Philadelphia 76ers president Bryan Colangelo is denying a report connecting the executive to Twitter accounts that criticized Sixers players Joel Embiid and Markelle Fultz, among other NBA figures.
The accounts also took aim at former Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie, Toronto Raptors executive Masai Ujiri and former Sixers players Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel, the Ringer reported.
The Web site asked the team about five Twitter accounts it suspected Colangelo was operating. He said in a statement he used one of the accounts to monitor the NBA industry and other events, but he was “not familiar with any of the other accounts” brought to his attention and he didn’t know who was “behind them or what their motives may be in using them.”
Photo: AP
Embiid on Tuesday night told ESPN that Colangelo called him and denied the article. The 24-year-old center also tweeted that he did not believe the story.
“That would just be insane,” he wrote.
Yahoo Sports reported that Colangelo was standing by his statement to the Ringer. A message was left by reporters seeking comment from the Sixers.
Colangelo was hired as president of basketball operations for Philadelphia in April 2016. He also served as Toronto’s general manager from 2006 to 2013.
Colangelo stepped in with the Sixers after Hinkie resigned. He lost his GM job in Toronto after the Raptors missed the playoffs for the fifth consecutive season, and Ujiri took over basketball operations.
One of the Twitter accounts it connected to Colangelo downplayed Hinkie’s role in the franchise’s turnaround, the Ringer said. It also lamented in another post that Ujiri had not done anything to make the Raptors better.
Another account accused Embiid of “playing like a toddler having tantrums” and one criticized Fultz for his work with his “so called mentor/father figure.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier