WASHINGTON, D.C. — Dirk Nowitzki has been around long enough to remember an NBA when players cared more about their footwork than their social media footprint.
“I don’t know if it’s about winning as much anymore as it is looking good on Instagram, Twitter, having followers and having clicks and likes,” Nowitzki told The Athletic. “I do agree 20 years ago people weren’t on their phones as much.”
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Nowitzki, the Dallas Mavericks forward, was responding to comments made by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver last week at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston. In an interview with The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Silver revealed that it is his experience that a lot of NBA players “are genuinely unhappy.” Silver attributed some of their anxiety as “a direct product of social media.”
“I think those players we’re talking about, what strikes me when I meet them, they’re truly unhappy,” Silver added.
It is a powerful and telling comment for sure. And it received some immediate pushback. Charles Barkley, who is about as old school and as outspoken as you’ll find, reacted to Silver’s comments with typical Sir Charles rhetoric.
“(Adam’s) a great guy, but that’s the stupidest thing I might have heard any commissioner say,” Barkley said during an appearance on ESPN’s Get Up. “These guys are making $20, $30, $40 million a year, they work six or seven months a year, (they) stay at the best hotels in the world. They ain’t got no problems. That’s total bogus.”
Barkley, however, played before the social media revolution. That’s probably a good thing that fans weren’t using their cellphones to record Barkley after hours.
Nowitzki has a unique perspective because his career spans generations, both in basketball and technology. Nowitzki recalled that his former Dallas Mavericks teammate Harrison Barnes had told him that during Barnes’ time with the Golden State Warriors the team had a financial incentive to keep players off their cell phones.
At team dinners the first player to use their phone would have to give his teammates at the table an undisclosed amount of money.
“I like that,” Nowitzki said. “But I’m not going to blame everything on social media. We’re all competitors. I usually based my happiness on winning and losing. When we won it was fun. We would play music after games. When we lost we were pissed. That’s what I based my happiness on.
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“Guys would sit around the locker room waiting for the coach to talk and during that wait there would be conversations taking place. Now it is 15 guys on their phones. There’s not much time being spent together. But I’m not sure about the whole happy, unhappy thing.”
Genuinely unhappy can be true of any player at any time during the course of a long NBA season. Yet, when Silver said it last week, didn’t the names Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving immediately come to mind? They had to at least be in your top five.
Durant and Irving, two of the league’s biggest stars, seem unhappy, at least publicly. The stress of their pending free agency is a large part of it. Irving and Durant have scolded reporters this season for asking questions about their futures as if the speculation game isn’t played every year by the media and the fans. The future of both players is a major story that won’t go away until July when they are signed, sealed and delivered. Irving also undressed the media last month when he was asked about the video circulating on the internet of him and Durant having a conversation during All-Star Weekend in Charlotte.
The pressure of playing for a contender is certainly stressful as well. Durant has already won back-to-back championships so that inherent pressure is different compared to Irving, especially with the Celtics playing below expectations prior to consecutive wins over Golden State and Sacramento.
“It’s very interesting,” says one NBA head coach. “I’m hearing about how unhappy players seem when this truly should be a highpoint in their lives.”
That clearly isn’t the case with all of today’s players. Sometimes winning doesn’t bring happiness. Barkley singled out Irving in particular for being “the most miserable person I’ve ever seen.”
“When you’re a star, and I’ve been a star, you get all the credit but you get all the blame,” Barkley added. “That ain’t right, that ain’t fair. That’s just how it is.”
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Barkley may have hit on something. Both Irving and Durant appear to struggle with fame, media scrutiny and fan criticism as much as any two superstars. Durant was caught using a burner account to defend himself on Twitter. Irving has been waging an on-again, off-again war with the media all season.
Oddly, this emotional roller coaster Durant and Irving have been riding could lead to their departures from Golden State and Boston respectively. That’s great news for the Knicks, Clippers, Lakers, Nets, Mavs or any other team with salary cap space. Durant and Irving are unhappy therefore the aforementioned teams and their fans should be thrilled. Weird how that works.
The question, though, is whether Durant and Irving will find happiness elsewhere. The grass isn’t always greener. Durant is in one of the best basketball situations in the history of the sport. He’s surrounded by a star-studded cast, a great coaching staff and committed ownership. Next season the Warriors are moving into a new arena in downtown San Francisco. Golden State could win two or three more titles if Durant stays.
Irving is the best player for a storied franchise that hangs several championship banners and retired numbers from the rafters. Kyrie filmed a commercial about having his jersey retired one day in Boston for crying out loud. Incidentally, the advertisement was filmed long before Irving revealed to the media this week: “I didn’t really come into this game for there to be cameras in my face, be famous, be a celebrity, so it’s a little hard for me.”
Sure, whatever you say Uncle Drew.
Irving is also surrounded by a talented roster with enough assets to improve over the summer. Does the name Anthony Davis ring a bell? The Celtics are well coached, they have smart ownership and a GM in Danny Ainge, who according to one a Western Conference head coach, “is playing chess while everyone else plays checkers.”
And yet, there is a strong feeling around the league that Durant and Irving are both leaving. That’s what we were hearing last season with LeBron James as well. LeBron made a move that was as much about building his business empire than it was about basketball. James, who has been to eight straight NBA Finals, is now in danger of missing the playoffs.
His first season in L.A. is playing out like a disaster movie. Lakers fans aren’t happy, Magic Johnson isn’t happy and Luke Walton looks miserable.
Come to think of it, does LeBron look happy to you? Maybe Durant and Kyrie can answer that.
(Top Photo: Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images)