The Smush Parker Project

This past weekend, I visited the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. My cousin works for Twitter and was able to give me a tour. In addition to free iced tea and a T-shirt, the tour got me thinking about how pro athletes, especially NBA players, utilize technology, especially Twitter, in their increasingly public lives.

Before the advent of the Internet, fans didn't have a great idea of what NBA stars were like. Those who wanted to be privy to "insider" info relied on their team's beat writers to provide heavily filtered and carefully worded tidbits from interviews and press conferences. The arrival of the Internet, and more recently, social networking sites, has allowed athletes to circumvent the media and provide access into their everyday lives to the fans. This is a direct contrast to the last 20-30 years of NBA coverage.

The 1980s and '90s were a veritable dead period in terms of athlete-to-fan interaction. While the previous era of basketball featured many players prone towards entertaining, albeit at times inflammatory comments, the average NBA player became extremely adept at saying essentially nothing. The twin forces of political correctness and endorsement opportunities made players hesitant to be candid for fear of losing money or public face. No player embodied this idea more than Michael Jordan. Jordan was not only the greatest basketball ever; he was the most marketable basketball player ever. Behind his trademark tongue-wagging, bald head and mega-watt smile, Jordan garnered endorsements from Nike, McDonalds, Gatorade and Hanes, among others, eventually culminating in his own Jordan brand of apparel. 

What most fans didn't know, however, was that Jordan was a bit of a prick. In his watershed 1991 book, The Jordan Rules, Chicago Bulls beat writer Sam Smith detailed how Jordan told teammates not to pass to starting center Bill Cartwright, how Jordan was a gambling addict, how he ripped on Head Coach Phil Jackson and General Manager Jerry Krause to anyone who would listen and how he constantly fumed about not scoring enough because his teammates stole shots (Jordan averaged a whopping 22.4 field goal attempts per game). Furthermore, it later came to light that Jordan cheated on his wife Juanita with a hairdresser named Karla Knafel, which eventually led to the Jordans' divorce. 

Most people don't know these things about Jordan, because information was just not as readily accessible in the '90s, and because Jordan's public image was so carefully crafted. Twitter, on the other hand, gives people a chance to see athletes more closely. To some athletes, this means more of the same: safe supplementations to a meticulously forged public persona, meant to make athletes appear congenial, focused, and, most importantly, marketable (just like Jordan). Yet some athletes have used Twitter to let fans see a side of them to which said fans wouldn't typically have access. 

The notion that Twitter might become a powerful tool of communication for the NBA really took hold over the summer, when Minnesota Timberwolves big man Kevin Love broke the news that Kevin McHale wouldn't return as head coach of the team over Twitter. Though Love subsequently deleted his Twitter account, the message was clear: Twitter was a force with which to be reckoned.

Other players choose to be more entertaining than newsworthy. Cleveland Cavaliers center Shaquille O'Neal (@The_Real_Shaq), already known as one of the league's most loquacious and entertaining personalities ever, has used Twitter to share his every move with fans going so far as offering memorabilia to the first fan who could find and touch him in a bizarre version of Twitter tag. 

Steve Nash (@The_Real_Nash) of the Phoenix Suns, already a fan favorite for his free-wheeling style and unselfish play, has used Twitter to promote a series of goofy, low-fi viral videos that do everything from comparing teammate Leandro Barbosa to a Na'Vi from Avatar to documenting a sing-a-long of Lionel Richie tunes on the team bus. 

While many athletes are viewed as seemingly emotionless robots, Twitter has also shown that many are extremely sensitive when it comes to fan criticism. Phiadelphia 76ers guard Lou Williams (@TeamLou23), recently responded directly to one fan's repeated tweets to Williams that he be traded. Suns power forward Amar'e Stoudemire (@Amareisreal), the subject of recent trade rumors that have him going to the Cavaliers, has directly addressed critics who say that he can't co-exist with O'Neal, using his stats as positive evidence.

Like any social networking site, Twitter is an opportunity for people to connect with others. Players in the NBA, more than any other professional sports league, have used Twitter to keep fans informed and entertained. It would be poor journalism on my part, however, not to point out that there has been some negativity with NBA players and Twitter. 

In the wake of his recent troubles involving firearms in the locker room, Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas used Twitter to repeatedly make jokes about the investigation and ensure fans that it was no big deal. Yes, this is certainly a bad thing. But for every NBA player like Arenas using Twitter negatively, there are 20 like Nuggets guard J.R. Smith (@JR_Swish), who despite having a reputation for being a bit of a thug in the eyes of many fans, has used Twitter to make fart jokes with his younger sister. Ultimately, Twitter is a medium where NBA players can, if they choose, show fans their true, often goofy colors, in lieu of the typical personality-from-a-can that so many stars displayed for so long.