Bryan Colangelo resigned from the Philadelphia 76ers on Thursday after a week-long investigation into alleged burner Twitter accounts that turned out to be operated by his wife, Barbara Bottini.
The tweets from the main account in question (although there were three others that went dark) ranged from defending Colangelo as a GM, defending his large shirt collars, criticizing current members of the Sixers including Joel Embiid, criticizing the Raptors where Colangelo was previously, and disclosing sensitive information that had not even previously been reported. The investigation determined Colangelo very well might have been oblivious to the presence of the accounts, but that he spoke to his wife about such sensitive team information he was reckless and thus the need to part ways — there was also some apparent drama involving his father, Jerry, during the investigation.
Shortly after the Sixers released an official statement on the matter, Colangelo did the same. In that statement he “vigorously” disputes the allegation he was reckless and then proceeds to place complete and total blame on his wife.
Bryan Colangelo in an official statement: "I vigorously dispute the allegation that my conduct was in any way reckless. At no point did I ever purposefully or directly share any sensitive, non-public, club-related information with her." pic.twitter.com/onzzpQb6ur
— Fred Katz (@FredKatz) June 7, 2018
The part regarding his wife is truly incredible, so let’s break that down.
“At no point did I ever purposefully or directly share sensitive, non-public, club-related information with her.”
Sure, my guy. So, he’s either insinuating she got information from someone else, was eavesdropping on him, or it just accidentally slipped out. Got it.
“Her actions were a seriously misguided effort to publicly defend and support me, and while I recognize how inappropriate these actions were, she acted independently and without my knowledge or consent.”
Alright, that’s understandable. Still pivoting all blame to her, but that might be very well justified and true.
“Further, the content she shared was filled with inaccuracies and conjecture which in no way represent my own views or opinions.”
Shoutout to Colangelo for riding with the “she was lying” defense. Truly tremendous. Now, some of those tweets I think this is probably true. For instance, I doubt Bryan was the voice in her ear when she was firing off tweets about Ben Simmons needing to not be a coward and shoot the ball (if he was, that’s even better, but I’ll buy that). However, the parts about Jahlil Okafor failing a physical and some of the other stuff seems way inside baseball and if she was making that up, it’s pretty wild, and if she wasn’t she had to be getting it from someone.
In any case, this statement seems to be a man frustrated by this situation who is mad that something not done by him led to his firing and a long road ahead to rebuild his reputation around the league. That’s somewhat understandable, but probably won’t make things especially great on the home front for awhile after squarely placing the blame on his wife in this statement.
