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The first part of the article:

When the NBA playoffs began earlier this month, 19-year-old Zinzy was disappointed that the Memphis Grizzlies, his favorite team, weren’t in the mix.

The Grizzlies were fresh off a 25-game, rebuilding season and were on the outside looking in for the first time in years.

So, he had a goofy idea — what if he jokingly live-tweeted a fake playoff series, as a gimmick?

At first, he was planning on doing so with a good friend who was a Phoenix Suns fan, who was worried that his team might miss the playoffs, too.

“We were talking, and I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be so funny if you got knocked out, if you didn’t qualify for the playoffs, and we just did this fake playoff series in our heads?’” Zinzy told SB Nation. “And he was like, ‘Yeah, that would be cool.’ And then, they made the playoffs eventually, and I was just like, that kind of sucks.”

But, after thinking about it a little bit more, he decided to do it anyway. In part, because it’d be funny. And, in part, because it was something to bring together a community that had long meant so much to him.

The rest was history — since his first Warriors-Grizzlies Tweets on April 18th, tens of thousands of NBA fans have posted Tweets and shared Instagram posts reacting to an NBA playoff series that isn’t actually taking place.

How the heck did we get here?

The story actually begins six years ago, in Nigeria

In 2020, Zinzy was a 13-year-old living in Nigeria who had never even taking a liking to basketball.

“I was very ignorant of the sport, right?” he recalled. “I was like, basketball is boring.”

Then, one night, a friend of his dragged him to watch a Grizzlies game on television at 2 am. Almost immediately, he found himself enthralled, drawn to the Grizzlies’ bright-blue uniforms and captivated by rising superstar Ja Morant.

After doing his homework, he learned that the franchise had never won an NBA title and had not had a ton of success relative to other teams. And, in a funny way, that made him want to become a Grizzlies fan even more.

“I did some research on all the teams. And I was like, ‘The Grizzlies don’t have any championships.’ And I love that. It sounds dumb saying it aloud. But, if I could go support a team, and I feel like I’m part of the bigger part of their history when they’re winning, then that would definitely feel good.”

Since 2020, there have been plenty of highs and plenty of lows. The Grizzlies made the playoffs four times in five years. They saw Ja Morant, Jaren Jackson Jr, and Desmond Bane all become stars. Since that first watch, Zinzy estimates he’s watched more than 70% of Grizzlies games.

But the 2025-2026 season was a tough one. They traded away Bane in the offseason and Jackson Jr. ahead of the midseason trade deadline. Now, it appears like it could be the end of the road for Morant, too, with trade rumors circling the point guard all season.

So, on the heels of such a difficult season and the fanbase in flux, Zinzy viewed the gimmick as something silly that could bring the fanbase together.

The 2026 Warriors-Grizzlies playoff series began in a dorm room

One night, while studying for his final exams at the University of Manitoba in Canada, where he studies environmental design, he randomly began to live-tweet a fake series between the Grizzlies and the Warriors.

“I just got this idea, like – I can still do this on my own,” Zinzy said. “I can do it on Twitter, right? So I just, I tweeted fake stats of Ja and Steph in a Game 1 battle. Then right after that, a couple of days later, I decided to fake live-tweet Game 2 out of nowhere.”

He didn’t think much of it at first.

But, slowly but surely, other major fan accounts on NBA Twitter decided to get in on the bit.