A weekend BASE jumping accident in a Utah canyon killed two people, one of them a daredevil athlete best known for performing onstage with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl, authorities said.

The sheriff’s office in Grand County, Utah, confirmed one of the dead was Andy Lewis, an extreme athlete known for feats in BASE jumping, a dangerous sport that involves parachuting to the ground after jumping from a tall fixed object such as a building, a bridge or a desert cliff overlooking a deep canyon.

In BASE jumping circles, Lewis had a huge following and a reputation for pushing the envelope — leaping into tighter spaces or deploying his parachute later than his peers would dare, said John McEvoy, a BASE jumping instructor in Twin Falls, Idaho, who has jumped with Lewis.

“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy said. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”

Lewis’ other sport made him an overnight celebrity, thanks to Madonna

Lewis was also a prominent figure in the niche sports of slacklining and tricklining, which combine elements of high-wire walking with aerial acrobatics — sometimes at perilous heights.

Lewis went from obscure athlete to overnight celebrity when he appeared onstage in Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl halftime show. Dressed in a Roman toga, Lewis bounced and executed tricks on his inch-wide line like it was a trampoline while Madonna sang behind him.

“My phone actually rang itself to death three days in a row,” Lewis said soon afterward in an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late night show.

Emergency responders were dispatched Sunday to a report of people injured in a BASE jumping attempt at Mineral Bottom, a remote desert area near the Utah-Colorado line, according to the sheriff’s office. Lewis and an unidentified 50-year-old man died at the scene, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

Sheriff’s Lt. Al Cymbaluk confirmed to The Associated Press that it was Lewis the extreme athlete who died. He said he had no further details on the fatal accident.

BASE jumping is far more dangerous than skydiving

Though there’s no official tally of BASE jumping deaths, a list compiled by the website BASEaddict.com shows 540 total fatalities worldwide since 1981 — including 30 people killed last year. Prominent deaths include BASE jumper Dean Potter and his climbing partner, Graham Hunt, who were killed in 2015 while attempting a wingsuit flight in California’s Yosemite National Park.

A study focused on BASE jumping in Norway, published in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that BASE jumping carried risks of injury or death five to eight times greater than skydiving.

Lewis openly acknowledged the sport’s inherent danger.

“It’s weird to think about how many people are dead, because it’s like a normal thing,” Lewis told documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview published last year.

Lewis owned BASE Jump Moab, a business that offered excursions to inexperienced customers using tandem jumps, in which the customer was harnessed to a guide wearing the parachute.

Sheriff’s spokesperson Cymbaluk said he didn’t know if Lewis and the other man killed were performing a tandem jump.

Tandem BASE jumping carries additional risk because it straps together two people, one of whom generally lacks experience, under a single parachute, McEvoy said. But because they involve novices, they also tend to be the most low-risk, basic types of jumps.

“Within BASE, it’s a very controversial topic,” McEvoy said. “There’s a lot of people who say it’s the stupidest thing in the world and others arguing: `No, we’re giving people the experience of their lives.’”

No one immediately returned phone, text and Facebook messages left Monday for BASE Jump Moab.

Lewis won four straight world championships in competitive slacklining from 2008 through 2011. Lewis set a Guinness World Record for slackline surfing, swaying his feet side to side in a rocking motion that mimics surfing, while keeping his balance above China’s Diaoshuilou waterfall in 2011.

In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two hot air balloons more than 4,000 feet above the Nevada desert.

The expectation around the league is that the Utah Jazz will match any offer sheet Walker Kessler receives, and executives hold a similar view regarding Detroit and Jalen Duren. Another restricted free agent center at least worth monitoring is Mark Williams in Phoenix (yeah, the guy the Lakers traded for before rescinding the deal). But it’s only logical to wonder why the Suns would give up assets to acquire Williams only to let him walk a season later.

New York Times

For most people familiar with the Utah Jazz, the answer to who the Jazz will select with the No. 2 overall pick comes down to whoever the Washington Wizards don’t select: AJ Dybantsa or Darryn Peterson.

But one prominent NBA media figure seems dead set in his stance that the Jazz will select Duke big man Cameron Boozer. For Bill Simmons, it’s not if the Jazz take Boozer, it’s when.

“I would bet anything AJ (Dybantsa) is the first pick… and I think Boozer goes two,” Simmons said on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” on Saturday night.

This wasn’t the first time that Simmons expressed his confidence in the Jazz selecting Boozer. On a June 8 episode of his podcast, Simmons expressed his hunch that Boozer would end up in Utah.

“I think Danny (Ainge) is such a wildcard at second,” Simmons said. “He did it with (Jayson) Tatum, he did it with (Jaylen) Brown, he did it when he was going to take Durant, he over and over again looks at the high end talent guys and is able to project them. You would think it’s going to happen with Peterson, but I think there’s too many red flags. I think he’s going to stay away from Peterson. I could see him taking Boozer at two. That would be my minus-130 bet right now. I might be wrong, but I really think they’re gonna take Boozer, I do. I can’t explain it.”

Later on, Simmons explained that the Jazz’s front office knows the families of Dybantsa and Boozer incredibly well, know that the two like playing in Utah — something that should never be taken for granted — and that Peterson is too much of a wildcard to take a swing on.

J. Kyle Mann, an NBA draft analyst for The Ringer who was Simmons’ guest on the June 8 episode did not echo this sentiment.

“I think the Jazz will take Peterson. I’ve heard they like Peterson, I’ve heard Danny likes Peterson,” Mann said.

Boozer was the national player of the year in his lone collegiate season at Duke, averaging an insane freshman stat line of 22.5 points, 10.2 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game. Boozer’s high IQ and rebounding are two of his biggest strengths, while his defense and perceived lower athletic ability leave some teams hesitant on drafting the former Blue Devil.

The NBA Draft will be held on June 23 at 8 ET in Brooklyn, N.Y.