Around The Horn Does Entire Segment On A Fake Woj Tweet About Lebron Forming A Superteam In LA

AWFUL ANNOUNCING – Media outlets occasionally get fooled by fake Twitter accounts, especially in the offseason of trade, free agency and draft rumors, but ESPN’s Around The Horn did so in a particularly hilarious way Thursday. Moderator Tony Reali started the episode’s discussion by reading a tweet from a fake Adrian Wojnarowski account, and prefacing it with “This is from Wojnarowski, so of course it’s legitimate”.

Anthony Chiang of The Palm Beach Post first called attention to the mistake. You can see the tweet they displayed above. Yep, that’s “WojVertioalNBA,” not “WojVerticalNBA.” Note the lack of blue verified checkmark, too.

“Let’s talk this headline I read,” Reali says. “This is from Wojnarowski, so of course it’s legitimate, but is it legitimately seismic, or just NBA in summer? Roll it. “LeBron will opt out of contract in 2018 to form a super team and “defend himself” in LA, league sources tell The Vertical. Tim, reading that, do you think it’s a possibility, do you think it’s reality, or do you think it’s a fallacy?”

Oh man, the old duped by a fake Twitter account with one letter changed.  Worst feeling in the world when those sneaky motherfuckers catch you napping.  When they change the 0 to an O or the I to an l or something like that.   Easier than you think to get hoodwinked and bamboozled especially when you’re going through much material on a daily basis, always gotta be on the lookout double checking the profile and the follower count.   Dave gets tricked by the fake KFC account like at least once a week.  If you’re not constantly on the lookout it’s pretty easy to make someone look stupid.

And that’s just dumb Barstool stuff when everyone knows we are idiots; much more brutal when you’re live on ESPN and everyone’s wearing a suit.  Poor Tony Reali having to take all the heat for this fake Woj asshole.  And I’m not just saying that because he’s a big time, long time Stoolie although that certainly doesn’t hurt.  Just know it could happen to me literally any time I open up Twitter especially with their constant shitty updates.

For one, he handled it just about as perfectly as you can.

Also, it’s not like the story was completely without merit.

It should be noted that while the specific tweet in here was definitely fake, and while it went to a level of certainty that Wojnarowski and other reporters haven’t yet publicly expressed, the base sentiment (a strong possibility that LeBron goes to L.A. in 2018) has been suggested by Wojnarowski and other NBA reporters. So, the panelists’ reactions here are about what the real Woj said, not just what the fake one said. This continued for a few more minutes, with Frank Isola and Ramona Shelburne also discussing it. Isola said it was about 50/50, an opinion he expressed on his Sirius show earlier in the day. Shelburne also thought there was a pretty good chance of LeBron going to LA. None of those statements are invalid, and they seem in line with the real Woj’s comments, albeit not the fake Woj’s tweet that this is already decided.

Screengrab was a bad look, but whatever. Playas fuck up.

Also Lebron will probably form a super team in LA.