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LOS ANGELES -– Lonzo Ball disagreed with his father that Luke Walton has lost control of the Lakers locker room, but stopped short of an outright endorsement of his coach.

“I’ll play for anybody,” the rookie point guard said following the Lakers morning shoot around at Staples Center.

LaVar Ball told ESPN this weekend that the Lakers “are not playing for Luke no more.”

Speaking from a luxury resort in Lithuania, where his two youngest sons are preparing to make their professional debuts with Prienu Vytautas, the elder Ball made his comments to an ESPN reporter embedded with the family after the Lakers lost 108-94 to Charlotte on Friday night. It was the Lakers’ ninth straight loss.

“Luke doesn’t have control of the team no more,” he said. “They don’t want to play for him.”

Asked pointedly if he agreed that Walton had lost the support of players, Lonzo Ball said, “I don’t think so. I mean, he’s our head coach. We are going to play for him.”

Lonzo Ball on whether he is happy with Luke Walton as Lakers head coach: “I’ll play for anybody.” pic.twitter.com/9mSQFmReQo

— Bill Oram (@billoram) January 7, 2018

Walton said Sunday that he was “fine” with LaVar’s comments, on one condition.

“My only concern with any of it is for Zo,” he said. “As long as Zo’s fine with it and Zo can come out and play and be, and it doesn’t affect mine and his relationship, then it doesn’t bother me at all.”

Lonzo Ball has insisted that his father will continue to speak his mind, but the latest chapter raised questions of whether the elder Ball was simply broadcasting sentiments that originated with his son.

“That is just his opinion,” Lonzo Ball said. “He has coached me his whole life. So, he is definitely going to have a strong opinion about it. That’s just what it is.”

Lakers executives met with LaVar Ball on Nov. 29 to ask him to tone down comments he had made questioning Walton’s rotations and overall usage of his son, the No. 2 pick in June’s draft. Sunday’s story was the first time, however, that LaVar had outright suggested Walton should not coach the Lakers.

“Even if you bring in a LeBron or a (Paul) George, he can’t coach them guys,” LaVar told ESPN. “What is he gonna tell them? He’s too young. He has no control.”

Lakers General Manager Rob Pelinka attended Sunday’s shoot around but declined to speak to reporters. Magic Johnson, the team’s president of basketball operations, has been posting on social media this weekend from Lansing, Mich., where his parents are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary.

The comments reached Walton prior to a Lakers shoot around Sunday morning, which was attended by 500 to 1,000 fans as part of an American Express event. Walton was in good spirits, shooting around after the walk-through with Ball, Kyle Kuzma and assistant coach Brian Shaw.

Walton said he “would disagree” with the assertion he had lost the locker room.

“I don’t see that the players aren’t playing hard,” he said. “I think the players are playing very hard, we’ve been through a hard stretch, but they are giving us what they have and we’re going to keep working and we’ll be fine.

Luke Walton responds to LaVar Ball’s allegation that he has lost the locker room. “I would disagree with that,” he said. pic.twitter.com/dimJr1NEqv

— Bill Oram (@billoram) January 7, 2018

When asked about his job security last week, Walton said, “I coach as if it’s not” in jeopardy. On Sunday, he said he has been given reassurances from the Lakers front office that he has their support.

“I feel very secure in my job status right now,” he said. “We talk all the time. They’re 100% behind and supporting what we’re doing.”

David Bowie, the chameleon-like star who transformed the sound — and the look — of rock with his audacious creativity and his sexually ambiguous makeup and costumes, died of cancer on January 10, 2016. Bowie had just turned 69 on January 8, 2016, the same day he released a new album called “Blackstar.” Bowie’s hits included “Space Oddity,” “Fame,” ‘’Heroes” and “Let’s Dance.”

Long before alter egos and wild outfits became commonplace in pop, Bowie turned the music world upside down with the release of the 1972 album, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” which introduced one of music’s most famous personas. “Ziggy Stardust” was a concept album that imagined a rock star from outer space trying to make his way in the music world. The persona — the red-headed, eyeliner wearing Stardust — would become an enduring part of Bowie’s legacy, and a touchstone for the way entertainers packaged themselves for years to come.

LaVar Ball, the father of Lakers rookie point guard and prized first-round draft choice Lonzo Ball, is at it again.

In an exclusive interview with ESPN from Birstonas, Lithuania, where his two younger sons are preparing to launch their professional basketball careers, Ball was harshly critical of Lakers coach Luke Walton, saying he has lost control of the team, and no longer has the support of his players.

“You can see they’re not playing for Luke no more,” Ball told ESPN’s Jeff Goodman. “Luke doesn’t have control of the team no more. They don’t want to play for him.”

“That’s a good team,” he continued. “Nobody wants to play for him. I can see it. No high-fives when they come out of the game. People don’t know why they’re in the game. He’s too young. He’s too young … He ain’t connecting with them anymore. You can look at every player, he’s not connecting with not one player.”

The Lakers take a nine-game losing streak into Sunday night’s home game against the Atlanta Hawks. Walton said Friday that he didn’t think his job was in jeopardy. “I coach as if it’s not,” he said.

But LaVar Ball seems to think it should be. He criticized Walton for his use of Lonzo Ball in the Lakers’ loss to Charlotte Friday, the rookie’s first game back from a six-game absence because of injury.

“Lonzo looked good, but he also looked disgusted,” Ball told ESPN. “He was ready to play. Four minutes left in the first quarter, he dunked it, getting in a flow and Coach sits him down. Sat him down. Now game goes from four points to 10 to 15 to 20. I don’t know what they’re doing. If he’s ready to play, let him play. Don’t try and monitor no minutes, put on restrictions.”

By GERRY SHIH

BEIJING — An Iranian oil tanker collided with a bulk freighter and caught fire off China’s east coast, leaving the tanker’s entire crew of 32 missing and causing it to spill oil into the sea, authorities said Sunday.

Chinese authorities dispatched police vessels and three cleaning ships to the scene after the collision, which happened late Saturday. The South Korean coast guard also sent a ship and a plane to help search for the missing crew members — 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis.

The Panama-registered tanker Sanchi was sailing from Iran to South Korea when it collided with the Hong Kong-registered freighter CF Crystal in the East China Sea, 160 miles off the coast of Shanghai, China’s Ministry of Transport said.

All 21 crew members of the Crystal, which was carrying grain from the United States, were rescued, the ministry said. The Crystal’s crew members were all Chinese nationals.

It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the collision.

State-run China Central Television reported Sunday evening that the tanker was still floating and burning, and that oil was visible in the water.

It was not clear, however, whether the tanker was still spilling oil. The size of the oil slick caused by the accident also was not known.

Earlier Sunday, Chinese state media carried pictures of the tanker on fire with large plumes of smoke.

The Sanchi was carrying 150,000 tons, or nearly 1 million barrels of condensate, a type of ultra-light oil, according to Chinese authorities.

By comparison, the Exxon Valdez was carrying 1.26 million barrels of crude oil when it spilled 260,000 barrels into Prince William Sound off Alaska in 1989.

The Sanchi has operated under five different names since it was built in 2008, according the U.N.-run International Maritime Organization. The IMO listed its registered owner as Hong Kong-based Bright Shipping Ltd., on behalf of the National Iranian Tanker Co., a publicly traded company based in Tehran. The National Iranian Tanker Co. describes itself as operating the largest tanker fleet in the Middle East.

An official in Iran’s Oil Ministry, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said 30 of the tanker’s 32 crew members were Iranians.

“We have no information on their fate,” he said. “We cannot say all of them have died, because rescue teams are there and providing services.”

The official said the tanker was owned by the National Iranian Tanker Co. and had been rented by a South Korean company, Hanwha Total Co. He said the tanker was on its way to South Korea.

Hanwa Total is a 50-50 partnership between the Seoul-based Hanwha Group and the French oil giant Total. Total did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It’s the second collision for a ship from the National Iranian Tanker Co. in less than a year and a half. In August 2016, one of its tankers collided with a Swiss container ship in the Singapore Strait, damaging both ships but causing no injuries or oil spill.

___

Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

This cocooning collection by Khalid Qasimi was filled with soft silhouettes, plays on proportion and colors straight out of a Crayola box.
The designer said he loved the idea of the urban nomad, the man who carries his wardrobe with him, in layers. Hence, the shirt flowed from under a checked bomber jacket and a sweater was slipped under a short-sleeved shirt. Models also carried striped, colored blankets.
This collection was all about comfort: Trousers were extra-wide and topped with sweaters or jackets cropped at the waist, while coats were voluminous, almost like blankets, in shades of burnt orange, tobacco or rose. The only things missing here were pillows and slippers — but maybe they’ll appear next season.

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A star of London men’s week, Danish designer Astrid Andersen said she didn’t move in a specific direction this season, describing her collection instead as a “mood board come to life,” with an homage to Eighties London youth culture and the era’s Buffalo collective of artists, models, stylists and musicians.
Her collection was as shiny and bright as a new pound coin but with a tough edge: Puffer jackets glittered with gold piping or zippers while tracksuits were jazzed up with shiny silk jacquard, plaids and checks, and a long, snuggly sweater coat sparkled with silvery threads.
Although it was technically a men’s collection, Andersen also teased some of her fall women’s designs, which will make their debut on Feb. 1 at Copenhagen Fashion Week. The result was a wild gender mash-up with men in kilts and transparent lace tops and women in swooshy silk trousers and shiny, gold and black oversize hoodies.
Somehow, in the space of about 10 minutes, all of it coalesced into a thing of beauty, an ageless, genderless frolic that put a smile on many faces on a cold January night at the Old Selfridges Hotel.

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It was a collection that captured the January zeitgeist: Christopher Raeburn’s fall outing was built around fabrics fit for the Arctic, secondhand blankets and wool fabric disguised as shearling.
With temperatures still below freezing and Niagara Falls a wall of ice, what better moment to send out coats made from chunky neon Neoprene and Russian naval military blankets?
Called “Immerse,” the collection was all about a plunge into cold water, but rather than sending chills down anyone’s spine, London’s king of upcycling and recycling turned out a collection that was all about protection, warmth, layering and comfort.
Among the standouts of this handsome collection were orange Neoprene coats — long and short — that came with matching gloves that dangled from cuffs; intarsia sweaters, some with albatrosses flapping across the front, others with squid patterns, and gray and white coats made from blankets covered in boxy Soviet-era patterns.
Comforting puffers, done in collaboration with Finisterre, did their bit to keep things cozy, as did helicopter jackets, which Raeburn sourced from Britain’s Royal Air Force.
While the designer spends most of his time wondering how to give supply fabrics and military cast-offs a new life, he hasn’t given up on new textiles entirely. Honorable mention goes to

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Alex Mullins employed a high-minded concept to achieve the right balance between the formal and the creative.
With the relationship between the right and left functions of the brain in mind, Mullins brought together the logical and the emotional to create a strong, intriguing lineup that felt relevant to the way modern men dress.
The looks proved that opposites do attract: Smart suits, as in a pinstripe double-breasted blazer and matching high-waisted pants, were paired with deconstructed shirting that featured large cutouts and tie-dye graphics.
Among the most striking pieces were a series of jacket and trousers combinations with pieces of smashed ceramic plates sewn on them. “I wanted to visualize thinking with these broken, fragmented ideas,” the designer mused.

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Designer Marina Cortbawi has been continuing to focus on Merlette’s brand DNA of airy, cotton dresses and separates with signature hand-embroidered details. For Collection 4, the styles grew in number with new tops, dresses and pants. Ellsworth Kelly’s lithographs of negative space and plants inspired both the palette — Malaki green and petal pink with black, white and navy — as well as the textures. Cortbawi infuses the illusion of print via her hand-embroidered details, like a dress with shadow embroidery or bias cut fille coupe striped Italian poplin dress, each offered in multiple colors. Hand smocked and tiered ruffles, basket weave smocking, Victorian sleeves and ruched wrists made for new additions to the cotton silhouettes. The lot was sensibly paired over high-waisted, wide-leg tonal cotton trousers, perfect for the pre-fall season. Cortbawi is also strategically adding updated colorways to classics, like an oversize, Malaki green tiered wrap dress, in order to build her customers’ ideal wardrobes. The approach is to grow sensibly by keeping the line tight and listening to her customers’ feedback — and it’s clearly working. Since the last collection, the brand has grown from 80 to 130 individual shops in Japan, in addition to launching on Matchesfashion.com.

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TAKE TWO: Jonathan Anderson packed photographer Alasdair McLellan off to Northern Ireland for their second collaboration on the designer’s Workshops line, a series of monthly collaborations between Anderson and a lineup of fellow creatives that he calls “kindred spirits,” the fruits of which are available at a retail space next to the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch, London.
“I love doing [these collaborations] because it’s my micro-project and more about accessibility and the idea of trying to bring a newness of the time in a way that is actually personal to me,” Anderson told WWD. “This shop is an experiment for me, it was always meant to be, we are now embarking on a new year of working with different ceramist, poets, artists, photographers and archives.”
Within this McLellan collaboration are items including T-shirts, key rings, mugs, stickers, puzzles, badges and posters featuring exclusive photographs by him of models and Northern Irish landscapes.

J.W. Anderson x Alasdair McLellan 
Courtesy Photo

“Alasdair went to Northern Ireland, where I come from, and he shot all the different landmarks that I knew as a kid. The Mourne Mountains, the Giant’s Causeway, the Falls Road…” said Anderson, adding that this was far from McLellan’s first foray into Ireland.
“Alasdair has always

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