Basketball Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo congratulated the Philadelphia 76ers for winning the NBA Draft lottery on Twitter, before they actually won on Tuesday.
Mutombo, who played for the 76ers during his career, had received an email from the 76ers asking him if he would put a congratulatory message on Twitter if they won. The email had some sample tweets that he could use. He copied and pasted one of the tweets onto his Twitter page and sent it immediately, according to the Associated Press.
“Congrats to @Sixers on grabbing the #1 spot in the #NBADraft,” he tweeted.
The problem was the 76ers hadn’t won yet because the draft lottery was still four hours away, which led some to question if the lottery was fixed and the athlete had some inside information.
"It was like maybe 30 seconds, then I realized, `Whoa! What did I do here?"' Mutombo said, "But it was too late. It was out in the air. I want to let people know there was no conspiracy."
The tweet was quickly deleted by Mutombo. He then apologized saying that he got excited about the 76ers' odds and got ahead of himself. He added that he had no knowledge if the Sixers would win or not.
The 76ers did win the lottery and the Los Angeles Lakers came in second. The NBA Draft is June 23.