ESPN analyst Jay Williams was totally fooled by a fake quote from Nets star Kevin Durant.
Media pundits and television personalities unfortunately need to be aware of the growing dangers of social media, where trolls behind fake avis spew fake news for no reason other than to make high-profile names in the industry look foolish.
Unfortunately for ESPN studio analyst Jay Williams, he fell into one of these traps surrounding a made-up quote from Kevin Durant thanks to a Nets fan on Twitter. For those curious, the quote centered on the reignited debate about whether Durant or LeBron James is the best player in the world, and how their head-to-head Finals record swings the pendulum in the former’s favor.
Whether Williams was sent this fraudulent quote by one of his colleagues or happened to stumble across it by himself on Twitter doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that this isn’t a great look from the former Duke star, and he has since been taken to task on the social media platform.
Care to guess what tweet Williams was referencing? Well, it came from an account titled “Depressed Nets Fan.” We’re not exactly experts in the social media field, but in no universe does that scream reliable source. It is possible, however, that Williams was hoodwinked by the allure of the quote, which read:
"“People try to discredit my rings, but honestly I feel like they’re the most valuable of our era. People argue (LeBron) is the GOAT, but if I beat him in back-to-back finals, then what does that make me?”"
We can’t speak for everyone, but our skepticism alarms went off after seeing that the “f” in Finals wasn’t capitalized. Even if Williams didn’t pick up on that, all he had to do, assuming he read this specific tweet, was do a quick post search from the account, which literally made it known that he was going to try to “bait KD with a new quote.”
It’s well-documented that Durant is obsessed with maintaining his esteemed reputation, so it’s certainly understandably why Williams would believe he unleashed this quote. However, a man with his experience — he’s been with ESPN for years and spends multiple hours per day on national television — simply has to fact check his sources.
Clearly embarrassed by the blunder, Williams subsequently took to Twitter to acknowledge that he received poor information and owned the mistake.
I got poor information this morning relating to a statement that was thought to come from @KDTrey5 . It was a fake tweet by a kid and it wasn’t true. I apologize & own this mistake. I have to be better and will be.
— Jay Williams (@RealJayWilliams) October 29, 2020
This is no doubt going to stick with Williams for a long time, and content-hungry basketball fans should let his humiliating gaffe serve as another reason to not believe everything you read and hear on social media.
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