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NBA ‘Centel’ has officially been recognized by Merriam-Webster.

For the uninitiated, NBA Centel is a parody account that frequently posts outrageously fake hoop news.

It’s the parody account of the NBA news aggregate account, NBA Central, which OutKick’s Amber Harding Snyder recently alluded to in a piece about Kevin Durant.

READ: Kevin Durant Loves Reading Comments From ‘Dummies’ On Parody Account

Essentially, you never want to get Centel’d, which is to get caught slipping believing a fake headline. The account has built a rep for getting blocked by a slew of athletes.

Media outlets have been caught in the past believing a Centel headline and looked ridiculous in the process.

At its inception, I frankly found the whole thing annoying. The more self-aware they got, the more I started to enjoy their over-the-top content. At the end of the day, they’re a better “outlet” to read than aggregator news accounts that have become rampant on social media, which most of the time are just money-hungry bot-driven headlines about nothing news (looking at you, Dov Kleiman and MLF Football).

I’d rather read the Onion version of NBA news than “Breaking” news from outlets pretending they’re legit when it’s actually some loser in a hoodie with a substantial following.

(I don’t wear hoodies.)

So, how did Centel make its way into an OutKick article? Did this author get caught “slippin'”?

No. It’s actually a day of celebration for NBA Centel after the famed dictionary Merriam-Webster officially acknowledged it as a “verb.”

Specifically, they acknowledged getting “Centel’d” as an act of getting punked by a fake news headline.

Monday, Oct. 14, will surely go down in parody account history.

Piggybacking on an exchange between the aforementioned Kevin Durant and an unfortunately illiterate soul on the internet, Merriam-Webster pointed to the culprit as a prime example of getting Centel’d.

The thread is worth a minute of your day.

The parody account celebrated its achievement by expressing astonishment.

And the rest of NBA Twitter celebrated the “game recognizing game” with their own attempts at trolling.

“Centel’d officially in the dictionary before a Joel Embiid conference finals appearance,” one fan said.

Ballsack Sports, a parody account in its own right, also had to acknowledge the game by Centel … or dissed it … it’s hard to tell what’s real or fake.

Gotta love the internet.

Follow along on X: @alejandroaveela

Send us your thoughts: alejandro.avila@outkick.com