When NBA living-legend Phil Jackson joined the Twitter-world a little over two years ago, users rejoiced in being able to see inside the surely complicated mind of a basketball genius.
Fast forward to today, and his questionable running of the New York Knicks, from his helm as team president, and his Twitter interactions are a tad different.
Jackson has been getting immense heat from the masses over everything from the team’s sorry season; coming off a franchise-worst 17 wins, to his unpopular use of the 4th pick in this year’s draft to select Latvia’s Kristaps Porzingis. However, according to Los Angeles Lakers team president (and Jackson’s boo) Jeanie Buss; the razzing via social media is nothing but entertainment to him. Furthermore, he loves to jab back:
“Come on, he jabs at Twitter with some of his tweets (laughs). That’s Phil. And whatever comes his way, whatever washes over him in terms of criticism or backlash or whatever, he can take it. He loves it,” Buss explained. “It has invigorated him. I can tell on my timeline when he’s done something, because his name comes up in all the basketball world,” she said. “I didn’t know he was going to tweet it – you know, Phil is a big boy, he knows exactly what he’s doing, everything is for a reason, and so he can answer those questions. But any arrows that come his way, he can survive. It just makes him tougher. It’s good.”
There are really three schools of thought when it comes to celebrities and social media. Either pay someone to run it for you so you can blame them when something goes wrong, be thick-skinned enough to deal with the worst of humanity whenever you do something that makes the news, or take the Coach Herm Edwards approach: “DON’T PRESS SEND”.
It appears Jackson, whom they call the “Zen Master”, has the perfect temperament to deal with the trolls.
[h/t LBS]