Bryan Colangelo was reportedly suspected of having burner accounts with Raptors

Had the Philadelphia 76ers done more research before hiring Bryan Colangelo, they may have learned that operating burner accounts on social media and other websites is something the general manager has a history with — allegedly, of course.

On the “Sixers Beat” podcast this week, Derek Bodner of The Athletic revealed that he spoke with several NBA executives who said it is an “open secret” that Colangelo operated anonymous RealGM accounts when he worked in the Toronto Raptors’ front office.

“These guys care very much about how they’re perceived publicly. They read everything they can,” Bodner said. “The way it was described to me, and these are other executives’ words, is that there’s basically an open secret that at one point during his Toronto tenure he had what many suspected were burner RealGM accounts.”

For those who are unfamiliar with it, RealGM has hosted NBA forums for many years. As Bodner noted, that would have been what Colangelo and others used before Twitter and other social media sites became so popular.

Operating anonymous accounts is a method many coaches and executives to keep tabs on their players. But if the Twitter accounts in question belonged to Colangelo, he clearly crossed the line.

“You don’t get fired for having a burner account. You might get laughed at for a couple of days, but you don’t get fired for having a burner account,” Bodner added. “Where this crossed the line is he was bad-mouthing his own players and releasing medical information he shouldn’t have been releasing, allegedly, and bad-mouthing his predecessor and badmouthing his successor in Toronto.”

Colangelo has owned up to operating one of the five burner Twitter accounts, but he insists the others were created by someone who is out to get him. That would seem like a lie if the new theory about who is behind the accounts turns out to be true.