Remember when that almost unprecedentedly arrogant young star from Cleveland, Ohio held an hour-long press conference called “The Decision” where he announced he would take his “talents” to “South Beach” to play for the Miami Heat?
During his arena-filled introduction, James – along with teammates Dwayne Wade and newly acquired Chris Bosh, famously told fans that they would win as much as eight championships. But then they ran into Dirk Nowitzki’s Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals stopping that prediction from the get-go dead in its tracks.
Well, seasoned veteran Nowitzki sees how the league has evolved more than anybody else and he just annihilated players who obsess over this.
He’s not only the best player to come out of Europe but he’s arguably considered to be one of the greatest power forwards of all time whose career may be coming to an end given that he’s forty years old.
However, sometimes its just not about the game. It’s about ego in relation to social media and that’s what Nowitzki pointed out recently about the current state of the league.
Nowitzki said, “I don’t know if it’s about winning as much anymore as it is looking good on Instagram, Twitter, having followers and having clicks and likes.”
Does Dirk have a point? pic.twitter.com/9KBNIHAa2l
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) March 9, 2019
It’s true isn’t it?
The invention of social media has complicated everything in every industry because of its obsessed users.
Antonio Brown might be the most perfect example of what Nowitzki is referring to.
When the Pittsburgh Steelers went to New England to play the Patriots for the AFC Championship three years ago, after the divisional win, Antonio Brown infamously posted a video on social media inside the locker room when you could hear head coach Mike Tomlin giving a post-game speech.
Brown’s enthusiasm over the win was beside the point. He literally undermined his whole team with that one video.
After that debacle, it was reported that Brown makes tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for posting videos like that.
It’s a degradation process: get famous for being good at something then make money off of social media and then ultimately allow what made you famous in the first place to suffer.
It happens all the time especially with the young players.
Nowadays, it’s all about the brand because every single player believes they are marketable beyond what they’re famous for. They narcissistically find themselves more interesting than they actually are, which is why they post more on social media than work on their craft.
It’s not about winning championships like Nowitzki said and that’s part of what makes them weak.
A young player coming into the league on a smaller market team initially might look at the bigger picture and say nobody can rival the Golden State Warriors so there’s no point in really striving for that championship.
So they use social media as a way to fill that void.
It’s pathetic. All of the players in Michael Jordan’s era should be ashamed of this nonsense.