'Surreal': Aussie NBA fan ponders Joe Ingles tattoo after tweet goes viral

One Aussie NBA superfan is weighing up which tattoo of Joe Ingles he’s going to get, after a tweet to the Utah Jazz star unexpectedly went viral.

Sam Johnson, a 20-year-old university student in Sydney, was messing around with a mate before a class on Thursday morning when he decided to send a tweet to the Australian forward.

With only a very small following on the platform, Johnson wasn’t expecting to get a response.

Of course, when it came, he was left all the more shocked.

“I was in class, bored with a mate talking basketball as we do,” Johnson told Yahoo Sport Australia.

“He just said, ‘why not do a tweet to your favourite player, I bet he won’t respond’.

“I said to him, ‘I bet he will.'”

Sam, of course, was proved right, as Ingles himself, his fellow Jazz star Donovan Mitchell and even high-profile NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski got in on the joke.

Naturally, he and his mate were trying to keep a lid on things during their class as everything unfolded.

“You know Twitter, people are always tweeting stuff, but it all got picked up in like, 10 minutes,” he said.

“Even Woj, he’s iconic, when his name popped up and the amount of followers he has, it was crazy, we couldn’t believe it.

“It was blowing up, my phone was crashing, it was surreal.

“The tutor was at the front of the class talking and we’re just staring at our screens in complete silence.”

Johnson already has some ink – “I have one tattoo on my leg already after a drunk night out with the boys, but this one I’ll put a bit more care into,” he said.

But now he’s pondering which direction to go with when it comes to having Ingles’ face inked on his skin.

The Jazz superfan hasn’t ruled out going back to the man himself for some advice on which direction he should go with it.

“It’s definitely between the thumbs up or the headband Joe from the playoffs last year,” Johnson said.

“(The tweets) are a cool thing to have, Donovan will be a club legend, along with Joe.”