The Nick Nurse supposed burner account is back up and running, and is defending itself for dear life, though its other tweets offer some more insight into whether this account was set up or run by Nick Nurse. Here are some of the investigative strongpoints.
Grammar
The main reason for skepticism that this account has been run by Nurse is simply just the horrific grammar consistently displayed tweet after tweet by @MikeLeonards1347 on X.
Difficult to say that tweet was composed by an adult, or a professional basketball head coach, let alone NBA Champion and University of Northern Iowa graduate, Nick Nurse. Compared to the exposed burner of former 76ers GM Bryan Colangelo, Colangelo had next to perfect writing on all of his responses, whereas @Leonards1347’s is relatively, well atrocious.
Insane Levels of Pettiness
Every tweet has the same tone, and it is almost the polar opposite of that of Nurse. The consistent ‘punching up’ mentality taken on by the account is notable and riddles each take.
Strangely Passionate About Nurse
I must say, the actions of this account are insanely fishy, and a clickthrough of the tweets throws red flags all over. If there ever were to be a Nick Nurse burner, this is likely what it would look like, aside from the plethora of grammatical monstrosities.
The care and sheer passion behind this accounts unwavering affection for Nick Nurse and his body of work in Toronto and Philly is just plain strange. Nurse gave himself very few positive talking points in the eyes of Raptors fans in the years post-championship, and to defend him to these lengths points immediately towards the account owner having personal ties to Nick himself. Otherwise, we are truly looking at the world’s largest Nick Nurse super-fan.
Account Activity
The first account activity was a repost of this tweet from the Toronto Raptors on December 31st of 2021.
It is unclear when this happened, as it could have been far more recent than the post itself. More likely that it has happened in the last month considering the first typed tweet/reply from Leonards1347 was on October 2nd of this year.
From then on the account went on a tirade of Nick Nurse defence/support on all relevant perimeters.
76ers twitter:
Raptors Twitter:
Even Chimed in on Kawhi Leonard and Fred VanVleet Twitter:
Fighting for its Life Thread
The account claims that they are just a fan of Nurse, and have no connection to him whatsoever after a brief deactivation period. Twitter sleuths seem undeterred and are chalking this up to being ‘exactly what a burner account would do’ similarly to when the deactivation happened in the first place.
One thought that won’t escape my mind is, why deactivate the account if you’re just some random Nick Nurse fan as claimed? They claim it was to protect Nick Nurse from losing his job, which if an investigation were to occur, there would be no possibility of such an event taking place in this case, since they claim he did not create or use it. Fundamentally missing logic, how interesting.
It is also notable that the ‘NBA Investigation’ report was falsified by rapzcity on Instagram. The NBA has not launched an official investigation into the matter surrounding this account.
(Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images)