Today’s NBA is very different from how it used to be. From even 10-15 years ago, the league has changed a lot.
Players are faster, smaller, shooting the ball more, and have a lot of power to go and do what they want. Of course, there’s also the social media aspect of things.
When it comes to platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, players often use them to help promote their brand or share their own perspectives on certain issues.
For Michael Jeffrey Jordan, he didn’t have to deal with any of that, and he’s glad for it. In an interview with Marvin R. Shanken back in 2020, he dropped this truth bomb about the modern-day sports scene:
“I don’t know if I could’ve survived in this Twitter [era], where you don’t have the privacy that you’d want and what seems to be very innocent can always be misinterpreted.”
As usual, Jordan was right with his assessment. While the internet provides all kinds of benefits for athletes around the world, it also comes with a whole lot of unnecessary drama.
According to Kevin Durant, the lack of social media actually helped Jordan thrive during his career.
“Everything is so accessible now,” said Durant. “Michael Jordan was such a mystery back then. You couldn’t just open your phone and scroll through his whole life on Instagram or see his thoughts on Twitter. There’s so much coverage on us as players right now. That takes away some of that mystery, that lore that comes along. We’re so easy to touch and we get taken for granted for a while. So MJ dipped in and out of circles, rarely did interviews, kept to himself. I think that helped towards him just being this god-like figure in our game.”
Social media has changed the world in more ways than one. Everybody is connected, and we can all experience these guys playing from behind our small screens.
We take it for granted way too much nowadays, but Jordan is aware enough to know just how distracting it can be.
