I mean, it used to be, for those that have been around a while, in the old days it was about female reporters, and we all got past that issue. I also think it's a bit of an anachronism to have reporters in the actual room where players are dressing. I think that depending on where we see this virus, potential variants, you know, I think creating a little bit of distance may make more sense for the foreseeable future. In regard to reporters returning to locker rooms, I recognize what I am about to say may not be so popular with this group. Later, I’ll get into the real concern that Silver is attempting to launder through the concern he offered, but for now, let’s look at the entirety of his meandering thoughts, bolded for emphasis: Silver’s comments from this All-Star Weekend on potentially ending locker-room media access were muddled and self-contradictory, but also unintentionally revealing. No, on this issue, he’s been focused on the bodily privacy, just like Players Association head Michele Roberts is. That isn’t what NBA commissioner Adam Silver is fixating on, though, when it comes to media reforms. Every moment is potentially captured on a phone and every stray interview could be taken out of context. My former existential dread aside, it’s hard to blame players for feeling surveilled and overanalyzed. When I was fired by ESPN less than a month later, I took it as a blessing. By the end, I was rummaging through slips of the Like button to please my bosses. At the start of the beat-writing journey, I was writing in-depth features. He could tell I didn’t want to ask and I could tell he didn’t want to be asked, nice though he was to answer. I remember feeling a pang of self-hatred when, in the locker room, I asked Steph Curry to explain an Instagram post he liked about LeBron’s then-Cavs struggling. That insatiable demand for stories can inspire some stupid ones. These guys, especially the superstars, are living in a panopticon where they’re constantly observed and discussed at a scale beyond their control.
Sure, star players have always chafed at criticism, but this era is uniquely paranoia inducing. Their unhappiness with the media is understandable. A lot of that push is coming from the players, who are increasingly unhappy in general, and especially unhappy with media coverage. One of the reasons I quit my media job and started HoS was because I believed that the NBA, in a Shock Doctrine maneuver, would use the pandemic as a pretext for further restrictions on reporters. Right now, it would appear that the NBA is attempting to take locker-room access away from reporters permanently. In this post, I’ll try to explain two things that haven’t been well-explained by NBA commissioner Adam Silver: Why locker-room access exists and why players want to end it.