The Eric Lewis burner account allegations were — and still are — pretty funny at first. But things have officially reached a level of seriousness that I don’t think many of us expected.
For those of you out of the loop, earlier this week NBA Fans unearthed a Twitter account that they think is NBA referee Eric Lewis’ burner account.
The account’s handle is @BlairCuttliff. It only has 108 tweets so far and essentially all of them are replies to other people defending calls Lewis has made during games against NBA fans.
There’s a plot twist here, though. We don’t actually know whose account this actually is. After fans discovered the account and brought it to the rest of the internet’s attention, the operator seemingly outed themselves as Eric Lewis’ brother, Mark.
So, yeah. This is all pretty strange. Strange enough for the NBA to feel like it needs to step in here.
The league is reportedly launching an official review into the Twitter activity related to Eric Lewis, according to veteran NBA reporter Marc Stein.
The NBA, I'm told, has opened an official review into Twitter activity unearthed this week with frequent mentions of veteran referee Eric Lewis.
More NBA from me: https://t.co/A6ycVmnrjq
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) May 26, 2023
This is officially a big deal. It’s unclear what, exactly, the league is investigating surrounding Lewis. But this is the same sort of thing that happened when fans discovered an account supporting former NBA executive Bryan Colangelo.
The investigation revealed that the account was actually Colangelo’s wife’s account, but it still led to the then-76ers executive’s resignation from the team. He hasn’t gotten a job in the NBA since.
This isn’t to say that the same thing will happen here with Lewis, but an investigation certainly isn’t a good sign. We’ll have to wait and see what turns up from this.