Twitter and NBA players go together like milk and cookies. It’s so delicious and fun to have every once in a while. But in all honesty, too much of it can make you feel a little sick. I mean, how many different “heading out to Cheescake Factory” tweets can you stomach?
But its all in good fun. And by and large, its harmless. Unless you’re Orlando Magic GM Otis Smith.
“It’s got to be the dumbest thing a professional athlete has ever done. But they do it, and I’ve got no problem with that. That’s the world that we live in now: the mass media in which everyone is a reporter and everyone has an opinion on stuff and they continue to put it out there. God bless ’em all. Why a guy in the public eye would choose to do that kind of stuff is beyond me.”
Smith continued:
“And why do they have to speed through my neighborhood in their fancy new sports cars? Don’t they realize kids live here? And while I’m at it, the next time one of their frisbees comes over my fence, I’m keeping it. Those little punks need to learn a lesson. One of them steps on my lawn, I’ma whoop ‘im good.” *
In fairness to Otis, no less than 10 Orlando Magic players have a Twitter account. One of those players is Gilbert Arenas, which is enough to give you indigestion. Gilbert is such a Twitter fiend that he tweeted throughout a blind date last week.
“Got hooked up on a blind date..and I guess she was blind when she picked out this outfit ..OMG I thought she was the queen of ZAMUNDA,” he tweeted.
Arenas then went further, posting, “I thought she had a bunch of stretch marks but it was just her shirt..lookn like SIMBA,” before covertly capturing an image of her striped top on his cell phone camera.
“Look at this hot mess…she all most caught me takin the pic,” he tweeted as he uploaded the image.
Arenas failed to slow up his caustic comments, telling his almost 30,000 followers, “this dragon can eat,” before describing her as “lookin like a thunder cat.”
His typing from the dinner table did little to endear him to his blind date though.
“She just said this was the worst date ever,” he posted, before adding, “She called me a jack ass.”
It was enough to earn a fine from the league. And I can’t imagine being a GM and watching a guy you’re giving $62 million to over the next three years act like this over a public medium at a time when bloggers and other sports writers are just DYING for content. If I was Otis, I might hate the twitterin’ too.
*I made the second quote up. If you didn’t realize that, then please leave your name, address and phone number in the comments section. I have some great business deals I’d like to discuss with you.
