Turner Sports presented a Sports Business Innovation panel at this year’s CES in Las Vegas. Among those in attendance was the Seattle Storm’s Sue Bird.
Bird participated in a panel that discussed how social media has changed sports. It was moderated by NBA on TNT’s Ernie Johnson and also included NCAA president Mark Emmert, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, and Grant Hill of NBA TV and TNT.
Bird said she found out about how social media can have a negative impact when Twitter was a new thing and a player that tweeted critically on taking part in a season-ticket holder event was fined.
She said she takes a more passive approach to social media, deciding to ignore negative tweets as opposed to others that may want to engage with those that tweet critical, or even nasty things, to their accounts.
I love that you can be connected and show another part of your personality, but you see young kids getting judged all the time even when the behavior they are doing might be normal for a college student.
–Sue Bird
Bird also touched upon the topic of how technology has changed her given the explosion of new technological innovations that have taken place during the latter portions of her career.
I’m 36 now. I’m trying to cross every T and dot every I so that I can play. That’s all I’m thinking about. So if you tell me I need to sleep 12 hours, I’m doing it. If I need to wear a device to figure that out, I’m all about it. And that is something I wish I did when I was 22. I can’t even imagine what my career would have been like.
By: Akiem Bailum (@AkiemBailum on Twitter, Instagram)
