A fake news website fooled several news sites Saturday into thinking the NBA had canceled the 2017 All-Star Game in Charlotte because of the passage of an anti-LGBT law.

A site called ABC News, with a logo similar of that of the real ABC news, ran the bogus story. A short AP rewrite of the fake story was picked up by Cleveland.com, which deleted it when it discovered the hoax (here is an archived version of their now-deleted page). The report was distributed widely enough online that the NBA was forced to issue a disclaimer on its Twitter page.

The fake news story is weird since the article is not an obvious parody, so it’s easy to see how some people were fooled before doing any due diligence. The first tipoff should have been that the NBA would not announce such a dramatic step on a Saturday afternoon for an event happening 10 months later. But it shows how pretty much anything posted on the web will be believed by someone.

The NBA is still hoping a resolution will be worked out in North Carolina, but unless the law is changed or ruled unconstitutional, the league will have to make a decision on the game sooner or later.

Update: The original version of this story said that the Associated Press also ran the hoax report. This is incorrect. Cleveland.com did post the hoax and issued this apology, which included: "We combined it with an Associated Press story about the North Carolina controversy but left the AP byline on what we published. That made it appear that the Associated Press had been duped by the impostor website. That's not fair to the Associated Press, a valued partner for Cleveland.com."

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