Did 76’ers Exec Bryan Colangelo Have A Secret Twitter Burner Account?

This edition of NBA Burner accounts is probably even more intriguing than Kevin Durant’s alleged secret Twitter last summer. According to a report from The Ringer, Bryan Colangelo the Sixers President of Basketball Operations was operating at least five burner accounts on Twitter where he allegedly criticized his players and other NBA Execs.

In February, The Ringer received an anonymous tip that Bryan Colangelo, the Philadelphia 76ers’ president of basketball operations, had been secretly operating five Twitter accounts. Since then, we have scrutinized and archived those accounts in an attempt to verify the source’s claims that the longtime NBA executive has been using them as a platform to:

• Criticize NBA players, including Joel Embiid, Jahlil Okafor, and Nerlens Noel.
• Publicly debate the decisions of his own coaching staff, as well as critique former Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie and Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri/
• Telegraph the 2017 trade in which the Sixers acquired the no. 1 overall pick that would become Markelle Fultz.
• Disclose nonpublic medical information about Okafor and gossip about Embiid and Fultz to members of the national and Philadelphia media.

The five accounts pinpointed by the unnamed source included one that followed media members, Sixers employees, and NBA agents but never tweets (its handle is @phila1234567, and it has no account name), and four that have posted tweets or replied to other users. Of those, one was active between April 2016 and May 2017 (its account name is Eric jr, and its handle is @AlVic40117560), two were active within the past five months (HonestAbe / @Honesta34197118 and Enoughunkownsources / @Enoughunkownso1), and one was posting several times a day (Still Balling / @s_bonhams) and as recently as last week.

Colangelo admitted that at least one of those accounts is his – the @phila1234567 – but has denied knowledge of the other of the accounts. The Sixers have launched an investigation but let’s examine some of the “proof”

After The Ringer reached out to Colangelo’s office, some of the accounts went private, tweets were deleted and some other accounts were unfollowed. Some of the accounts that were followed from the burners included Colangelo’s son’s AAU team. Also, a guy named @SixersAdam claims he matched the phone numbers on the account the exec claimed and some of the other mentioned secret accounts. How did he do it, by trying to log in and using the lost password prompts to piece it together:

Head to Page 2 to see some of the tweets, the alleged proof and read the team statement as well as Colangelo’s

The team issued a statement Wednesday morning:

An online media outlet filed a story linking multiple social media accounts to 76ers President of Basketball Operations Bryan Colangelo. The allegations are serious and we have commenced an independent investigation into the matter. We will report the results of that investigation as soon as it is concluded.

This was Colangelo’s statement included in the piece.

“Like many of my colleagues in sports, I have used social media as a means to keep up with the news. While I have never posted anything whatsoever on social media, I have used the @Phila1234567 Twitter account referenced in this story to monitor our industry and other current events. This storyline is disturbing to me on many levels, as I am not familiar with any of the other accounts that have been brought to my attention, nor do I know who is behind them or what their motives may be in using them.”

If its not Colangelo, than it is someone who has intimate knowledge of the Sixers organization. Do you believe Bryan was secretly tweeting from all five accounts or was he set up?

Password Proof

Sixers star center Joel Embiid jumped in on the fun, but later clarified that he doesn’t believe the rumors.