The Los Angeles Lakers are off to the NBA's most unexpectedly poor start this season. They're 3-5 despite having a star-stacked team and have already fired one coach and hired another. Tuesday night, the team had a great chance to get a big win and possibly begin righting the ship by pulling out a victory against the mighty San Antonio Spurs after calling a timeout and setting up a potential-game winning play with 9.3 seconds left.
But somewhat inexplicably, Paul Gasol (above) -- a seven-foot post player with a career three-point average of just 23% -- ended up launching a long three from the corner that rimmed out and the Lakers lost in dramatic fashion.
That was nothing, however, to the drama that took place on Twitter later on Tuesday night.
In short, Twitter's sports trolls came out again, tweeting a plague of ugly abuse to Gasol's official handle, @paugasol. Sick of the venemous messages, LakersNation blogger Andrew Ungvari began retweeting many of them for posterity's sake.
That's where what you see below comes from. Many of the messages threatened Gasol or wished death upon him:
@paugasol are u fucking serious pau taking the last shot u need to get shot in the face 🔫— Ahmed Adem (@ahmedmayweather) November 14, 2012
I wish I know where u lived, ill put a bunch of soap bars in a pillow case & beat the SHIT out of u with it @paugasol— G.Kate The Great (@PresidentCater) November 14, 2012
hope tha team plane crash ehhbody survive but yo ass @paugasol— torre. (@luhtorre) November 14, 2012
Others were based on the fact that Gasol is originally from Spain:
@paugasol goooo back to Spain you big bird lookin ass nigga!!!— Mr. Armendariz(: (@Alexx_Bruh0824) November 14, 2012
@paugasol leave America.— It'sTattedOnHerButt✪ (@_FollowLaQuay) November 14, 2012
Others were just plain rude:
WEAK BiTCH! @paugasol— torre. (@luhtorre) November 14, 2012
That's all ugly behavior, to be sure, but just the latest example of sports fans on Twitter exhibiting heinous behavior toward the athletes they follow. We took a deeper look at the issue last week, and it seems death threats in particular seem to be popping up with increasing frequency.
What, if anything, should be done about sports trolls on Twitter? Give us your take in the comments.