#BLOCKED
Ken Hoffman calls out disgraced celebrity who blocked him on Twitter
Jun 24, 2019, 4:46 pm
Photo by Getty Images
Well, that was #unexpected
This article originally appeared on CultureMap.
You're serious? Bill Cosby went on Twitter to wish dads a happy Father's Day? How's that possible — he's in prison?
That was my reaction when I heard about Cosby taking to social media to issue a Father's Day message. Naturally, I went on Twitter, clicked on @BillCosby, to see for myself. Here's what I saw:
"You are blocked from following @BillCosby and viewing @BillCosby's tweets."
Whoa. Cosby is sitting in prison, convicted last year of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 2004, with 60 more women on record accusing him of raping them over the past 50 years … and he's blocking me on Twitter?
Was it something I said? Clicking back, I may have called him "disgusting" and a "lowlife" in a column in 2014. He's still holding a grudge over that? To show you how long ago that was, at the time, only 20 women had come forward to accuse him of raping them.
I borrowed someone else's iPhone to see what Cosby posted on Twitter:
"Hey, Hey, Hey, it's America's Dad … I know it's late, but to all of the Dads … it's an honor to be called a Father, so let's make today a renewed oath to fulfill our purpose – strengthening our families and communities. #AmericasFavoriteDad"
Oh, the irony
Never has anybody been so out of touch with reality and tone deaf than Bill Cosby behind bars on Father's Day in 2019 — and his social media team. (Wait, perhaps O.J. Simpson going on Twitter last week and announcing "I got some getting even to do" is equally nuts. Simpson is free after spending nearly a decade in prison for robbery and kidnapping, or as Saturday Night Live put it, "really for murder." Less than a week after joining Twitter, Simpson has 772,000 followers.)
Obviously, Cosby does not have access to social media in prison but asked his spokesman to post his message on Cosby's Twitter account, which has 3.5 million followers.
"America's Favorite Dad?" That's crazy talk. I'm a dad, and many times I'm not even the favorite dad in my own house. I remember having a rare serious conversation about the Cosby case with my son when he was about 16 years old. I gave him advice about girls. I told him, the first step to get a girl to like you is easy … just be nice to her.
After that, I can't help you. I got nothing.
Cosby took a different route: knocking them unconscious with Quaaludes and raping them. He still calls himself "America's Favorite Dad?" No! That's how you end up disgraced, scorned, and in prison.
The (many) Twitter battles
I do not block anybody...
Continue reading on CultureMap to learn about Ken's testy exchange with ESPN sportscaster Scott Van Pelt.
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They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”