The DeAndre Jordan Standoff is one of the best story lines in the history of the NBA offseason, in part because it involved a wacky emoji war that swept across all of NBA social media. But now Mavericks forward Chandler Parsons, the man who started that war, says his opening salvo wasn’t even related to the Jordan saga.
As you surely remember, Parsons sent the following tweet when reports that Jordan was reconsidering his decision to ditch the Clippers began to surface:
Everyone in the world assumed that tweet meant Parsons was flying back to Houston to woo Jordan back to Dallas, and that set everything in motion. Chandler recently did radio interview on KRLD-FM 105.3, though, and he says everyone got it wrong:
I loved the emojis during all of that, and then everybody started jumping on that and there were emojis everywhere - did you enjoy all that, or was it too stressful to enjoy it?
Parsons: You know what’s funny? Actually, when I tweeted that plane emoji, I was leaving LA and going to Vegas for my girlfriend’s birthday. I wasn’t even going to Houston. I didn’t even think about it initially, then it started blowing up, and obviously the timing of it was perfect and then it just kind of took off with J.J. [Redick] tweeting the car and [Chris Paul] and everybody - I saw the Dodgers, the Warriors, Kobe, MJ, everybody started tweeting it so that was more funny than ever. At that point, it was already over and he was going back to the Clippers, so might as well make light of it.
Chandler can say whatever he wants, but the blood from the Great NBA Emoji War Of 2015 is still on his hands.