Very early this morning, some NBA players started giving their salutes to Kevin Garnett, reportedly hearing that the hall of fame level power forward (or center) planned to retire. From what we can tell, the rumor started with a fake Stephen A. Smith account on twitter, which for some reason already has 500-plus followers. Yesterday afternoon, a fake Chris Broussard account “reported” that Rajon Rondo was getting traded for Tyreke Evans and a No. 5 draft pick. That tweet was actually retweeted over 1,000 times and caused a stir among Celtics fans.
Here are some ways to avoid getting duped by these lame impostors: see if the supposed big news is trending on twitter, see if the all-knowing Adrian Wojnarowski mentioned it, and best of all, click on the twitter username to see the authenticity (real Stephen A. Smith has 680K followers, impostor has 500). At least in the process, we learned just how much respect Garnett’s peers have for him. James Harden can rest assured knowing that, in fact, the rumors don’t appear to be true.