General

Stern Ready to Bring Order to NBA Tweets

Sep 4, 2009, 4:51 PM UTC

All dreams must die at some point. It’s called waking up and going toâ†µwork, or having someone knock you out of proverbial reverie and tellâ†µyou the rent’s due.â†µ
â†µ
â†µSo it was with a heavy heart that, catching up today, I read theâ†µreport from Marc J. Spears over at Yahoo! that Stern willâ†µannounce player guidelines for Twitter and other social media:â†µâ†µâ‡¥“Obviously, there is a happy medium between tweeting before the gameâ†µâ‡¥and tweeting from our bench during the game,” Stern said by phone.â†µâ‡¥“You want to make sure that pop culture doesn’t intrude on whatâ†µâ‡¥brought us here, which is the game, and that we show the right respectâ†µâ‡¥for the game.”â†µâ†µThe bad news is that this follows in the footsteps of the quasi-fascistâ†µNFL. The good news? It pertains mostly to when players can and cannotâ†µtweet:â†µâ†µâ‡¥“We just need to make sure when it’s OK to Tweet and when it’s not OKâ†µâ‡¥to Tweet so it at least focuses around the game,” he said. “It wouldâ†µâ‡¥look unusual for a guy sitting on the bench to pick up his cell phone,â†µâ‡¥and I think we can agree that he probably shouldn’t be writingâ†µâ‡¥e-mails. It’s not about Twitter; it’s about the line of communication.â†µâ‡¥That’s what we’re focusing on.”â†µâ†µ

But what about the the other stuff, the wackyâ†µslice-of-life/stream-of-â†µconsciousness goldmine that we here have madeâ†µaâ†µdaily feature out of? In typical Sternian fashion, the man’sâ†µtaking a calculated risk (or perhaps asserting authority whileâ†µleaving a glimmer of hope -- you never can tell with him): “We’re happyâ†µto let it play out to see if it merits all the attention that it’sâ†µgetting. We don’t want to overreact.”â†µ
â†µ
â†µGood news for us, and anyone else who thinks these often inane,â†µalways revealing dispatches are the next frontier of player/everyoneâ†µelse interface. As for the Memphis fans upset at Hasheem Thabeet’s excessiveâ†µchattiness, well, you’ll just have to hope another Jennings-likeâ†µcrisis forces Stern to crack down harder.
â†µ

â†µFor more NBA coverage, visit SportingNews.com's new NBA blog, The Baseline.

â†µ

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

See More: