LeBron James Joins Three Comma Club

LeBron James has definitely proven he is the NBA GOAT, when it comes to earnings while active as a player.

The superstar just became the first player to earn billionaire status while still chasing championships. 

Per Sportico reporter Kurt Badenhausen, James's $330 million earned in player salary since 2003 and $700 million dollars in endorsements — including high-dollar deals with AT&T, Nike, Beats, Blaze Pizza, GMC, PepsiCo, Rimowa and Walmart — put him firmly in the Three Comma Club.

It's a clear win for James against league icon Michael Jordan, with whom he is often compared to and debated about by fans for his actions on and off the court. 

It took Jordan, even with perhaps the most lucrative shoe deal in history, years after his playing career to amass his billion-dollar fortune.

This is just the latest win for James, who led the Los Angeles Lakers back to the championships in 2020 after a long drought and most recently his update of Jordan's seminal acting turn, "Space Jam: A New Legacy," taking first place this past weekend at the box office with $32 million in ticket sales.

Twitter Honors American Gymnast Simone Biles With Own Icon

  Simone Biles is the Twitter-certified “Greatest Of All Time”! 

The gymnast was honored by the social media company with her own GOAT icon Thursday, making the

24-year-old the first female athlete and first Olympian to be honored as such. The icon, featuring a gray goat in an orange leotard, doing the splits while wearing a gold medal, will crop up whenever someone uses the hashtags #SimoneBiles or #Simone through the end of the Tokyo Olympics on Aug. 8.

Witness greatness
Tweet with greatness#SimoneBiles#Simone pic.twitter.com/M6RKzP3KB6

— Twitter Sports (@TwitterSports) July 21, 2021

The same day In Tokyo Biles demonstrated why she deserved the honor. On the training platform she nailed a Yurchenko double pike, a move so advanced and dangerous it has never been attempted by another woman at the Olympics before, in a superb illustration of why she has dominated the sport for at least half a decade if not longer, racking up 30 Olympic and World Championship medals along the way.

👀 @Simone_Biles just casually bringing her Yurchenko double pike vault to podium training! 🐐#TokyoOlympics #SimoneBiles pic.twitter.com/V6veMIHUzW

— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) July 22, 2021

Artist Formerly Known as Mos Def Exits Thelonious Monk Biopic

One day after we reported that Yasiin Bey, better known to music fans by his former stage name Mos Def, would be headlining a biopic about Jazz legend Thelonious Monk, the superstar has exited the project.

Yasiin Bey

Today, Bey announced that he will not move forward with the project — which was set to begin production next summer under its working title “Thelonious”— without the blessing of Monk’s family, which the musician’s son made clear following the announcement of Bey’s participation that it had not been given to production company Jupiter Rising Film.

TS Monk told Pitchfork that Monk’s estate had not approved the film by: “This project and its announcement are totally unauthorized! I hate the script and I control the music in Thelonious’ catalog. There is no involvement by anyone in the Monk family with this project, and we actually condemn the effort.”

Bey who was set to play the titular role posted a four-minute Instagram video today. In it he claimed that he’d been told that the Monk family approved the film.

“To be clear, I was given every indication by the production company that the family was on board. It was one of my primary questions — just as important as the music, if not more important, that the family supported the project,” Bey said. “I took them at their word, and clearly that wasn’t the case.

A talented musician in his own right, who has also shown flashes of brilliance on the big screen, Bey added that he’s still super-excited and that if there’s an opportunity to tell this type of story in the right way he is up for it but, “… only with the estate’s approval and full involvement and acceptance… Perhaps another time, under better auspices, but not right now.” 

Here is Bey’s full response:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Yasiin Bey (@yasiinbey)