Kevin Durant once said that Michael Jordan would’ve been way more uncomfortable playing in the social media era. A talking head attempts to reason against it.
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Kevin Durant is a man who knows his basketball as well as the lore of the game. If there’s one current player who you cannot accuse of being ignorant about history, it’s him.
Having said that, what KD said about Jordan – with the social media and smartphone fanfare – wasn’t a point of contention. Skip Bayless is trying to revive a rather down news cycle using that ploy. He’s used this morning’s segment for that very purpose.
KD says MJ benefited greatly from having no social media. I disagree. Now on @undisputed
— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) March 11, 2022
Skip Bayless gets taken apart by fact-checkers and Michael Jordan fans
Michael Jordan himself said in an interview with Cigar Aficionado that this current era of media coverage isn’t something he’d have liked playing through. According to him, the Bulls legend was under too big a microscope even for his time.
Given how uber-present social media has become since the smartphone revolution, one cannot blame MJ for this stance. It is also important to keep in mind that he was the first truly global basketball superstar.
If at all there was any social media in place at his time, his fame would undoubtedly be greater. But the amount of scrutiny he’d face – especially with his gambling addiction and socializing – would be exponentially higher.
Michael Jordan on today’s athletes and the social-media era:
“For someone like myself, I don’t know if I could’ve survived in this Twitter [era], where you don’t have the privacy you’d want and what seems to be very innocent can always be misinterpreted.” https://t.co/rOi0lzwr0A
— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) July 28, 2021
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