Bucks

Bucks

The Milwaukee Bucks are an American professional basketball team based in Milwaukee. The Bucks compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Central Division. The team was founded in 1968 as an expansion team, and play at the Fiserv Forum. Former U.S. Senator Herb Kohl was the long-time owner of the team, but on April 16, 2014, a group led by billionaire hedge fund managers Wes Edens and Marc Lasry agreed to purchase a majority interest in the team from Kohl, a sale which was approved by the owners of the NBA and its Board of Governors one month later on May 16  The team is managed by Jon Horst, the team's former director of basketball operations, who took over for John Hammond in May 2017.

The Bucks have won one league title (1971), two conference titles (1971 and 1974), and 15 division titles (1971–1974, 1976, 1980–1986, 2001, 2019, 2020). They have featured such notable players as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Sidney Moncrief, Oscar Robertson, Bob Dandridge, Bob Lanier, Glenn Robinson, Ray Allen, Sam Cassell, Junior Bridgeman, Michael Redd, Terry Cummings, Vin Baker, Jon McGlocklin, Marques Johnson, and Brian Winters. Abdul-Jabbar and Giannis Antetokounmpo have been named the NBA's Most Valuable Player while playing for the Bucks, for a total of four MVP awards.

On January 22, 1968, the NBA awarded a franchise to Milwaukee Professional Sports and Services, Inc. (Milwaukee Pro), a group headed by Wesley Pavalon and Marvin Fishman. A fan contest was held to name the new team, with over 40,000 fans participating.  While the most-voted fan entry was the Robins, named for Wisconsin's state bird, the contest judges went with the second-most popular choice, the Bucks, which was a reference to Wisconsin's official wild animal, the white-tailed deer. One fan, R. D. Trebilcox, was awarded a new car for his part in reasoning why the Bucks was a good nickname, saying that bucks were "spirited, good jumpers, fast and agile."  The Bucks marked a return of the NBA to Milwaukee after 13 years; their previous team, the Hawks, played for four seasons in the early 1950s before moving to St. Louis in 1955 (they are now based in Atlanta). In October, the Bucks played their first NBA regular-season game against the Chicago Bulls before a Milwaukee Arena crowd of 8,467. As is typical with expansion teams, the Bucks' first season (1968–69) was a struggle. Their first victory came in their sixth game as the Bucks beat the Detroit Pistons 134–118; they won only 26 more games in their first year. The Bucks' record that year earned them a coin flip against their expansion cousins, the Phoenix Suns, to see who would get the first pick in the upcoming draft. It was considered a foregone conclusion that the first pick in the draft would be Lew Alcindor of UCLA. The Bucks won the coin flip, but had to win a bidding war with the upstart American Basketball Association (ABA) to secure him.[14]

Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_Bucks

Yoenis Cespedes

Yoenis Cespedes

Yoenis Céspedes Milanés (born October 18, 1985), nicknamed La Potencia, is a Cuban-born professional baseball outfielder for the New York Mets of Major League Baseball (MLB). He made his MLB debut on March 28, 2012, for the Oakland Athletics, and has also played in MLB for the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers. Primarily a left fielder in his early career, he has split between left and center field since joining the Mets. A right-hand batter and fielder, he stands 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) tall and weighs 220 pounds (100 kg).

From Campechuela, Cuba, Céspedes played eight seasons until 2010 for the Alazanes de Granma in the Cuban National Series. In that time, he batted .319, .404 on-base percentage (OBP), .565 slugging percentage (SLG), 169 home runs and 557 runs batted in (RBI) over 528 games. He was also a member of the Cuba national team, winning gold medals in three tournaments. In MLB, he won the Home Run Derby in both 2013 and 2014. He is a two-time All-Star, and in 2015, played in his first World Series as member of the National League champion Mets.

Céspedes was born in the small town of Campechuela, in Granma Province, Cuba. Céspedes is the son of Estela Milanés, a softball pitcher who appeared in the 2000 Summer Olympics for Cuba,  and Cresencio Céspedes, a former Cuban League catcher who separated from Milanés when Yoenis was one year old.  At age 10, he was sent by his mother to a state-run school where he could focus on baseball.  He played eight seasons in the Cuban Winter League before defecting from Cuba in 2011. In the summer of 2011, Céspedes and six others took a 23-hour speedboat ride departing Cuba and heading for the Dominican Republic. After arriving in the Dominican, he met Dominican agent Edgar Mercedes who established residency for him in Santiago which allowed him to bypass the MLB Draft and become a free-agent. 

Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoenis_C%C3%A9spedes

فال كيلمر

فال كيلمر

إدوارد فال كيلمر (بالإنجليزية: Val Kilmer)‏  (ولد في 31 ديسمبر 1959) هو ممثل أمريكي. في الأصل ممثل مسرحي، أصبح كيلمر مشهورا في منتصف 1980 بعد سلسلة من الظهور في أفلام الكوميديا، بدءا سرية للغاية ! (1984)، ثم عبادة الكلاسيكية عبقري حقيقى (1985)، وكذلك عمل أفلام الحركة الرائجة، بما في ذلك دور في توب غان وقام بدور قيادي في الصفصاف.

خلال 1990، اكتسب كيلمر احترام النقاد بعد سلسلة من الأفلام التي كانت ناجحة تجاريا أيضا، بما في ذلك أدواره كجيم موريسون في الأبواب، الدكتور هوليداي في عام 1993 وتومبستون، وباتمان  في عام 1995 في باتمان للأبد، وكريس شيرليز في عام 1995 الحرارة وسيمون تمبلر في عام 1997 في سانت. في أوائل 2000، ظهر كيلمر في أدوار عديدة جيدة، بما في ذلك بحر سالتون، المتقشف، وأدوار مساندة في قبلة قبلة فرقعة فرقعة، الكسندر، وكصوت كيت في نايت رايدر(الفارس الراكب)

المراجع

https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%81%D8%A7%D9%84_%D9%83%D9%8A%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B1

Val Kilmer

Val Kilmer

Val Edward Kilmer (born December 31, 1959) is an American actor, musician and artist. Originally a stage actor, Kilmer became popular in the mid-1980s after a string of appearances in comedy films, starting with Top Secret! (1984) and Real Genius (1985), as well as the military action film Top Gun (1986), and the fantasy film Willow (1988).

Some of his other notable film roles include Jim Morrison in The Doors (1991), an apparition of Elvis Presley in True Romance (1993), Doc Holliday in Tombstone (1993), Chris Shiherlis in Heat (1995), Bruce Wayne / Batman in Batman Forever (1995), Simon Templar in The Saint (1997), Moses in The Prince of Egypt (1998), "Gay Perry" in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), and Dieter Von Cunth in MacGruber (2010).

Kilmer is also author of the book, I'm Your Huckleberry: A Memoir, published in 2020

Kilmer was born December 31, 1959, in Los Angeles, the son of Gladys Swanette (née Ekstadt; 1928–2019)  and Eugene Dorris Kilmer (1921–1993) , an aerospace equipment distributor and real estate developer.  His mother was of Swedish descent. His father's ancestry included English, Scottish-Irish, French and German.  His parents divorced in 1968 when he was 8 years old. Kilmer's grandfather was a gold miner in New Mexico, near the border with Arizona.  In 1977 Kilmer's younger brother Wesley, who had received a diagnosis of epilepsy, drowned in a jacuzzi at age 15; their father died in 1993. 

Kilmer attended Berkeley Hall School, a Christian Science school in Los Angeles, until ninth grade.  He attended Chatsworth High School with Kevin Spacey and Mare Winningham, and also attended the Hollywood Professional School. He became the youngest person at the time to be accepted into the Juilliard School's Drama Division, where he was a member of Group 10. 

Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Kilmer

Jonathan Owens

Jonathan Owens

Jonathan Owens (born July 22, 1995) is an American football safety for the Houston Texans of the National Football League (NFL).  He played college football at Missouri Western State. 

Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Owens

XFL

XFL

The XFL is a professional American football league in the United States. Consisting of eight teams divided equally between an East and West division, the league was founded in 2018 and began play in 2020. The company was headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, and was the successor to the original XFL, which was controlled by Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) and NBC, and ran for a single season in 2001. The league intended to compete in a ten-game season and a two-week postseason in the winter and spring months, after the Super Bowl. All eight teams were centrally owned and operated by the league (as opposed to the franchise model, with each team having different ownership groups) and spread across the United States in markets currently or recently represented by an NFL franchise.

In announcing the reformed XFL, McMahon stated that while it would share its name and trademark with the previous incarnation, it would not rely on professional wrestling-inspired features and entertainment elements as its predecessor did, instead aiming to create a league with fewer off-field controversies and faster, simpler play compared to the NFL. The league and its teams were owned by Alpha Entertainment, a private company formed independently of WWE by McMahon (although WWE was listed in filings as holding a 23.5% minority stake in Alpha Entertainment). 

After 5 weeks of play, the XFL announced that its inaugural season would come to a close on March 12 because of growing COVID-19 pandemic concerns and social distancing mandates. On April 10, the league suspended day-to-day operations and laid off its employees;  it filed for bankruptcy three days later and put itself up for sale.  On April 21, recently fired former XFL commissioner Oliver Luck sued McMahon for wrongful termination. 

On August 2, it was reported that actor and producer, Dwayne Johnson and longtime business partner and ex-wife, Dany Garcia partnered with Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital to purchase the XFL for $15 million, hours before an auction could take place. 

The original XFL ran for a single season in 2001, as a joint venture between WWF and NBC spearheaded by Vince McMahon and NBC executive Dick Ebersol. The league attempted to be a competitor to the National Football League—the predominant professional league of American football in the United States (and where NBC had lost its broadcast rights to CBS three years earlier), running during the late winter and early spring to take advantage of lingering desire for football after the end of the NFL season. It featured various modifications to the rules of football in order to increase its intensity, as well as on-air innovations such as Skycams, placing microphones on players, and in-game interviews with players. The league was criticized for relying too heavily on "sports entertainment" gimmicks similar to professional wrestling. Back in 2001 the XFL aired during the wrestling “attitude era,” and was more maintaining their lust for violence and sex appeal making them have harder hits, fewer rules, and modest cheerleaders,  and for the lack of high-level talent among its players. Despite strong ratings for its first games, viewership eventually nosedived, and the league folded after the conclusion of the inaugural season.  Both partners lost $35 million on the XFL,  and McMahon eventually conceded that the league was a "colossal failure"

Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFL_(2020)

Israel Folau

Israel Folau

Israel Folau (Tongan: Isileli Folau; born 3 April 1989) is an Australian professional rugby league player who plays for Catalans Dragons. He has previously played Australian rules football and rugby union . In 2019, he became the record holder for most tries scored in Super Rugby history.[8]

Folau played rugby league for the Melbourne Storm in the National Rugby League (NRL) from 2007 to 2008, where he broke the record for most tries in a debut year. He then played with the Brisbane Broncos from 2009 to 2010. Playing as a wing or centre, Folau represented Queensland in the State of Origin and Australia, becoming the youngest player to play for both teams.

In 2011, Folau joined the Greater Western Sydney Giants in the Australian Football League (AFL) and played for two seasons. In December 2012, Folau announced he was to switch codes again, this time for rugby union, and signed a one-year contract with the Waratahs.  He made his international debut for Australia in 2013 against the British & Irish Lions.

Folau's statements about what he understands the Bible to say about same-sex marriage and homosexuality brought him into conflict with the administrators of Rugby Australia, and in 2019, they terminated his contract. Alleging that Rugby Australia terminated his employment on the basis of religion, Folau commenced proceedings in the Fair Work Commission but was unable to reach a settlement with Rugby Australia; he subsequently commenced proceedings in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia  and a confidential settlement between the two parties was released on 4 December 2019. 

Folau was born in Minto, New South Wales to Tongan parents, Eni and Amelia. He attended Lurnea Public School and Westfields Sports High School before his family moved to Brisbane, Queensland in 2004,  after his father obtained work there.  In Brisbane Folau attended Marsden State High School from where he was selected for the Queensland Schoolboys squad in the Australian Under-15 Championships and also represented the Australian Schoolboys team in 2006.   Folau also played several seasons of junior rugby league at the Goodna Eagles in Goodna. 

At the Australian championships, Folau was spotted by a Melbourne Storm scout and was invited to play his junior football with the Storm's feeder club at the time, Queensland Cup team, the Norths Devils. He won a premiership while playing with Norths and became the first player to represent Queensland Under-19's while still only 16 years old. From playing with the Queensland Schoolboys and the Devils, in 2006, while in year 12 at Marsden State High School where his classmates were Chris Sandow and Antonio Winterstein,  Folau was selected to play in the Australian Schoolboys squad that toured Wales, England and France. Folau was strong, representing Australia and at the end of the tour was awarded the Australian Secondary School Rugby Leagues (ASSRL) Award for the best back of the tournament. Playing years above his age gave Melbourne the confidence to give Folau an opportunity in the NRL.

Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Folau