PROTECT THE PAINT

Amare Stoudemire and Tyson Chandler both received fines for allegedly tweeting during a game. The funny thing is they did not tweet. They figured out how to have tweets made on their behalf.

It’s odd the league will enforce the rules and levy fines without performing due diligence. Aren’t players allowed to have personal websites or run other businesses? Because these sites and businesses are linked to twitter they get fined $7,500?

Sure it was Amare’s and Tyson’s personal accounts, but they were on the court playing, ruling out any possibility they tweeted.

I have a ball in my hand, not a smart phone! (Credit: picapp.com)

Is the NBA so naïve that they cannot grasp the idea that many players have people tweeting on their behalf the majority of the time? Twitter linked via a mobile device allows flexibility to tweet during vigorous travel schedules. It take only a few seconds of query-keyboard-fingered-fury to fire out personal blasts that people can read.

I know for certain that even if the majority of players tweet, there are players out there who have other people tweeting on their behalf. With family life, basketball, charity work, and many other business ventures, players do not have the time for tweeting.

Whether or not a player uses twitter doesn’t mean they don’t have an account. From a business perspective, using social media to keep your name and image prominent via social media makes sense. It is a wonderful tool to promote causes and share information that can spread virally. This is a highly potent tool for marketing your side business ventures or promoting a personal cause.

Players link people to special opportunities exclusively by using tweets. There is nothing wrong with that. It is up to the business owner to decide how they market themselves.

The NBA should consider investigating the time stamp of the tweet, and then also acquire the time and location of the player during this timestamp. Should the time stamp of the tweet overlap with a game, the player should be investigated, and be allowed to clarify the matter. If the time of tweet occurs during half time, pre or post game time, then a fine should be assessed.

It is too gray an area to definitively prove. If the player is on the bench, or in the game during the tweet, a fine should not be assessed.

What the league should not do is just mindlessly assess fines because a tweet from Amare Stoudemire or Tyson Chandler went out during a game. If you are going to enforce the fine, you should do so in a just fashion.

Anyone ever heard of tweetfeed? (Credit: picapp.com)

After all, If a player is smart enough to calculate a method to have someone else tweet on his behalf or set up an auto tweet via automated feed, the NBA should be smart enough to figure it out a player is not tweeting on the court.

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