Patrick Patterson Twitter highlights problem with sports fans

One Patrick Patterson tweet is all it took for OKC Thunder fans to hypothesize about a Russell Westbrook contract extension.

Poor Patrick Patterson. On August 10th the newest Oklahoma City Thunder power forward had surgery to repair a minor knee injury. The scheduled procedure went under-the-radar (like everything else surrounding the Thunder) until Patterson sent out a tweet the day before.

This could have meant anything. Maybe Patterson was celebrating an anniversary of some sort. He very well could have had a movie marathon planned. Either way nothing from Patterson, the Thunder organization or the media suggested that he was hypothesizing a Russell Westbrook extension.

But that’s exactly how virtually everyone took the tweet.

Patrick Patterson is a human being just like us. He has a life outside of basketball, outside of Russell Westbrook. Patterson has fans all across the country that could care less about the Thunder/a Westbrook extension – he’s tweeting for a broader audience.

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I get it. The future of the Oklahoma City Thunder rests on Russell Westbrook’s shoulders. OKC has already lost one League MVP in free agency – losing another would be disastrous for us fans. But the constant speculation about a Westbrook extension is not healthy.

Is this to say athletes don’t send subliminal messages from time to time? No. But the constant obsession over every post has become sad. We aren’t in the heads of these athletes, just like they aren’t in our heads.

Hanging on athletes vague tweets has become America’s new favorite pastime. When LeBron James tweets song lyrics the public immediately assumes it’s about Kyrie. When players follow each other in the offseason it means they are teaming up. When Gordon Hayward’s wife posts a photo of her daughter it’s taken as a sign Hayward was going to Boston (okay so that was right). The point is, these people aren’t making social media decisions based on what fans are going to think – they use social media just like the rest of us do.

A similar occurrence happened earlier in the offseason. Travis Singleton – aka The Sneaker Reporter – had personal news regarding his brand/website.

https://twitter.com/SneakerReporter/status/885693732531589120

Nowhere is there any mention of a Russell Westbrook extension. Singleton even took it a step further:

The heat Singleton got because he wasn’t breaking a Westbrook extension was despicable. He may be a Thunder reporter but Singleton also has a business to run – he doesn’t just tweet about OKC basketball. But people decided to make up their own storylines.

It’s time to be blunt. Do you like when others put words in your mouth?

So stop putting so much emphasis on 140 characters from a person you’ve never even met.