A few months back I hatched a scheme in which I was going to try and get someone of relative notoriety to tweet at me. I knew this couldn’t been done in a traditional way, since many random people tweet celebrities about nonsense every second of the day.

During my brainstorming, I noticed a commercial on ESPN for their fantasy basketball game. The commercial depicted Jon Hedar (of Napoleon Dynamite fame) acting as a know-it-all fantasy sports super agent. He would call real life players out of nowhere, giving them advice and trying to get them to help his virtual team. I knew at that moment, what I needed to do. I needed to take on the twitter persona of Jake Stephens, fantasy basketball agent/expert/person who lacked touch with reality.

Within moments, the twitter account (@JakeStephensNBA) was created. I began to retweet NBA players across the twitterverse. I focused my efforts mostly on those who appeared in the ESPN commercials. My aim was to try and respond in someway directly to comments the players were making in their feeds. I wasn’t having much luck…

Then, Kevin Durant (at the time was @KDThunderup and can now be found as @KDTrey5) tweeted he had phone issues and needed the numbers of his friends and followers. This was my chance. Moments after he sent this request, I told him we needed to talk strategy. That was all I needed. Evidence can be seen in the photo of this post that Mr. Durant himself got the joke, and tweeted me promptly.

In less than 24 hours, I got one of the best players in the NBA to tweet me, with the use of a little simple humor and ingenuity.