging competitor.
In this competition, Guam is a vital territorial holding. Not only is it home to more than 170,000 US citizens and service members, but it also offers access to a deepwater port, fuel and munition storage, and an airfield that for US power projection. A submarine squadron and a ship that performs maintenance on them are based there.
“America’s day begins in Guam, and it is not only a location we must fight-from, but one we must also fight-for given the threats we face in the near term and the foreseeable future,” Davidson told lawmakers Tuesday.
I’ve been at the cheapskate game for over 13 years, and in that time I’ve tested hundreds of products and written about thousands more. Along the way, I’ve identified a select few that really stand out, that offer an unbeatable blend of performance and value. Every so often, I find myself thinking, “This is really a hall-of-fame deal.”
And that’s the story behind the Cheapskate Hall of Fame, my newly created pantheon of all-time greats. To kick things off, I’m inducting seven products and services. Over time I’ll add more, while also revisiting the list to make sure everything still qualifies. (This isn’t like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where spots are permanent. If a product gets discontinued, for example, or no longer represents the same amazing value, I might pull it.)
So read on for my picks, and be sure to let me know what products or services you think deserve to be included.
Lexy Savvides/CNET
I’ve been enamored with the Amazfit Bip for years now, and the newer S model is even better. For a mere $70 (sometimes $60, if you catch a sale), you get a smartwatch with an always-on transflective display, one that’s more readable in direct sunlight than even a high-end Apple Watch. Plus, it can run for weeks on a charge, even if you use features like GPS and heart-rate monitoring.
No, you can’t reply to text messages or invoke Alexa, but a few compromises are to be expected at this price. Read CNET’s Amazfit Bip S review to learn more.
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Think back just a little. When iPads burst on the scene in 2010, the starting price was $500. The Amazon Fire 7 costs literally one-tenth as much, yet it can do even more than Apple’s original tablet. Sure, the iPad has matured greatly since then, but it still starts at $329.
The Fire 7 may have a lowish-resolution screen and old-school Micro-USB power port, but it’s $50. (Very often, it goes on sale for $40, and occasionally even less than that.) With it you can stream video, read books, play games, check email, listen to music — all the things.
Yes, the smarter buy is the Fire HD 8, which offers a host of improvements for not a lot more money. But the Hall of Fame nod goes to the Fire 7, just for destroying expectations for what a $50 tablet can do.
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Bitwarden
I’ve already given my family instructions to put this on my tombstone: “You need a password manager!” Maybe I should include an asterisk: “…but you don’t have to pay for one.” Bitwarden is an open-source (read: no-cost) password manager that’s fast, versatile, easy to use and secure.
For me it replaced a non-free, overly bloated app that was increasingly causing problems on my PC. Bitwarden has been smooth sailing for nearly a year; I’m glad I made the switch.
There’s a Premium option available (just $10 annually) and a six-user family plan as well ($40), but I suspect most users won’t need either. Bitwarden works on all your devices and offers the all-important capability of automatically synchronizing between them. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
David Carnoy/CNET
I’ve lost count of how many AirPods alternatives have crossed my desk. But the EarFun Air stood out for one simple reason: Good sound, lots of features, low price. OK, that’s multiple reasons, but they combine to make this the current Hall of Fame earbuds pick. (Note to EarFun: A lot of very good competitors are gunning for you.)
The noise-isolating Air ‘buds don’t offer ANC, but they do come in a USB-C case that can also charge wirelessly. And they have one of my favorite features: in-ear detection. Take out a ‘bud, the music pauses. Put it back in, the music resumes.
EarFun lists these at $60, but they’re almost always on sale. At this writing, for example, there’s an on-page coupon that takes 20% off, bringing the price down to $45. And I’ve occasionally seen deals that drop them below $40. That’s an awful lot of bang for your earbud buck.
Read more:Best cheap true-wireless earbuds in 2021: Top AirPods alternatives for $100 or less
Hulu
Assuming you’re not interested in live TV, Hulu is the best value in streaming, period. Your $6 buys you access to a mammoth library of current and past TV series, some award-winning original content and, OK, a so-so selection of movies.
Yes, Apple TV and Disney Plus are competitive at $5 and $7, respectively, but they don’t offer anywhere near Hulu’s breadth of content — much of it exclusive to the service. You’ll find comfort viewing (Seinfeld, Happy Endings), cutting-edge creations (Devs, Mrs. America) and FX superstars (Fargo, Legion, What We Do in the Shadows). I think the Hulu original Palm Springs was perhaps the funniest movie I saw in 2020.
The bad news: The $6 plan includes commercials. You can get rid of them, but it’ll cost you double. At least you get the choice, unlike when you’re watching cable.
New Wave Toys
With rare exception, all power banks are the same: flat, black bricks. Bo-ring! This one looks exactly like the Sony Walkman cassette player of my youth, and even has working (though non-functional) buttons and sliders on the side.
The Hotline’s 16,000-mAh battery can charge up to three devices simultaneously: one via a Type-A USB 3.0 port that supports QuickCharge, one via a USB-C port and one via Qi wireless charging. There’s even a little LED flashlight and a bank of tiny lights that show how much power is remaining.
So this is no mere novelty device, something that gets by on looks alone. It’s a terrific mobile charger, and yet it’s priced like a fairly ordinary one: just $40.
Wyze
I still get looks of disbelief when I tell people about the Wyze Cam, which does everything a smart security camera should but costs only $20 (plus shipping). It’s a hall-of-famer in its own right, but I’m giving the nod to the $30 ($38 shipped at Amazon) Wyze Cam Pan, which can rotate a full 360 degrees on its base and has a 93-degree vertical range to boot.
The Pan would be a great deal at twice the price, given that it streams razor-sharp HD video (day or night) to your phone, provides two-way audio, alerts you when it detects sound and/or motion and stores video locally or in the cloud — at no extra charge.
Wyze makes a number of startlingly affordable smart-home products that are also Hall of Fame contenders. For now, however, the Cam Pan is a slam-dunk addition. Read CNET’s Wyze Cam Pan review to learn more.
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CNET’s Cheapskate scours the web for great deals on tech products and much more. For the latest deals and updates, follow him on Facebook and Twitter. You can also sign up for deal texts delivered right to your phone. Find more great buys on the CNET Deals page and and check out our CNET Coupons page for the latest Walmart discount codes, eBay coupons, Samsung promo codes and even more from hundreds of other online stores. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Answers live on our FAQ page.
Dustin Diamond‘s cancer diagnosis has been hard for him to deal with emotionally … and it has him questioning how this happened to him.
The “Saved by the Bell” star’s rep tells TMZ … Dustin’s struggling to come to terms with having the type of lung cancer he has — stage 4 small cell carcinoma — because it’s normally caused by smoking, and he’s never been a smoker.
So, we’re told Dustin can’t help but wonder if his cancer is the result of his frequent work travel over the past 20 years.
The rep says Dustin’s worked all over the country on film sets and at comedy clubs for meet-and-greets … and sometimes had to stay in pretty questionable hotels and motels, because there were no other options.
We’re told Dustin believes some of these spots might have had mold or asbestos … which he could have breathed in, causing his cancer.
As we reported … Dustin just completed his first round of chemo at a Florida hospital, and will start physical therapy soon while he awaits the second round of treatment.
We’re told his doctors have not determined what caused his cancer, but as we reported … he does have a history of it in his family. His mother died of breast cancer.
Dustin’s rep says they are awaiting more test results, and hoping to get some answers.
