With the help of some friendly folks in Arkansas, Kentucky basketball fans are learning the same lesson the lady in that classic State Farm commercial learned about her French model date.
Contrary to her statement that “they can’t put anything on the internet that isn’t true,” people can — and do — post deceitful things on the internet, especially social media.
Don’t worry, you get plenty of politics elsewhere, so we’ll keep this to sports. We’re of course referencing the post making the rounds on Twitter that allegedly shows the official Arkansas basketball account bragging on some of John Calipari’s former players.
The screenshot includes photos of Bam Adebayo, Devin Booker and Anthony Davis — all of whom played for the legendary coach at Kentucky — in their Team USA gear with the caption “Going for GOLD!” For good measure, it also has the gold medal and American flag emojis, plus tags three different accounts: Team USA, USA Basketball and Calipari.
The image appears to have originated from an account called “KentuckyBrother” and has since been circulated around by various other accounts, including the RedditCFB page that has nearly 350,000 followers.
Between those two accounts alone, it has close to half a million impressions. It’s understandable why — a school claiming its new coach’s former players from a rival program is a bad look and deserves to be ridiculed. Just look at what happened to former Georgia football assistant Scott Cochran a few years ago.
The only problem? This one is fake.
Proving it to Kentucky Fans
The tweet by “KentuckyBrother” — which, let’s be honest, should be your first clue — is about as real as the lady’s French model date in the aforementioned State Farm advertisement. And quite frankly, it should have been just as obvious.
Here’s a few things we can point out to prove it, for those who are still skeptical…
1. Look at the upper corners of the photos of the players. They are not curved in the way that Twitter always shows them in that view. They should look like the top of the photo in the previous tweet shown in the screen grab.
2. The space between the photos is too wide. Again, look at the space between the photos directly below it. It is much narrower.
3. The screenshot shows the tweet was posted 3 minutes earlier. Despite that, it has 141 retweets, 1,100 likes and 71,000 impressions. Those are massive numbers for such a short timeframe, even for an account with 280,000 followers.
4. The tweet is not currently on the RazorbackMBB page.
5. “They probably just deleted it!” … The tweets immediately before and after the alleged tweet are the “PG play” post with pictures of Boogie Fland, DJ Wagner and Johnell Davis and the post about Arkansas players in the NBA Summer League. Mysteriously missing? The “Let’s go to work” post with a 39-second video featuring practice highlights – which, interestingly, has 144 retweets, 1,100 likes and 79,000 impressions.
Arkansas Basketball Fires Back
Any level of critical thinking proves what happened here: A Kentucky basketball fan got bored and spent time photoshopping the alleged tweet.
That’s pretty odd behavior for a fan base that has “moved on” and totally isn’t obsessing over its ex.
To its credit, the “KentuckyBrother” account has seemingly responded to the criticism by essentially admitting it’s fake – while pointing to a real tweet as evidence that it wasn’t too crazy of a leap.
The tweet in question? Arkansas’ post during the NBA Draft about Calipari having a player selected in 17 consecutive drafts…which seems to be a pretty normal recruiting tactic: “Want to get drafted? Come play for a coach who gets guys drafted.”
To cap it all off, the Razorbacks even got in on the fun with a subtle dig at the ridiculousness:
It’s only July 8, y’all. Whenever the Arkansas vs Kentucky game at Rupp Arena rolls around, whenever it is, it should be appointment television.
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