Add a catalyst like LeBron James to the crucible of NBA Twitter and it doesn’t take long for the community therein to combust.
If you were on Twitter the night the Cavaliers beat the Celtics in Cleveland to force a Game 7 in the Eastern Conference Finals — and if you follow enough users tangentially or intrinsically involved in NBA Twitter — you saw this firsthand. James had 46 points with 11 rebounds, nine assists and three steals. His defense, including but not limited to a trademark chasedown block, was the stuff of LeBron fans’ dreams. He drove, he dunked, he shot 5 of 7 on 3-pointers — two of those as identical, glitch-like 27-foot step back jumpers in Jayson Tatum’s face. He was everything you could want LeBron James to be and more.
So, too, was NBA Twitter. It was the kind of performance that inspired incoherent exclamations, just James’ name in all caps. Simultaneous reactions from everyone you follow showed up in consecutive chaos on your timeline. There were tweets of joy, tweets of disbelief, tweets with stats, tweets with memes.
It can be a matter of timing, catching NBA Twitter like this. There’s usually an inciting event, sometimes, but not always, to do with a game. It can be a dunk or a halfcourt shot, an upset or a comeback, but it can also be an athlete’s Instagram, a breaking report, or just a really spicy hot take in need of roasting. The replies and the jokes — whatever is appropriate, sometimes both — come lightning fast, from national media and beat writers and bloggers, from fans and trolls.
On a good day, the smart analysis, clever replies and friendly drags create a community that makes a beloved interest even more fun. It’s unlike anything else in professional sports, on or offline: A dense concentration of NBA fans who, for whatever reason brought them to Twitter, for whatever role or lack thereof they play in the community, are invested in the subculture and have found, time and again, that Twitter is the only place to find other fans that care like they do.
And those good days keep fans checking Twitter. Just a glance because you opened the app, because it’s habit, obligation or something closer to addiction. And it only takes a few tweets, a few takes really, to get sucked in when NBA Twitter indulges its bitter side — when the community turns its enthusiasm to slapboxing and rehashing arguments its had hundreds of times before.
Hours before James inspired widespread euphoria, when it became official Chris Paul would miss Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals, NBA Twitter promptly revisited one of its favorite debates — that of the Warriors’ past and potentially future asterisk championships. The usual suspects made the usual cases, this time with the added bonus of meta subtweets about the fact the collective was retreading this particular ground at all. It’s an old argument, a classic really. No reason for anyone to follow along or engage, and yet, the tug of the community is strong — the mix of interest and obsession, of wanting to know what the people you follow are saying, of needing to share what you think, of feeling compelled to throw a little more gasoline on the flames just for fun. And so, you scroll, you follow, you tweet — even when you kind of hate it.
Good, bad. Insightful, idiotic. Fun, infuriating. NBA Twitter is everything it has always been, and more amorphous than ever — which might not be the worst thing.
The legend of NBA Twitter begins in the summer of 2015.
To be clear, basketball Twitter didn’t begin in 2015. No, the exact origins of that are harder to parse. Of the 10 people I spoke to, everyone began using Twitter either around 2008-09 or during the lockout in 2011. None of their first memories of an online basketball community were of Twitter, nor were their first basketball Twitter memories of a community characterized by live-tweeting and debate. Most remembered early basketball Twitter as something closer to an RSS feed than a chat room.
(Basketball Twitter and NBA Twitter are often used interchangeably, but are not exactly synonymous. Basketball Twitter, best I can tell, is the name used by people within the community — especially those who have been around since the “beginning.” Basketball Twitter includes fans of the sport at all levels and in all leagues, but its dominated by discussion of the NBA. NBA Twitter became the more common designation when journalists began writing about it and when the league made active strides to ingratiate itself into and take benevolent ownership of the community. This story uses NBA Twitter for accuracy and clarity describing the NBA-focused majority of basketball Twitter.)
Anyways, the Big Bang of NBA Twitter happened on July 8, 2015, when free agent DeAndre Jordan may or may not have been held hostage by Doc Rivers and a motley crew of Clippers until he re-signed with L.A. The day began with banana boat fall out and got weirder from there.
Chandler Parsons tweeted a plane. J.J. Redick, then a Clipper, tweeted a car. Blake Griffin tweeted a plane, a helicopter and a car. (Paul Pierce tweeted a jpeg of a rocket. Kobe tweeted a series of a trophies and z’s. Tweets that on any other day would have delighted for hours alone were just a footnote to the day’s timeline.) Then: The Clippers were inside the house.
NBA Twitter was a place to see your enthusiasm reflected back to you.
Basketball Twitter had enjoyed moments of shared reaction before. When the Houston Rockets social media manager tweeted a horse emoji next to a gun emoji after the Rockets knocked the Mavericks out of the playoffs, everyone was deft enough to screenshot that immediately for posterity. The 2015 Playoffs were live-tweeted, fear and loathing in Knicks Twitter was a known quantity. But the community was still in many ways off the radar of the offline world. You discovered it through a follow here, and a follow there. A writer you liked, a funny meme you saw. You only discovered basketball Twitter if you were already on Twitter or if you already knew the main players.
That changed in 2015. The DeAndre Jordan Emoji War introduced NBA Twitter to the wider world. It was a defining, irrefutable statement that this was a group of basketball fans you wanted to be a part of. Whether you were drawn by a desire to participate, to be a part of the club — and, later, to get a job — or you wanted to follow along for lack of any basketball fans in your offline life, the Emoji War painted a picture of fun. Subsequent follows would unveil that NBA Twitter was as smart as it was funny, a place for fans like you — fans who were different than your average sports bar neighbor, who were interested in the intricacies of not just their team, but everything about the league. NBA Twitter was a place to see your enthusiasm reflected back to you.
Six months later, in January 2016, The New Republic published a piece called “NBA Twitter is Changing the Way We Watch Sports.” In it, Maxwell Neely-Cohen wrote, “Twitter has become the epicenter of basketball fandom, a beating heart and a central nervous system.” Neely-Cohen described a community of writers, insiders, super fans, PR personnel and brands, plus “rappers, heads of state and the very players being discussed.”
“It’s really just this comprehensive, broad community and there’s — whoever you think of as at the cookout, or at the global sports bar, is on NBA Twitter,” says TJ Adeshola, head of U.S. Sports League Partnerships at Twitter. “You’ve got insights, you’ve got hot takes, you’ve got trolling, you’ve got trash talk, it’s really the ideal sports experience.”
That May, Wired ran a piece titled “Techies are Trying to Turn the NBA into the World’s Biggest Sports League,” that cited the league’s Twitter presence and savvy fanbase as part of the reason it’s so tech friendly. The following June, Twitter and the use of social media by athletes and brands was cited in two stories favorably comparing the league to the NFL, then in the midst of the first full summer of its still-ongoing anthem meltdown.
Perhaps the highest praise to give the league is just to say that the NBA managed to not how-do-you-do-fellow-kids a good thing to death.
“The league’s social media strategy and its convivial embrace of the internet has allowed for a world of characters, motifs and running jokes,” Steven Louis wrote for GOOD Sports. And later, “This disparity is translating to the way modern fandom is performed and sustained…[The NBA’s] understanding of young adult vernacular and behavioral patterns has created loyal online communities.”
Both the NBA itself and team leadership should be commended for social media policies that are conducive to growth, particularly embracing the unlicensed spread of vines (RIP) and highlight clips as well as investing and trusting in talented social media managers for brand accounts. But perhaps the highest praise to give the league is just to say that the NBA managed to not how-do-you-do-fellow-kids a good thing to death.
“I think what’s made it so special is that it’s happened organically. We didn’t call NBA players or the NBA to say, hey, let’s make NBA Twitter a thing,” says Adeshola, who manages Twitter’s NBA relationship. “It’s been a community that’s gelled together on its own.”
According to numbers provided to FanSided by Twitter, the NBA is now the most tweeted about sports league, with 100 million NBA-related tweets in 2018 so far. In the 2017 offseason, from June through October, Twitter registered nearly 76 million NBA-related tweets. Additionally, per Adeshola, 73 percent of users have identified interest in basketball conversation. Meaning, they will or can be served suggested content from NBA Twitter.
What all the early coverage of NBA Twitter didn’t quite capture, though, is the effect this astronomical growth had on what was a tight-knit clubhouse-style group.
Part of the appeal of NBA Twitter was the potential to be part of an intimate circle, but a tight-knit clubhouse is at odds with immense expansion. The number of people who now follow NBA Twitter, but are not a part of it, are not known in the community, has increased considerably. Growth invites the kind of anonymity that allows both a Finals MVP and a general manager to cultivate reckless burner accounts. In other words, early basketball Twitter was a community of mutuals – internet shorthand for users who follow each other and interact, often as friends, on a platform. NBA Twitter, however, came to mirror the influencer industry, with a divide opening up between aspirational high-volume, high-profile users and the fans (of basketball, of basketball Twitter) who follow them. The relationship between those in the clubhouse and those in their mentions, like the relationships between fan and expert, blogger and staff writer, beat and national reporter, has not always been without tension.
Roasting is an NBA love language.
From LeBron James and Draymond Green exchanging Instagram comments to team accounts engaging in tongue-in-cheek compliment battles to Andy Liu (@AndyKHLiu), Sam Esfandiari (@SamEsfandiari), Justin Rowan (@Cavsanada) and Carter Rodriguez (@Carter_Shade) setting the gold standard for Twitter proxy wars during four years of Warriors-Cavaliers Finals, dragging and teasing and trolling is part of the NBA. It’s part of the fun, a public display of affection for the league and the community it has built.
“[NBA Twitter] was always really shit-talky. I always had a rule where I wouldn’t get super mean-spirited or tweet something about somebody who was hurt or died — those were like the only rules I had — but I roasted,” says Jason Concepcion (@netw3rk), staff writer and host of NBA Desktop at The Ringer. “I felt free to roast.”
“I think I’m willfully an asshole sometimes,” says Seerat Sohi (@DamianTrillard), an NBA staff writer at SBNation and former contributor to FanSided’s The Step Back. “Twitter is a great place to have a shit-eating grin, I troll occasionally.”
The key to teasing is mutual respect, affection and understanding, even if it’s no fun to say as much.
In the early days, the closeness of the community provided a sense of people’s personalities, of their biases and eccentricities, that made jokes more palatable, more friendly, more forgivable. The key to teasing is mutual respect, affection and understanding, even if it’s no fun to say as much. If you don’t have an established rapport with someone, well, then it’s just bullying. And somewhere between teasing and bullying is trolling. So there needs to be a common ground, agreed upon terms of engagement, for all of this to work. When NBA Twitter grew to its current size, it lost that consensus.
“You were more familiar with [the community] and so I felt like it was sort of easier to understand,” says Ian Levy (@HickoryHigh), senior NBA editor at FanSided. “There used to be some kind of like, inherent closeness. But as the thing has gotten bigger, that secret clubhouse thing is gone. Now everyone is in the clubhouse, you don’t have to… I think some people don’t necessarily feel like they have to treat it the same way.”
For a group that thrives on jokes, it’s critical to have some agreement on where the line is. Even in a community that understands there is one hard line for slurs and hate speech, the line for what’s just mean or uncalled for is less clear. It is easy to believe that you know someone just because you follow them for a long time, or because they respond to your tweets on occasion, or because there are, in fact, many real and genuine bonds formed from internet friendships. But presumed or unfounded familiarity can also lead to behavior that goes too far.
Then, there are the people who, galvanized by the ease of tweeting and the knowledge they’ll never face their target in real life, just don’t care.
“There were always going to be trolls online,” says Liu, a writer at WarriorsWorld and himself a friendly menace to NBA Twitter society. “It’s just the amount of people that NBA Twitter became kind of gave creedance and a louder voice to people that are trolls. Your Andy Lius, or your egg avis that are just homophobic, misogynistic, racist people. That type of person just has a louder voice now because everybody is a part of NBA Twitter and its growing every day and it’s huge online.”
“In general, overall, yeah there are people that say it has gotten worse and I think more than it getting worse, I think it’s just gotten bigger,” says Katee Forbis (@KateeForbis), a self-described Grizzlies super fan who tweets with the display name NBKay. “I still think overall the community as a whole tends to look out for its own and kind of protect each other…I think overall the bad apples don’t define the group.”
The first week I began interviews for this story, Tom Ziller, SBNation NBA editor and writer of the popular and essential basketball newsletter, Good Morning It’s Basketball, included a closing message in his April 23 email that read, in part, “Basketball Twitter is getting less fun every day … everything is so toxic and everyone has so much conviction in their opinions that everything is a fight.” He implored readers to relax, stop fighting and be nice.
Ziller later elaborated by email to me that “nothing is universal, and my lament should have been framed as such. Basketball Twitter is less fun for me. That’s not the case for everyone.”
Still, the responses he received — the number of NBA Twitter participants who agreed, who felt he spoke to an unspoken shift — indicate that while his lament may not be universal, it was certainly relatable.
Throughout my interviews, and in most exchanges I’ve seen on NBA Twitter, toxicity is used refer to the tone with which users talk about basketball, specifically the vehemence and aggression of their convictions or the intensity of their reactions to media commentary — more so than violent language. Of the users I spoke to, again, just a sampling of a sample, slurs and hate speech were the number one, sometimes the only, reason to block someone.
Similarly, within NBA Twitter, “trolls” tends to refer to incendiary users firing off tweets to poke metaphorical bears. They aren’t the portrait of the abusive troll who takes joy in telling people to kill themselves or throwing slurs around with abandon detailed in March by Sports Illustrated. (Though those trolls do exist in NBA fandom — more so in the mentions of the athletes themselves.)
Abuse is a problem on every single social media platform, and it’s worth remembering and repeating in any conversation about toxicity online that the internet can truly be awful for everyone, but especially anyone that is not a straight white cis man. NBA Twitter has its sexist, misogynistic, racist, xenophobic bullshit, and even pockets of more passive condescension, exclusion and microaggressions, but that’s not what’s giving NBA Twitter an identity crisis.
And explicit or not, toxicity on NBA Twitter cannot be divorced from the greater context of Twitter, nor the greater context of 2018. Society has become an angrier, more aggressive place. So has Twitter. So has NBA Twitter.
“It feels to me as though the righteous and deserved cynicism and anger around the political and social conversations happening on Twitter have bled over to basketball. We’re all fired up (for good reason, in my view) about the latest scandal or quote or whatever, we yell about it … and then we don’t turn that anger off when we move back to talking about basketball,” Ziller wrote by email. “Anger is the new normal. This is why I don’t tweet much anymore: I struggle to compartmentalize the firehouse of fury and I don’t trust myself to be kind to everyone I interact with, something I’m striving for at this point in my life.”
“I think it’s kind of a little bit of a reflection of society in general. That we are very quick to go into our corners, when we believe something, we believe something,” says John Karalis (@RedsArmy_John), co-founder of the Celtics’ blog Red’s Army and contributor to Boston.com. “And at no point will we accept anything beside what is in our own echo chambers. And what that leads to is some pretty nasty fighting.”
“My experience on basketball Twitter is enriched by the mute button and block button,” says Levy.
It’s hard. No one is suggesting it’s not. It’s hard to be angry all the time, it’s hard to escape to a favorite corner of the internet, to visit a community that once gave you such joy only to be met with some silly or factually incorrect take, or to see people relitigating the same old debates, or slandering your favorite player, and to find yourself worked up and angry again. It’s exhausting. An onslaught of content that is decidedly not what you’re here for — whatever that may be — can be draining.
Still, NBA Twitter remains, more than other areas of life and despite algorithm changes, something you can mostly control.
“My experience on basketball Twitter is enriched by the mute button and block button,” says Levy. “Following the type of people I’m interested in interacting with and ignoring the people I don’t. I block and mute people all the time because they think about basketball in a way that I’m just not interested in.”
The extra effort required to block trolls, bad apples and anyone else you don’t want to see is, for many, an easy ask for the connection NBA Twitter continues to provide. One of the attractions of the community has always been the exposure to other NBA fans. Whether you engaged and built internet-friend relationships, or just lurked and observed, NBA Twitter provided visibility to fans, both of the sport and of individual teams.
“I’m always trying to figure out what fans are thinking about their teams, the way they shape their identity around the way their team plays,” says Sohi. “Twitter is a great way to get the first person account of that.”
This past April, ahead of a painfully on-brand playoffs performance, The New Yorker ran a piece by Alex Wong (@Steven_LeBron) called “The Anxiety and Fear of the Toronto Raptors Fan.” In it, a Raptors fan, Shankar Sivananthan, tells Wong, “When the team cracks in any way, Twitter becomes a dark, depressing pit of insecurity and fear.”
Matt Moore (@HPBasketball), an NBA writer at The Action Network who previously worked at CBS Sports and, before that, established himself as a basketball blogging godfather of sorts with Hardwood Paroxysm, engages with fans more than most.
“It’s interesting from a sociological perspective, from the idea of basically opinions being gradually shaped in this very specific social media environment, because you’re sharing these one-off conversations and it’s all 140, 280 characters. You have this developing repetition that reinforces certain ideas and certain attitudes.”
“A common response is, look, don’t generalize us with this jackass, don’t just act like we’re all saying this, none of my friends think this way,” Moore adds later. “And that’s tough because if I pick up on what has been a trend, if I hear the same line in my mentions from multiple Celtics fans or on my timeline from multiple Celtics fans and then I say ‘Celtics fans seem to have this idea of…’ It’s never saying conclusively, but I also don’t have any real way of knowing what those percentages are, it could have just been — it’s like any sort of sample.”
But it’s easy to generalize — or at least it’s fun. According to Moore, Sixers fans are the most defensive, but OKC is “up there.” Boston is hyper-defensive but in a “you better not counter the idea they’ve done everything right” kind of way. Bulls fans have a sense of humor because “a lot of them hate the team,” but Knicks fans, unsurprisingly, have the best sense of humor in the league.
But all that — and the easier generalization and higher profile of fans of successful teams (say, Warriors fans) — hides another refrain, another logical truth to all of this: All fans are, really, the same.
“I wouldn’t generalize all Philly fans as crazy because I live in Philadelphia, there a lot of normal people, I talk to Sixers fans all the time,” says Alex Kungu (@Kungu_NBA), a writer at Celtics Blog. “They’re just like every other sports fan, they’re very nervous about their team all the time and when they talk to other fanbases they’re very confident. That’s how most fans work. So, you know, I try not to take any — I try to not judge or anything like that.”
“We’re all kind of delusional about the same things,” says Concepcion.
“I think we have these kind of imaginary definitions of what a fan of a particular team is and fans are pretty much the same everywhere,” says Concepcion. “ I think social media really created a performative fandom as a genre, but I think fans, by and large, are pretty much the same, no matter what team they root for. We’re all kind of delusional about the same things.”
“I think a lot of the fans on Twitter are the same,” says Liu. “I think a lot of trolls are the same, I think a lot of the diehards are the same on Twitter.”
But recognizing the universal fan experience doesn’t quite counteract human nature, or the inclination to get annoyed when someone comes for your team. Fans’ feverish enthusiasm for players — for example, Jazz fans declaring Donovan Mitchell is so good they don’t miss Gordon Hayward — can color the way you feel about a player and detract from your availability to appreciate their greatness
“That emotionally makes you be like, God, I hate these people, Donovan Mitchell really isn’t even that good,” Kungu says. There’s a tendency, which he’s guilty of too, to respond by overreacting with boasts and digging up old tweets. “That type of always emotional response from fans sometimes takes away from people wanting to give praise, or people appreciating [the other fan’s] team or those players.”
The friction of coming into contact with other — sometimes rival, usually argumentative — fanbases is doubly abrasive during the playoffs.
“It’s a whole new dynamic when you have a ‘bar’ full of Cavs and Warriors fans that are playing each other that night. Because then you have that antagonist. You have a reason to become even more invested in the outcome of the game,” says Adeshola, who, beyond his job, enjoys NBA Twitter as a Wizards fan. “You don’t want to lose with that other person looking at you, you don’t want to be trolled, you don’t want to be made fun of, you don’t want to leave as the loser, right?”
Greater exposure has also been huge for people who were previously shut out or unwelcome in old school sports spaces – be it arenas, bars or newsrooms.
The greater exposure in general, and the suggestion that the essential nature of fandom is the same, has also been huge for people who were previously shut out or unwelcome in old school sports spaces – be it arenas, bars or newsrooms. Yes, it’s still a lot of dudes, but it’s undoubtedly easier to find fans that share your identity and to receive confirmation that an NBA fan, or writer, can look like you — that there is a basketball-viewing community that embraces you. And, theoretically, it’s exponentially easier for editors and industry leaders to find, hire and promote the work of a more representative collection of sportswriters.
“Something the conversation that followed my newsletter comments struck at was how integral Twitter was in building a lot of ‘outsider’ or diverse voices, which is absolutely true! It was immensely valuable to me from about 2009 to 2015, and it still has that value for a lot of emerging voices,” Ziller wrote by email. “My favorite use of Twitter right now is to follow sportswriters of color and women sportswriters so I can read their stuff and share it through the newsletter.”
NBA Twitter becoming an avenue to a career is a net good, but it has also changed the tone of the interactions on the platform. Twitter has, as Concepcion put it, “become a lane to get a job” and for people who already have jobs in sports media it becomes a part of the job. You can get hired over a Twitter presence; you can get suspended over a tweet. It also changes the dynamic between the users. There was a loss of innocence, Concepcion says, when everyone realized there was a professional angle to the platform — even if that professionalism itself hinges on striking a hirable balance between clever, funny, on-brand trolling and actual basketball insight.
“I think on this website there are a lot of people who want to be taken seriously. They want to be writers, they want to be known in their profession, in this profession,” says Kungu.
The intense conviction of opinion Ziller identified is about more than just being right. Or, it’s still about being right, but being right is about more than being right — it’s about being right to build your resume.
The lines, then, between professional and fan have blurred, with beat writers and bloggers — ever the subject of the homer tag — in conflict with national writers when their experiences inform conflicting analysis. The overriding sentiment is one of genuine support for each other’s work, but everyone wants to be read. Everyone wants to have the definitive story, the correct take, the revelatory column that gets shares and retweets. It’s only natural, but it still changes the stakes — again, it just changes the tone.
The appeal of NBA Twitter has always been as much about finding fellow fans as it has ever been about seeing more funny tweets.
Remember that this is supposed to be fun. Even as the emotions of fandom cut through logic, even as you can’t help but get worked up over slander, to get upset over one tweet, from one user, that somehow ended up on your timeline when you checked Twitter at one particular time and now 20 minutes later you’re still livid. Emotional investment — caring about this dumb shit — is the ying to fun’s yang of why we watch at all.
And it all plays out on Twitter. There’s analysis, there are jokes, there are links to writing. There are trolls and petty arguments, people set in their opinions, crazy like you’re crazy but on the other side of the fight. And, yeah, toxic garbage. Perhaps NBA Twitter lost some of the sanctity and intimacy that the memory of basketball Twitter connotes, but that’s bound to happen when you share something special, it’s bound to happen when more people have the opportunity to be involved. And that’s good: The appeal of NBA Twitter has always been as much about being around fellow fans as it has ever been about seeing funny tweets.
“Sometimes it can be a rough place. People aren’t always very nice when they have different opinions,” says Maggie Schultz (@88mugsy88), explaining how she’s kept her Twitter a positive place. “I just took basketball a little more lightheartedly…I’ve found that I engage with people that don’t take it as seriously a lot more often. I just like keeping my experience a little more fun and lighthearted and I enjoy interacting with people who do the same.”
Schultz, a Timberwolves fan, says she fell in early on with Cavs Twitter, because they’re all kind of goofy and that is very much the tone she’s looking for on NBA Twitter.
“I guess that’s the common thing for me, people that are goofy and, you know, keep things light.”
And for someone else, keeping things goofy and light might mean trolling.
“It’s become more fun to … just make fun of people at all time,” says Liu, and, at this point, it’s what his followers are following him for. “And then also just exaggerate the whole thing, because at the end of the day, to drop the act for a second, at the end of the day, we know that Russell Westbrook is not the number one factor or the only factor that OKC lost, we know that LeBron isn’t the main person that kicked off Kyrie, we know all of these are true things. But that doesn’t matter. We take one thing and then we make it more fun. Then we make an entire joke out of it…Because that’s the fun in it all.”
If NBA Twitter is a kaleidoscope of essentially similar fans with different overlapping, messy and occasionally conflicting motivations, it’s not a stretch to suggest NBA Twitter is reforming as micro-communities of similar dispositions. Warriors and Cavs trolls have more in common than Warriors Twitter at large. A Grizz fan speaking out about contract extensions has more in common with a Blazers fan doing the same than a Memphis blogger who will hear no evil of the team. A national writer interested in local sentiment will find more to enjoy in the fan pockets than her analytics-oriented peer. And so, then, when you find NBA Twitter to be an overwhelming and toxic place, when you feel lost in a crowd of heightened emotions, unclear tone and endless arguments, the solution is simple: find your people.
Ask yourself, why are you here?
Why are you on Twitter? Who do you follow, why do you tweet?
It’s all right if you don’t have a simple answer. You want jokes, but maybe not about your team. You want to be right, admired, liked and maybe even a job, too. You want to have good time — whatever that means, whatever that entails. That’s human, and recognizing the humanity of the community, understanding how this grew out of control, is what this is all about.
NBA Twitter isn’t what basketball Twitter once was, it grew, evolved, transformed by some alchemy in which everything that was is still, but somewhat altered. A change in tone, in scope, in stakes. The elements are the same, but the matter is different.
And to create gold — the pure on-a-pedestal basketball Twitter — requires a delicate reaction, maybe even a magical balance, certainly good timing. Roasting, but not bullying. The sharing of opinion, argument and perspective with at least the premise you could change someone’s mind. Exposure to new voices and a healthy reckoning with their different experiences. All of these things are harder to measure without the familiarity or implied respect of a clubhouse, the agreed upon terms. The lines for where all these things turn bad can feel like they are redefined every day.
So perhaps it’s a little more work, but it’s work that good, growing communities have always done.
So perhaps it’s a little more work, but it’s work that good, growing communities have always done. If someone isn’t picking up what you’re putting down, or vice versa, block or mute or unfollow — it’s not so hard, it’s not so deep. NBA Twitter is meant to be fun and it’s in your power to tend to what you can to preserve what you love.
It’s good and important work to be constantly evaluating, to make sure that your community is a welcoming place, that the jokes and the roasting don’t escalate to abuse. And by the same token it’s important to recognize the heart and remember why it’s worth the work.
“When I think about my NBA Twitter experience, I think about laughter, I think about joy, I think about pain,” says Adeshola. “I think about jaw-dropping dunks and game-winning shots.”
“There’s a certain type of Twitter inside joke that you have when you’re online, ” says Liu. “I’ve made friends through the connections of our inside jokes and Russell Westbrook stuff. Or arguments, conversations that people care about. Like the answer, do you want Eric Bledsoe or Brandon Knight? Who cares about that, right? But on Twitter, it’s a fun conversation to have.”
“There’s just so many types of fans and the individuality of those fans is part of what makes being a sports fan and an NBA fan great because you take all of these people from these different cultures and different backgrounds and different levels of knowledge and different levels of interest and for two and a half hours, during a Celtics game, we’re all the same,” says Karalis.
“That’s one of the interesting things, [that] people from different backgrounds, ages, genders, sexual orientations, all this, [that] doesn’t really define them, because they’re in NBA Twitter,” says Forbis. “Maybe they wouldn’t have met this person any other way, but they do this way… they’re friends with people that they otherwise would have never come into contact with.”
“It’s one of my favorite things,” Forbis adds. “I just really like the community. That’s my favorite part.”
“Basketball is my favorite sport. And it’s fun to just talk basketball, just to engage with other people and how people do basketball,” says Schultz. “I changed how I used it a long time, so it’s not terrible to me. It’s still a fun experience and I enjoy using it. I really enjoy talking to people…I use it for it to be a positive thing, you know?”
“Tweeting is, for me, it’s fun, it’s getting takes off. I used to and still do treat it as like batting practice, like if I have an idea or if I think I have an idea, I might tweet it just to see what kind of reaction it gets,” says Concepcion. “I [also] use it as purely venting and entertainment, it’s just fun.
“I like the drama, I do, I enjoy the takes. I really do.”
NBA Twitter is not worth the work to catch a highlight or see LeBron subtweet, though those are both delights. It’s worth it because NBA Twitter is, in all its big, occasionally ugly, complexity, still your people.
Cocky Warriors fans, weird Celtics fans, Raptors fans in a tailspin of paranoia and destiny — they are all the same, they are all like you. Because they boast the way you would if you could, they’re weird the way you’re weird, and you too would be traumatized if your team put you through the Toronto playoffs experience. NBA Twitter is still, in essence, a group of fans that care about basketball like you care about basketball. It’s why you found your way there in the first place. The only difference is it’s big enough now to reflect that that can mean different things.
Basketball Twitter came together because a group of people with a shared interest and a similar disposition found each other online. So do it again: Find each other again. Block and mute, do what you have to do. Basketball Twitter was once the table in the school cafeteria where the funny, smart NBA fans sat. Now, it’s the cafeteria itself. It’s a whole academy of NBA fans. So scan the room, find your friends.
And get those takes off.
Artwork by Elias Stein.