Stunned Paul Allen

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About

Stunned Paul Allen is a reaction image featuring the owner of the Portland Trail Blazers and co-founder of Microsoft looking dumbfounded with his mouth agape on the sidelines during the team's semifinal match against the Golden State Warriors in the 2016 NBA Playoffs.

Origin

During Game 4 of the Portland Trail Blazer’s NBA Playoff semifinals against the Golden State Warriors on May 9th, 2016, Paul Allen was captured on camera with his mouth open in astonishment as the opponent team's star point guard Steph Curry scored a three-pointer during the overtime portion of the match (shown below). The game resulted in the victory of the Golden State Warriors (132 – 125).

Spread

Later that evening, ESPN2 host Jemele Hill tweeted^[1] a photograph of a television screen showing Paul Allen seated at the game, along with the caption "When they said he was doubtful one day then he basically ended your season the next day" (shown below). Within 48 hours, the tweet gained over 3,200 retweets and 3,000 likes. Meanwhile, Twiter user @cjzero^[2] posted an animated GIF of Allen's reaction titled "Stunned Paul Allen in slo-mo," garnering more than 1,400 retweets and 1,300 likes over the two days (shown below, right).

On May 10th, The Daily What^[6] published a post about the event, highlighting photoshopped images of Allen as Crying Michael Jordan (shown below, left) and the character Mr. Krabs from Spongebob Squarepants (shown below, right). In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the reaction image, including UpRoxx,^[3] TechInsider^[4] and SB Nation.^[5]