Scott Morrison was a mild-mannered Celtics assistant coach when he awoke on the morning of Feb. 22.
His fame had generally been confined to his roots on Prince Edward Island and in the basketball reaches of Canada, and he’d become a celebrity of sorts in Portland, Maine, during three years as coach of the Red Claws. But even some Celtics fans may have had trouble picking him out of a lineup. Maybe still would.
Then, in the blink of a two-word tweet, Morrison became an international sensation. He was still a mild-mannered Celtics assistant coach, but suddenly people around the world were clicking on his Twitter profile to learn more about the author of a profound reply.
It began after the U.S. defeated Canada in men’s curling and women’s hockey at the Olympics. Chris Sedenka, Red Claws play-by-play man and Portland radio show host, decided to have a little snarky fun. At 8:43 a.m., he tweeted, “Hey @Canada, what else would you like us to beat you in today?”
A minute later, according to the time stamp, Morrison replied, “Gun Control.” Twitter soon caught on in a big way. The retweets and likes began flying.
“I had just woke up and read the scores,” said Morrison, “and I was disappointed because (Celtics video coordinator) Matt Reynolds and I had a vested interest in the Canada-U.S. curling rivalry. So it was a double whammy because we lost women’s hockey, too.
“And then I see Chris with his tweet trying to be smart about it, and the first thing that came to mind was gun control because of the stuff that’s been going on, and that’s kind of a sensitive topic, I guess, everywhere now. But people in Canada don’t understand it. We can’t really comprehend how it works down here. Generally speaking for most Canadians, we don’t understand why something like this can become a problem when it seems like the rest of the world has set a standard for how to deal with it.
“Anyway, that’s a deeper dig into what I was thinking, but I knew I could shut him up with that one, and I did. And neither of us have that many followers, so I wasn’t expecting it to be a big deal.”
Morrison was about to get more.
“I was driving to practice and I could see the alerts coming in,” he said. “I noticed maybe nine or 10 people liking or retweeting it, mostly people I know, so I thought, ‘Oh, some people have seen it.’ Then I got on the court for about two and a half or three hours, and when I came off I had a message saying I was trending in Canada, which was hilarious.
“I didn’t trend in Canada when I was in Canada. I’ve never been trendy even, ever wore anything trendy. I sent some of my buddies the screenshot of the message that Twitter sent me. It still wasn’t such a big deal at that point, but by the end of the day I had to turn my Twitter alerts off because it had gotten insane.”
As of late this past week, Morrison’s message had attracted 27,960 retweets, 99,400 likes and more than 700 replies.
“To a person, anyone who’s made a comment to me has been like, ‘Hey, that was a good answer,’ ” Morrison said. “Everyone’s been very supportive, which, to me, is a good sign. It feels like maybe people are starting to be more woke to what’s going on.
“I wasn’t intending to get into a political thing. It was more to shoot Chris down a little bit. But I haven’t heard anything from up above (in the Celtics organization). Luckily I don’t think anybody important follows me,” he joked.
“I did mention it to Brad (Stevens) and a couple of the other coaches in the locker room, and they thought it was good. They thought it was cool. I don’t think anybody is really worried about me causing an international incident or anything.”
But he did deliver a jolt, and in the time since, Morrison has paused to consider the deeper meaning of the gun issue and its different sides.
“My takeaway is just how sensitive an issue it is,” he said. “And where I thought it was just Canadians looking at the situation in the U.S. and thinking it was getting out of hand, I think if anything it just showed that people all over the world agree, but also a lot of Americans agree, too.
“It’s something I believe in. I usually keep that stuff to myself, but, you know, if that many people appreciated what I said, then I was glad I did it.”
McCARTY MAKES MOVE
Congratulations to Walter McCarty on getting the head coaching job at Evansville, though a number of his friends here are saddened because they’ll no longer get a regular chance to beat him on the golf course.
Walt spent three years on the Louisville staff, and he spoke a while back about the numerous NCAA restrictions.
“It’s difficult, man. You’ve got to know a lot of rules,” he said. “You have to know what you can do on certain days and what you can’t do — whether you can text, whether you can call, whether you can have a kid on campus on off campus, whether you can be out recruiting kids depending on what year they are, whether you can talk to a kid at a game.
“There’s so many rules that you really have to understand them so you don’t put your school in any type of danger of breaking rules. It was difficult.”
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