It’s officially Twitter’s fifth birthday and no matter if you hate it or love it, it’s here to stay. Finding an under-25 NBA player who isn’t tweeting is actually somewhat difficult, and it’s helping us all get through this boring lockout.
The worst part about time is that it never slows, too many things change. It sucks in life, but most importantly in sports. You can’t truly compare teams, players, leagues or awards. Would Wilt Chamberlain still drop 40/20s regularly if he played today? Would someone like Elgin Baylor, who went 14 years without ever winning a single ring, be drawing the same amount of venom that LeBron gets on the regular now? Could Bob Pettit even make a team in this era? What was actually the best era of basketball? Who are the 10 greatest players of all-time?
If Twitter was around for all the years the NBA existed, what would guys have been tweeting about? It could’ve been a great tool. Instead of having to read long-winded passages in books about what happened, which players hated this guy or that guy and whether Boston really did pull some screwy tactics to give themselves a home-court advantage, we could’ve just checked out their tweets.
Tweets would’ve never answered some of the more important questions (Russell or Wilt?), but they could’ve left us with more than grainy clips to go off of. And hopefully, A LOT would come from Darryl Dawkins.
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THE WILT SPECIALS
11:31 A.M.- @WiltDaGod: whaddup?? Im about to go on my third date today. Lets get it! #teamstankyleg
10:32 P.M.- @HONDO: you lost tho RT @WiltDaGod: just dropped 56
11:14 P.M.- @WiltDaGod RT @brigitte_bardot: heeeeey Wilt! When are you comin into town???
…
@WiltDaGod RT @NBA: Wilt Chamberlain just scored 100 POINTS!
Not much has been spoken about Chamberlain that isn’t already known: he was a self-acknowledged ladies man…he was the most dominant player ever…he might’ve been the best athlete to ever play hoops…but yet winning championships wasn’t the only thing he cared about. Chamberlain would’ve taken to Twitter much like Shaq has. He would’ve used it as his own personal promotion service, talking about the games, his life, what living in Hollywood was like and doing all of it in his typical “Way Over The Top, Too Large For Life” style.
THE “I HATE THE CELTICS AND ONLY WANT TO WIN JUST ONE RING” SPECIALS
11:44 P.M.- @Mr_Clutch: all I did today was go off for 44, hit some clutch shots and we STILL can’t beat Boston…
10:17 P.M.- @BillRuss11Rings: you want one of mine? RT @ElginBaylorFlyingHigh: seriously, this year is about to be THE year. I’m not losing again. I NEED A RING!!!!
You can bet tweets like these would’ve been all the rage. I can’t even begin to imagine the suffering guys like Jerry West, Baylor and Chamberlain felt playing against Boston. Take what LeBron is going through right now and multiple it by 10. Especially Baylor. He has to have some of the worst luck in NBA history (he retired just a few games into L.A.’s record-breaking championship season that saw them win 33-straight games).
THE TOMMY HEINSOHN SPECIALS
@HeinsohnOG: Tommy Point!!!!!!!!! RT @Bob_Cousy: Ova here at the Gahden practicing. We just came up w/ this new drill. Its called the three-man weave. Pretty cool
5:17 P.M.- @HeinsohnOG: Tommy Point!!!!!!!!!
10:21 P.M.- @HeinsohnOG: Tommy point!!!! RT @Celts_fan: Love you Tommy! Bring home a title!
11:57 P.M.- @HeinsohnOG: tommy point!! RT @JulieAndrews24: Everyone make sure you go check out ‘the sound of music’ premiering tomorrow!!!
THE CONNIE HAWKINS GETTING SCREWED SPECIALS
@THE_hawk: why won’t anyone let me PLAAAAAYY
@THE_hawk: RT theBIGO: Lets make whats right be right #freeHawk
If you’ve never had the chance to check out the novel on Connie Hawkins’ life, Foul!, you need to. The Hawk was blackballed from the league for “being involved” with people who threw games. In this instance, “being involved” wasn’t much more than talking to a few runners, accepting money, giving it back because Hawk really had no clue what he was doing (he just wanted to play ball) and then having his name smudged through the mud for most of the 1960s.
By the time he got reinstated and joined the NBA, he was already 27 years old. His first year in Phoenix? Only dropped 25, 10 and 5 and took the Lakers to seven games in the playoffs before losing.
You know how your father always goes on and on about how back in the day this guy could jump from the free-throw line and this guy never missed a shot and this guy could grab quarters from the top of the backboard and you never believed any of it? Well, the Hawk is the ultimate shoulda-coulda-woulda player because the NBA stole his prime from him.
What do you think? Who do you think would’ve been the best person to follow?
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