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Lima Sopoaga trolls NBA star sparking code war between fans

Sopoaga vs JR Smith

All Blacks and Highlanders first five-eighth Lima Sopoaga has sparked a ‘fan war’ between rugby and NBA fans after throwing tongue-in-cheek banter at Cleveland Cavaliers shooting guard J.R. Smith.

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The NBA star posted a hypothetical scenario on Instagram, asking his followers what would they do if they found a truck full of cash with your child and the driver of the truck deceased. Smith captioned that his child would have said “Daddy get that side i got this side” to which Lima Sopoaga replied, “Daddy will all this money buy you a jump shot to help LBJ in the finals?”

The Cleveland Cavaliers have been a one-man band in the NBA playoffs with many commentators criticising the team for performing poorly providing little to no help to Lebron James. The trolling by Sopoaga has triggered a wave of angry NBA fans, unaware of who he is. The replies in some cases are too explicit to repost here.

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Coming to the rescue are a number of rugby fans, willing to bat on behalf of rugby as comments going both ways reach slanderous levels. It is believed to be the first social media beef between a professional rugby player and a professional basketball player. It is not known whether Sopoaga is a fan who bandwagons Lebron or whether he is a genuinely concerned Cavs fan about Smith’s jumper.

 

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J
JW 39 minutes ago
Razor has an about turn on All Blacks eligibility rules

Yep, another problem!


I think he would have, in the instance I mentioned, which wasn’t changing anything other than correctly applying todays eligibility quidelines. Which is an arbitrary construct, as the deal likely would have played out completely differently, but I just ‘allowed’ him to have 1 year sabbatically for his ‘loyalty’, rather than having some arbitrary number like 70 caps required.


So if Richie had a 3 year deal, and the first year he was allowed to use him still, I don’t think he’d really not transition to Dmac being his main 10, as he’s obviously the only one he can use for the following two years, therefore likely his only real option for the WC (very hard for Richie to overtake him in such a short time). Richie would purely be a security net in a situation like I proposition where there are only small changes to the eligibility.


The system is not working well enough though, as we don’t have the Rugby Championship or World Cup trophies, do we? Well on that last question, that’s all I’m really saying but I would not believe a word this author says, so it’s entirely a ‘what if’ discussion, but if the author is right and now they are actually going to be more flexible, I think that’s great yeah. Ultimately thought I think those two players were an anomaly signing their contracts and futures up so far ahead, especially of when they were performing. Both jumped at the opportunity of good contracts when their All Black prospects weren’t looking that bright.

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