Report: Philadelphia 76ers’ Bryan Colangelo operated 5 burner Twitter accounts

A report on The Ringer has detailed the possibility that the Philadelphia 76ers’ Bryan Colangelo operated up to five burner Twitter accounts.

Once again, the NBA has proven to be the most captivating soap opera in all of sports.

On this occasion, the subject involves Bryan Colangelo, the president of basketball operations and general manager for the Philadelphia 76ers.

According to an investigative report on The Ringer, Colangelo has reportedly operated up to five burner accounts on Twitter under a variety of aliases since assuming the reins in Philadelphia two years ago.

In summary, to quote from the article written by Ben Detrick:

"“Since (becoming aware of the accounts,) we have scrutinized and archived those accounts in an attempt to verify the source’s claims that the longtime NBA executive has been using them as a platform to:Criticize NBA players, including Joel Embiid, Jahlil Okafor, and Nerlens NoelPublicly debate the decisions of his own coaching staff, as well as critique former Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie and Toronto Raptors president Masai UjiriTelegraph the 2017 trade in which the Sixers acquired the No. 1 overall pick that would become Markelle FultzDisclose nonpublic medical information about Okafor and gossip about Embiid and Fultz to members of the national and Philadelphia media”"

When contacted by The Ringer, the Sixers indeed confirmed that one of the accounts, going by the Twitter handle @Phila1234567, was operated by Colangelo. The following statement was released via Colangelo from the Sixers denying the links of all five accounts:

"“Like many of my colleagues in sports, I have used social media as a means to keep up with the news. While I have never posted anything whatsoever on social media, I have used the @Phila1234567 Twitter account referenced in this story to monitor our industry and other current events. This storyline is disturbing to me on many levels, as I am not familiar with any of the other accounts that have been brought to my attention, nor do I know who is behind them or what their motives may be in using them.”"

As would be expected, Twitter itself simply exploded once the story was released.

In his customary manner, Embiid was the first of the Sixers named in the report to respond:

Very soon after, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN tweeted the following:

However, Wojnarowski countered this tweet with the following:

In an additional twist, Derek Bodner, who covers the Sixers for The Athletic, tweeted this interesting tidbit:

The league is no stranger to the use of burner accounts, with Kevin Durant this past offseason exposed for using his own fake account after he was caught being critical of his former team, the Oklahoma City Thunder. As clumsy as this was from Durant, it involved just the one burner account, not five as this article claims.

While Colangelo and the Sixers have denied the validity of the claims, the in-depth nature of the piece and the significance of the place Colangelo holds in the Sixers’ hierarchy means that if proven to be correct, it would simply equate to monumental debacle for the Sixers’ front office.

As a result, the Sixers released the following media statement:

In the meantime, basketball followers can simply sit back and wait to see what the investigations unearth.

Next: 2018 NBA Mock Draft - Doncic still No. 1 in post-lottery edition

The NBA truly is the greatest soap opera of the sports world.