Amazon Prime Video has been a standout with their NBA coverage this year by trying to bring fans more into the modern day. It’s been a refreshing change of pace from the likes of Inside the NBA, which views today’s game with about as much energy and enthusiasm as Statler and Waldorf. Nowhere was that more evident than by featuring the social media accounts of NBA Central and parody account NBA Centel.
For those who don’t live on NBA Twitter, NBA Central is an aggregation account with a hefty 2.2 million followers. It shares quotes, highlights, and stats from around the league. Although aggregators tend to get a bad rep, mostly in the NFL universe, the NBA Central account has way more followers without all the controversy and baggage.
NBA Centel is the parody version that sometimes finds its way into the headlines by fooling people on the regular with their posts. Although the account deleted all its posts earlier this year, it’s now fully back online.
So in honor of International Fact-Checking Day (which we need now more than ever in our current world), the Amazon NBA crew played a game of Central vs Centel by having analysts Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, and Udonis Haslem try to guess whether the posts were real or fake news as revealed by host Taylor Rooks. It’s worth watching the video just to see what Eric Collins had to say about Jalen Duren.
Here’s one way to celebrate International Fact-Checking Day 😂
The crew had to guess if these posts were shared by NBA Central or NBA Centel 👀 pic.twitter.com/qa4hSbOIDs
— NBA on Prime (@NBAonPrime) April 3, 2026
Who would have thought we would ever see the day when NBA Centel would reach the mainstream like this?
Maybe you like game shows in your studio coverage, maybe you don’t. But at least this idea is fun, original, and relevant for a ton of NBA fans who use social media. And anything that doesn’t involve Oz the Mentalist is an automatic win in our book.
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