On Christmas Eve, Nate Parham, Ivan Bettger, and myself welcomed the irascible Ryan Mourton onto our podcast.
In case you forgot, I managed to get him to agree to a little gentlemen's bet. A wager of sorts.
See, Ryan manages Fear the Sword's twitter handle. I manage the GSOM handle, @unstoppablebaby. Therefore, it was agreed that whichever team lost, that blog would have to tweet out highlights of the opposing team's starting five. No explanation. Nothing. Just YouTube clips.
I was pretty confident the Warriors would win.
If you want a quick refresher, skip to the 33:35 marker of the podcast:
"The loser of the game, the twitter handle -- for five days following -- will schedule tweets that are best-of youtube compilatons of the five starting players of the team."
You can hear the fear in his voice as he realizes what this would entail. It is a palpable fear. A physical reality.
So there it was.
The tweets would start at 2 pm Eastern Standard Time, starting the day after the game. It was shook upon, as only two men can shake on something while speaking over an internet connection thousands of miles apart.
Lo and behold, the Warriors won the game.
Yesssssssss.
December 26th: Stephen Curry
And so it began, innocently enough.
— FearTheSword (@FearTheSword) December 26, 2015
I made @Ryan_Mourton tweet Warriors highlights from @FearTheSword. Life is good today. https://t.co/udQttcbPpD
— Bram Kincheloe (@BramKincheloe) December 26, 2015
Low key hate Bram right now
— Ryan (@Ryan_Mourton) December 26, 2015
December 27th: Klay Thompson
— FearTheSword (@FearTheSword) December 27, 2015
A kindly reminder that @FearTheSword tweeting @warriors highlights is the best thing on the interwebs pic.twitter.com/MLZuR5tOIf
— Golden State of Mind (@unstoppablebaby) December 28, 2015
This whole thing was making me very, very happy. The responses being generated by each post were HILARIOUS.
Favorite response from the Klay tweet:
@dustyreeds a bad one.
— FearTheSword (@FearTheSword) December 27, 2015
December 28th: Harrison Barnes, aka woops!
Ryan made a critical error at this point. Instead of tweeting Brandon Rush highlights, which he was sworn to do as part of this sacred bet -- whoever started the game on Christmas -- he had a brainfart and tweeted out Harrison highlights.
— FearTheSword (@FearTheSword) December 28, 2015
Hey man, no skin off my nose.
Just meant he'd have to do an extra day and get some Brandon Rush highlights up in there.
December 29th: A day without highlights
Ryan really messed up, and forgot to post a highlight video the next day.
I quickly let him know.
.@FearTheSword WHERE WERE MY FRICKIN HIGHLIGHTS TODAY RYAN????!!!!
— Golden State of Mind (@unstoppablebaby) December 29, 2015
@unstoppablebaby DID IT NOT SEND?
— FearTheSword (@FearTheSword) December 29, 2015
.@FearTheSword DON'T MAKE THIS WORSE THAN IT HAS TO BE @Ryan_Mourton!!!
— Golden State of Mind (@unstoppablebaby) December 29, 2015
@unstoppablebaby GAAAAHHHHHDDDDDDDDDD DAAAAMMMMIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTT
— FearTheSword (@FearTheSword) December 29, 2015
@unstoppablebaby @FearTheSword @Ryan_Mourton
— Killjoy (@KilljoyGSW) December 29, 2015
And then things got interesting.
@unstoppablebaby @FearTheSword should've made him tweet Draymond Green #NBAVote every day
— Julie Phayer (@juliephayer) December 30, 2015
Julie, if you didn't know already, is the Social Media Coordinator for the Warriors, meaning she runs all of their social media accounts. This will be important to remember.
December 30th, pt. 1: Brandon Rush
Well, he finally got something right.
— FearTheSword (@FearTheSword) December 30, 2015
Favorite response:
@FearTheSword plz no more
— Nathan Adkins (@BeJron_Lames) December 30, 2015
December 30th, pt. 2: Draymond Green #NBAVote
To his credit, Ryan upheld his end of the bargain, and took Julie's advice when tweeting out his Draymond highlights.
Draymond Green #NBAVote https://t.co/kaiVFH7FGJ
— FearTheSword (@FearTheSword) December 30, 2015
The comments to that tweet are a true work of art, and can be read in their entirety here.
I wanted to highlight one special response. Really summed it up beautifully.
@FearTheSword pic.twitter.com/wcyysJ2Guv
— Justin Rowan (@Cavsanada) December 30, 2015
If you thought it couldn't get any better, well, it did. A whole lot better.
@unstoppablebaby @juliephayer NO NOT JULIE
— FearTheSword (@FearTheSword) December 30, 2015
@unstoppablebaby @juliephayer No see ::begins inception like foreshadowing sequence:: She'll have to RT it, then the trolls see it, then....
— FearTheSword (@FearTheSword) December 30, 2015
Wait for it. Waaaaait for it.
BOOM!
HATE @BramKincheloe pic.twitter.com/xpQyIr2Gwf
— Ryan (@Ryan_Mourton) December 31, 2015
Julie went and retweeted the dang thing from the Warriors account, which means that 1.3 MILLION people saw what a fool Ryan had made of himself. HAHAHAHAHAHA SUCK IT RYAN!!!!!
GUYS WE DID IT!!! https://t.co/Zn2RnxE2er
— Bram Kincheloe (@BramKincheloe) December 31, 2015
@Ryan_Mourton @BramKincheloe pic.twitter.com/il0X22yHyj
— Julie Phayer (@juliephayer) December 31, 2015
@KirkSeriousFace @juliephayer @BramKincheloe bullay! pic.twitter.com/M8oOTRlGFi
— Ryan (@Ryan_Mourton) December 31, 2015
December 31st: Andrew Bogut
Lastly, it was time for the Australian big man. Last day of the year, last highlight of the bet.
— FearTheSword (@FearTheSword) December 31, 2015
@FearTheSword @YouTube pic.twitter.com/FtOsjNWR2X
— Wes & Drew League (@BushJohnson223) December 31, 2015
--- = ---
So, in summation, we made a Cavs' writer spend the bulk of his Christmas and New Year's holiday tweeting out highlights of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Brandon Rush, Draymond Green, and Andrew Bogut with a surprise guest appearance from Harrison Barnes. We confused the heck out of thousands of Cavaliers fans, and got Julie to chime in from the Warriors account.
All sorts of people responded with confused emojis, memes, and pictures. It, quite literally, made my year.
I don't think Nate has ever been more proud of me.
@BramKincheloe This wager ruined the end of someone’s year. We win, Bram. We win. Lol
— Nate P (@NateP_SBN) December 30, 2015
Happy New Year everyone! Even to you Ryan!
Can't wait to keep trolling you in 2016!
High five team! That was surely a job well done.
Wow. #Warriors had better win on 1/18, otherwise I can't imagine what's in store for @unstoppablebaby... https://t.co/Mxq7ch6Q6D
— Poor Man's Commish (@poormanscommish) December 30, 2015