There were rumors of a basketball game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls Thursday night, but no one really noticed because more important things were happening off the court.
Doug McDermott slides into Taylor Swift’s direct messages
Behold the story of #TaylorMeetsDoug, a true tale of modern romance.
Alex Goodlett/Getty Images
Ricky O'Donnell has covered basketball at all levels for more than a decade at SB Nation. He’s currently the Associate Director of Programming.
Hours before the game tipped, a post published at Gawker detailed the story of a proud sociopath who hacked Taylor Swift’s social media accounts and tried to profit off whatever he found there. The post includes a screenshot of Swift’s direct messages on Twitter, which features an appearance from Chicago Bulls rookie Doug McDermott.
This isn’t the first time the reigning princess of pop -- the 25-year-old Swift -- has been linked to America’s sweetheart --- the 23-year-old McDermott. Up until this point, it always looked like a one-sided affair.
Doug’s college days
.@taylorswift13 @taylorswift13 @taylorswift13 #taylormeetsdoug
— Doug McDermott (@dougmcd3) March 13, 2013 Lets get this trending! #taylormeetsdoug @taylorswift
— Doug McDermott (@dougmcd3) March 13, 2013 On March 13, 2013, Creighton was coming off a victory in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament championship game over Wichita State. Junior forward Doug McDermott scored 14 points in the win, and Bluejays were headed to the NCAA Tournament a week later as a No. 7 seed.
Creighton had a few days off, so McDermott did what most people would have done: he tweeted at Taylor Swift. The messages above are McDermott’s honest attempt to meet Swift by starting the hashtag #taylormeetsdoug. For a while, it didn’t appear to have worked. Creighton was bounced by Duke in the round of 32, and McDermott’s dream of starting a nationally trending topic died without gaining much traction.
Doug sees Taylor at his first ever NBA game
McDermott made his NBA debut on Oct. 29 in Madison Square Garden against the New York Knicks. Swift was also in the gym, set to start for New York at small forward:
Taylor Swift da gawd predicted the Knicks win total pic.twitter.com/IJRGmwsLQw
— alex (@steven_lebron) December 26, 2014 The Knicks reportedly traded two first-round picks to acquire Swift when Derek Fisher learned she couldn’t even dunk without the help of a teammate:
Being the true New Yorker she is, Swift still showed up for the Bulls-Knicks game in a courtside seat. It was there she was noticed by McDermott in his first ever NBA game. Her appearance made an impression:
McDermott said his welcome to the NBA moment came when he saw Ben Stiller and Taylor Swift sitting courtside.
— K.C. Johnson (@KCJHoop) October 30, 2014 McDermott scored 12 points in 24 minutes and Chicago defeated New York, 104-80.
The DMs
Gawker’s post was published at 2:30 local time on January 29th. The Bulls were in Los Angeles to play the Lakers, while Swift had a busy week trademarking her own extremely bad catchphrases. Here’s the screenshot from the Gawker post:
Bless Taylor Swift for being the only person in the world who converses with Lena Dunham, Zach Braff and Doug McDermott. She is a true icon.
A quick check of the 177 people Swift follows on Twitter confirmed McDermott was one of them:
McDermott has only played two minutes since Nov. 30 as he recovers from surgery to repair a torn meniscus, but recent developments have his rookie season already feeling like a success. #TaylorMeetsDoug, a story of true millennial romance.
