Clippers player JJ Redick gives a first-hand account of how the NBA emoji war started

Leading up to DeAndre Jordan's shocking decision to back out of a deal with the Mavericks and re-sign with the Clippers, players from both teams converged on Houston to recruit Jordan to their teams.

In the process, players from both teams sent out emoji-based tweets, demonstrating their involvement in this all-out recruiting war. Soon, the battle went viral, with NBA and other sports accounts sending out similar tweets, despite having no involvement 

Clippers guard J.J. Redick, who had publicly given the Clippers an "F" for not re-signing Jordan before Jordan changed his mind, went on Zach Lowe's podcast "The Lowe Post" and gave a first-hand account of the war.

Redick told Lowe he had driven to Houston on Wednesday morning after he had gotten a call from Clippers coach and GM Doc Rivers that Jordan wanted to go back to L.A.

Reddick said the story hadn't broken yet. He got to his hotel, went on Twitter, and saw the story had been reported by ESPN's Marc Stein.

He then saw that Chandler Parsons, the Mavericks' lead recruiter for Jordan, tweeted out a plane emoji, suggesting he was on his way to Houston to re-recruit Jordan:

Redick told Lowe: "I was just kind of my Twitter account, scrolling through my timeline, and I saw a plane emoji. You know, 'Chandler Parsons to the rescue, yaaay!' And I'm just like, 'Alright, we're gonna tweet out a car, I'm already here.'"

Afterward, Blake Griffin got in the mix:

As did Chris Paul, who'd previously been banana-boating in the Bahamas with Dwyane Wade and LeBron James:

However, the tweet that really set the Internet ablaze was Paul Pierce's picture of a rocket emoji, causing some to wonder if the 37-year-old forward knew how to access emojis in the first place.

Redick was as baffled as the rest of the Internet:

"I'm still not sure why he tweeted that out, because he wasn't trolling like, 'Hey, I don't know how to use emojis.' He's got a couple of emoji apps on his phone, neither of which I had ever heard of. I have, like, the emoji app, you know, the one where you type in emoji? He's got some crazy ones, and he's got, like, these emojis I've never seen before. And so, I don't know why he couldn't type that emoji into his actual, you know, Twitter feed or whatever. It was bizarre. I have no idea. I still am unsure as to why it was a picture of a spac ship emoji and not an actual spaceship emoji...  I'm still unsure of that. Because we talked about it, it just still doesn't make sense to me."

Soon, many others in the NBA world jumped in, with the Warriors tweeting out a trophy emoji and Kobe Bryant tweeting out five ring emojis.

While some argue that the whole scenario reflected poorly on Jordan, the Clippers, and the NBA, Redick felt it drew mainly positive attention to the NBA.

"It's such a small subset of people that were actually a part of this story on Twitter, and yeah, there were some emojis being tweeted out, but it was all in good fun," Redick said. "Our meeting was very serious. DeAndre's decision was very serious. But having said that, Wednesday was the best day on Twitter, maybe, ever."

Though the event did affect the fates of at least two franchises - Redick admitted he felt slightly bad for the Mavs - the viral nature of the tweet storm did make it one of the most fun, memorable sports stories in recent memory.