21st Century Schizoid Man

I guess its only fitting that Twitter first entered my social consciousness thanks to the NBA. It was some time last February courtesy of the Jones. Skeets and Melas were discussing activity on Shaq's account and all I could gather, at the time, was that Twitter had something to do with people who had nicer phones than me and it made me feel old. Hi, I'm 25, by the way. Six months later, a Twitter post has put Michael Beasley into rehab.

How did we get here?

I saw the Michael Beasley TwitPic on Friday, thanks to a link provided in the basline's top NBA tweets column. This was before the skies, seas and earth opened and harsh winds of speculation blew from every direction. The comments under the pic, depicting Super Cool's really unfortunate back piece, suggested a storm was sure to come, though. Not because of the tattoo, but because of what appeared to be a small bag containing a drug that makes you feel awesome and hungry in the lower right hand corner of the frame.

At first, the response was typical of the new media. Bloggers made fun of the tattoo and Beasley's general carelessness, that's all. There wasn't nearly the sense of indignation and lost innonence with Beasley's summer Internet picture fiasco like the one that accomponied Derrick Rose's outing as a supposed pot-smoking gang member. But then the wheels started to turn. Beasley posted some tweets that, when read aloud by Michael Kim, made it sound like he might really be so fucking embarrassed by the incident that he could kill himself. Reding them off the Twitter page makes them seem more like the lamentations of somebody who just saw Twilight (or me after I saw District 9).

Anyways, this all really got serious when word broke that Beasley entered rehab in Houston at the bidding of Heat General Manager Pat Riley. The speed at which this happened was so revelatory about how fans follow athletes that, to me, what we learned about ourselves during this process totally trumped what we think we learned about Beasley. When it comes to fan/athlete relations, this has been a summer of revelations.

I'll callously admit that I don't think Michael Beasley is crazy or a drug addict. I think, like many (young?) people, he is seriously lacking in a sense of self, which leads him to share every development in his life, no matter how minor, with anybody who's willing to listen. For a person like who I imagine Beasley to be, the quest for validation is likely endless. If you smoke enough weed, and take enough pictures of yourself, it's only a matter of time before the two worlds collide. His checking into rehab is a spectacle both on his part and the Heat's, mostly the Heat's, to show they give a fuck about their investment and how he spends his summer vacation.

To spotlight the the larger issue here, I have to point out something that I don't think anybody else has mentioned. Nothing actually happened. It wasn't even a revelation that Michael Beasley smokes weed, in fact, he'd faced real repercussions for it before his NBA career even began. Up until the news came out that he'd checked into rehab, the story here basically was that young Beasley was up to his same old tricks. This was all about affirmation, not revelation.

The Heat forcing Beasley into rehab has nothing to do with drugs, or mental illness. It's about Beasley being unable to control his brand, or social networking identity. His recreational use of marijuana was surely an annoyance before, but one common among young players. Rehab is Beasley's punishment for driving down his Q rating and shining a light on the Heat's inability to keep him in check.



In the past, money, women and drugs were the key players in the tragedy of the young black athlete, who went from having nothing to drowning in a sea of plenty. Social media has introduced itself as a new key character, and maybe the most insidious one. Perhaps we need to stop and consider that for all they receive in material riches, these young men are likely facing a serious lack when it comes to affirmation for anything outside their physical stature and ability to put a ball through a basketball hoop. Considering the serious delays in development the track to NBA stardom in young men, is it any wonder that a man-child such as Beasley is, in all seriousness, not all that different from the kind of person who would watch a movie like Twilight and feel deeply impacted by it?

That basketball players lead lives unimaginable to most of us does not exclude them from trials that can be painfully familiar. In the case of the social-media meltdown, which is terrible common among high-schoolers and college aged kids, they also tend to be terribly public affairs. The Heat are just the latest surrogate family for Beasley, who's creation myth featured him traveling the countryside in hopes of finding a court on which to play. Again, his core is failing him through their decision to rehabilitate him as a commodity, not as a 20 year-old young man.

I'm sure what exactly Michael Beasley needs, or if even such a thing exists. I know its not rehab though, and the Heat's decision to pursue such a path is a window into the sad way that NBA franchises take care of their "young men."