I’m one of the 153 followers of Hasheem Thabeet’s protected Twitter account. His teammate, John Lindner, assured me it was real after I expressed doubts about his original announcement of his teammates’ Twitters.
As such, I’m one of the 153 people who got this tweet (it will be protected) late last night. And, probably, one of the most puzzled. (NSFW language ahead.)
You see, what you can’t see there is what you can see here:
I believe the popular parlance is "FML," Hasheem.
That would have been enough to spark a huge production if Thabeet hadn’t cleared it up shortly afterward (same deal on the protected tweet):
This Twitterer tittered.
This, as an April Fools’ joke, is pretty good. Thabeet getting busted for failing a drug test during the week of the Final Four, an event that could bring his UConn Huskies a national championship and earn him NBA millions would be an enormous news item, whether it broke after Letterman or during The View, and the media firestorm this could touch off would be embarrassing if it had been picked up and subsequently revealed as ersatz. (Instead, it got a minor bump from Twitter’s band of insomniacs.)
But UConn’s program is battling recruiting shadiness and recovering from an unfortunate post-game eruption from gruff coach Jim Calhoun. I doubt their star mouthing off in salty tones on Twitter about a fictional failed drug test, even facetiously, is going to be a laughing matter.
Count on this being a conversation topic today and one more reason college athletes will be getting Twitter instruction with their Facebook/MySpace tutorials next fall.
9 Comments
April 1, 2009 at 9:38 am
[...] (9:30 a.m.): I was reminded by this clever shenanigan from Hasheem Thabeet that today is April Fool’s Day. Perhaps I have been April fooled as [...]
April 1, 2009 at 11:30 am
[...] Hasheem Thabeet Plays the April Fool of March Madness [The Arena Blog] [...]
April 1, 2009 at 12:03 pm
[...] -Thabeet’s April Fools joke. [...]
April 1, 2009 at 2:02 pm
[...] + Hasheem Thabeet plays an April Fool’s joke on Twitter. OMG HOW HILARIOUS. {The Arena.} [...]
April 1, 2009 at 3:23 pm
[...] What is better? a blogger playing an April Fools Joke or a blogger blogging about one. [...]
April 1, 2009 at 6:03 pm
[...] -Thabeet’s April Fools joke. [...]
April 1, 2009 at 8:50 pm
[...] Hasheem Thabeet Plays the April Fool of March Madness I’m one of the 153 followers of Hasheem Thabeet’s protected Twitter account. His teammate, John Lindner, [...] [...]
May 4, 2009 at 8:29 pm
hasheem thabeet’s (Hasheem the Dream) twitter page is not exclusive, he has like 1,800 followers, including me…
May 6, 2009 at 9:01 pm
When this was posted, not only was his page protected, there were only 153 followers. Obviously, that status and his followers have both changed since.
Thanks for commenting.