Have you ever been centel’d?
If you don’t know what that means, good for you; it means you’re not a chronically online basketball fan, unlike many people I talk to on a daily basis. If you do and if you’ve been victimized by the infamous account, that’s okay too … it happens to the best of us.
To fill everyone in, “TheNBACentel” is an X account that posts fake basketball reports like, “BREAKING: Joel Embiid OUT for Christmas game due to holiday fatigue from opening gifts.” Sometimes, its tweets are more believable; the account has fooled Colin Cowherd, Draymond Green and thousands of others. On Wednesday, the troll account removed all of its posts, leading to speculation that it was shut down by X itself. Many official NBA team accounts posted tributes.
While I wish I could write this week’s column solely in tribute to the page’s best posts, the left side of my brain compels me to explore a different area of the topic. See, I believe that the rise of accounts like Centel — which have become massive in the sports social media space solely for being provocative — is directly related to the loss of interest in NBA basketball itself.
I generally find the whole “the NBA is dying” discourse to be fairly boring and redundant, but there is certainly something to be said from a sociological perspective here. As many have noted, there is an inherent interdependence between American sports leagues and the media outlets that support them, often referred to as the “sport/media complex.” Institutions like the NBA have made a considerable shift away from traditional broadcast media in favor of social media (why watch the whole game, ads and all, when I can see the highlights on Instagram?). As a result, the success and growth of the league have come to depend on a largely unstable and unserious online community.
Such associations are seen financially as well. According to SponsorUnited, an outlet that tracks sports sponsorship data, NBA players’ sponsored posts garner 2.5 times more engagement than those of other professional athletes. Further, it was estimated that social platforms were responsible for 20% to 50% of the combined media value generated for sponsors during the 2017–18 season, and one can only assume that this figure has grown in recent years.
Unfortunately, as NBA Twitter’s influence grows, so too does its toxicity. As is often true on social media, the most derogatory and outrageous comments rise to the top. Even the players are taking notice. “NBA Twitter and social media sucks,” noted Atlanta Hawks guard Terance Mann during a particularly rough patch for his former team, the Los Angeles Clippers, last season. “It’s s---.”
It’s naive to assume that these players, especially young guys who have come up during NBA Twitter’s prime, can simply ignore posts that often feature personal insults. There are nearly unlimited examples: Kevin Durant’s incessant beef with his haters, Darius Garland’s mid-interview acknowledgement of online jokes involving teammate Donovan Mitchell’s genitalia in a SKIMS advertisement and so on. While many posts are harmless, these incidents can be mentally damaging to players nonetheless.
There is some good in NBA Twitter. For example, many people find meaningful relationships and communities as a result of discussing the sport with others online. And while I’m not sure that the harm done to both the players and the league itself is worth it, on the internet’s Wild West, anything goes. There may be nothing we can do about it now — I doubt banning the Centel account was a great step towards a more compassionate community — but I do still foolishly hope that posters will think twice before defaming an athlete for a couple thousand likes.
