[quote="Mike Zaun" post=349452][quote="Beast of the East" post=349437][quote="Mike Zaun" post=349354][quote="Beast of the East" post=349343]When my kids were small we'd take them to the Bronx zoo. There was this 20 something year old guy with a long stick poking it through the cage of some forgotten ferocious animal and taunting it. Years later, when two guys at the SF zoo hopped over the first fence and slingshot rocks mat a tiger, the tiger leapt over a 14 foot wall, tracked the perpetrators and mauled them to death. I felt bad for the tiger.
Social media is like that. Players get poked with sticks and we complain when they snap.back.[/quote]
One minute virtue-signalling fighting for moral high ground, then you compare our players to animals? Sounds like that comparison comes from a dark, dark place.
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I wonder what Sharmorie would have done if you called his basketball low IQ directly to his face on on social media.
Fans interact with players on social media because they really enjoy interacting with a coach or athlete, and they try to elicit a response from them, like the guy poking the tiger. If a "fan" who may be an adult himself, slams a student athlete, we'd hope he has the restraint to ignore them, but social media, even redmen,com is still like the Wild West.
College athletes on twitter are there because they often get adulation for as many as tens of thousands of fans. They also get occasional crap, and honestly, I don't blame them for getting rankled by idiots.
Social media in general is toxic. You learned that first hand, and took down Mullin's Maniacs, or whatever you did with your free wings service.
Felipe Lopez spoke about it at the NYAC at his ESPN premier. Basically said that college ballplayers love the attention they are getting by having a legion of followers, but that all in all, there isn't much positive that comes out of it except the kid thinking he is already a star.[/quote]
Wrong...nice try I said low basketball IQ at times but then I said it was really his shot selection that was poor and NBA scouts agree and told him to his face. Doubt he cried or tried to fight them. Convenient how you left out the "basketball" part and tried to make it into something it wasn't.
Yes these guys are young but they aren't kids. You have to have restraint as a player and I know it was a low blow what that fan said to Keita but you have to be better. It comes with the territory...you will be heckled by 5% but loved by 95% of fans usually too. These guys are the big men on campus, so the stupid comments on social media are the minority not the majority of what they face. If you think it's too much to ask for restraint and maturity from 20+ yr old players who are legal adults playing at a very high level in college, then you're basically lowering their standards implying they can't do better than that. Are 20 yr olds more likely to be impulsive and say something back? On average yes, but these guys have to learn how to tune the BS out or they won't go very far IMO.[/quote]
Mike agree with most of what you’re saying, but this is one comment by Sedee. Again, not defending it, but it seems like the exception not the norm. Maybe he tuned out 99.9% of the comments and for whatever reason this one got to him. Maybe he was having a bad day, who knows? It happens. Nobody is perfect, at any age or maturity level.
