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What Had Happened Was

What Had Happened Was: 8/10/16

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    By Ryan Cortes Rhiannon Walker

    GAME. BLOUSES.

    After it was over and the U.S. women’s gymnastics team had pirouetted its way to a gold medal, Martha Karolyi — the U.S. women’s gymnastics national team coordinator since 2001, who has 54 years of experience in the sport — said what we all thought: This is the best women’s gymnastics team … ever.

    “I would have to say yes,” Karolyi said to ESPN’s Johnette Howard, knowing that the Americans’ 8.209-point victory over second-place Russia was the largest in an Olympic women’s team final since the Soviet Union defeated Czechoslovakia by 8.997 points at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.

    As Howard notes, this has to be the craziest part of the performance: The women went a perfect 12-for-12 on their routines, and they didn’t even need Simone Biles’ four scores; that’s how bad the beat down was:

    But the 12-for-12 wasn’t the most impressive thing about this romp. Someone calculated that if Biles’ four scores, which easily qualified her first for the individual all-around event on Thursday, were removed from the American team’s total and replaced with the fourth-best American scores in Sunday’s qualifier, the U.S. still would’ve won the gold medal. The margin would’ve been “just” two points, instead of the mind-blowing 8.2. That is beyond remarkable.

    BLESSINGS!

    As we move forward with the Black Lives Matter movement and demands for equality in the way African-Americans and people of color are treated in the United States, it’s important to remember one of the most important groups in the movement: the people who recorded the atrocities in the first place. Without them, these images would likely remain a local issue instead of a national one.

    https://twitter.com/ChuckModi1/status/763043089338372096

    SOCIAL STATUS

     

    FOR THE CULTURE

    Rapper Rick Ross is celebrating the 10th anniversary of his debut album Port of Miami by performing “the biggest concert” of his career … on the Port of Miami.

    Luke Cage puts on for Harlem, New York, in the trailer for the upcoming Netflix show.

    The delicate balance of life and death inspired one Chicago poet and rapper’s debut mixtape.

    Actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson called out his male co-stars of Furious 8 on Instagram. He actually used the phrase “Candya—s.”

    TOP THREE TWEETS

    Every morning we’ll hit you here with the best of what we saw on social media the previous night. Why? Why not?

    1. PUT SOME RESPECK ON HIS WARMUP

    2. BOW WOW VS. SOULJA BOY

    3. NEW YORKERS MILLY-ROCKING FOR JESUS

    #ICYMI

    The homie Justin Tinsley told of the story of that time he tried to learn swimming by jumping off the diving board. It may not have gone smoothly, but hilarity ensued:

    Anywho, back to the diving board. There’s like three or four of the homies in front of me. They’re all hype, already pointing to the girl they’re trying to impress. As for myself, I’m walking to the diving board and it’s feeling like a scene from a Spike Lee movie. You know, where the character isn’t really moving but everything around him is? The only thought running through my head was a simple one: Dog, get your ass off this diving board. You can’t swim. WTF is wrong with you? You gon’ die, n—-. Yet on the surface I was as cool as Aaron Rodgers on a fourth-quarter drive. I walked to the diving board with a Diddy bop. Kids were laughing and yelling at each other. Lifeguards were posted, monitoring the scene. And even more people were laid out working on their tan. The only calming presence in my mind was from Kevin McCallister in Home Alone. So, I jumped. And as I said before, at the height of the jump, that’s when I figured I was about to die. All because I wanted to impress a girl who, if she walked in front of me right now on the streets of Washington, D.C., I wouldn’t know who she was. I looked down, and all I saw was water. Not the bottom of the pool. Just water. I thought about what they’d play at my funeral. Maybe Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday.” Or maybe Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s “Crossroads.” Or maybe Master P’s “I Miss My Homies.” I thought about my mom, who probably would have saved me, only to kill me again for doing something so stupid. Whatever the case, when I hit the water, that’s when full panic mode struck.

    PICTURE PERFECT

    Ryan Cortes is a staff writer for The Undefeated. Lemon pepper his wings.

    Rhiannon Walker is an associate editor at The Undefeated. She is a drinker of Sassy Cow Creamery chocolate milk, an owner of an extensive Disney VHS collection, and she might have a heart attack if Frank Ocean doesn't drop his second album.

    This Story Tagged: Kevin Durant What Had Happened Was Klay Thompson Simone Biles DeAndre Jordan USA Gymnastics