The Ben Simmons Situation and the Internet

[Lipoli390]

Really interesting issue you've raised, Drew. Social media and the Internet generally are having a powerful impact on our society. The Internet has become the source of massive amounts of unfiltered, unedited, unverified information. It's become a tool for manipulation that is used regularly to rile emotions and shape opinions. Owners, agents and players in the professional sports often use it to achieve business objectives.

But in this instance, I don't think the Simmons situation would be any different without the Internet. The key triggers for the acrimony between Simmons and the Sixers organization had nothing to do with the Internet. First, the fact that the Sixers were aggressively shopping Simmons is something Simmons would have known through his agent even with no media reporting of any kind. Moreover, television and print media would have reported it as well. Second, the negative comments from Doc and Embiid were made on television for Simmons and the world to see. Subsequent negative opinions about Simmons from Shaq and others have been shared on social media, but they would have likely appeared in print and on ESPN sports center in 1991.

I agree that the Internet probably amplified the noise surrounding Simmons, but the sound was already so loud in this instance that the Internet amplification probably didn't matter. However, I can see the possibility that the constant barrage of Internet information and chatter regarding the Simmons situation, including comments on the acrimony and Ben's depressed market value, might be having an impact by making it more difficult for a retreat and reconciliation. There's a lot of value in having periods of silence, which can provide an opportunity to cool off emotionally and reflect more rationally. It's probably harder than it would have been in 1991 for reconciliation between Simmons and the Sixers because there is no relief from the constant barrage of widespread, daily negative information and chatter.

[SameOldNudityDrew]

so he would still request a trade and nothing would be different

I think you're right he'd still want out. Do you think we would know about it? I honestly don't know. Do you think the leverage anybody has would be the same? I don't think so, but I'd be interested to hear what you think. If the leverage were different, how, and how much would it be different, and why?

Drew, if there were no internet, newspaper sports pages would become our primary source of information, and beat writers would make it quite clear Simmons wanted out.

Oh, and I would probably spend a lot more time outside!

Exactly. Newspapers and ESPN via regular cable television would be the source of info. One thing the internet has done is pumped up fan engagement via message boards, blogs, etc. Things were much more passive 30 years ago among fans other than water-cooler or bar stool sports chatter.

Definitely. There's no way that nobody would have known there was an issue. In 1991, a story like this would have hit in what we now know were the twilight years of beat writers like Sid who covered their markets. So to a large extent, the conflict between Ben and the team would have been reported to some degree in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Philly fans were probably already assholes, so I'm sure there would have been some local pressure on sports talk radio in that market too.

Beyond Philly though, we probably only would have heard about it through ESPN, right? Do you guys remember what ESPN was like in 1991? My memory ain't great, but as I remember it, it was mostly SportsCenter--highlights with added color commentary and a quick flash of the boxscore after the game. Dan Patrick. Chris Berman. Keith Olbermann. Craig Kilborn was a bit later. This was a playoff series, so ESPN would have probably shown interviews after the game, but I don't remember there being much commentary or opinion on ESPN shows at the time. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong.

ABC or NBC or somebody would have carried the games because it was the playoffs, so the color guy alongside Marv Albert would definitely have commented on Ben's shooting woes before or during the games, but I don't remember there being much opinionating on those telecasts.

You guys watched The Last Dance, right? The thing that struck me was just how intensely bitter the disputes and dramas really were. Some of that a few of us knew about in 96-97. ESPN had definitely grown by then and more people were starting to use the internet to read sports news. I think that might partly explain why stories like Rodman and Carmen Electra were reported (to some degree) at the time. It was the post-OJ period when the personal stories of athletes were starting to become as much a form of the entertainment as the games themselves. But even then, we didn't know all these details of how awful things had gotten. Sam Smith's readers in Chicago were aware of some of it, but outside of that market, even ESPN wasn't really covering that stuff as much. Watching that series, all I could think was if they had today's internet then, so many more people would have been going crazy over all the drama (and maybe amping it up even more).

These days, my wife knows about the Ben Simmons drama. She doesn't even watch basketball. We've all almost certainly spent much less time watching Ben Simmons play than we have listening to podcasts about this, watching talking heads bloviate about it on YouTube, and (present thread included) sharing our own views, sometimes in great detail, on it. Off-court, off-field drama has always been there in sports. And of course, especially for us hard-core fans, it's still ultimately about what happens on the court during the games. But it just feels to me like the internet has changed the experience of following sports so significantly. What used to be the drama on the margins of the sport--the stuff ESPN didn't really do much with until the mid to late 90s, the stuff even beat writers would often keep quiet to stay in the good graces of athletes--it's almost like for most fans now, that drama is almost the entertainment content itself even more than the actual games.

It feels like the internet has turned sports more into reality TV. And I suspect that has a real effect on how these athletes, their agents, and the teams themselves make decisions. I remember feeling this a bit when Kevin Love asked out of Minnesota, thinking that he'd just heard so many people say for so long that he should leave the team that he came to believe it too. Or at least, hearing so many other people say it legitimized a desire he had to leave anyway and made him feel more comfortable asking out. And that wasn't even a situation that had a lot of drama to start with. In Ben's case, I'm sure he had reason to want out, and there were obvious reasons for Philly to look to move him (again). But with everyone's collective opinions swashing around on the internet, it feels like we've turned it into a consensus opinion that he must be traded, and (perhaps) a foregone conclusion that he will be. It feels like a crisis we're partly driving by clicking to read more about the crisis. Obviously, he's recognized this and is using it as leverage, regardless of what we may think about that.

I guess it just feels more and more like we're not just following what happens in sports anymore. It feels like we're actively applying pressure in ways that helps to shape what happens. I can't imagine that being the case without the internet. Not saying I want to go "back, back, back" to the days of Chris Berman, or that I'm "cool as the other side of the pillow" on the internet itself. Obviously, it's given us this. Us. It's helped us create this community. At the same time, experiencing this whole Ben Simmons saga play out, it feels like the internet has made us a part of the story now in a way we weren't before.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm just really interested to hear what you guys think about this.

[AbeVigodaLive]

There's a reason why Zach Lowe said last season that 8 or 9 of his top 10 most listened to podcasts either happened in the offseason or were almost entirely about player movement.

Blame the internet. Social media. Old hardened scribes. Or ourselves.

But drama sells right now in our country. Many basketball "fans" even seem more interested in the drama than the on-court play.