Bryan Colangelo On His Alleged Burner Accounts: “Someone’s Out To Get Me”

Here is a sentence of fascinating developing NBA gossip: Bryan Colangelo says he is not behind the Twitter accounts attributed to him in a bombshell article by The Ringer last night, and believes someone is “out to get him.”

That news comes from Jordan Schultz at Yahoo! Sports, who says he talked with Colangelo:

For reference: Colangelo has admitted that one of the five Twitter accounts mentioned by The Ringer article, @phila1234567, was an account he used to monitor basketball news.

The Sixers told reporter Ben Detrick that another account—@AlVic40117560, aka “Eric jr”—was not connected to Colangelo. But when Detrick asked about those two Twitter accounts, three other accounts a source said were connected to Colangelo—@Honesta34197118, aka Honest Abe, @Enoughunkownso1, aka Enough Unknown Sources, and @s_bonhams, aka Still Balling—were promptly locked down. “Eric jr” remains public, and everyone’s RTing this one tweet.

Colangelo has denied a connection to those four accounts, which said rude things about several Sixers players. But both Derek Bodner at The Athletic ($) and Kyle Neubeck of Philly Voice say many of the comments made by these four Twitter accounts match up with things they’d heard from sources. “Without getting into specifics, there are multiple views expressed by these alleged burner accounts that would align with views expressed in private by members of the Sixers’ front office and management,” Bodner wrote. “Views which, in some cases, have never been reported.”

But wait, there’s more: ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski said last night that people around the league believe Colangelo’s denials of any affiliation with the four burner accounts, and Joel Embiid himself tweeted that he didn’t believe the story. This morning Jerry Colangelo, Bryan’s father, told Yaron Weitzman he didn’t have any knowledge about the Twitter accounts.

Others are being more tight-lipped. Kevin Durant told ESPN “it ain’t got shit to do with me.” Even a West Vancouver teacher caught up in the story no-commented to the local media. The Sixers’ dog mascot, Franklin, fled to Mexico.

And now Colangelo says someone’s out to get him. The plot thickens. The Sixers’ “ independent investigation” continues, presumably.