Rumor Patrol: Was Kevin Ware Briefly Kicked Off the Louisville Basketball Team Last Month?

Kevin Ware, the Louisville basketball player who suffered a gruesome compound fracture leg injury in the NCAA Tournament, has mysteriously been absent from twitter since July 15. If you check his feed, he’d been an active tweeter all summer, either tweeting out something or re-tweeting someone or replying to someone every day.

Obviously, taking a timeout from twitter is a no big deal. (In fact, it’s quite healthy!)

But is there a bigger reason for his twitter hiatus?

Matt Jones at Kentucky Sports Radio floated a rumor that has been circulating in the Bluegrass State: Ware was allegedly kicked off the Louisville basketball team in July for multiple violations of a team rule. But the scuttlebutt is that shortly after Ware’s dismissal, he returned to the team.

"A rumor spread (first on UL message boards, fan forums and Twitter) that Kevin Ware had been kicked off the UL basketball team due to multiple violations of the same team rule. While we initially dismissed the notion as mere fan chatter, after some digging, I (and others in the media) began to believe it was true. At some point over the past few weeks, the rumor goes, Ware was dismissed after the latest violation and the team was told he would no longer be with the team. The rumor spread online, in part, because team members told multiple people that Ware was no longer on the team. It then finally leaked to media at the end of last week. As of now, no member of the Louisville media has come out and reported the story, and my guess is that no one will. I spoke with UL spokesman Kenny Klein on Friday night, and he told me Ware is on the team now, but said he did not go as far as to say that no dismissal had ever occurred"

I know what you’re thinking – Jones and KSR are mortal enemies with Louisville, and there’s obviously no truth to this. And Louisville confirmed to KSR that Ware is currently on the team, so let’s move on! But the question of whether or not he was indeed booted for multiple violations of a team rule remains unclear.

Louisville fans are angry. The Louisville media is being defensive about the claim by Jones that they are not reporting the story. Nobody knows what to believe.

Eventually, the truth will come out. Why? Because Ware was the biggest story of last year’s college basketball season – the podcast I did on Ware’s injury and the media reaction is still the most-listened to one I’ve done – and his return to the Cardinals next season will mean multiple TV features and magazine profiles. Come November or early December, Kevin Ware – and that ghastly injury – will be everywhere. As if his return from the gnarly injury wasn’t enough, perhaps the narrative will include another hurdle – whatever may or may not have happened over the summer. [via Kentucky Sports Radio]