The Raw Women’s Champion is headed to prestige TV. On this morning’s episode of WWE’s The Bump, Becky Lynch revealed that she will guest star on the season five premiere of Billions, and it’s because the showrunner is a big fan of wrestling and of The Man specifically.

Brian Koppelman, the co-creator and showrunner of Billions, called into The Bump and how the Billions-Becky connection came about. He was a fan of wrestling as a kid during the Bruno Sammartino era and that The Man revived his fandom:

Becky Lynch brought me all the way back in over the past few years. The arrival of somebody who has that much power, charisma, force, integrity in what they do in the ring, and the fact that it was a woman who seemed to combine the most important aspects of so many of the greatest wrestlers ever – when I see Becky, I don’t think of women wrestlers necessarily, I think of Dusty Rhodes being a working man, I think of all these different people who found a way to synthesize their character with who they really were.

Koppelman and Lynch became friends after the TV writer wore one of her shirts at a Billions event, which Lynch saw on Twitter. Ahead of the fifth season of the show, Koppelman and his writing partner David Levien came up with something for Lynch to do on the which. They don’t give any hints (will the world finally get that Paul Giamatti-Becky Lynch interaction it needs?), but say her part is “a lot of fun.”

Billions will start its fifth season, with a guest appearance from Becky Lynch, on Showtime on May 3.

As basketball fans rehash the feud between Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan that dates back all the way to the 1988 playoffs, longtime NBA executive Rod Thorn, who worked on the league side during the construction of the Dream Team roster for the 1992 Olympics, said Wednesday that Thomas’ name “never came up” during his conversations with Jordan about the Dream Team.

It had long been assumed that Jordan made it a requirement that if he played, Thomas could not be on the team. Most who believe that theory won’t be persuaded by Thorn, but on Golic and Wingo on Wednesday, Thorn made it clear he did not ever hear from Jordan that Thomas should not play.

“There was never anything in my conversations with (Jordan) that had to do with Isiah Thomas,” Thorn said.

Episodes 5 and 6 of The Last Dance, which airs this weekend on ESPN, will revisit the Dream Team, while last week’s episodes looked back at Bulls’ rivalry with the Bad Boys Detroit Pistons and Thomas’ fractured relationship with Jordan. It is widely believed that the Pistons’ decision to walk off the court before the clock had expired in Game 4 of the teams’ 1991 series was the final straw in the relationship between the two NBA legends.

Though Thorn’s statement is well taken, any other person tasked with organizing Team USA, of course, could have easily spoken in private with Jordan to make sure his conditions were met if this was something he demanded. While the Dream Team won the gold without Thomas and Jordan is clearly a higher priority than Thomas, it’s still impossible to believe that Thomas, a 12-time All-Star and Finals MVP, was organically left off the list for the 1992 Olympics.

In our age of technology, it can be hard to discern what is real and what is a “deepfake.” Deepfakes are photos, videos, or audio files that have been manipulated by AI technology so seamlessly that they seem convincingly authentic. While deepfakes are usually used for explicit reasons or to put Nicholas Cage’s face on nearly everything, Jay-Z is now dealing his own deepfakes. The rapper’s Roc Nation is reportedly flexing copyright law to remove a deepfake audio clip of Jay-Z singing Billy Joel and reciting Shakespeare from YouTube.

AI-powered videos have appeared on YouTube which uses a computer-generated text-to-speech model programmed to learn Jay-Z’s speech pattern. The technology resulted in a convincing clip of Jay-Z reciting Shakespeare’s “To Be Or Not To Be” monologue from Hamlet and another of him singing along to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire.” But Jay-Z’s Roc Nation is doing what they can to remove the clips through filing a copyright strike.

The strike was first spotted by The Verge, which reported that Roc Nation was using copyright law to attempt to get the videos removed from YouTube. Roc Nation’s endeavor to get a deepfake removed from YouTube by using copyright law is the first of it’s kind, as the lyrics to Joel’s song are protected under the law. According to The Verge’s report, Roc Nation also claimed that the “content unlawfully uses an AI to impersonate” Jay-Z’s voice.

Following Roc Nation’s claim, the videos were temporarily taken down by YouTube which, according to the report, would be the first time the video streaming service has removed AI-generated voice impersonations. However, the videos have since been temporarily re-instated because Roc Nation’s takedown requests were found to be “incomplete.”

After tossing out the possibility in a recent music video that he will not participate in the NBA Dunk Contest ever again, Orlando Magic forward Aaron Gordon confirmed his stance to Stephen A. Smith on First Take.

Gordon said the dunk contest requires so much planning and practice that it actually takes away from his ability to fully focus on the stretch run of the NBA season, and after two near-losses, he’s ready to put it in the past.

Instead, the down time during the NBA’s hiatus has helped Gordon focus on how important it is to him to make it back to the postseason.

“(The 2019 first-round series against Toronto) was the most exciting basketball I’ve ever played,” Gordon said. “That’s the focus, to be in the big games and to win for Orlando.”

Gordon has long been seen as a hinge piece of Orlando’s core, but has fluctuated between roles and playing styles in a way that has made it hard to pin down what exactly he is as an NBA player. The Magic haven’t helped by drafting big man after big man, forcing Gordon to play small forward rather than the 4 or 5 spot, which would give him more consistent physical advantages.

Asked what needed to happen to make his playoff performances stand out more than his Dunk Contest performances, Gordon said he needed to play with more discipline and be more consistent.

Should the NBA season resume, the Magic would enter the playoffs as the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference.

Mother’s Day’s on Sunday May 10th. Are you ready?

View Entire Post ›

View Entire Post ›

*audible gasp*

View Entire Post ›

Wait, Mad-Eye Moody is Bill Weasley’s DAD?

View Entire Post ›

With the 30th anniversary coming up in September, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air cast reunited on Will Smith’s Snapchat show, Will From Home. In (virtual) attendance was Smith (he’s the titular Will, and he’s at home… it’s a complex premise), Alfonso Ribeiro (Carlton Banks), DJ Jazzy Jeff (Jazz), Tatyana Ali (Ashley Banks), Karyn Parsons (Hilary Banks), Daphne Maxwell Reid (Aunt Vivian), and Joseph Marcell (Geoffrey). The great James Avery passed away in 2013, but the reunion will include a tribute to Uncle Phil.

In the clip below, Smith teases Ribeiro for coming up with his character’s name:

“The reason that my character’s name is Will Smith is because of you, do you remember that? It was such a deep insight that you had. You said, ‘Because people are going to call you that for the rest of your life!’”

Sadly, calling Will Smith “Willenium Smith” did not catch on.

Smith also asked his co-stars how they felt about being recognized by The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air fans, with DJ Jazzy Jeff admitting that he was annoyed when people would ask him to do his and Will’s handshake. “You would see in people’s eyes when they were about to sneak the handshake and I would just grab their hand and hold it,” he said.

The Will From Home finale is airing in two parts: part one is out now (and available here), while part two will premiere on Thursday, April 30, at 6 a.m. EST.

It’s hard to promote an album these days with the world being how it is at the moment. Still, Selena Gomez has found a way: Today, she has shared a new version of her recent “Boyfriend” video, except it has been carefully re-created with dolls instead of people.

Gomez herself didn’t actually sit down, meticulously reposition dolls and other props, and make this video frame by frame, though. Instead, she turned to somebody with more experience in that arena: a Instagrammer/YouTuber who goes by “Selena Gomez Doll.” Good news for folks who like this “Boyfriend” video: over the past few years, Gomez Doll has also re-created other Gomez videos in the same fashion.

The person behind the Gomez Doll account was certainly thrilled when they discovered that the real Gomez followed them on Instagram, writing last month, “I cannot believe that Selena actually followed me!! i woke up and saw a message that said selena followed me and i was so confused.. i can’t believe it was actually true!!! i can’t believe my idol actually followed me!! i’m still shaking, this was so unexpected!! i’ve been a hardcore selenator since 2012 and i’ve been making stop motions on youtube and pictures on this account for almost 6 years, never did i think that selena would actually follow me!! i’m so happy right now ahhhhhhhhhh!!! this honestly feels like a dream come true!!”

Watch the “Boyfriend” video above, and check out some other re-made videos from Selena Gomez Doll below.