Two-factor authentication giveth, and two-factor authentication taketh away. That’s the lesson we’re learning thanks to enterprising work from various Twitter sleuths, it looks like Sixers GM Bryan Colangelo’s wife, Barbara Bottini, has a pretty solid connection to a few of the burner accounts suspected to be tied to Colangelo.
That revelation last night thanks to reporting from The Ringer set the NBA (and sports world) into a frenzy last night, and frankly it’s been more entertaining than the NBA playoffs themselves thus far. Colangelo himself today maintained his denials, suggesting someone was out to get him:
Bryan Colangelo tells me via text: "Someone's out to get me. … This is clearly not me." Colangelo adds that he's "hopeful to resolve this soon."
— Jordan Schultz (@Schultz_Report) May 30, 2018
That’s pretty funny, especially because “It’s a conspiracy!” is exactly the kind of excuse you’d expect an NBA GM running various info-leaking, self-praising burner accounts to say. It also makes it great that his wife appears to have a pretty strong connection to a few of these accounts. Or at least, her phone does:
https://twitter.com/DidTheSixersWin/status/1001982391106318343
It was a theory first put forward earlier today by a few different Twitter users, though this was the thread that led to the two-factor authentication ID test:
https://twitter.com/legsanity/status/1001944119940386816
https://twitter.com/legsanity/status/1001951245844865024
At this point, it seems obvious that these Twitter accounts were operated by Colangelo, Bottini, or some combination of the two of them, and no matter what that answer ends up being, it’s both funny (especially in light of Colangelo’s chosen method of defense today) and also something that could lead to Colangelo losing his job, especially given the strong denials Colangelo has issued today to everyone from the media to Joel Embiid.
What a weird story, and credit to people willing to do some online detective work based on the final two digits of a phone number. This is going to end with one of the most awkward press conferences of all time, and it’s an event some might be looking forward to more than the actual NBA Finals, at this point.
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