A Wrong Number Makes Michigan Youth Basketball Team’s Day!

Buccaneer stories like this one need to be told.

I saw this Jenna Laine (ESPN staff writer) story and realized I hadn’t seen it anywhere else as of that time. Understanding how such small stories touch people’s lives so deeply sometimes, I had to put it out on Bucslifemedia.com as well. Fans deserve to know about these instances where our Bucs go above and beyond.

So it goes that a youth basketball team was trying to make a face time video chat with someone they knew. Without realizing it, they inadvertently called the wrong number, and Sean Murphy-Bunting answered the call from the Buc’s Locker Room. The Michigan kids didn’t believe who Murphy-Bunting was telling them he was. Murphy-Bunting then got Rob Gronkowski involved in the live video chat. The kids quickly realized they were really communicating with Buccaneers players and even more so when the call was handed off to Leonard Fournette, Richard Sherman, and Mike Evans. Fournette told the kids that Tom Brady was in a meeting but could be coming out of it pretty quickly. If so, he would bring the GOAT in on the call.

Sure enough, the Michigan (Brady played College at U. of Michigan) youths began losing their collective minds when Brady did show up in time to talk with them. Fournette had this to say about that.

“They were shocked,” Fournette said of when he handed the phone to Brady. “I think that’s… to guys in high school… Tom is the figure for them. ‘You know what I mean? Who wouldn’t want to look up to a guy like that?”–all quotes Per Jenna Laine ESPN Sports.

Brady then chimed in on the whole thing saying, “That was sweet! I didn’t know who it was. [Leonard] said, ‘Here’s my boy’ or whatever he said. It was nice. It would have been nice for me when I had been in high school too.”

When Brady found out the kids were from Michigan? “Even better,” he said. “That was fun. That was really fun. It was really good to see all those young kids hyped up.”

The following are a couple of the tweets about what happened.

The boys are like “yes, if this is XXXX.” The guy replies, “no, this is Sean. Do you know who I am?” Of course they think it’s their teammate messing with them. After some back and forth the guy says “this is @seanbunting_ ” and he sends a selfie in the Bucs locker room… pic.twitter.com/qdrbTzE0Fo

— P. Jason Whalen (@pjwhalen16) November 24, 2021

It was an unexpected occurrence. Nevertheless, the kids and the Big Kids in Buc’s uniforms seemed to both get something out of it. Thanks to all the Bucs that participated in the call.