Rumors

Six-time NBA All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns and entrepreneur and model Jordyn Woods will curate the latest edition of Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated auction, bringing their shared perspective as collectors to the biannual sale.

Artsy

The couple has assembled a selection of 10 works by postwar and contemporary artists including Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, both associated with Pop Art; Helen Frankenthaler, Alma Thomas, and Sam Gilliam, all linked to the Washington Color School; and George Condo, John Chamberlain, Ed Ruscha, and Rashid Johnson. The live auction takes place at Sotheby’s New York on October 7th, with the exhibition on view from October 2nd.

Artsy

Several works carry personal significance. Towns considers Condo’s I Want My Brain Back (2020) a reflection of “how much I was losing myself” during 2020, a particularly difficult year for the athlete. He noted that Condo has “become a great friend of ours.”

Artsy

Curated by Parisian Stéphane Ashpool, in collaboration with creative brands Pigalle and Ill-Studio, Pigalle Duperré sits between a high school and a residential building. Its court patterns, built with rubber panels from recycled soles of old shoes to withstand all weather conditions, have regularly changed colors and appearances over the years. It’s become a must-stop for visitors, regardless of if they care for basketball. Ashpool said it’s been a viral topic of discussion since 2015. How viral? Pigalle Duperré has a 4.5-star rating from more than 550 reviews on Google Maps. One reviewer described it as an “excellent example of urban regeneration and a good use of urban voids.” Another called it the “most vibrant and colourful basketball court probably on Earth.” “We know it is a place now that is in a lot of tourist books,” Ashpool, 42, told The Athletic. “People are coming from all over the globe daily.”

New York Times

Jaylen Brown, who has his own brand, 7uice, is now venturing into art collecting and wants to educate players coming into the League on the value of investing through art. Working alongside creative legend Set Free Richardson, they’ve set out to gift rookies with art pieces that, in time, will appreciate in value. The two met up with Portland Trail Blazers guard and fellow Marietta native Scoot Henderson during NBA Summer League in Vegas and presented him a hand-signed print by award-winning painter and one of Brown’s favorite artists Rafa Macarrón at the Rookie 1 Party. The piece, which is worth over 20k, was acquired from Lio Malca’s Gallery 60 White.

SLAM

“A good amount of our players are current art collectors,” Brown tells SLAM. “I’m currently growing my art collection and looking forward to learning more about art and all its capacities. As I learn and grow, I plan on sharing that learning process with the world, as well as my NBA counterparts.”

SLAM

The Milwaukee Bucks in partnership with the Milwaukee Downtown Business Improvement District #21 and 600 East are creating a mural of Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo. The 54-foot work is created by local contemporary artist Mauricio Ramirez. It is on the east facade of the 600 East building at 600 E. Wisconsin Ave.

Business News

Taylor Lumpkin: The new @Giannis Antetokounmpo mural that’s being painted by artist Mauricio Ramirez in downtown Milwaukee is coming along very nicely

Twitter

Robin and Brook Lopez are two distinct figures in NBA history, recognized nearly as well for their playful interests off the court as everything they’ve accomplished over a combined 26 seasons on it. The Lopez twins are Disney fanatics and avid comic book readers; long before they entered the league and throughout their time in it, they’ve also been storytellers—crafting, sketching, writing original tales in notebooks they hoped to unearth at some point.

Sports Illustrated

Last week, one of their ideas became a reality. It’s called Transition Game, a manga about a 15-year-old basketball prodigy who lives in Japan and is trying to assimilate into a different culture. It’s a personal narrative for Brook and Robin, who helped create it with their older brother Chris and an illustrator named TATSUZ. The first chapter was released on Aug. 2.

Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated: How have you felt releasing such a personal story into the world for the first time? Nervous, anxious, excited? Robin Lopez: I think a combination of the three. It’s always a little nerve-racking to put your work out there and see what people actually think about it. But that said, I think it’s really a dream come true for all of us. We've grown up on comics, on manga, and to actually be putting out our first issue, it's something that we’ve thought about for such a long time.

Sports Illustrated

SI: What was the genesis of the idea for Transition Game and how long did it take from then until its release? Robin Lopez: We've had the germ of this idea in the back of our heads for quite some time. I’d say quite a few years, honestly. But I think we started working on it earnestly within the past three years, I’d say.

Sports Illustrated

SI: Brook, did you want to jump in? Brook Lopez: I think it marries a lot of what we love, too, as fans. We’re obviously huge basketball guys. Huge comic book, huge manga guys. And then if you look at the basis overall, a boy playing basketball in Germany and then moving into this new setting in Japan, where he feels like a fish out of water, he has to get his bearings. It's something that means a lot to us. We didn’t grow up out of the country. We grew up in America, but we definitely traveled a lot. We moved towns, switched schools, switched teams and all that jazz.

Sports Illustrated

The Nets and Barclays Center announced Friday that the Joe and Clara Wu Tsai foundation if funding the inclusion of a Jean-Michel Basquiat curriculum in New York’s public schools. The program, underway in Brooklyn since April will now expand throughout the five boroughs. In addition, the team and arena will host an art show featuring 150 Basquiat-inspired pieces already created by middle and high school students in Brooklyn.

NetsDaily