15 All-Star Games. 4 rings. 3 Finals MVPs. 3 All-Star MVPs. 2 NBA Scoring titles. 1 League MVP. 28,596 points. Rookie of the year. Deputy US Marshall. 8 movies. 4 rap albums.
Today we cut the cake on the final days of Shaquille O’Neal. Two days ago Shaq, the man with more nicknames than an Apatow movie, officially retired after 19 years in the NBA. Through Twitter. Actually, through a service I’ve never heard of before called “tout” that claims to allow live video uploading to twitter – a ridiculous idea, since Twitter is a microblogging service and blogs are definitively not live, but back to the point
That Shaq retired after almost two decades of play is not particularly surprising. He’s accomplished about everything a player can hope to accomplish in a career. He’s the 5th all time highest scorer. He’s got enough rings to fill a hand without doing the obnoxious thumb-ring thing. He’s been paid more during his career than any player in NBA history, has five kids and has plans to work as a sheriff or US Marshall now that his basketball career is over. He’s got a pretty good setup going. What makes it surprising is the twitter element. All of the greats eventually retire, but Shaq announced his retirement to his followers before he informed the Celtics, his employers, of his plan.
This is the second time in the last year that a major NBA star has announced their future through a social medium without telling their team first. The first was Lebron* taking his talents to South Beach. This event was widely criticized as one of the most arrogant and selfish actions undertaken by an athlete in recent memory. People hate him for it.
Shaq: not so much.
Admittedly, there are major differences between these two events that on the surface must seem very important: Lebron was the league MVP the year he left Cleveland while Shaq was pretty old; Lebron still had over a decade of playing time left in his career while Shaq was pretty old; Lebron, a native of Ohio, was betraying his roots while Shaq was pretty old; there were lots of reasons. None of them are actually important in the big picture.
The importance of this twitter/tout/interwebs announcement is not that Shaq is retiring or even that people are more tolerant of Shaq biting his digital thumb** at Boston than they are of Lebron snubbing Cleveland. This announcement is important because it signals an official turning point in the way athletes manage themselves, a revelatory moment where athletes have crested the system and reached a world where they don’t have to play by the rules anymore. As long as players keep winning, the people will support them. The magical game of PR and marketing has just become a solo-enterprise.
This isn’t the beginning of a trend either. This has been coming for a while. Celebrities like Ashton Kutcher have created entire careers out of twitter marketing. Blogs have become television shows (albeit short-lived ones). Politicians have risen and fallen through posted soundbytes and unfortunate underwear photos.The first great breakout of this idea in the sports world though was almost ten years ago, when four words spoken during a press conference became a bigger story than the championship that had just ended: “We’re talking about practice.”
Allen Iverson could do things on the court that nobody else could. He was a gymnast at the rim, our thug ballerina, and was so tough that NFL quarterbacks called him crazy. I remember watching him get spiked into the ground while he had a broken tailbone. He bounced twice, immediately got up and started running back down the court. He was that tough. He was the anti-hero, the street kid who almost went to jail instead of Georgetown, the first player to take the national stage with neck tattoos. He wasn’t part of any team or any establishment; he was The Answer. But he was also a business.
By choosing to openly stand for himself only, Iverson broke the rules. He stopped being a star within a team system and therefore couldn’t be properly promoted by team marketers. So he did it on his own. He held frequent press conferences after games where he spoke exactly what was on his mind, appeared on countless magazine covers promoting ideas, products and lifestyles that the NBA did not endorse and sold more shoes and jerseys than anyone dreamed possible. I haven’t played basketball since I was in 7th grade and even I have a pair of the AI3’s.
By standing apart from the system he became a symbol of rebellion for all of the kids who wanted to stand against the authorities in their lives. And we loved him for it.
Now, that mentality of all-for-moi-and-more-for-me openly pervades every aspect of the sports world. It’s largely why we’re in the middle of an NFL lockout and about to have an NBA lockout this fall. This mentality has not only become the norm, but we’ve developed technologies that encourage it. When a player can tweet thoughts and opinions about the game he’s playing from the sidelines, why do we need commentators? Most commentators are former players anyway. When players can hire personal accountants and business advisers to make financial decisions for them, why should those players consult their team owners and coaches about anything? When money has ceased to be a consideration, why should any player hesitate to go after whatever they want, loyalty be damned? No rings on these fingers means I don’t owe you squat (insert Beyoncé lyric here).
Athletes have always found ways to make names for themselves. One of our greatest heroes, Muhammad Ali, can attest to that. But at least he competed in a sport where he never had teammates or a city to let down. Players argue that they aren’t role models, that they’re professionals and we should judge them by what they do on the court or on the field only, but that’ll never be the case. We are how the public sees us, not what we do.
There isn’t really an ending to this article. I don’t think there could be. This rant is mostly just a series of observations, tipping points I’ve noticed that have led to a moment in time where, barely a year after one of the biggest stars in the NBA caused an uproar by making a public announcement without telling his team first, another of the biggest stars announces his retirement on twitter and the only public response is to ask, “what nickname should we give him now?”
We are on the edge of a world where personal choices mean more than community. Where what I want today means more than what you’ve believed in for years. And Shaq has just announced it through a program called tout.
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* I still wish people would call Lebron LBJ
** If you don’t get this reference, do a google search for “do you bite your thumb, sir?” That’s why we have Google. I’m not going to explain it. Don’t be lazy.
