It's safe to come out now, seems like Big Vinny Lieberman has finally moved onto to greener pastures. To recap his new media / old media fail would take more time than I have on a sunny Sunday afternoon, but here are the highlights.
Vinny got the story wrong, not surprising in the short attention span drive by media day and age. The story is the Warriors had PR acting as sock puppets on a fan site encouraging season ticket holders to renew. In addition to positive 'vibes' on the forum of Warriorsworld they spread good cheer in the blog comments sections of Tim Kawakami's and Adam Lauridsen's blogs.Tim and Adam were also able to deduce that some additional comments likely came from Warriors broadcaster Bob Fitzgerald. Not the hardest story to uncover considering Bob is a rabid Notre Dame fan.
Vinny's version of the story is different, and he isn't one for grasping the big picture. Fitz never posted on Warriorsworld as far as anyone can tell. We know he , or one of his producers, reads because of the liberties poster Rocco took with a Baron trade to New York article that was quoted by Fitz on his KNBR show .
"It's purely speculation" said Roehm, LSM's director of public relations. New Yorkers are stupid. They think they are the center of the universe.
Bob probably didn't read the site too often or he would have known that Rocco enjoys inserting fake quotes in articles. Fitz hasn't responded to Tim and Adam, and it is unlikely that he will, I think that speaks for itself.
Story should be over, we have the draft coming up, the promise of a new season, overpriced tickets, parking and concessions to pay for. Everyone has moved on but Vinny. He has been very motivated to make this story, that he had nothing to do with uncovering and got wrong, his own. His involvement with a competing radio station probably plays a role. Additional levels of fail are his repeated postings to the forum, probably good from a Warriors PR standpoint since he drove people away from the forum for 2 consecutive days. Posting the same links to the same ramblings on his SFGate site back to back to back all day every day. This mirrors his Twitter account where he likes to post a link to his blog, evey few minutes, driving away any followers he managed to pick up.
I tried emailing him a few times asking him for some restraint, that didn't seem to take. My suggestion for him on new media / old media was to follow what Tim K does, since Tim gets it, and does it better than anyone. Maybe Vinny will get it, but for now, he isn't getting it here. His forum account is suspended and the warriorsworld community has returned to where it was 2 weeks ago, no one knew who he is, now we know and don't care.