Allison Samuels

Will Venus Williams retire at 19? Last week when her outrageous dad said she might leave tennis to focus on her education and investments, people laughed. "I wouldn't take anything he says too seriously," said top player Lindsay Davenport.

The most-talked-about celebrity at Oscar 2000 was the one who didn't show up: Whitney Houston.

You'll see lots of big-name rappers on the Grammys this week, but the one who outstripped them all in 1999 didn't get a single nomination. So Wednesday night Juvenile, whose CD "400 Degreez" sold 4 million units, will work Rochester, N.Y.--taking the stage, as usual, by leaping out of a giant Plexiglas Rolex.

Kevin Garnett is a gifted mimic. He steps off the basketball court and seconds later is on a rollicking roll, from the late rapper Tupac Shakur to a dead-on Tony Montana, the Al Pacino mobster in "Scarface," to quick riffs goofing on his Minnesota Timberwolves teammates.

Looks like Lisa Marie Presley is a sucker for a serenade. Elvis's daughter, 32, is engaged again, this time to singer John Oszajca, 25. It's her third attempt at harmony with a musician.

It's often said that the entertainment industry is driven only by the desire to make money, but that is plainly untrue. It is also driven by the desire not to lose it.

In Oliver Stone's football saga, "Any Given Sunday," Jamie Foxx plays a third-string quarterback who gets his big break when the two men in front of him get injured.

Denzel Washington may make almost $10 million a movie, but he's not afraid to take a punch. When he took on the role of Rubin (Hurricane) Carter--the real-life middleweight contender imprisoned for 19 years for a murder he didn't commit--Washington trained as if he'd been given a shot at the title.

At first Jay-Z insisted he didn't want a party for his new album. Then, about a week and a half ago, one of the world's biggest-selling rappers suddenly changed his mind, and by last Wednesday night his people had made it happen: rented New York City's Irving Plaza nightclub; lined up a deejay and background vocalists for Jay-Z's performance; printed up personalized tickets for such guests as Puffy Combs, Busta Rhymes, Eve, Russell Simmons and Lil' Kim.

When last we saw Dr. Dre, the producer who helped to invent gangsta rap with N.W.A back in the '80s, he'd become a kinder, gentler rapper. His eclectic, adventurous 1996 CD "Dr.

It's a classic NBA one-on-one: a coach, Phil Jackson, with his reputation as the league's reigning genius, vs. a star-studded L.A. Lakers team that has played like a remake of "Dumb and Dumber." Since Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant arrived in L.A.

The week the hit film "Three Kings" opened, three of its stars--George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube--made the talk-show rounds. Clooney did Leno, Wahlberg did Letterman and Ice Cube did "Live From LA"--a new show on cable's Black Entertainment Television.

Rapper Eve Jihan Jeffers likes a good dare. When she was in the ninth grade, a schoolmate dared her to dye her hair blond, and Eve couldn't resist the challenge. "I was like, I can do that--no problem," remembers the 20-year-old Philadelphia native with a roll of her eyes. "I did dye it and went to school the next day and blew everybody away.

When they showed 24-year-old rapper Juvenile the video for his new hit single "Back That Azz Up," he gave it the accolade du jour: "That s--t is off the hook!" The video--basically, women shaking their rear ends--is subtle only in its coyly misspelled title.

When you consider the short, sad life of Dorothy Dandridge, it has a familiar ring. She was a child performer who rose to sudden stardom, a sex symbol who was frustrated as an actress, a victim of two bad marriages, dead at 42 of an overdose.

At 20, Bryant is already living the modern American dream.

The big shocker at last week's NFL draft came when Ricky Williams, winner of the Heisman Trophy at the University of Texas as college football's premier player, wasn't the first running back chosen.

After a loss three weeks ago, Los Angeles Lakers coach Kurt Rambis was berating the team in the locker room. Dennis Rodman raised his hand, according to two teammates. "May I say," Rodman offered, "what a sh-tty coach you are?" Last Thursday, after "The Worm" showed up late for yet another practice, Rambis and owner Jerry Buss finally put an end to Rodman's two-month tenure, waiving him and agreeing to pay the remainder of his $600,000 contract. (Neither team executive would comment.) Rodman's...

No one can cram more tumult into 48 hours than Dennis Rodman. Take, for example, one recent weekend that began Friday night with the Lakers power forward being benched after a sideline spat with new coach Kurt Rambis.

Enough with the endless sampling and the cheesy million-dollar videos, says the Philadelphia-based act the Roots. It's time to make rap real again. "Now it's all about money and talking about how many women you have and cars you drive," says drummer ?uestlove. "Corporate America has taken it over."But less sampling doesn't spell a lack of influences.

Standing ovations don't mean what they used to; sports fans today give them up easily and often. Still, few athletes get a standing "O" just for stepping on the basketball court--during warm-ups.

THROUGHOUT THE '90S, NBA basketball has increasingly become a one-on-one game. So it seems appropriate that saving this season--perhaps even the league--came down last week to NBA Commissioner David Stern and players' union chief Billy Hunter going head to head in an all-night negotiating session.

HE HAD HIS FIRST TASTE OF football stardom at the age of 8 when he earned the nickname ""Boss Hogg'' as a bowl-'em-over running back on a Pop Warner team in San Diego.

When a basketball star choked and tried to punch his coach, it highlighted a growing culture clash in the NBA. Are the game's bad boys, old-guard coaches or the hype-hungry endorsement industry to blame?In pro sports ugly usually begets uglier.

BORN WITH OUR eyes on the future, we Americans are notoriously oblivious to history--our own or anyone else's. Unless we are personally involved, our attitude goes, it's nothing to get worked up about.

EVEN BACK IN JUNIOR HIGH IN Indianapolis, Kenneth Edmonds--you know him as Babyface--was more or less the guy he is now. He was in his first band then; onstage, he'd let others sing as he hung back, playing guitar, registering the crowd's response. ""I'd watch to see what they reacted to,'' he recalls. ""We were doing other people's songs and it helped me see what I needed to write so people would be drawn to it.

ALEK WEK GIGGLES A LOT. SHE giggles at the mere mention of Method Man, her favorite rapper, and she giggles when she talks about sashaying down the runways of New York, Paris and Milan.

A DOZEN PHILADELPHIA PLAYERS ARE streaking up and down the court in three-on-three drills, but new 76ers coach Larry Brown only has eyes--and instructions--for one. ""Allen, go down the lane sooner,'' Brown urges. ""Allen, get to your position sooner.'' ""Allen, space out.'' Allen Iverson acknowledges his coach with a slight nod and hustles to comply.

EVEN THE LAMEST PERFORMERS GET standing ovations these days, but how many singers can lay claim to three hours of body-swaying adoration? Welcome to a Kirk Franklin concert, a musical lovefest of remarkable dimensions.

A YEAR AGO QUINCY JONES COULDN'T buy a booking in late-night to hawk his 33d album, ""Q's Jook Joint.'' The 64-year-old music man, perhaps the most influential African-American in Hollywood, was told that Leno wasn't interested and that Letterman's people wanted him only if he'd perform, which he hasn't done in 23 years because of a medical condition.