Lance Armstrong does not like to be outdone on Twitter. So, when Mike Beasley – an NBA rookie with wings, sunglasses, and broken English tattooed on his back – started hogging all the attention earlier this week, Armstrong took it to the next level and issued a twitter invitation to come hang out with him and ride some bikes.

From Sky News…

The seven-times Tour de France winner issued an invitation via Twitter – telling people to turn up at Phoenix Park.


“Good morning Dublin. Who wants to ride this afternoon? I do. 5:30pm @ the roundabout of Fountain Rd and Chesterfield Ave. See you there,” Armstrong tweeted.


When the American arrived he was mobbed by fans, many jostling for a prime position at the front of the pack with one of cycling’s all-time greats.


The 38-year-old, who is in Ireland for a global cancer summit, said: “For me, I like to ride my bike anyway, so on a very simple level it’s a very sunny, beautiful day in Dublin and I’d be going for a bike ride anyway.

Sky News reports, a bike shop in Dublin rented 190 bikes in two-hours leading up to the event. And according to a report from…well, according to Lance Armstrong tweet, 1000+ showed up for the occasion.

It’s plausibly unrelated, but Shaq has apparently backed off of Lance for now, and scaled down his twitter challenges for Shaq Vs. to Mike from Dirty Jobs.

Scores Join Lance Armstrong On Dublin Ride (Sky News)

Thought The Big Web Viral would be interested in this week’s token internet craze. The resemblance is pretty staggering.

Ho damn, The Big Dapper is more like it.  Here I’m am in matching threads and beard.

The meticulous scribe of this article felt the need to clarify that O’Neal is an american basketball star and that his nickname is Shaq, leaving me to believe that The Big World Renowned is not one that we should so quickly add to O’neal’s stable of The Big nomenclature.

The real story here, is that since challenging Obama  in person (roundball meets round-table on a healthcare reform) didn’t go so well the other day, Shaq resorted to the old standby to challenge David Beckham to a game of “soccerball.” It goes on…

And to entice Beckham on the show, O’Neal has decided to post a series of “tweets” calling on the England footballer to take up the challenge.

“Dear david beckham,” tweets Shaq. “I kno u heard about my Shaq Vs show, anyway u will never score a goal on me, I challenge you lil man.”

But Beckham failed to respond to the tweet, prompting another tweet from O’Neal: “David beckham I kno u hear me, dnt be scared, dnt make me call u out, u will never score a goal on me.”

O’Neal’s most recent tweet to Beckham read: “Dnt make me tweet to 2 million people that your scared of shaq, u betta respond, if u scared get a dog.”

There it is. The blow-by-blow on twitter, as reported by newspaperman. In related twitter news, Ocho Cinco doesn’t know what Levitra is.

David Beckham taunted by Shaquille O’Neal on Twitter (Telegraph)

I love Chad. I love Chad for getting behind the Bengals being featured on HBO Hard Knocks when he easily could have gone the route of The T.O. Show on VH1. But, as he demonstrated in a radio interview with KGOW in Houston earlier this week, he’s not exactly a new media visionary. I took a few quotes out of context from his take on Twitter:

“You know, it’s funny – I like it… I have my own application coming out where people will be able to (drumroll, puhlease!!) interact and follow me.

Rebuff:

Either Chad’s a genius and he managed to convince somebody to create “his own application” based around the sole purpose of the original tool (and we’ll all be chadderring by 2010), or he just doesn’t know what Twitter actually does.

“…when the season starts, it’s going to get even worse. I’m going to really make it fun. I’m using Twitter during games, during halftime, after the games. I’m going to be taking it to the next level.”

Rebuff:

Read: I’m going to get fined a lot this season.

Chad ‘Ocho Cinco’ Johnson Ready To Just Play (Sports Radio Interviews)

Follow Chad Johnson on Twitter

Mark Cuban posted an internet apology this morning on Blogmaverick.com for the uncouth comments directed at Kenyon Martin’s mom he made earlier in the week, which he says “started as a smart ass comment that I know that no one heard. How do I know, because there was a reporter right there next to me, as well as other people who saw the whole thing and didnt hear a word of it.”

Yesterday, in another fleeting moment of misjudgment, he posted on twitter what he calls one of many examples of abusive messages he receives regularly. It isn’t pretty.

If Mark’s goal was to make people feel bad for him with this little stunt, well, it worked. A quick twitter search for “@mcuban” revealed several pages worth of mostly sympathetic messages from Cuban’s followers telling him to buck up (and of course, wanting to know who sent this; Cuban chose not to include the twitter handle of the sender). I’ll admit at first I too was more interested in how the NBA or Twitter might react, predicting that an apology might follow from the latter. Upon further consideration, I believe Cuban was out of line and this message should have never seen the light of day.

It’s a question of digital responsibility. Mark Cuban has roughly 39,000 followers on twitter, putting him in the top-200 users in the World. He has been revered for his use of the platform, specifically, his efforts to reply to people’s messages and interact with the community. With that type of reach and influence, it’s unquestionably necessary that you proceed with caution and watch what you say. And in the case of something scathing like this, assume a certain degree of your audience is not sophisticated enough to understand exactly what you’re trying to convey. Even some people who use twitter obsessively were confused by the tweet because he deleted the ID of the sender – at first glance it foolishly looks like @mcuban calling @mcuban the N word.

Like he initially thought when the reporter standing next to him didn’t run with (or according to Cuban even hear) the K-Mart comments, Cuban may believe that he gets a free pass here as well because he deleted the offensive tweet before it could be seen by too many people – of course, the search results say otherwise. However, if Cuban can man up and apologize for something he believes no one heard, then maybe he can do the same for something that multiple pages of @ replies, blog posts, and comments indicate happened in plain site.

I think that no-call on Saturday has thrown Mark Cuban over the edge. Just look at this retweet (WARNING: what you’re about to see may shock you)…

Cuban promptly deleted it, and then claimed it was just one example of the twitter savaging he suffers each day.

I did a quick search for “@mcuban” and his supporters want blood!! (At least they’d like to know who sent him that message). It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out and if Twitter responds.

H/T to @melfi from NYHoosier.com for grabbing the screenshot before it got deleted.

Shaq’s MMA trainer went on First Take to discuss the rumors that The Big Cactus (I honestly never heard this nickname before, anyone else?) wants to fight Chuck Liddell…

Wait, how many levels is your academy?

If this guy didn’t pump the six levels six bazillion times, and Shaq-fu wasn’t such a class clown, maybe I’d buy Diesel vs. Liddell. However, is this the dude that tracked down Shaq on twitter and took him on in the octagon?

In other @The_Real_Shaq news, this tweet is hilarious…

Just got dat underwater ipod adaption device jammy so I can hear music unda water, I b aqua jammin, Waaaa Waaa Shaq-mu The quilla …(8:52 PM May 4th from TwitterBerry)

H/T to FastActionNews.com for the video posting.

Dwight Howard was suspended for last night’s game six of the Magic/Sixers series – giving Celtics and Bulls fans a glimmer of hope that should one of those teams emerge still standing from that series they wouldn’t have to see Superman. That dream is, of course, dead. Orlando romped Philly last night to advance to the second round. Howard, who wasn’t allowed to be in the stadium, was back at the hotel with his family.

And as Sports By Brooks pointed out this morning, providing his own commentary via Twitter.

His twittering is a sobering example that just because you’re a supreme athlete not all pros are going to be The_Real_Shaq (and yeah, of course I’m going to start following him). For example,

“aaaaaahh got yall i cant tell yall. its real bad real bad michael jackson lol. see if yall can get thatabout”

Personally, I can’t get that. In fact, he didn’t communicate much that I think most of the outside World found discernible. I did find this one intriguing:

“someone asked have i played shaq 1on1. how we gonna do that.”

Is that how we gonna do that – let’s set it up? Or how we gonna do that – surely you jest.

Hugging Harold Reynolds found Dwight’s fascination with the Ivan “Polish Hammer” Putski to be engaging puzzling as well.

Check out the rest of Dwight’s twitter feed and become a fan of him on Facebook.

Planning to spend Short Skirt Saturday* inside Radio City Music Hall for the 2009 NFL Draft. Thanks to @tarametblog and Pepsi for hooking me up with the V.I.P. pass!

I’ll be there around 2:30, at which point live-tweeting will commence. Follow me on twitter or check out steadyburn.tumblr.com (the weakest looking tumblog in the land at the moment) for all the real-time updates!

Should be a draft to remember, considering that it’s supposed to push 85 tomorrow in NYC, which means only the most irate of Giants and Jets fans are planning to show up and boo incessantly the hometown picks.

If you want to prep for the draft by hearing about Mark Sanchez’ NYC burger odyssey, follow him on twitter here. If you want to get familiar with some of the best pre-draft content going around the blogosphere, there’s always the NFL Draft of All-Time Video Game Greats and Top Five Hottest Girlfriends of 2009 NFL Draft Prospects.

Enjoy the picks!

*In College, a friend of mine coined the term Short Skirt Saturday to represent the first balmy Saturday in the Spring in New York. Self-explanatory, inspired, and completely on point.

The Business of Sports threw up a post today championing the twitter usage of the Worldwide Leader. As much as I’d like to tear it down, and say they’re just using it as a megalo-rss feed, I can’t really do that (BLAST!) As BofS points out, ESPN is actually engaging it’s audience kindof on twitter. For example, Both the PTI and the Around The Horn twitter handles are inviting viewers to ask questions via the platform. For instance, @PTIshow put up a post yesterday asking viewers to suggest a guest for today’s show. Additionally, ESPN Regional Television created @Big12Network for fans to get updates on conference tournament happening – I badly wish The Big East was doing this.

Without letting them get off scott free, of the seven twitter IDs that Business of Sports highlights (minus the true ESPN.com feeder ID @ESPN) the follower to following ratio is about 10 to 1. And I hate, hate, hate to admit it, but Plaschke is the one doing the best job of joining in the fray (1,419 followers; following 1186). So, hop to Reali and fantasy guy Matthew Berry! (Fantasy Guy Matthew Berry gets special commendation for setting his location as Sadly, CT.)

Link: ESPN and Twitter


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