The Minnesota Timberwolves, Los Angeles Lakers and all of Basketball Twitter will hold a social media moment of silence in honor of Flip Saunders.Â
When a traumatic event outside the friendly confines of a spots arena effects us, we band together to honor that moment and make it part of our escape. That’s going to be the case when the Timberwolves tip off their season tomorrow against the Lakes with heavy hearts. It will be first game they’ve ever played that Flip Saunders won’t be around for.
Saunders died on Sunday after battling cancer, and his death is something that is hanging like a depressing cloud over the joyous occasion of the start of the NBA season. But rather than go the usual route of providing a moment of silence before Wednesday’s game, Basketball Twitter is banding together to honor Flip with a social media moment of silence.
Here’s the plan for the Twitter moment of silence:
"The PlanThe game is set to tip off this Wednesday, Oct. 28 at 9:30 p.m. CT.The moment of Twitter silence will start at the opening tip.Those who participate will step away from Twitter until the Wolves make their first basket. After the first bucket, the moment of silence will be over.It’s that simple."
It’s not something that everyone is going to teak part in, but the more the word can be spread about this the greater the impact it’s going to end up having. It’s also noteworthy in that we live in a digital age where this type of thing is not only possible but actually makes sense without feeling stupid or contrived. A Twitter moment of silence is actually probably worth more than an actual moment of silence, as we seem to Tweet almost more than we talk these days — or at least easier.
Saunders was a special person in the lives of basically everyone he touched, and that’s going to be reflected in a way we haven’t really seen before but could be the start of a new trend.
[H/T: AWAW]