The Ben Simmons Situation and the Internet

[SameOldNudityDrew]

Ok, so imagine this:

Take the exact Ben Simmons situation on the court, plus the comments Doc and Joel made to reporters, but there is no internet. The whole league is the same, the CBA, everything, but in terms of the way we consume information and the way it's disseminated, it's 1991. No Twitter. No Instagram. No YouTube. There are no podcasts, no sports websites, no message boards, no smartphones. There's no minnesotasports.enjin.com. Imagine the exact Ben Simmons situation right after Philly lost in the playoffs last year, but there is no internet.

[list=1]
[*] What do you think would most likely have happened?
[*] And what, if anything, could that tell us?
[/list]

[ALLDAYCHRIS [enjin:19712952]]

He'd still be mad and request a trade. Also ESPN was founded in 1979

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

Technology and the way humans disseminate information doesn't change the fact that Daryl Morey fervently tried to trade Ben Simmons to Houston just months prior and Doc Rivers showed a lack of confidence in Simmons' ability to be a championship-winning player. Add some questionable (at best) comments from Joel Embiid and you have plenty of fuel on the fire. I think Simmons still requests a trade and wants out of Philadelphia.

Imagine if your department head tried to trade you away and your boss questioned your ability to do your job publicly. There would naturally be tension there that likely would never be corrected. I think the embarrassment of Simmons' playoff woes would be significantly lessened without social media and various outlets, but the situation probably remains the same.

[ALLDAYCHRIS [enjin:19712952]]

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

[SameOldNudityDrew]

He'd still be mad and request a trade. Also ESPN was founded in 1979

Yes, ESPN was around in 1991. Actually, that's partly why I picked that date. I was watching SportsCenter habitually every morning around then! So I'm curious about this as one possible topic to discuss.

So if we think the scenario would be the same, then it would suggest the internet itself hasn't had much of a role in the story, but that ESPN itself as a company may still have.

And if we think the story would have played out differently, then it might indicate the internet itself has played a bigger role.

[SameOldNudityDrew]

Technology and the way humans disseminate information doesn't change the fact that Daryl Morey fervently tried to trade Ben Simmons to Houston just months prior and Doc Rivers showed a lack of confidence in Simmons' ability to be a championship-winning player. Add some questionable (at best) comments from Joel Embiid and you have plenty of fuel on the fire. I think Simmons still requests a trade and wants out of Philadelphia.

Imagine if your department head tried to trade you away and your boss questioned your ability to do your job publicly. There would naturally be tension there that likely would never be corrected. I think the embarrassment of Simmons' playoff woes would be significantly lessened without social media and various outlets, but the situation probably remains the same.

I hear you Cam on the impact of the attempted Houston trade. I was thinking this exact thing yesterday after hearing somebody criticize Ben for wanting out. The employer trying to get rid of you metaphor is good. Assuming he would still have found out they were trying to trade him, who wouldn't resent that? I do wonder though whether news of that would have leaked to him before the internet. What do you think?

I think the impact on Doc and Joel's comments is probably more significant though. When I listen to exactly what they said, and then I consider their impact online, it feels like there's a real magnification there. It's almost as if the collective weight of the internet has largely taken it as a given that he needs to be traded so that we've added, maybe significantly, to the pressure for this to happen. If there was no internet, I wonder if it would still be taken as a given that Philly has to trade him at some point, regardless of which side we think is in the wrong. Ben would still have reason to resent those comments, but it feels like the internet has amplified it and that's affected the balance of power here, I think in a way that has hurt Philly's leverage. I'm not saying they're innocent. Clearly Doc, Joel, and (I think to a lesser extent) Morey have all done things that have helped create the situation. But think about it this about it this way--if this happened on our team, we'd probably feel there's an unfair outside pressure on a star player to leave. It's not a perfect parallel, because obviously a lot of Philly fans want Ben out! And there is also a kind of counter-reaction that gets amped up on the internet as well, with people like Charles Barkley saying Philly shouldn't have to trade him and criticizing player empowerment. (Side note: sometimes it feels to me like we love to complain about player empowerment going too far, but we overlook the extent to which our incessant clicking on stories like this helps make that happen. I don't mean that as a criticism of anyone; it just feels like an irony we should acknowledge.)

Back to the main issue, regardless of the direction in which pressure is amplified, I suspect the internet does change the equation. And I'm wondering in what way, and what we can conclude from that. For example, if there's more pressure in any direction coming through the internet, where is that weight coming from? To what extent does that reflect . . .

A) the centralized power of ESPN magnified through the internet?
B) a more diversified media landscape of non-ESPN podcasts and content producers?
C) the parties involved, Ben, Joel, Morey, etc., using the internet to reach audiences directly through Twitter or Instagram?
D) us, the global population of fans and content consumers who have more power than ever now to click buttons that demand certain content?
E) something else I'm not thinking of?

Everybody has an opinion on who's right and who's wrong here. What's interesting to me is not what those opinions are, but how the internet has or hasn't affected the reality of the situation, potentially by magnifying the impact of those opinions and whatever other information we exchange online.

[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?

[FNG]

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!

[Monster]

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!

FWIW Kareem basically demanded out of Milwaukee in 1975.

I think this is an interesting scenario that was created in this thread. I think we would all agree that the internet has some sort of influence on life as we know it. How it would have mattered in this situation is hard to tell but it's interesting to think about.

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

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.