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Twitter, the NBA, and Fantasy Basketball

April 9th, 2009

It’s Finals time.  Not in the NBA – in Fantasy Basketball.  I’m not in them (no surprise there – I never seem to be, despite my best efforts) but that doesn’t stop me from following them ardently.  What is interesting this year in the NBA is the rapid adoption of Twitter by some top names in the league.  ShaqBaron Davis, and Paul Pierce.  My favorite – Charlie Villenueva.  He’s probably one of the most prolific NBA players on Twitter…with his most publicized ‘tweet‘ coming at halftime of a recent game against the Celtics. 

What I find intriguing about this is that it gives unprecedented access to our sports heroes.  Shaq and Paul Pierce routinely give out tickets to games via the micro-blogging service.  With Shaq, it’s the first person to find him in the NBA city he’s playing in and touching him after he tweets.  He recently visited my hometown, Portland, and put the tweet out for tickets against the Trail Blazers.  It took 4 minutes for someone to find him and win the tickets.  His response to his followers?  “100 people n the prtland area just came for tickets wow portland twitterers r niiiiiice“… 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out my current opponent, who is not ashamed of using the power of Twitter to gain an edge in his matchup.  Fab Fish – this one’s for you…. way to game the system.

Somone has gone to a lot of work to find and verify accuracy of sports figures on Twitter, which they list in a spreadsheet for the public to see.  Who will you follow?

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