Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka Apr 7, 2022; Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA; Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka watches game action in the first quarter during game against the Milwaukee Bucks at Fiserv Forum. Mandatory Credit: Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports
NBATwitterBy Jay Rigdon on

The NBA world was having a relatively quiet day by recent standards, what with no franchise owner being forced to sell after decades of problematic behavior finally reached a tipping point.

Then, at 10:35 PM Eastern time, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski did what he often does: dropped a Twitter bomb that sent the sports world into a veritable frenzy.

That is JUST vague enough to lead to immediate, rampant speculation as to the nature of Ime Udoka’s violations of organizational guidelines. Woj didn’t offer much more, although his general outline of “job not in jeopardy” but strong disciplinary actions on the table led to some obvious conclusions, as did the fact that there were no court records being suddenly flashed across Twitter.

At 12:50 AM Eastern, Shams Charania reported the nature of Udoka’s misconduct: a consensual relationship with a staff member.

Woj later added that a season-long suspension isn’t out of the question.

Plenty of people who jumped to this conclusion in the wake of Woj’s tweets (and ESPN.com piece) looked prescient, of course, and the dueling reports serve as yet another entry in the storied Woj vs. Shams rivalry. Obviously, no one is more plugged in than those two reporters, give or take a random Brian Windhorst dramatic monologue; if Woj and Shams aren’t publishing anything, then no one would be.

At least you’d think that! But one Twitter account had the whole story all at once.

Not only did “juan benet ramsey” have most of the story, including the nature of the misconduct, which was the thing everyone wanted to know in the wake of the Woj tweet, but they beat Woj to Twitter by more than an hour.

This tweet started to take off shortly after Woj’s report, presumably after people searched Udoka’s name on Twitter. The timestamp didn’t lie, and this isn’t a clout-chasing burner account, randomly guessing transactions or news items ahead of time in hopes of being right once and building some sort of hollow following.

No, this was actual knowledge, which means it’s a banner day in the history of burner accounts.

From there, things get even more interesting, as Twitter attempted to unmask the burner owner. To be clear, this part of the story is somewhat less appealing; it’s tempting to just leave the mystery where it is, and if you want to stop reading right now, you could make a strong case you’d be better off.

But in the interest of capital-J journalism: here’s a series of tweets that make compelling cases for a few candidates.

Again, this is just pure Twitter speculation. They certainly make a compelling case for a few names just on that list, too.

But it’s comedian Nick Ciarelli who feels like the best candidate:

The circumstantial evidence is strong to this point, and a liked tweet of the burner account might push it over the top, were we forced to guess who’s behind the burner (which we would never do because a little mystery makes life endlessly more intriguing):

Regardless of the person behind the mask, let’s take a moment to applaud whoever out there heard a bit of NBA goss from sources reliable enough to know it was true and decided to toss it onto a burner account, where it went big very quickly, sort of beating the top NBA newsbreakers to the punch. Sure, this didn’t require actual journalistic approaches to sourcing and verification.

But when you’re right, you’re right.

What a day for burner accounts.

About Jay Rigdon

Jay is a columnist at Awful Announcing. He is not a strong swimmer. He is probably talking to a dog in a silly voice at this very moment.

View all posts by Jay Rigdon