Give Me The Rock

Don’t worry, I’m not that self-centered. I’m not referring to Give Me The Rock. I’m talking about a phenomenon that started in earnest a couple of years ago with Agent Zero and his decision to start blogging regularly.* Today, Gilbert Arenas, Luol Deng, and others have blogs that they update regularly on NBA.com. Greg Oden, Mike Conely Jr, Rajon Rondo and a bunch of other guys have personal blogs on Yardbarker. On his blog 38pitches.com, Curt Shilling breaks down the results of the games he pitches in and more recently discussed the details of his contract negotiations with the Red Sox.

It’s clear that the blog has become a significant communication tool for many professional athletes. It is a place where they can comment on yesterday’s game because a fan dared them to, talk about how their rehab is going, post a letter they received from a general manager, chat about what they do on off days, and invite people to play HALO 3 with them online. You know things have changed when Mike Conely invites fans to play video games with him.

Greg Oden was the guy who really got me thinking about this topic. In the CBS Sports 30-man experts league, I drafted Greg Oden in the 12th round (which was pick three hundred and something or other). Now realistically, I don’t expect Oden to play this year, but it’s been fascinating to follow Oden’s progress through his blog. When I look up Oden on CBS Sports, it tells me that he had microfracture surgery and he’ll be out for a year. Check back next year. When I go to Oden’s blog, I can watch videos of him rehabbing and discussing his knee and the progress that he’s made so far. Now which one of those is a more appealing way to get information on Oden and his injury?

While Oden’s videos have been interesting, it’s really Gilbert Arenas who has been pushing the boundaries of what an athlete will write about on the Internet. Arenas became a blogging superstar because he’s the perfect storm of talent and personality. He’s honest, funny, wildly confident, likes to interact with his fans, and is a great player. No doubt he also has talented people working for him behind the scenes.

As you may have heard, Arenas is dealing with some knee issues early in the season. He had his knee drained twice in three weeks and it appears that his performance on the court is suffering as a result. In the past, someone looking for information on his injury would usually turn to one of the major sports sites for a vague two sentence update on his condition. But now, we can go directly to the source. In his latest blog entry, Arenas talks about his knee and a discussion with Richard Jefferson and Jason Kidd:

Actually, we were talking about my knee. He was telling me I need to get a second opinion because I shouldn’t be getting it drained this early on in the season. It was the same thing that me and Jason Kidd talked about after the game on the court. He said that I should get a second opinion and I shouldn’t be playing so many minutes early. He said that it’s the same thing that some of these players come back from. He had microfracture surgery, so he knows. His injury was worse than mine so he knows you have to take your time coming back.

Now Arenas is clearly on the leading edge of blogging. It’s going to be the year two-thousand and never before every player in the league has their own blog that they update regularly. But the Internet has made airtime cheap. In the same way that nobodies like me can start pontificating to the entire world about fantasy sports by setting up a blog in five minutes, Gilbert Arenas and other players have discovered that they can speak directly to their fans without having to rely on traditional reporters, newspapers, and other media. If you ever played that game telephone as a child, you know that the more people who get in the middle of a message, the more it becomes filtered and distorted. Blogs remove that distance between player and fan, allowing a player to communicate directly with their fans in their own voice.

The old way certainly isn’t dead yet, nor will it be soon. But the next time I’m looking for information about a player or his health, I’m going to start with his blog and go from there. Until then, I’m off to buy an Xbox.

* I am aware that Arenas was not the first NBA player to have a blog. However, to the best of my knowledge, he was the first who was both a very good player and had interesting things to say. Please correct me if I’m wrong about that.