Camden wrote: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.