Reports: A $15 Candle, Purchased As A Prank, Is What Got Jordan Bell Suspended

The uncommonly complex saga of the one-game suspension of Warriors second-year center Jordan Bell took another twist Thursday. To recap: Bell was suspended from Wednesday’s game in Memphis because he reportedly charged a purchase at the team hotel to the bill of assistant coach Mike Brown. Initial reports failed to turn up any details about what exactly had been purchased, leaving open all kinds of titillating possibilities, which most people’s imaginations understandably filled with porn.  Today’s report reveals that the item at the center of this scandal is—DUN DUN DUN—a candle?

Warriors forward Jordan Bell retweeted a Twitter thread on Thursday afternoon that appeared to shed new light on his one-game suspension.

The Chronicle has confirmed details of the thread, including that Bell was suspended for charging a candle to assistant coach Mike Brown’s hotel bill. It was a “pretty accurate account of how things went down,” a source close to Bell told The Chronicle of the thread, which was tweeted by Twitter user @MGRADS.

Here’s some of that Twitter thread, which fills in the details missing from Wednesday’s report from The Athletic, by identifying the item and clarifying whether its purchase was shifted to Brown’s bill as a prank or as genuine fraud:

According to Twitter user @MGRADS—whose scoop was retweeted by Jordan Bell and confirmed by the —one of Bell’s All-Star teammates tried to mollify Brown by explaining the prank and offering to pay for the candle, but “the team didn’t think it was funny.” According to the Chronicle’s reporting, the Memphis candle incident “wasn’t the first time Bell had charged something to Brown’s room without Brown’s permission,” hence the suspension. Assuming this is all true, and that a prank over a $15 candle is considered “conduct detrimental to the team,” here’s where this gets a little screwy:

Seems like docking a player $9,505 because an assistant coach wasn’t in on a $15 iteration of an ongoing series of pranks is kind of uncool! Then again, maybe it was an especially evil candle? A cursed candle. I demand to see the candle.