Problem: Background: Steven Delano Smith (born March 31, 1969) is an American retired basketball player who is currently a basketball analyst for Turner Sports. After a collegiate career with Michigan State, he played with several teams in his 14-season National Basketball Association career, including the Miami Heat, the Portland Trail Blazers and the San Antonio Spurs, but is perhaps best known for his five-year stint with the Atlanta Hawks which included an All-Star Game appearance in 1998. He won a championship with the Spurs in 2003. Smith was widely regarded as an excellent three-point shooter, and is one of three players to make seven 3 pointers in a quarter.
Context: Portland was a loaded team that had reached the Western Conference Finals in the 1999 playoffs and featured star forward Rasheed Wallace as well as the newly acquired Scottie Pippen. Smith would no longer be required to carry the offensive load, and averaged 14.9 points a game in 81 starts as the Trail Blazers secured the second best record in the Western Conference. Smith would increase his scoring average to 17.1 in the playoffs, as Portland would defeat the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round before beating the Utah Jazz in the semifinals. Up next would be the league best Los Angeles Lakers, who took a 3-1 series lead over Portland before the Trail Blazers won game 5 on the road and game 6 at home as Smith scored 26 points to set up a game 7 matchup. Despite leading by double digits heading into the fourth quarter, the Lakers came back to win the game and advance to the NBA Finals where they would win the NBA Title. That summer, Smith represented the United States at the 2000 Summer Olympics for the United States men's national basketball team, which won the gold medal. He averaged just over 6 points a game in the Olympics including a 12-point performance against China in the group stage of the tournament. The Trail Blazers entered the 2000-01 season with high expectations, but struggled to repeat the success of the previous season, as injuries took their toll and new additions and trades hurt team chemistry. Smith only started in 36 of 81 games, but still managed to 13.6 points a game. Portland would suffer another loss to the Lakers in the playoffs, this time in a three-game sweep in the first round. Following the season he would be traded to the San Antonio Spurs for Derek Anderson and Steve Kerr.
Question: What happened with the Portland Trail Blazers?
Answer: Smith would no longer be required to carry the offensive load, and averaged 14.9 points a game in 81 starts as the Trail Blazers

Problem: Background: Canadian comics refers to comics and cartooning by citizens of Canada or permanent residents of Canada regardless of residence. Canada has two official languages, and distinct comics cultures have developed in English and French Canada. The English tends to follow American trends, and the French Franco-Belgian ones, with little crossover between the two cultures. Canadian comics run the gamut of comics forms, including editorial cartooning, comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, and webcomics, and are published in newspapers, magazines, books, and online.
Context: Canadian cartoonists often found it hard to succeed in the field of comic strips without moving to the US, but in 1921, Jimmy Frise, one of Ernest Hemingway's drinking buddies during the journalist's days in Toronto, sold Life's Little Comedies to the Toronto Star's Star Weekly. This strip was later retitled Birdseye Center, and became the longest-running strip in English Canadian history. In 1947, Frise brought the strip to the Montreal Standard, where it was renamed Juniper Junction. Nova Scotia-born artist J. R. Williams single-panel strip about rural and small-town life, Out Our Way, began in 1922 and was syndicated in 700 newspapers at its peak. Two new comic strips appeared on the same day in 1929 in American newspapers and fed the public's desire for escapist entertainment at the dawn of the Great Depression. They were the first non-humorous adventure strips, and both were adaptations. One was Buck Rogers; the other, Tarzan, by Halifax native Hal Foster, who had worked as illustrator for catalogues from Eaton's and the Hudson's Bay Company before moving to the US in his late 20s. Other adventure strips soon followed and paved the way for the genre diversity that was seen in comic strips in the 1930s. In 1937, Foster began his own strip, Prince Valiant, which has become his best-known work for Foster's dextrous, realistic artwork. After struggling to support himself at various Toronto-based publications, Richard Taylor, under the pen name "Ric", became a regular at The New Yorker and relocated to the US, where the pay and opportunities for cartoonists were better. The Toronto Telegram began to run Men of the Mounted in 1933, the first home-grown adventure strip, written by Ted McCall and drawn by Harry Hall. McCall later penned the strip Robin Hood and Company, which made its appearance in comic books when McCall founded Anglo-American Publishing in 1941.
Question: What were comics like in the 1920s
Answer: escapist entertainment at the dawn of the Great Depression.

Problem: Background: Hunter was born in New York City, the son of Gertrude (nee Gelien) and Charles Kelm. His mother, from Hamburg, was a German Roman Catholic immigrant, and his father was Jewish. Hunter's father was reportedly abusive, and within a few years of his birth, his parents divorced. Tab grew up in California with his mother, older brother Walter, and maternal grandparents, John Henry and Ida (nee Sonnenfleth)
Context: One of Hunter's first films for Warners was The Sea Chase (1955), supporting John Wayne and Lana Turner. It was a big hit, but Hunter's part was relatively small. Rushes were seen by William Wellman, who cast Hunter to play the younger brother of Robert Mitchum in Track of the Cat (1955). It was a solid hit and Hunter began to get more notice. His breakthrough role came when he was cast as the young Marine Danny in 1955's World War II drama Battle Cry. His character has an affair with an older woman, but ends up marrying the girl next door. It was based on a bestseller by Leon Uris and became Warner Bros largest grossing film of that year, cementing Hunter's position as one of Hollywood's top young romantic leads. In September 1955 the tabloid magazine Confidential reported Hunter's 1950 arrest for disorderly conduct. The innuendo-laced article, and a second one focusing on Rory Calhoun's prison record, were the result of a deal Henry Willson had brokered with the scandal rag in exchange for not revealing his more prominent client Rock Hudson's sexual orientation to the public. Not only did this have no negative effect on Hunter's career, a few months later he was named Most Promising New Personality in a nationwide poll sponsored by the Council of Motion Picture Organizations. In 1956, he received 62,000 Valentines. Hunter, James Dean and Natalie Wood were the last of the actors placed under exclusive studio contract to Warner Bros. Warners decided to promote him to star status, teaming him with Natalie Wood in two back-to-back films, a Western, The Burning Hills (1956), directed by Heisler, and The Girl He Left Behind (1956), a service comedy. These films also proved to be hits with audiences and Warners planned a third teaming of Hunter and Wood. Hunter rejected the third picture, thus ending Warner's attempt to make Tab and Natalie the William Powell and Myrna Loy of the 1950s. Hunter was Warner Bros.' most popular male star from 1955-1959.
Question: did he win any awards for this role?
Answer:
It was based on a bestseller by Leon Uris and became Warner Bros largest grossing film of that year,