Roundtable: Thoughts on Bryan Colangelo’s alleged burner accounts

The Philadelphia 76ers are involved in one of the weirdest storylines in NBA history. Our staff debates what that means for Bryan Colangelo.

If you’ve been avoiding Twitter, not reading the site or living under a rock, you missed the weirdest NBA storyline in recent memory. Naturally, the Philadelphia 76ers are involved.

According to Ben Detrick of The Ringer, Bryan Colangelo might be tied to five Twitter accounts that have sent out disparaging tweets about multiple players, including Joel Embiid, Jahlil Okafor, Markelle Fultz and Nerlens Noel. Those accounts also interacted with Brian Jacobs, a former writer here at The Sixer Sense, on a regular basis.

One of the accounts, which has never tweeted, has already been claimed by Colangelo. He refutes any relation to the other four accounts. Three of the accounts, however, went private soon after Colangelo was notified of the report. Here’s an excerpt from Detrick himself:

"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."

Back when the Sixers were attempting to trade Okafor in 2017, the accounts referenced failed medicals as the reason some deals fell through. Prior to this story surfacing, that was never reported. The account also referenced video of Fultz and his trainer working on changes to his shot, which the public hasn’t been exposed to.

Since the news broke, Sixers Twitter has been in full-blown investigative mode. One theory is that Colangelo’s wife, Barbara Bottini, was in charge of the accounts. Her alleged phone number ends in -91, which matches the recovery phone numbers for three of the five accounts. That’s how deep we’ve gotten.

Others have pointed out comments from our own website, The Sixer Sense, that match some of the patterns/opinions expressed by those accounts. One account, Eric jr, interacted with the aforementioned Jacobs more than any other account on Twitter. He also interacted with @SixerSense multiple times.

All of this leads to one central question: what is going to happen to Bryan Colangelo. He, of course, denies the report. The Sixers have launched and internal investigation, and nothing will be certain until that investigation is complete.

Given what we already know, our writers sat down to offer their thoughts on the matter.