The spoof account and NBA inside joke was suspended on X on Wednesday, but returned to full glory one day later

Thursday saw the return of one of the NBA’s greatest inside jokes: NBA Centel. One day after being suspended on X, the NBA spoof account is back in its full glory after being mourned by NBA fans and teams alike.

NBA Centel announced its resurrection on Thursday morning, with a response to condolences from ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith. The video garnered 300,000 likes in just a few hours.

The account, a parody of aggregation account NBA Central, has become renowned over the years for its satirical posts about goings-on in the league. NBA Centel is famous for its viral posts that tend to dupe people into believing that, say, the Dallas Mavericks aren’t letting Luka Dončić jerseys into the building anymore.

The account is also very much on the NBA’s radar. High-profile people, including several NBA players, have been duped to the point that a new verb was created: To be tricked by the account is to be “centel’d,” a term that even the Merriam-Webster dictionary has acknowledged after it was coined by Kevin Durant.

Although it is not entirely clear why NBA Centel was suspended, it likely has to do with its status as a parody account. The X platform has strict rules about marking parody accounts after the disastrous rollout of its blue check system in 2022.

As basketball fans mourned the loss of NBA Centel on Wednesday, several NBA teams joined in. The Los Angeles Clippers, Sacramento Kings, Miami Heat and Detroit Pistons all dedicated their wins to the memory of the spoof account. The Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns also paid tribute, while the Orlando Magic advocated for the account’s release. Even the official NBA 2K account joined in

After NBA Centel rose from the ashes, the Suns took it a step further, welcoming the account back to the platform.

The man who runs the NBA Centel account anonymously spoke with Front Office Sports in October, after the Durant interaction went viral, and said that other fake sports news accounts inspired him to create NBA Centel.

“I didn’t expect it to gain as much traction as it did,” he admitted. “It definitely evolved from the beginning.”

Now, the account has evolved even further, as the NBA world rejoices its return.