NBA players were asked to read mean tweets about themselves on the Sunday Jimmy Kimmel Live for a segment called, “Mean Tweets: NBA Edition.” I’ve posted the video down below if you need a good laugh.
Most of you already know what this is. Some people can’t resist the urge to knock down the celebrities they love to hate by tweeting something awful in hopes of getting a rise out of them.
Jimmy Kimmel simply asks the celebrity — in this case the NBA player or NBA related person in question — to read the tweet about himself and then react with the appropriate level of contempt or disgust.
Apparently, Jimmy Kimmel has gotten into some hot water for faking this stuff. I guess his fans didn’t realize he was running a comedy store. They thought he was a serious news source or something.
In any event there’s been enough pushback about previous fake mean tweets that sports blogger Dan Devine actually investigated the new Mean Tweets: NBA Edition pretty exhaustively.
Devine’s conclusion? He wrote: “[T]hese tweets all appear to be quite real; even a couple that no longer appear to exist were still acknowledged/copped to by the people alleged to have written them. Because why not take credit for this?”
Some of the NBA players who participated were Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Shaq, and more. And, yah, at least some of the tweets were in fact genuine, although I certainly don’t plan to investigate whether they all were.
Has anyone noticed that #chrispaul has #Michaeljacksons original nose
— Sir. ROBERT JACKSON (@undertaker594) January 10, 2013
So here’s the official Mean Tweets : NBA Edition from Jimmy Kimmel Live:
I have to admit that I never thought of sending a mean tweet to somebody that size. But maybe people get brave when they can hide behind their computer monitor.
Brag in the comments if you ever sent a mean tweet to an NBA player. Double bonus points if the NBA player read your tweet on the show.
[NBA player Kobe Bryant photo by Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com ]