In the summer of 2018, JJ Redick, who was one of the most active social media users in the NBA, decided to delete both his Twitter and Instagram accounts.
“It’s a dark place,” Redick said of social media at the time. “It’s not a healthy place. It’s not real. It’s not a healthy place for ego, if we’re talking about some Freudian sh*t. It’s just this cycle of anger and validation and tribalism. It’s scary, man.”
For nearly a year, Redick, who infamously was the catalyst for the emoji-fueled saga on De’Andre Jordan’s free agency a few years ago, remained removed from any social media platform. Then the craziest and most active free agency period in NBA history began, and the need to be informed became too much to resist for Redick.
“I have something to admit,” Redick said on the most recent episode of The JJ Redick Podcast. “On June 29, I was talking with my buddy Adam Glessner who works for the Spurs, and he was like ‘Yo, how are you going to get notifications? How are you going to be up to date on free agency?’ So I was like, I think I should just create a burner account. So I used some random Gmail account that I don’t really use, and set up an egg. I followed five people: Woj, Chris Haynes, Ramona, Shams, the news breakers.”
NBA free agency has become so intriguing that it pulled Redick, who called social media “f*cking scary,” right back in to its clutches. Redick says he’s since deactivated the account, but if you see someone tweeting pro-Pelicans thoughts with the handle @JJRedickisGawd, just be aware it’s probably him.
