Love it or hate it, it’s inarguable that when it comes to stirring up something out of seemingly nothing, NBA Twitter is king.
A perfect example of this took place at 4:13 p.m. ET Thursday, when San Antonio Spurs guard DeMar DeRozan sent out this cryptic tweet:
Its meaning at first seems very obvious, but is it really that apparent? It can’t be, right? This is NBA Twitter we’re talking about here, a place where even the subtweets get subtweeted and memed to death.
So, putting on our best Internet cryptologist hats, we endeavoured to unpack just what DeRozan was actually trying to say here, and we’ve whittled it down to three options.
His grudge against the Raptors
This is the most obvious choice.
DeRozan no doubt must have Jan. 3 and Feb. 22 circled on his calendar for next year, the dates when his former team, the Toronto Raptors, visit the Spurs and he makes his return to Toronto.
Look, we get it. DeRozan has a right to (still) feel hurt and think Raptors president Masai Ujiri is a liar for trading him and all that stuff. At the same time, however, why send this out now, with training camps not even open yet?
It’s not as if people will forget that DeRozan will be out for some sort of revenge when he faces the Raptors like some spurned lover or something, so the timing of this all is curious and leads up to our second theory…
He’s going to cook Ibaka up something nasty
The whole “vengeance against the Raptors” angle just doesn’t fit well enough, but this one does.
In a recent episode of his YouTube cooking series “How Hungry Are You,” Raptors forward and DeRozan’s former teammate Serge Ibaka made some fried worms for DeRozan, something the Spurs all-star wasn’t too happy to try.
DeRozan’s tweet specifically refers to the old adage of vengeance best served cold. This isn’t a ground-breaking line by any stretch, but he could’ve referred to exacting his revenge in any other manner and instead opted to use the dish metaphor.
Coinicidence? Maybe. Or maybe it’s because he’s planning his revenge on Ibaka the next time the two meet up by also serving Ibaka something bizarre.
It’s something Butler related
The biggest stretch on our list here, but seeing as just about everybody in the NBA is talking about the Jimmy Butler–Minnesota Timberwolves fiasco at the moment, maybe this is just a really convoluted way of DeRozan weighing in.
As unlikely as this may seem, it’s not impossible. Many players in the league are buddies with each other, and DeRozan and Butler have been Team USA teammates before, so they probably keep contact with each other.
Maybe DeRozan knows something that the rest of just don’t know yet.
Don’t discount it. This is the NBA. A league where seemingly anything can happen.
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