NBA preparing Twitter guidelines

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NBA commissioner David Stern told Yahoo! Sports on Thursday the league will soon follow the NFL in announcing Twitter guidelines and other social media restrictions for its players and coaches.

“Obviously, there is a happy medium between tweeting before the game and tweeting from our bench during the game,” Stern said by phone. “You want to make sure that pop culture doesn’t intrude on what brought us here, which is the game, and that we show the right respect for the game.”


The NFL announced its own guidelines on Monday by restricting players, coaches and football operations personnel – or anyone representing them – from using social media networks like Twitter and Facebook from 90 minutes before kickoff to the end of traditional media interviews after games. NFL game officials are banned from using social media at all times.

Stern described the NBA’s guidelines as “nothing too serious.”

It's not surprising they'd do that and fair enough that they do. It seems like it's something that should be the prerogative of the individual teams but I suppose a league-wide policy saves them the trouble and treats everyone the same. I say relax it during All-Star Weekend, though.

They need to do this. Players tweeting on the bench comes off very unprofessional. I agree about ASW though.

I agree. The game is what they should concentrate on, not looking forward to posting a tweet.

This doesn't go far enough. They should ban talking to each other about anything unrelated to the game, checking out chicks in the crowd, and staring off into the distance blindly. The game is what they should concentrate on, not trying to find ways to kill the boredom.

I think a $100,000 fine and ten game suspension would get these guys to finally respect the game while sitting on the bench.

Tweeting from the bench and from the locker-room are very unprofessional. So some rules should be introduced concerning it.