In about a week, what started as a small rumble via NBA Twitter/blogosphere has now morphed into serious discussions about man codes, social media shamming and over-sharing. The thing is, the reason FOR the slander is because of just that, social media, and our unhealthy addiction to it.
First let me get this out of the way, I hate the Lakers. Beyond that fact, I am a fan of D’Angelo Russell. I thought the Lakers made the correct choice in selecting him with the 2nd overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft. Shawty can boogie down. On the opposite end of that spectrum we have Nick Young aka Swaggy P aka My Least Favorite NBA Player in the past decade. He’s also engaged to “rap mega star” Iggy Azelea. Nick isn’t a victim, lets not get it twisted, he was caught cheating on his soon-to-be wife. He’s a super bamma who wasn’t smart enough to keep his mouth shut, sicin up his own indiscretions to a kid like a gump. I really don’t care about non-injury related news about athletes because as a sports fan, I really can care less about any player’s personal life unless it hurts their availability to perform in their job.
The fact that both their lives are the point of ridicule today seems to have been self-inflicted, which is sad, troubling and unfortunately not surprising.
What we must realize, is that this is the Age of Exposure.
The Age of Narcissism.
And we ALL are guilty of it. From making our precious children take numerous selfies for US to post on our own social media sites then to watch them learn how to take selfies themselves without any supervision, to old ass adults who instead of having fun wherever they are, do nothing but take pictures or worse, group chat during said outings. WE ALL DO IT!
BUT, just because that is a fact, doesn’t negate the egregious violations of certain individuals.
Russell committed the worst man-code violation imaginable. He is now labeled a gump, cornball, different variations of the term “rat” (Ratatouille, Fiefel among others lol) etc and they are all valid. There are societal and clubhouse rules that you just don’t cross and no matter what Young did/said, there was no reason to record it. Like, who does that?!?!
You know who does that? People who think any and everything needs to be recorded and documented. Russell is going to get the benefit of the doubt from most people because of his age (19) and that’s a convenient excuse. The issue going forward is whether he, as the hand picked heir of the storied Lakers franchise, can be trusted to lead….because leaders don’t lead this way.
Lets put the phones down sometimes and just live….privacy still matters.
I agree he committed man code violation and for that should’ve been sent to the timeout chair. I just didn’t understand why this was media coverage for 3 straight days though especially for a horrible team. I just wonder if this wasn’t D’Angelo Russell and say a more prominent superstar in the league would the slander/backlash would’ve been as extreme.