Is it because there are more social media options than ever before? Or maybe it’s because the cream of the NBA crop is up for NBA free agency. Perhaps it is because it’s Summer and other than events in Brazil, there is not much for the hard core sports fan to focus on.
Likely, you are ready to check the box that says “All of the Above.” Regardless, it is easy to see that in the age of Twitter and Snapchat and Instagram, not to mention a growing list of 24/7 cable sports channels, the NBA free agent season has taken a turn for the surreal and it will not likely ever be the same again. Thanks to the instant media and 140 character world we live in, the free agent period has turned the average sports fan into something resembling the legendarily rabid SEC football fan.
NBA Free Agency in the Social Media Age
We are now tweeting and posting things we hear about Carmelo and Lebron and Bosch as though we have some authoritative informational stance because, well we heard it somewhere else. We see a tweet from a poster who has an ESPN account reporting that Carmelo has come to terms on a deal with the Lakers. No need to bother checking the veracity of the information. Turn on ESPN to see if it’s true? No! We have gotten the word and the word must be spread to our personal masses who will then turn it around to their personal masses, and just like that, “Steve from Saginaw” has gotten out the word first and foremost. Wait? That was wrong? ‘Melo didn’t agree to a contract with the Lakers? But I saw it Twitter….
Still not convinced we have entered the surreal zone?
Sunday, UCLA Assistant Basketball Coach, David Grace, sent out a tweet that claimed that Kobe, Carmelo and Kevin Love were in engaged in a pickup game on campus. The story had some veracity because UCLA has been known for decades to facilitate closed door pickup games with NBA and college stars. Was Grace trying to promote Love and Anthony to the Lakers? Of course not. He was promoting the coolness of UCLA getting such a high level of stars to play pickup games at his school…in his gym. The glitch here is that Grace had no actual knowledge of any such game. He heard the rumor and turned it into instant media fodder. For an hour on a late Sunday afternoon, as people were grousing for any sports to salvage the last day of their 4th of July holiday weekend, the internet caught fire with the rumor; a rumor that was exactly that…nothing more than hearsay.
Actual sports journalists, having to compete in the modern media complex, of course have turned to social media to get their word out faster, as well as to promote their own “in-depth” analysis posted on their employer’s web site. Sunday, they stopped what they were doing in order to call their sources, who in turn had to call other sources, in order to shoot down the pick-up game story.
What were they working on that they had to bring to an instant halt?
Tweeting things that they “heard from various sources.” Tweeting about Kobe missing the Lakers’ meeting with Carmelo, and at which fabulous West LA restaurant would they meet up for dinner later; or Lebron blowing off meetings to go to Brazil for the World Cup, and that must be good for Miami because they have Brazilians living there. Nothing substantial in any of it–just a compelling need to make sure the instant media age doesn’t leave them behind and to give them the ability to feed our ever growing need to read random smoke signals. Admit it, you stop what you’re doing at work several times a day to check to see if Lebron is going back to Cleveland, or if Pat Riley has offered him part ownership of the Heat to come back to Miami, or if any of it is even true. Afterall, didn’t someone just tweet that they sat next to a guy in coach on a commercial flight to Minneapolis who looked just like Lebron?
Did the free agency create the instant media circus? Or did a wild, wild west media create the chaos? At this point, does it matter? The genie is out of the bottle. There is no going back on the ridiculousness and the world of both is hereby changed forever. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to get to my Twitter followers, because I am certain I just heard that Carmelo is at a Starbucks in Fontana… there must be something major I will have to report to my people.
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