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Depending on one’s personal perspective, Magic Johnson either has the best or worst account on NBA Twitter, with almost no in-between. As someone whose name is escaping me once said, Magic tweets like someone who thinks they’re the only one with a television, providing the most lukewarm takes and updates possible to everyone without a T.V., usually a day or so after whatever he’s tweeting about happened. Why he loved tweeting what are essentially ESPN App push alerts so much that it was part of why he wanted to step down from running the Lakers is an endlessly fascinating question.
And for people as weirdly fixated on this as I am, it turns out it gets even more interesting, because apparently Magic isn’t even the one sending his own tweets. As he revealed to Rob Lowe in a truly bizarre exchange during his appearance on the Rob Pelinka lookalike’s podcast, Johnson has a person send his tweets for him
As transcribed via “Literally, with Rob Lowe” (emphasis mine):
Rob Lowe: Do you know Pardon My Take? I did (their podcast). Those guys are huge fans of yours as you know, and I said look, ‘you’re the best sports podcast, I’m going to be interviewing Magic, he’s going to be one of my first guests, do you have any questions, do you have any thoughts?’ And they’re like ‘you have to ask him, does he write his own tweets?’ And I was like what? Of all the things? Of all the things that you could ask one of the greatest men, players, but that’s what they wanted to ask, so here I am, I’m asking: Why are they obsessed with your tweets?
Magic Johnson: I don’t know. No, I have somebody write them out. I tell them what I want to say and they write them.
Well first of all, I need to meet this person, and second, I don’t want to be overdramatic, but this is literally the biggest sports scoop of all-time. I think Woj now has to give his job to Rob Lowe, because this is the most gigantic story anyone has ever broken, and it somehow only leads to more questions.
Did Magic give this person instructions to tweet things in as generic of phrasing as possible? Does Magic decide where the random exclamation marks for emphasis — punctuation so prevalent that they’re even in his Twitter bio — go? Does Magic call this person to tell them what he wants to tweet? Text them? Do they have to be available 24/7? Is this their only job?
I only ask because this is now my dream position. Magic, if you ever need someone to send tweets for you, I’m 100% ready to do it. I have gotten your tweet alerts for long enough that I think I can absolutely mirror what you’re going for, and I’m willing to work for less than whoever is doing it now. Shoot me a tweet if you’re interested (or at least have your tweet guy do it), you can find my @ below. I look forward to hearing from you, and if not, I at least am excited for this anonymous genius’ next tweet on your behalf.
For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen.