Kerr Drops off Social Media After Talk With Wiseman
NBA Twitter is something of a spectacle to watch. With uninformed hot takes flying left and right, it’s hard to weed out any good information, and while the platform is often used to incur social change that people need in this day and age, it can also be an incredibly malicious mouthpiece for detractors of a specific person or player. Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and second-year player James Wiseman know this better than most, as a quick look around the Twittersphere can display that everyone seems to have an opinion on how Kerr should be coaching, and how Wiseman should be playing.
Recently, however, it seems the criticism to these two has been taken (rightfully so) with a grain of salt. Steve Kerr’s last post on Twitter was a congratulatory post to the University of Arizona’s women’s basketball team on reaching the Final Four this past March, and his last activity was a retweet two days later. Recently, Warriors insider Monte Poole sat down with Coach Kerr to discuss why he was off the platform with no plans to return, and Kerr explained that it started with a discussion he had with then-rookie and 2nd overall pick Wiseman in the middle of last season. Kerr cited that it was their “conversation about life” that made them both rethink how much they access the platform.
It’s no shock that athletes are more outspoken about these kinds of issues in an age where being outspoken has become a norm. The “players-first” movement across the league has gotten a lot of support from the fanbase as more and more about the positions these people are put in comes to light. For Kerr, he faces a tar pit of criticism from both Warriors fans and detractors who attribute his choices to the early-season struggles the team had in the 2020-2021 season. The peace of mind he seeks and has encouraged Wiseman to seek seemed to have worked: The Warriors were one of the most lethal teams down the stretch heading into the play-in, and Kerr’s tuning out of the noise seems to have played a part in that.
What’s more shocking about the Warriors coach’s indefinite hiatus is how outspoken he’s been politically. Kerr is a person that’s very vocal about issues both political and social, something he was starting to become a commonly-referenced name for over the past four or five years. While his activity to spur change and support causes he believes in has not wavered, he simply, as Monte Poole put it, “…has lost the desire to see and hear the sights around them.” Kerr believes it’s much healthier to stay away from the “BS” which surrounds modern rhetoric and debate on Twitter.
The social media hiatus is becoming more of a trend amongst public figures in recent months, especially as everyone struggles through the whiplash of the pandemic. While many people see it as a bad thing, that these people are weak because they can’t take the heat that comes with being a celebrity, it’s an unfair assessment to forget that these people are, well, people. The toxicity and problematic behavior that’s bred on social media shows how divisiveness and anger can warp something which has done a lot of good into a place that nobody wants to be. Steve Kerr and James Wiseman are just two examples of people who have a lot of expectations that they don’t necessarily deserve to be scrutinized for not fulfilling, and there are a lot of other NBA players (namely DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love) who have advocated that mental health comes first. If a hiatus from social media is what helps Warriors coaches and players become their best selves, then we should all – as fans and as people – be in support of it.