Who is Aaron Rosenberg? The Man Behind Viral ‘Ben Simmons Traded to the Warriors’ Tweet

News about Ben Simmons being traded to the Golden State Warriors created a lot of buzz on X yesterday. A man named Aaron Rosenberg, claiming to be an NBA Insider, posted the ‘news’ in a very recognizable format that ESPN uses to post updates from the NBA.

However, it turned out to be a hoax from a parody account. Unfortunately, by the time things became clear, there were already thousands of reposts and likes on the post.

As of now, the post has over seven thousand reposts, 71k likes, over two thousand replies, and 7.7 million views. But who is Aaron Rosenberg?

The account posted, “BREAKING: The Brooklyn Nets are trading Ben Simmons to the Golden State Warriors, sources tell ESPN,” with an image of Ben Simmons in the Brooklyn Nets jersey. The said account has over 51k followers as well, which gave this update more credibility than it should have.

However, if we look at the bio of the account, the true identity is mentioned somewhere deep down. The bio reads, “ESPN NBA Insider, stepping in after the legendary Adrian Wojnarowski. Bringing you the latest and most accurate NBA news, trades, and updates. •parody/satire.”

The real disclaimer must’ve been intentionally buried under the fake information.

The account also claimed to be the replacement of Adrian Wojnarowski, who stepped away from his NBA Insider job at ESPN yesterday.

Aaron Rosenberg claimed to be Adrian Wojnarowski’s replacement

Wojnarowski shocked the sports media world yesterday by announcing his retirement from ESPN and the news industry. He left his job to join his alma mater, St. Bonaventure University, as their new general manager for the men’s basketball program. The troll account immediately pounced on the opportunity to get some more engagement.

He wrote, “After years of excellence, Adrian Wojnarowski has officially retired from ESPN. I’m Aaron Rosenberg and I’m honored to take over his role, continuing the high standard he set by delivering the latest and most accurate NBA news to fans worldwide. Excited for this new chapter!”

This post garnered over 5 million views.

Although it was fake news and later received a community note from X for the same reason, there were some fans who thought that it was real.

One fan wrote, “A rosenbomb has a nice ring to it,” referencing the “Woj bomb” that Wojnarowski was famous for. He used to announce major NBA updates, such as trades, new signings, etc in short social media posts and earned this name from fans.

Another fan also believed that the Rosenberg news was real and wrote, “Hope you reached the level of Shams and finished the battle for WOJ.” He was referring to the competition between Wojnarowski and Shams Charania for being the best NBA Insider.

Fortunately, not everyone was tricked into believing in the post. One fan wrote, “I smell Centel all over this,” referring to the popular troll account ‘NBA Centel’, which impersonates ‘NBA Central.’

Troll, parody, and satire accounts have grown a lot in numbers recently. Even though Elon Musk has introduced measures to have control over them and other fake news portals, he hasn’t been very successful so far.