The Sixers Hired The Fan They Threatened on Friday

Truth.

As first reported here on Friday, the Sixers threatened legal action against recent college grad Jerry Rizzo if he didn’t turn over passwords to fake Twitter accounts he created for B. Franklin Dogg and Phil E. Moose.

Today, they hired him.

Really.

Over the weekend, Rizzo, a self-proclaimed “social media sponge,” got a call from new Sixers CEO Adam Aron – who may or may not sleep – about ways in which he may be able to help the team. The two spoke, Aron asked Rizzo to come in for an interview on Monday, and the rest is history– tomorrow Rizzo will start as the team’s new “social media coordinator”… and presumably him and his boss can laugh about the time I almost sued you, even though Aron told reporters that was never going to be the case. 

Rizzo came to us for the not-so-nice part of the story… he went to Comcast with the fluffy part. As told to John Gonzalez: [CSN Philly]

Aron sent Rizzo an e-mail saying as much. Then the two talked on the phone. That led to an invitation that Rizzo still can’t believe: Would Rizzo mind coming down to the Sixers offices to meet Aron and some other people?

“He said ‘I think we might have something here for you,’” Rizzo said. “I thought maybe he meant freelance work or something like that. I had no idea he meant a full-time job. We were sitting in his office, and he said ‘welcome to the organization.’”

Assuming this wasn’t all orchestrated by Aron (I'm not entirely convinced), hiring Rizzo is a good PR move for the Sixers, who most likely weren’t thrilled to see blog posts about the team flexing their muscles against a young fan. 

Now, maybe we can get passed all this Irving Rudd marketing nonsense (as brilliantly detailed by Sam Donnellon last week) and start focusing on winning basketball games, eh?