The age of social media has drastically changed how people live their everyday lives. This shift is especially evident in the upbringing of young athletes. Many might find it surprising that the NBA still includes players whose childhoods were untouched by social media. For those like DeMar DeRozan, that absence led to certain a level of attentiveness to the game that seems increasingly rare in today’s generation of athletes. The Sacramento Kings called this out recently, and it drew praise from Shannon Sharpe.
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Aside from the media, the number of distractions for NBA players wasn’t that money. That, sadly, isn’t the case anymore today. Far too many young players have become consumed with how people view them on platforms like Instagram. One of the biggest examples is the accessibility to a high school mixtape.
Once upon a time, the honor of receiving a full-fledged basketball highlight tape in high school was reserved for only the most elite players in the nation. Social media’s accessibility opened the door for anybody to have a highlight reel. It looks cool, of course. But from a very young age, self-consciousness starts to creep in. DeRozan has seen the ramifications of that first-hand inside an NBA locker room.
“Motherf****** so worried about what’s on their phone and what somebody says,” DeRozan said on 7 PM in Brooklyn. “Even to the point that I’ve seen a motherf***** put his name in the Twitter search to see what they were saying.”
What DeRozan saw didn’t happen after the game, but during halftime. The idea of checking a phone mid-game wasn’t even a real thought in his mind.
The six-time All-Star entered the league in 2009, just three years after Twitter launched as a website. Back then, if a young player dared to pull out their phone during halftime, a veteran would shut it down immediately. Times have changed. Sharpe, for one, couldn’t believe the audacity some of today’s young players show in a professional setting.
“A lot of the veterans have been ushered out,” Sharpe said on Nightcap. “So they’re getting younger and younger, [which is allowing them to do] the stuff that they are doing now.”
Sharpe may have been voicing his frustration, but his co-host Chad Ochocinco Johnson had a guilty look on his face. The reason was simple. He had done the same thing himself. “I tweeted on the sideline in the middle of the game, in the middle of a preseason game,” Ocho said.
The difference is that Ocho would never do such a thing during a regular-season game. The intensity of competition should put an athlete in a completely different headspace, where what’s happening on social media doesn’t matter. Joe Johnson certainly believes that’s how it should be.
“You’re thinking you’re probably too locked in to even care about that,” Johnson said. “That’s why our phones are such a distraction nowadays.” He makes a completely valid point, and that doesn’t apply only to professional athletes. Anyone with access to a smartphone can attest to the power these small devices have over us.
An athlete should never pull out a phone during an NBA game. Building team culture is extremely important, and moments like this can break that foundation. Unfortunately, with how times continue to change, the change people like DeRozan and Sharpe are looking for may never come.
