Bryan Colangelo denied he has burner Twitter accounts used to take shots at his team's players

According to The Ringer, 76ers GM Bryan Colangelo has burner Twitter account he used to rip Joel Embiid, Nerlens Noel, Jahlil Okafor, Sam Hinkie or Masai Ujiri.

Colangelo denied the allegations and contacted Joel Embiid to deny the story.

Per The Ringer, 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.

On Tuesday, May 22, I emailed the Sixers and shared the names of two of the accounts, phila1234567 and Eric jr (I did not disclose our suspicions about the other three accounts, one of which, Still Balling, had been active earlier that day; I did this to see whether the partial disclosure would trigger any changes to the other accounts). On a follow-up call that day, Philadelphia’s media representative told me that he would ask Colangelo whether he had any information about the two accounts.

That afternoon, within hours of the call, all three of the accounts I hadn’t discussed with the team switched from public to private, effectively taking them offline—including one (HonestAbe) that hadn’t been active since December. The Still Balling account, which had been tweeting daily, has not posted since the morning of the 22nd (I had already been following Still Balling with an anonymous account of my own, which allowed me to see activity after it went private). Since I contacted the Sixers, Still Balling has unfollowed 37 accounts with ties to Colangelo, including several of his son’s college basketball teammates, a former coach from his son’s high school, and an account that shares the same name as the agent Warren LeGarie, who has represented Colangelo in the past.

Later that day, the Sixers rep called back. He confirmed that one of the accounts (@Phila1234567) did, in fact, belong to Colangelo

On Tuesday, May 29, I contacted the Sixers to ask about the seemingly linked nature of all five accounts. The team responded with a statement from Colangelo:

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.

Joel Embiid spoke with ESPN about the phone call with Colangelo: "I talked to him and he said that he didn't say that," Embiid said. "He called me just to deny the story. Gotta believe him until proven otherwise. If true, though, that would be really bad."


Embiid had fun on Twitter overnight 

Joel told me that @samhinkie IS BETTER AND SMARTER THAN YOU @AlVic40117560 #BurnerAccount

— Joel Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) 30 maggio 2018

Fun night on Twitter lmao.. All jokes asides I don’t believe the story. That would just be insane

— Joel Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) May 30, 2018