The old-school players love to rag on modern NBA players because they believe that as the salaries have ballooned, the work ethics and intensities have plummeted.
There is a sliver of truth in that, but most of it is merely envy. Today’s players invest so much time in their crafts—and furthermore—they have a fraction of the privacy of yesterday’s heroes. Social media completely deteriorates the insulation between the players and the public.
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that there are quite a few big-time NBA names that would’ve never been able to play in this era—let’s check out 10 of them.
Ricky Davis
Ricky Davis had serious JR Smith energy. Tell me you can’t picture JR taking a page out of Ricky’s book and trying to rebound his own shot on his own basket to secure a triple-double.
Twitter would have absolutely destroyed him for that!
Anthony Mason
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Anthony Mason was an underrated rogue character of the 90s. He was outspoken about his own ability and routinely shaved his name and other patterns into his head. And, more so the issue, he loved to get into bar fights—even with Knicks fans, which I don’t think would fly with camera phones ready to catch the action.
Charles Barkley
Although Chuck, as he is affectionately known, is now given the grandpa treatment—AKA he’s allowed to unabashedly run his mouth because he’s from a bygone era—I think having social media doing his playing days might’ve swallowed him up.
After all, this is a guy who allegedly said he’d never buy his girl a watch because she’s already got a clock over the stove. Not exactly the kind of humor that flies on Twitter these days—and that’s far from the only spicy take that Barkley has shared over the years.
Michael Jordan
23 is undisputedly one of, if not, the greatest basketball player to ever do it, but even Jordan himself has admitted he couldn’t hang in the social media era. During a 2020 interview, he said, “I don’t know if I could’ve survived in this Twitter [era], where you don’t have the privacy that you’d want and what seems to be very innocent can always be misinterpreted.”
I’m going to trust Jordan on this one. He knows what he was getting into during his heyday!
Walt Clyde Frazier
Although Walt has become beloved for his quirky attire and “Clyde-isms” I have to think that his eccentric behavior might’ve started to rub people the wrong way if he played during the social media era.
There is only so much of that one can take—and with social media at his disposal, it would’ve been all day every day.
Allen Iverson
Allen Iverson’s career stretched to the precipice of the social media era, but the bulk of his time in the league he was largely able to fly under the radar, which, considering his rap sheet and obsession with strip clubs really worked in his favor.
Jason Kidd
Over time, it has become apparent that there was a serious contradiction between the team-first persona that Jason Kidd projected during his playing days and his actual behavior. Kidd’s erratic behavior seems to have dated back to his freshman year at Cal when he allegedly instigated a mutiny that got the team’s coach, Lou Campanelli fired.
In the time since, he has gotten quite a few other coaches and teammates run out of town. Not to mention a couple of ugly off-the-court incidents. Needless to say, social media wouldn’t have been kind to him, as we’ve seen during his coaching career.
James Worthy
In the grand scheme of what was happening in Los Angeles during the 90s, James Worthy was probably somewhat on the mild side of things. But that said, based on what we do know about Worthy, he might’ve run into trouble with social media.
After all, this is a guy who got busted with call girls during an undercover sting operation. Nowadays, he would have gotten on social media for it—and I’m sure 100s of Instagram DMs would’ve been leaked shortly afterward.
Karl Malone
While there are plenty of players, who you could argue deserve their privacy—and that social media has done a disservice, Karl Malone is quite literally the polar opposite. If Malone played in today’s era, all of his skeletons would’ve been dug up and he would have been rightfully jettisoned out of the league for his stomach-churning behavior.
Dennis Rodman
This one sort of goes without saying. Dennis Rodman was such a madman that he barely survived an era with no camera phones.
If the worm played nowadays, he would have been plastered all over social media, and his, let’s call them, somewhat unsavory hobbies, likely would have caused his career to hit a screeching halt. Hearing rumors about the kind of shenanigans that Rodman got into was one thing, but a couple of videos and it would’ve been a wrap.
