76ers investigating Colangelo’s social media use
The Philadelphia 76ers are investigating the Twitter habits of president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo after a report alleged he used multiple anonymous accounts to criticize some of the team’s players.
The report Tuesday by Ben Detrick of The Ringer used circumstantial evidence to claim that Colangelo used multiple Twitter accounts to not only rip current Philly stars Joel Embiid and Markelle Fultz, but also to support his own front office work with the team, critique the front office moves of other teams and disclose nonpublic medical information on former 76ers center Jahlil Okafor to the media.
“An online media outlet filed a story linking multiple social media accounts to 76ers president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo,” the team said in a statement Wednesday. “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.”
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/TheSteinLine/status/1001807649678163969″,”author_name”:”Marc Stein”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/TheSteinLine”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;Sixers announce they have launched an official investigation into the allegations of Twitter misuse by GM Bryan Colangelo: &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/xNDEgQczq7″&#gt;pic.twitter.com/xNDEgQczq7&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/TheSteinLine/status/1001807649678163969?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;May 30, 2018&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
In a statement from the team to The Ringer attributed to Colangelo, he explained his use of one of the Twitter accounts while also denying any connection to four others in the report.
“Like many of my colleagues in sports, I have used social media as a means to keep up with the news,” the statement said. “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.”
In his report, Detrick said that The Ringer was anonymously tipped off about five Twitter accounts in February and began researching and archiving them at that point. When Detrick reached out to the 76ers on May 22 to ask if two of the accounts were operated by Colangelo, the three accounts that were not mentioned were changed to private accounts, according to The Ringer’s story.
