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      in Tennis

      Martina Navratilova Has Plenty to Say

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      FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Martina Navratilova sat at a dockside restaurant in Florida this spring, wearing worn-out jeans, a denim button-down shirt that hung loosely at her waist and a 1619 cap that one of her five dogs had gnawed on. It’s her favorite hat these days.Athletic tape wrapped a thumb and forefinger, not to buffer a tennis racket, but to cover a skin condition that causes discoloration. She has not played in a while — the pandemic, aching joints, the usual excuses.A woman about Navratilova’s age, which is 64, said a star-struck “hello” on her way out of the restaurant. But a young waitress had no idea she had served a tuna salad platter with a side of asparagus to someone who, four decades ago, was working to become the model for the modern, socially aware athlete.During Navratilova’s heyday in the 1980s, the world did not have much appetite for an outspoken, openly gay woman whose romantic partners sat courtside while she dominated her sport as no one else had — winning 18 Grand Slam singles titles and 59 in all, the last coming in 2006, when she was 49.Navratilova won the U.S. Open mixed doubles title with Bob Bryan in 2006, when she was almost 50.Jamie Squire/Getty ImagesNowadays, that combination of success and fearlessness can make you an icon. Witness the empathy in recent days for Naomi Osaka, the four-time Grand Slam tournament winner who withdrew from the French Open, citing concerns for her mental health, after tournament organizers threatened to disqualify her if she did not appear at news conferences. Navratilova — an enthusiastic supporter of Osaka and a vocal champion of causes including climate change and animal welfare — may simply have been born too soon. After paving the way for the modern athlete, Navratilova still has plenty to say, and the world seems more willing to listen now, though not everyone agrees with her.She faced vehement backlash from L.G.B.T.Q. advocates when she argued in the Sunday Times of London in support of rules for transgender female athletes competing against other women, and was dropped from the advisory board of Athlete Ally, a group focused on supporting L.G.B.T.Q. athletes. And still, Navratilova wishes Twitter and Instagram had been around back in her playing days, consequences be damned.As a child in Prague, Navratilova read the newspaper every day. She studied the atlas, imagining where life could take her. She believes now that living out loud helped turn her into the greatest player on the planet. Defecting from Czechoslovakia at 18 saved her soul, she said, and living as an openly gay superstar athlete set her free.She has no shortage of thoughts and opinions, usually expressed on social media, even if the next day she is providing expert analysis on The Tennis Channel from the French Open.Navratilova talked with sportscaster Ted Robinson while calling a match at the French Open.Pete Kiehart for The New York Times“I lived behind the Iron Curtain,” she said, her eyes still capable of the glare that terrified opponents on the court. “You really think you are going to be able to tell me to keep my mouth shut?”Whatever the political and social culture is buzzing on, Navratilova wants a piece of the action. She tosses Twitter grenades from the left, caring little about collateral, and sometimes self-inflicted, damage. There was this on the Republican Party last month. Do not get her started on vaccine conspiracy theories. And she could not resist weighing on the Liz Cheney fracas.Do people change over time or just become more like themselves? Navratilova — who lives in Miami with her wife, the Russian model Julia Lemigova, their two daughters, five Belgian Malinois dogs, turtles and a cat — certainly has not changed so much as the world has.Navratilova and her wife, Julia Lemigova, chatted with Britain’s Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, in the royal box at Wimbledon in 2019.Pool photo by Ben CurtisAs a newly arrived immigrant, Navratilova was called “a walking delegate for conspicuous consumption” by The New York Times in 1975. The article elaborated:She wears a raccoon coat over $30 jeans and a floral blouse from Giorgio’s, the Hollywood boutique. She wears four rings and assorted other jewelry, including a gold necklace with a diamond insert shaped in the figure 1. The usual status symbol shoes and purse round out the wardrobe. She owns a $20,000 Mercedes-Benz 450SL sports coupe.She was labeled a whiner and a crybaby (by Nora Ephron, no less) and a danger to her sport, because she was so much better than everyone else.After Navratilova criticized the government of her adopted country, Connie Chung suggested during a CNN interview that she return to Czechoslovakia. “She was always opinionated, and always principled,” said Pam Shriver, Navratilova’s close friend and longtime doubles partner. “It would have been so great for her and her fans not to have her voice filtered.”Mary Carillo, the former player and tennis commentator, remembers being next to Navratilova in the locker room as a teenager at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills and noticing sculpted arms “with raised veins and sinewy muscle barely holding them all together.”“She was smart and quick and funny and emotional, with a game so strong and assertive that it seemed like fans automatically felt the need to cheer for the woman across the net,” Carillo said. “Like Martina’s game wasn’t … what? Feminine? Fair? That drove me nuts.”The EvolutionName the qualities that allow a professional athlete to transcend the game. Publicly challenging authority? Being an openly gay superstar? Transforming how people play and train for their sport? Navratilova checked each box.She was a Wimbledon quarterfinalist in the summer of 1975, when her country’s Communist government was deciding whether to allow her to participate in the United States Open in New York later that year. She hated being unable to speak her mind, or tell anyone of her sexual attraction to women. Navratilova during the 1975 U.S. Open.Focus on Sport, via Getty ImagesWhen she received permission to leave for the tournament, she told her father, who was also her coach, that she would not be coming back. She did not tell her mother.After a semifinal loss to Chris Evert, she headed to a Manhattan immigration office to request asylum. Three hours later, she was free. By the time she woke up the next morning at the Roosevelt Hotel, the story of her defection was in The Washington Post.Navratilova kept her sexuality private for six more years, because it might have disqualified her from becoming a U.S. citizen. After she was naturalized, a sports reporter tracked her down following an exhibition match in Monte Carlo and told her he planned to write about an off-the-record conversation they’d had about her being a lesbian.She urged him not to. She said she had been told it would be bad for women’s tennis. The tour was managing a recent controversy with Billie Jean King, who had been sued for palimony by a former girlfriend. King at first denied the affair, then acknowledged it during a news conference with her husband at her side.The reporter rejected Navratilova’s request, and after years of silence, she found herself shoved from the closet. From that moment on, though, Navratilova appeared with girlfriends and went about her life as she had always longed to.“I didn’t have to worry anymore,” she said. “I didn’t have to censor myself.”Navratilova greeted Judy Nelson, her girlfriend for several years, as she entered the court at Wimbledon in 1988.Professional Sport/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesThat September, Navratilova lost a third-set tiebreaker to Tracy Austin in the U.S. Open final and cried during the awards presentation. The crowd roared for Navratilova that day, but rarely afterward, even as she won the next three Grand Slam singles titles, and then 13 more after that. Along the way, Navratilova essentially changed not only the way people played the game, but also the way tennis players — men and women — went about their business.Don’t believe it? Take a look at the physiques of male tennis players before Navratilova became Navratilova.That evolution began in the spring of 1981, when Navratilova was at the Virginia Beach home of the basketball star Nancy Lieberman. She called Navratilova lazy and said she could train much harder.Cross-training was barely a concept then, but soon Navratilova was playing an hour of one-on-one basketball with Lieberman several times a week. She played tennis for up to four hours a day, began weight training with a female bodybuilder and sprinted daily at a local track.A nutritionist put Navratilova on a diet high in complex carbohydrates and low in fatty proteins. Her physique went from borderline lumpy to sculpted.With the help of Renée Richards, a new coach who played professional tennis in the 1970s after undergoing transition surgery, Navratilova learned a topspin backhand and a crushing forehand volley. Her game, powered by her lethal left-handed serve, became about aggression, about attacking the opponent from everywhere on the court.In 1983, Navratilova played 87 matches and lost only once. In three Grand Slam finals, she lost zero sets and just 15 games.Navratilova with the 1983 U.S. Open trophy.Leo Mason/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesSoon Evert started cross-training, and the next generation of stars looked a lot more like Navratilova. They adopted her fierce style on the court.Tennis careers generally ended around age 30 back then. Navratilova won the Wimbledon singles title at 34 in 1990 and continued to win doubles championships until 2006, becoming a groundbreaker in longevity.She has no doubt that her dominance on the court and her stridency off it worked hand in glove. “It lifts the pressure off you,” she said. “It’s like having a near-death experience. Once you go through it, you embrace life.”The CommentatorThe social and political commentary, and the requisite blowback, would come in time, starting almost by accident.In 1991, when Magic Johnson announced he had been diagnosed with the virus that causes AIDS, saying he was infected through sex with women, Navratilova was asked for her thoughts. She questioned why gay people with AIDS did not receive similar sympathy, adding that if a woman caught the disease from being with hundreds of men, “they’d call her a whore and a slut, and the corporations would drop her like a lead balloon.”Imagine dropping that in your Twitter feed.In 1992, she campaigned against a Colorado ballot measure that would have outlawed any legislation in the state that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. She said President Bill Clinton had wimped out with his “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays in the military. She demanded equal pay for women and bashed tennis parents who behaved badly.The pushback reached critical mass in 2002 when a German newspaper quoted her saying policy decisions in America focus on money instead of “how much health, morals or the environment suffer.”When Chung took her to task on CNN, Navratilova shot back, “When I see something that I don’t like, I’m going to speak out because you can do that here.”Navratilova at a gay rights march in Washington D.C. in 2000.Shawn Thew/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNow her eyes light up when she discusses Coco Gauff, the 17-year-old budding tennis star who spoke forcefully at a Black Lives Matter rally near her Florida home last year after the murder of George Floyd. And when she thinks of Osaka — who wore a mask naming a Black victim of racial violence before each of her matches at the U.S. Open last year — Navratilova is certain the masks, and speaking out, helped Osaka win the championship. A protest doesn’t take energy away from you, Navratilova explained, it does the opposite.She never knows where the blowback will come from, and knows that it won’t always be from the right. She will continue to write and tweet about her belief that elite transgender female athletes should have transition surgery before being allowed to compete in women’s events.“It can’t just be you declare your identity and that’s it,” she said. She feels similarly about intersex athletes who identify as women.The Black Lives Matter sticker on her car garners the occasional heckle. Navratilova said someone recently saw a photograph of her in the 1619 cap, then announced he was pulling out of a tennis camp where she was scheduled to appear.That is fine, she said. She will keep wearing the cap. More

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      in Tennis

      At the French Open, Naomi Osaka Seeks Comfort on Clay and No Interviews

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      The world No. 2 has said she won’t talk to journalists at the tournament, which begins on Sunday, but she faces a bigger obstacle: her record on clay.PARIS — While other major players juggled practice and media commitments ahead of the French Open, Naomi Osaka focused only on practice this week.She was on court at Roland Garros early on Friday, hitting with the former No. 1 Angelique Kerber on the red clay, where Osaka does not feel entirely at ease. During breaks, she sat in a chair staring straight ahead as her coach, Wim Fissette, crouched by her side in conversation.The second-seeded Osaka is tennis’s biggest new star and now the highest-paid female athlete in the world, ahead of Serena Williams. Osaka has won four Grand Slam singles titles, two more than any other woman since 2018. But the French Open, the only Grand Slam tournament played on clay, will be a big challenge. She did not get past the third round in four previous appearances, and so she planned to approach the event differently: Osaka recently announced that, to protect her mental health, she would not “do any press” during the tournament, which begins Sunday.It remains unclear what her news-media abstention will entail. Osaka, who represents Japan and lives in the United States, is under contract with the Japanese broadcaster Wowow. Will she choose to speak with that network and other broadcasters? Will she give post-match interviews on court? Or will she simply choose to skip the traditional post-match news conference designed to serve a wide variety of outlets?Answers were not immediately forthcoming, and Stuart Duguid, her agent, declined to comment when asked for clarification. What is clear is that Osaka chose not to take part in the official media day on Friday, which made her the exception. The participants included the women’s No. 1, Ashleigh Barty; the reigning women’s champion, Iga Swiatek; and the 13-time men’s champion, Rafael Nadal. Already an immovable object at Roland Garros, Nadal now has a permanent presence after the unveiling this week of a steel statue of him ripping his trademark forehand.Nadal and his fellow players addressed numerous topics on Friday, and most were asked about Osaka’s decision. None criticized her choice, but all said they would take a different tack.Rafael Nadal, the No. 3 seed, practiced on Court Philippe Chatrier.Pete Kiehart for The New York Times“As sports people, we need to be ready to accept the questions and try to produce an answer, no?” Nadal said. “I understand her, but in the other hand, for me, without the press, without the people who normally are traveling, who are writing the news and achievements that we are having around the world, probably we will not be the athletes that we are today. We aren’t going to have the recognition that we have around the world, and we will not be that popular, no?”Nadal, who will turn 35 on Thursday, is a creature of habit who began giving interviews as a preteen prodigy. The landscape has changed dramatically since he won his first French Open title in 2005. Athletes now speak through social media, but the surprise announcement from Osaka, 23, is not all about a generation gap.Barty, from Australia, is 25, and Swiatek, from Poland, is 19. Both are past French Open champions, and both are big stars in their home countries.“In my opinion, press is kind of part of the job,” Barty said. “We know what we sign up for as professional tennis players. I can’t really comment on what Naomi is feeling or her decisions.”Worn down by expectations and the intensity of professional tennis, Barty took a nearly two-year break in her career before returning in 2016.“At times, press conferences are hard, of course, but it’s also not something that bothers me,” she said. “I’ve never had problems answering questions or being completely honest with you guys.”In a statement on Friday, the WTA emphasized how seriously it took the issue of mental health, but also stressed that media obligations are part of the job.“The WTA welcomes a dialogue with Naomi (and all players) to discuss possible approaches that can help support an athlete as they manage any concerns related to mental health, while also allowing us to deliver upon our responsibilities to the fans and public,” the statement said. “Professional athletes have a responsibility to their sport and their fans to speak to the media surrounding their competition, allowing them the opportunity to share their perspective and tell their story.”Swiatek, like the young Canadian Bianca Andreescu, has prioritized the mental side of her game, using sports psychology from an early age and hiring a performance psychologist, Daria Abramowicz, as part of her team.Swiatek said on Friday that she did not think taking part in news conferences was difficult or had affected her mental health.Iga Swiatek during hitting practice at the Australian Open with her performance psychologist, Daria Abramowicz.Alana Holmberg for The New York Times“I feel that the media is really important as well because they are giving us, you are giving us, a platform to talk about our lives and our perspective,” she said. “It’s also important, because not everybody is a professional athlete, and not everybody knows what we are dealing with on court. It’s good to speak about that. We have like two ways to do that: media and social media. It’s good to use both of these platforms and to educate people.”What social media lacks — unless an athlete chooses to regularly answer questions from followers — is dialogue.Tennis news conferences are not what they used to be. They are generally shorter and much lighter on inquiries about tactics, technique and the match that just finished. But they remain an opportunity for journalists to ask questions on any subject. They also allow a chance for those who report regularly about tennis to develop a rapport with the athletes and better understand their personalities, psyches and, as Swiatek smartly alluded to, their motivations and intentions.Billy Jean King, who won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, said that she was torn over Osaka’s decision.“While it’s important that everyone has the right to speak their truth, I have always believed that as professional athletes we have a responsibility to make ourselves available to the media,” King wrote in an email. “In our day, without the press, nobody would have known who we are or what we thought. There is no question they helped build and grow our sport to what it is today. I acknowledge things are very different now with social media and everyone having an immediate ability to speak their truth. The media still play an important role in telling our story. There is no question that the media needs to respect certain boundaries. But at the end of the day, it is important we respect each other and we are in this together.”It is true that some of the world’s most prominent athletes do not give postgame interviews as a matter of course. Soccer players in Europe’s top leagues generally grant limited access. But top tennis players are hardly alone in speaking after every match. Star golfers usually are interviewed after each round. Top track and field athletes and Alpine skiers do interviews after each race. The Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, now retired, would win in less than 10 seconds and then spend half an hour or more running a gantlet of television, radio and print journalists.Osaka, with her long list of sponsors, has many new commercial partners who have a stake in her maintaining a high profile. But she already gives very few individual interviews and has reached a level of celebrity that she can probably maintain through social media, her sponsors and coverage of her matches.Osaka with members of her coaching staff at her practice Friday.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesOsaka is subject to a fine of up to $20,000 for each news conference she skips at Roland Garros. She explained in her announcement that she had seen many instances of players breaking down after a loss in the interview room. She said that players were often asked questions that “bring doubt into our minds, and I’m just not going to subject myself to people that doubt me.”The doubts are legitimate, however, when it comes to her clay-court results.Osaka, who will play her first-round match on Sunday against Patricia Maria Tig, is a great hardcourt player but not yet a proven threat on clay or grass. She has won two United States Opens and two Australian Opens, all on cushioned acrylic hard courts. On clay, she has a career singles record of just 19-16 and has yet to reach a tour final. After winning the U.S. Open in 2020, Osaka skipped the French Open, which was postponed to September and October because of the pandemic. This year, in her only tournaments on clay, she lost in the second round and then in the first.“Her challenges are lack of confidence with sliding and movement, and her shots don’t carry as much weight on clay as on a hard court,” said Pam Shriver, the ESPN analyst who was a U.S. Open finalist in 1978. “Her serve is also not as much of a weapon.”Osaka, who tends to aggressively rip her returns, is prone to making more errors on clay than on hard courts, where the bounces are true and shots are easier to time correctly. Players like Swiatek and Barty get more net clearance on their groundstrokes than Osaka, and Barty can change pace and trajectories more effectively with her crisply sliced backhand.But power players with relatively flat groundstrokes and sliding issues have solved the clay-court riddle, particularly Maria Sharapova, who once derided herself as a “cow on ice” on the surface but ultimately won two French Opens.“It takes time to develop, and it takes many hours on the practice courts for you to feel that your weight is underneath you on clay,” said José Higueras, the veteran coach who guided Michael Chang and Jim Courier to French Open titles. “If you hit exactly the same ball on a hardcourt that is a pretty decent shot, on clay it may not be that decent, because the other player has a little more time to adjust.”On Sunday, Osaka will try again to adjust her game in Paris. Win or lose, she plans to skip the news conference, and though her decision has stirred resistance, it will also stir reflection. More

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      in Basket

      Why Yuta Watanabe's Viral Moment Brought Cheers From Japan

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      Going viral because you got dunked on? Yikes — unless you’re Yuta Watanabe, whose effort has endeared him to a growing wave of basketball fans in his home country, Japan.Toronto Raptors forward Yuta Watanabe ended up on the wrong end of a viral moment when Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards dunked on him during a game in February.Photos and videos of Watanabe hopelessly coming up short in his attempt to stop the dunk made their way across social media, including the Instagram feed of the actor and basketball fan Kevin Hart, who shared a photo of the dunk with his 100-million-plus followers, saying: “This defender has to be thrown out of the league immediately….there’s no coming back from this.”But Watanabe is still here, and in his third N.B.A. season he has captured the imagination of basketball fans in Japan, his home country, while earning a rotation spot with the Raptors.Takeshi Shibata is the manager of basketball business for Nippon Bunka Publishing and has been a writer and editor with the company in Tokyo since 2010. A Tokyo native, he grew up watching the Showtime Lakers on satellite television in the 1980s, learning English by listening to the famed play-by-play announcer Chick Hearn.This season, he is one of the dozens of Japanese reporters covering Watanabe, whom he has followed since Watanabe was in high school playing for Jinsei Gakuen in the Kagawa Prefecture in Japan.“What I saw was an unbelievably athletic player,” Shibata said. “He was a man of energy, a man of effort.”Watanabe, then with the Memphis Grizzlies, exchanged jerseys with Washington Wizards forward Rui Hachimura, left, in 2019.Brandon Dill/Associated PressWatanabe has the best-selling N.B.A. jersey in Japan this season, ahead of Golden State’s Stephen Curry, the Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James and Rui Hachimura, the Washington Wizards forward who in 2019 became the first Japanese player ever drafted in the first round.Hachimura has more name recognition and better odds of becoming a star in the league, but Watanabe’s story — going undrafted in 2018 after four seasons at George Washington University, then signing a two-way contract with the Memphis Grizzlies — has appealed to a large audience in Japan.“He took more of a humble path,” said Ed Odeven, who grew up in the Bronx and has covered basketball in Japan since moving there in 2006. “The Japanese culture places a value on sticking with it and working hard to reach your goals. They see that in Yuta, and it resonates with them.”The pandemic curtailed Shibata’s plans to travel to Toronto — where he honeymooned with his wife, Ayako, in 1994 — to cover Watanabe in person this season. Instead, he wakes up at 5 a.m. and covers the Raptors from his home in Chiba, Japan, publishing up to four basketball stories daily on the company’s website. (The Raptors aren’t in Toronto, either; because of Canada’s health restrictions, they have spent the season in Tampa, Fla.)Shibata appreciates the flexibility of working from home, and has developed a rapport with Toronto Coach Nick Nurse, who has answered questions from Japanese reporters at the end of his virtual news conferences.“I enjoy talking to him and getting responses from him,” Shibata said. “He knows my English is shaky, and I’m trying my best to communicate with him. He’s been really inclusive to someone like me.”Through Toronto’s first 66 games, Watanabe has appeared in 47 and is averaging 4.2 points in 14.2 minutes.“I’m pretty sure I could come up with a good story even if Yuta played five seconds on the court,” he said. “Because every second means a lot to the basketball fans in Japan.”Shibata was hired by Nippon Bunka Publishing in 1992 as an advertising associate at what he believed was the start of a golden era of basketball in Japan.He joined the company shortly after watching Michael Jordan and the Dream Team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, which ignited interest in the game globally. That coincided with the publication of a popular Japanese basketball manga written and illustrated by Takehiko Inoue and named “Slam Dunk.” It ran from 1990 to 1996, sold over 120 million copies in Japan and helped inspire millions of children — including Hachimura and Watanabe — to play the game.Two local leagues eventually emerged. The Basketball Japan League began in 2005, and the Japan Basketball League, which became the National Basketball League, followed in 2007. Having two domestic leagues running concurrently violated FIBA’s general statutes, and the Japan Basketball Association, which oversaw both, was suspended from international competition in 2014.The N.B.A. held a pregame between the Houston Rockets and Toronto Raptors at Saitama Super Arena near Tokyo before the 2019-20 season.Jae C. Hong/Associated Press“There’s been so many roadblocks along the way,” Shibata said.Things have started to change in the past several years. The FIBA ban was lifted in 2015. The B. League — a new local pro league featuring 47 teams across three divisions — launched in 2016 and has been a success through the first five years, attracting local fans and major sponsors.Hachimura and Watanabe have inspired a new generation not only to watch the game, but also to see themselves playing at the highest level. (Yuta Tabuse became the first Japanese-born player to play in the N.B.A. in 2004, but lasted only four games with the Phoenix Suns.)In Japan, basketball is watched much less than baseball, soccer, tennis and sumo wrestling. Local newspapers will publish the occasional basketball story, such as the news last month that the Raptors had converted Watanabe to a standard N.B.A. contract. But N.B.A. games are available only online, through a streaming partnership between the league and Rakuten.To find basketball coverage in Japan, you must actively seek it out.For the longest time, the news media reported only traditional game stories, which was an adjustment for the former Lakers center Robert Sacre, who played professionally in Japan for three seasons.“They’re way more respectful,” he said. “They just want to know what happened during the game. It was never about trying to find a story. They want to know why you guys won or why you guys lost. It was unique in that sense.”There’s now a growing number of social media accounts, YouTube channels and podcasts, and they’re helping to provide the kind of off-the-court, personality-driven stories that reflect how basketball is covered in North America.“It’s become different in the last decade,” said Detroit Pistons Coach Dwane Casey, who coached in Japan from 1989 to 1994 and visits regularly. “You can see the younger generation getting more excited about basketball, and they’re covering it now. They’re into all the same things that get the younger generation’s attention in North America.”N.B.A. teams are recognizing this new appetite for digital content. The Raptors featured Watanabe in an episode of “Open Gym,” their behind-the-scenes video series, in February. It is the season’s most-viewed episode. And in 2019, the Wizards hired Zac Ikuma, a bilingual sports reporter in Japan, as a digital correspondent. The team has a dedicated Japanese Twitter account, and Ikuma hosts a Japanese-language podcast for fans overseas.Shibata has also ventured into telling different kinds of stories online. One of his most popular features was about a group of female Raptors fans in Toronto who nicknamed themselves “the Watana-baes.” The story, an explainer on the term “bae,” was picked up by a Japanese television network.Photos and videos of this dunk, by Timberwolves forward Anthony Edwards over Watanabe in February, made their way across social media.David Berding/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe digital activities of younger basketball fans are also helping give the North American audience a better idea of how the game is perceived in Japan.A few weeks after video of the Edwards dunk against Watanabe went viral, a Japanese reporter asked Watanabe about the play. The interview was translated into English by the Twitter fan account @RaptorsInfoJPN.“In a situation like that, most people avoid it these days for fear of it going viral on the internet,” Watanabe said. “I think, if I do so, I shouldn’t be here anymore and I shouldn’t get any playing time.”For Shibata, the play exemplified Watanabe’s work ethic, which has opened the door for a new generation of basketball players in Japan to dream of one day following the same path to the N.B.A.“It was only two points,” Shibata said. “We were proud of him for sacrificing his body to try to stop the dunk. To be an N.B.A. player, you have to stop these guys in the air. To do that, you can’t hide.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

      English Soccer Announces Social Media Boycott to Protest Online Abuse

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      The boycott, set to begin on Friday, is the most direct effort yet by a sport to pressure social media companies like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to take action against abuse.English soccer officials said Saturday that they would conduct a social media blackout next weekend to protest “the ongoing and sustained discriminatory abuse received online by players and many others connected to football.”The boycott has the support of a coalition of groups, including the Premier League, the richest and most high profile soccer league in the world, but also England’s soccer federation; the top two professional tiers of men’s and women’s soccer; referees; the country’s players union, and others.The action is the most direct effort yet by a sport to pressure social media companies like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to take action against online abuse, and comes after a season in which players, clubs, team executives, referees, female commentators and others have been the targets of abuse.The social media boycott also follows a week of fury and street protests against top clubs and their owners who tried — and failed — to create a breakaway European Super League that would have walled them off from many of the structures, including the pay system, that have sustained soccer for a century. At each of the protests, there were vitriolic demands for the owners of teams to sell.Cases of harassment have been well documented online. In February, Arsenal striker Eddie Nketiah posted a picture on Twitter with the caption “Working with a smile!”The tweet was met with racist abuse from a Twitter user who told Nketiah, who is Black, to leave the club. Twitter responded by permanently suspending the user’s account, Sky Sports reported.Karen Carney, a former footballer and current sports pundit, deleted her Twitter account after she received waves of online abuse.Peter Cziborra/Action Images via ReutersSuch harassment has been instigated not only by fans, but also by club social media accounts. In December, the commentator and former soccer player Karen Carney deleted her Twitter account after she received a wave of online abuse.After a 5-0 win by Leeds United over West Brom, Carney on Amazon Prime Video Sport wondered whether Leeds would “blow up at the end of the season.” A clip of her commentary was shared by the Leeds team Twitter account, which invited a slew of hateful messages toward Carney.Many on Twitter defended her and criticized the team’s social media folks, including the former Leeds captain Rio Ferdinand, who called for the tweet to be deleted.Bethany England, a forward for Chelsea, called out Leeds’ social media team for “atrocious behaviour.”“Cyber bullying a female pundit and opening her up to mass online abuse for DOING HER JOB AND HAVING HER OPINION!” England said.In February, the top executives of the Football Association — English soccer’s governing body — the Premier League, and other organizations wrote an open letter to Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, and Mark Zuckerberg, the C.E.O. of Facebook, calling for the leaders to put an end to “the levels of vicious, offensive abuse” coming from users on their platforms.“The reality is your platforms remain havens for abuse,” the soccer executives wrote. “Your inaction has created the belief in the minds of the anonymous perpetrators that they are beyond reach.”In the past, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter have taken steps, such as banning users temporarily or permanently, but the issues of online abuse have persisted.In a news release announcing the social media boycott, which will take place from Friday afternoon through Monday, English soccer called on the United Kingdom to “bring in strong legislation to make social media companies more accountable for what happens on their platforms.”In the statement, Richard Masters, the Premier League’s chief executive, said the league would continue to push social media companies to make changes to prevent online abuse.“Racist behaviour of any form is unacceptable and the appalling abuse we are seeing players receive on social media platforms cannot be allowed to continue,” Masters said. “Football is a diverse sport, which brings together communities and cultures from all backgrounds and this diversity makes the competition stronger.”It’s not the first time soccer has tried to shine a light on racism.Players and coaches in the Premier League and other top leagues, for example, have been kneeling before kickoffs all season in a show of support for the Black Lives Matter movement — at the encouragement of the league’s team captains and with the support of league officials.But some players and even entire teams, frustrated with a lack of concrete progress on racial issues and feeling the gesture has become more performative than productive, have recently stopped taking part.Crystal Palace forward Wilfried Zaha said he had come to see the kneeling as “degrading,” and said he would stop doing it and would focus his efforts elsewhere. Brentford, a team in England’s second-tier Championship, in February stopped taking a knee before games. While the players said in a statement that they still supported antiracism efforts, they said, “We believe we can use our time and energies to promote racial equality in other ways.”The social-media blackout will take place while an entire slate of games in multiple leagues will be played, including one between Manchester United and Liverpool, the Premier League’s defending champion.Edleen John, director of international relations for the Football Association, said English soccer will not stop pressing for change after next weekend.“It’s simply unacceptable that people across English football and society more broadly continue to be subjected to discriminatory abuse online on a daily basis, with no real-world consequences for perpetrators,” John said. “Social media companies need to be held accountable if they continue to fall short of their moral and social responsibilities to address this endemic problem.” More

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      N.B.A. Fines Kevin Durant for ‘Derogatory’ Social Media Spat

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      Michael Rapaport, an actor and podcast host, shared screenshots of a conversation in which Durant used homophobic and misogynistic language.The N.B.A. fined Kevin Durant, the Nets star, $50,000 for using “offensive and derogatory” language on social media, an apparent reference to screenshots of a private social media conversation between Durant and Michael Rapaport, an actor and podcast host.On Tuesday, Rapaport posted screenshots of an Instagram conversation with Durant in which Durant used homophobic and misogynistic language to refer to Rapaport, who was critical of an interview Durant did on TNT in December.The images shared by Rapaport did not appear to show the full exchange of messages between the two, but in one, Durant seemed to threaten Rapaport by naming a time and place for them to meet. Rapaport, who is white and has publicly made racist comments, responded multiple times by telling Durant, who is Black, to, “Go help the kids in BROWNSVILLE, BROOKLYN.” Brownsville is a mostly Black neighborhood where Rapaport has said he has gone to play basketball.After Rapaport posted the screenshots on Twitter, Durant replied to the post, saying, “Me and mike talk CRAZIER than this on the regular and today he’s pissed….My bad mike, damn!!” Rapaport then replied with misogynistic language. Rapaport’s initial post has been shared more than 15,000 times.The Nets declined to comment. Durant, 32, apologized on Thursday.“I’m sorry that people have seen the language I used,” Durant told reporters. “That’s not what I want people to see or hear from me, but hopefully I can move past it and get back out there on the floor.”Durant is prolific on social media, often using Twitter and Instagram to defend himself from fan criticism, no matter how small or large the fan’s followings. In 2017, it was revealed that Durant had created so-called burner accounts — alternate identities — to defend himself. Last year, he said on a podcast that he still has them.Rapaport, 51, is best known for roles on television shows such as “Boston Public” and “Prison Break” but has become more known in recent years for his basketball fandom and for his public social media feuds, including with his former employer Barstool.Durant has not played since Feb. 13 because of a hamstring strain. The Nets have not lost a step without him, having gone 18-3 since then. It is unknown when Durant will play again, but on Thursday he said, “I feel like it’ll be soon that I can be out there with my teammates.” More

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      Tony Buzbee, Lawyer for Deshaun Watson's Accusers, Addresses Skeptics

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      “This case is about female empowerment, taking the power back,” said Tony Buzbee, who represents seven women in lawsuits accusing the Texans quarterback of sexual assault.Tony Buzbee, the lawyer representing the seven women who have accused the Houston Texans star quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual assault in civil lawsuits, on Friday spoke publicly for the first time since the allegations emerged this week. Buzbee forcefully challenged skepticism about the claims of assault, which he said had been echoed by as many as 15 other women, and about the timing of the lawsuits filed so far.The claims have surfaced against the backdrop of Watson’s request to be traded from the Texans — whose executives have so far refused to honor his wishes — and could dampen other teams’ interest in a player regarded as one of the best in the N.F.L. at his position. The accusations have also been broadcast by an audacious personal injury attorney who has little or no history with such cases and who has used Instagram and Facebook to solicit potential clients.All of the complaints, filed in Harris County, Texas, accuse Watson of a pattern of lewd behavior: exposing himself to women he had hired for massages; dictating that they work on sensitive areas like the groin and inner thigh; and moving his body in ways that caused his penis to touch them.“The case ain’t about money, and it’s certainly not about seeking publicity or fame,” Buzbee said at a news conference at his firm’s office in downtown Houston. “I personally don’t need it, and these women don’t want it. This case is about female empowerment, taking the power back.”The accusations, which first surfaced on Tuesday night, have engaged two of Houston’s better-known lawyers in a legal fracas that centers on one of the city’s most beloved athletes. The N.F.L. is investigating the accusations against Watson, and Buzbee said he would hand over files to the Houston Police Department for potential criminal investigations.The Houston Police Department said in a statement Friday that it was “unaware of any contact between HPD and Houston attorney Tony Buzbee regarding the allegations contained in his recently filed lawsuits and no incident reports regarding these allegations have been filed in our jurisdiction.”After Buzbee’s news conference, Rusty Hardin, who represents Watson, issued a statement calling the allegations against his client “meritless,” but declined to comment in detail until next week, when “we’ve completed our review of the numerous, evolving allegations from Mr. Buzbee.”Watson, 25, hasn’t commented publicly about the allegations since he posted to Twitter on Tuesday night that he had “never treated any woman with anything other than the utmost respect.”Deshaun Watson hasn’t commented publicly about the allegations since he posted to Twitter on Tuesday night that he had “never treated any woman with anything other than the utmost respect.”Darron Cummings/Associated PressOne accuser said in her complaint that Watson had tried kissing her on the mouth, while another said he ejaculated during a massage. According to another complaint, Watson, after contacting the woman through an Instagram direct message, spoke with her on the phone before his appointment and said, “I make a lot of massage therapists uncomfortable and it’s really hard for me to find someone who will meet my needs.”The incidents, according to the lawsuits, occurred from March to December last year. Buzbee first alluded to the allegations against Watson on Instagram on Tuesday night. The post was accompanied by a photo of a smiling Watson.A former Marine, Buzbee lives an outsize life. He has an office on the 73rd floor of the tallest building in Houston and drives a Ferrari. He also ran for mayor in 2019.He has worked on personal injury cases for years, but is perhaps best known for his involvement in mass tort and class action cases, including the litigation following Hurricane Ike and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico a decade ago. He does not appear to have represented many women in sexual assault and harassment cases.Buzbee’s reputation for bluster and, depending on one’s view, grandstanding, is not new. In the 1990s, when he was a law student at the University of Houston, he sat in the second row in a class taught by John Mixon, then a professor there.Mixon called Buzbee one of the most confident students he had encountered in his decades of teaching. Buzbee had a knowing smile, and when he spoke, he did so with authority.“No professor would have tried to intimidate him,” Mixon said.The Texas legal community is known for showy lawyers, including many who come from humble backgrounds and have a street-fighting bravado that defines their approach to the profession. “The bookworm lawyer should probably go to Wall Street or corporate practice,” Mixon said. “These guys will eat them alive.”Indeed, the first two words on the website for Buzbee’s law firm are “Just Win.” A photo on his Facebook page includes a silver sculpture in the shape of a shark. On Friday, Buzbee flaunted his fearlessness, saying that he once sued the sheikh of Abu Dhabi and that he had received at least 10 death threats in this case.He then invited anyone who might have been assaulted or harassed by Watson to contact his office.Hardin has represented his share of high-profile athletes, including defending the pitcher Roger Clemens against perjury charges in 2012 and representing the N.F.L. running back Adrian Peterson, who was accused of felony child abuse in 2014.Watson’s agent, David Mulugheta, publicly defended his client in social media posts Friday.“Sexual assault is real. Victims should be heard, offenders prosecuted,” Mulugheta wrote on Twitter. “Individuals fabricate stories in pursuit of financial gain often. Their victims should be heard, and those offenders also prosecuted. I simply hope we keep this same energy with the truth.”Mulugheta’s post was criticized on social media for its characterization of the frequency of false claims, which studies have found to be rare, at a rate from 2 to 10 percent of all reports of sexual assault.Still, Buzbee’s very public approach to soliciting clients has raised questions about his strategy. He acknowledged that “when you make these allegations, the first thing that happens is people say it’s a money grab.” Like it or not, he added, “people blindly follow sports and are loath to believe victims.”Kim Gandy, the past president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said Buzbee’s efforts to raise the profile of his cases and to invite more victims to step forward may be intended to bolster each woman’s claim.“Just from history, it’s very clear that athletes, especially beloved local athletes, get the benefit of the doubt unless the evidence is overwhelming,” Gandy said. “Sad to say, you need multiple cases to prove one.” More

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      Stephen Curry Sees Your Tweets, and Your Team’s Weaknesses

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.The Friendship of LeBron and Anthony DavisThe N.B.A. Wanted HerMissing Klay ThompsonKobe the #GirlDadAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStephen Curry Sees Your Tweets, and Your Team’s WeaknessesAn up-and-down season for the ailing Golden State Warriors has social media abuzz with people doubting Curry, but he’s playing better than ever.Awards and championships can’t keep the critics from coming for Stephen Curry. “I saw all of it,” he said. “It was hilarious.”Credit…Tony Gutierrez/Associated PressFeb. 19, 2021, 6:09 p.m. ETStephen Curry missed 38 of the first 56 3-pointers he attempted this season. His Golden State Warriors were punchless without the injured Klay Thompson alongside him in their famed Splash Brothers backcourt, losing by 26, 39 and 25 points within the first five games.There was little at the time to suggest that Curry would soon be crashing the race for the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award and inspiring his coach, Steve Kerr, to say that “this is the best” version yet of his star guard.Curry has stopped short of saying he agrees. The likely explanation: He is as audacious as ever with his shot selection, confidence, celebratory shimmies and ambition. So he keeps expecting more and resisting limits, even as his 33rd birthday nears next month.“I am playing well,” Curry said in a phone interview — but insisted that he can still get better.“I know that’s kind of crazy to say,” he added.Such talk is not crazy to the Warriors. Shaun Livingston, a former teammate who has moved into the team’s front office, said Curry was noticeably stronger absorbing contact after working on his body in the off-season. Curry cited an improved ability to read defenses as an even bigger development in his game.After a broken hand and the N.B.A.’s pandemic-imposed hiatus limited him to five games last season, Curry has rebounded emphatically. He busted out of his early 3-point-shooting struggles with a career-high 62 points against Portland on Jan. 3, passed the Hall of Famer Reggie Miller for second place in career 3-pointers made on Jan. 23 and hung 57 points on the Dallas Mavericks two weeks after that.Curry is averaging 30 points, 6 assists and 5.3 rebounds per game while shooting 49.2 percent from the floor and 42.5 percent from 3-point range. They are the most robust figures he has produced since 2015-16, when he was named the league M.V.P. for the second successive season. The offensive surge has him on pace to join Michael Jordan on a very short list of players to average 30 points per game at age 32 or older.Curry said he is more patient this season: “How I see the game when I’m on and off the ball, seeing what the defense is giving you and knowing that I’ll find a way to get some space.”Credit…Jeff Chiu/Associated PressTeam officials have grown accustomed to seeing him hush skeptic after skeptic since his arrival from Davidson College as the No. 7 overall pick in the 2009 draft. They understand that Curry, who became the sort of revolutionary franchise cornerstone no one envisioned back then, may have to stay at a supernova level to get his 16-13 team back to the playoffs. They have also learned by now that there is little point in trying to curb his aspirations or quirks — even when that means having to watch Curry scroll through potentially toxic social media criticism on his phone at halftime.Andrew Bogut, the recently retired former Warriors big man, revealed last month on his new “Rogue Bogues” podcast that Curry was prone to check his Twitter mentions “if he had a bad half.” Asked to verify the story, Curry laughed and said it had indeed become “a really bad habit.”Bogut last played alongside Curry for the final month of the 2018-19 regular season and the playoffs, which were marred by the serious injuries to Kevin Durant (Achilles’ tendon) and Thompson (knee) and halted the Warriors’ remarkable run of three championships in five consecutive trips to the N.B.A. finals. Asked how regularly he still takes a peek at halftime, Curry said: “Probably more often than you think.”As such, before that 62-point eruption against the Trail Blazers, Curry was keenly aware of mounting social media criticism doubting his ability to carry an injury-hit team and claims that a poor season for the Warriors could damage his legacy.“I saw all of it,” he said of the critical tweets. “It was hilarious.”Ill-advised as the doomscrolling seems, given the potential adverse effects on his mental health, Curry said he is more focused on “the comedy I get from it” than trying to “keep the receipts” from fans and the media who don’t believe in him.“It started by accident to be honest,” he said, the day before being named an All-Star starter for the seventh time. “I had this ritual with my wife where, at halftime, she’d send me some encouragement or kick me in the butt a little bit if I was playing bad. And, obviously, with how iPhones are constructed, that Twitter button is just right there. It’s easy to get wrapped up in it for a minute or two. To this day, I don’t know how Bogut caught on, because it wasn’t like I was reading the tweets out loud.”“I think he just wants to be great. I saw him chasing greatness last summer when no one was watching”, said Bruce Fraser, a Warriors assistant coach. Curry and Fraser warm up before Monday’s game against Cleveland.Credit…Jeff Chiu/Associated PressAfter two games with at least 10 3-pointers earlier this month, Curry missed 15 of his first 18 3-pointers against the Miami Heat on Wednesday — only to drain two clutch 3-pointers in overtime in the come-from-behind victory. It was the kind of performance that sets social media ablaze, with critics calling for his two M.V.P. trophies to be repossessed and supporters responding by “just asking” why he lives in so many people’s heads rent-free. (Translation: Why talk about him so much if he’s not as potent as advertised?)“I don’t think he plays the game with spite or trying to prove people wrong,” said Bruce Fraser, a Warriors assistant coach, who works as closely with Curry as anyone in the organization. “I think he just wants to be great. I saw him chasing greatness last summer when no one was watching. The main piece to his success is the time that he’s put into it and his push last summer.”Eight-plus months off, as part of one of the eight teams that did not qualify to finish last season in the N.B.A. bubble at Walt Disney World, led to the most productive off-season of Curry’s career. It was the ideal tonic after the Warriors played well into June for five straight springs. Curry was in the gym constantly, with his longtime personal trainer Brandon Payne as well as Fraser, adding muscle to play through contract and evade clutching and grabbing off the ball, and to gird himself to head inside when defenses played him too tight outside. Defenses hound Curry so closely on the perimeter that he is driving the ball more than he has since 2015-16; nearly 30 percent of the shots Curry has taken this season come within 10 feet of the basket.“I’ve always been a late bloomer,” Curry said of the strength boost, “so it’s not a surprise.”When Curry was misfiring early this season, Fraser refused to worry. He was sure Curry was ready for the challenge of leading a mostly new team apart from the title-tested Draymond Green. Fraser was the one, after all, flinging the passes at a post-practice shooting session on Dec. 26 when Curry made 105 consecutive 3-pointers — 103 of them on camera.The purity of Curry’s stroke told Fraser that the real issue was how Curry was adjusting to an array of new defensive coverages. With Durant now on the Nets, Thompson unavailable and scant dependable shooting elsewhere in the lineup, Curry needed to get used to opposing teams locking in on him like never before.“At the beginning of the season, it was really hard for him,” Fraser said. “Box-and-ones, double teams, traps, triple teams. In transition, I’ve seen times when Steph’s been coming down the floor and there are four guys around him.”Teams are committing multiple defenders to Curry, with no consistent offensive threats beyond him on the Warriors.Credit…Neville E. Guard/USA Today Sports, via ReutersFraser’s recap hit upon one of Curry’s favorite subjects. At this stage of his career, Curry seems to enjoy talking about the nuances of reading the game as much as his actual shotmaking.“My patience is a lot better now, if I had to pick one thing,” Curry said. “How I see the game when I’m on and off the ball, seeing what the defense is giving you and knowing that I’ll find a way to get some space. I’m enjoying this run for sure.”The intensity and variety of the coverages “keeps me sharp,” Curry said.The benefit and wisdom of keeping an open ear to the latest critical chatter is much harder to see — So how much of a prime do you have left, Steph? — but that may be one more green light Curry has earned.“If you occupy spaces that people never thought you could, there’s always going to be attempts to try to explain it away,” Curry said. “That kind of comes with the territory. I like to have fun with it, though.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Decoding José Mourinho's Instagram

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerWhat Is José Mourinho Telling Us on Instagram?The Tottenham coach’s account is a surprisingly unfiltered window into his personality. It’s revealing a side of him he hasn’t always wanted people to see.CreditDec. 15, 2020Updated 1:18 p.m. ETLONDON — The content itself does not, when you type the words, sound especially fascinating. A 15-second video of a man buffing his shoes. A photograph of that moment he checked his phone in the snow, or that time he sat on a bus, or the day he ate some popcorn.In truth, the execution is not especially polished, either. Often, the angle is a little off. The framing is rarely perfect. Little thought has gone into the lighting. In more than a few shots, an eagle-eyed critic might point out that the subject is not actually in focus.None of those minor flaws, though, have stopped what may be the most unlikely transformation of the year: José Mourinho’s blossoming into a bona fide Instagram sensation.It is no surprise, of course, that in the 10 months since Mourinho, the Tottenham Hotspur manager, restarted his account — and particularly in the six since he seemed to remember that he had it — he has managed to pick up 1.5 million followers. He has, after all, been one of the most famous and most fascinating figures in soccer for almost two decades.But that is not what makes his account stand out. On the surface, Mourinho should not be especially well suited to Instagram. At 57, he is not exactly a digital native. He has never shown a particular interest in social media; indeed, as Paul Pogba discovered when Mourinho coached him at Manchester United, he is more likely to have thought of it as a nuisance, if he thought of it at all.Nor has Mourinho ever given the impression that he wants to offer fans a window into his life, professional or personal. He has admitted that his previous dalliance with Instagram, while he was at United, was entirely designed to placate his sponsors. He stayed on it, casually and reluctantly, for two years before deleting his account in May 2018. Friends said he had grown “bored” with it.In his first year at Spurs, too, he grew to resent the ubiquity of the film crews making the Spurs edition of “All or Nothing,” the Amazon Prime documentary series. “Only when I go to the toilet are they not coming with me,” he once said. He was happy when the cameramen and producers left, he said, because it meant that “things can stay inside, between us, the way I like it.”But for all that, it turns out that Mourinho is something of a natural at Instagram. His early contributions were limited: a half-dozen posts in the first four months since he reactivated his account, all but one of them for the benefit of one or another of his sponsors.Since June, though, he has used it more and more frequently, and to better and better effect. Of his 65 posts through Monday, only 12 appeared to be fulfilling some sort of commercial demand. Eight others are likely to be images taken from professional photographers and repurposed for his account. There are five dedicated to causes close to his heart, particularly the United Nations World Food Program.All the rest — 14 videos, 26 still images — are personal, if not taken by Mourinho then taken at his behest. He will, regularly, hand his phone to whichever member of the Spurs coaching team or club staff is closest at hand and ask that they take a picture for his feed.Though he has conceded that his sponsors asked him to rejoin the site — “They felt that when I closed my account a few years ago we had a few million followers and they weren’t happy” — he has not farmed the work out to an agency. He is also not doing it at the behest of the club.He has come to view it, he said, as a chance to “open our world to the world.” According to one consultant who has previously worked with Mourinho, it was a realization that dawned on him after the Amazon documentary aired: The quotidian reality of his existence was at least as interesting to people as his behavior on the touchline or his tactical decisions.Mourinho is a devoted Formula 1 fan — one early video shows him gathered with his coaching staff, watching a Grand Prix race; they do not look nearly as engaged as he does — and would “love to know how a big team, the drivers, the boss, works,” he said. “People love when they see the inside. They love what they don’t see.”And so Mourinho’s account offers regular glimpses not only into his world — a tracking shot of the inside of his office as he analyzes a training session, a glimpse inside the Spurs changing room, the place regarded by most in soccer as a sort of sanctum sanctorum — but into his mind, too.There are captions praising players — “Top players are team players,” he wrote alongside a shot of striker Harry Kane — and ones criticizing his whole squad — “I hope everyone on this bus is as unhappy as me.” And, of course, Mourinho being Mourinho, there are occasional broadsides at anyone who has incurred his displeasure, including a withering assessment of the Covid-19 protocols during the last international break.He uses Instagram to celebrate and to sulk, to badger and to chide, and he does it all with a stripped back, unfiltered, resolutely honest aesthetic. Whether that is a deliberate, artistic choice or a lack of technical skill — it is entirely possible that Mourinho simply does not know his Amaro from his X-Pro — it works.“Generation Z tends to value creativity and humor,” Lucie Greene, the founder of Light Years, a consultancy that works with brands on digital strategies, said. “For millennials, it is generally an aspirational, lifestyle thing: Instagram as the new Condé Nast. But older influencers tend to be a lot more real, a lot less concerned with polish and presenting their personal brand.“Mourinho comes across as quite stoic. His posts aren’t thirsty. That can be quite strategic, to act like you’re not selling it too much. It’s quite self-deprecating: You can see a corporate P.R. freaking out at some of the posts.”Instagram has grown in popularity with an older generation in general and older men in particular, she said.“To millennials,” Greene said, “Instagram is a consumption machine, but to older users it can be more based on community — a way to connect to an audience and exchange ideas.”Mourinho, it is fair to say, is not in it for the community. He follows only 13 people, mostly the official accounts of his sponsors, as well as a couple of family members, his representative at Creative Artists and — a bit of an outlier, this one — the naturalist David Attenborough. None of the accounts are players, past or present.Instead, his account is a fairly clear example of Instagram as a sort of visual diary, Greene said: an authentic, unadulterated vision into his world. Mourinho does not just post when he is happy; he posts after defeats, too.His feed is not addled with the type of humblebrags best exemplified by a picture of a golden stretch of sand, a gleaming blue sky and the caption “today’s office.” (There is one vacation shot, of Mourinho staring at a disinterested dolphin.) The shots he chooses are not designed to embellish his life; they are there merely to reflect it.Mourinho himself still feels that social media does not come easily. “I am not, in my nature, an Instagram man,” he told Tottenham’s official club channels this season. And yet, in a way, he is.Mourinho has spent the last two decades carefully cultivating a public image of himself through meticulously staged media appearances and strategically chosen, often incendiary, public interventions. Instagram is simply a logical next step, one in which he can tweak that image — make it more rounded, more relatable — as he sees fit.And despite himself, he seems to enjoy it. “You can see that he’s definitely got into it,” Greene said.As she scrolled through his feed, she was surprised to see that friends, colleagues and relatives had liked a succession of posts that, to someone who does not like soccer, made little to no sense. Man eats popcorn and man sulks on bus have little artistic merit; they are not, in any traditional sense, aspirational. But they are undeniably, indisputably Mourinho: Champions League winner, Premier League winner, Instagram influencer.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More