The NBA’s extremely online fandom can be a force for good and something more sinister

The NBA, as a league, fandom and general cultural phenomenon, is what could be fairly described as “painfully online”. From stars like Kevin Durant gleefully and regularly dunking on detractors from their own Twitter accounts, to media personalities like Josiah Johnson who have made entire careers out of memeing the league in real time, to the average fan constantly refreshing their feeds during playoff games: it seems, in many ways, that the crux of the NBA exists in the internet ether as much as it does on the hardwood.

The community that has formed around the NBA online has become maybe its greatest present-day asset, keeping fans engaged and keeping the league in the news even in the doldrums of the offseason. In 2021, “NBA” was the No 1 trending search on Google in the US, and its official Instagram account has more followers than all the other major professional sports leagues in the nation combined. Of course, there’s strength in numbers. But as the uncle of a famous spider-human mutant once astutely observed, with great power comes great responsibility. And, as evidenced over the last week, the power of the ever-churning internet hivemind can be a force for good, and a force for quite the opposite.

The full range of the good, the bad and the deeply ugly of the NBA’s powerful online community was on display over these past seven days. On one end of the spectrum was the case of Phoenix Suns’ volatile and widely disliked controlling owner Robert Sarver. After an independent investigation confirmed Baxter Holmes’ ESPN report that Sarver, and his sexist and racist comments, were at the helm of a toxic work environment, the NBA handed down a one-year suspension and $10m fine that was widely regarded as shockingly weak.