For all their recent excellence and success, the NBA’s Golden State Warriors have developed something of a tedious routine. They seem to pull punches during the regular season, occasionally lose games that leave everyone scratching their heads, and go through stretches of apparently disinterested and uninspired basketball. Come play-off time, though, the engine revs and all pistons are firing. For someone who played basketball, I can understand the temptation. Basketball at their level is incredibly taxing, the 82-game season is more than a marathon, and even the NBA playoffs last for months. You must pace yourself.
Source: Zoltan Major / shutterstock
The problem is that we’re in an information age with multiple sports news outlets looking to offer consumers 24/7/365 content. This week, that content hunger feasted on a brief video clip of Warriors Coach Steve Kerr commenting sotto voce about his displeasure with power forward Draymond Green. Green is a “Swiss army knife” of a player whose versatility on the defensive end allows him to check multiple positions. He also has ballhandling skills and shooting range you don’t often see from a guy at his natural position. He’s tough, he’s heady, most of the time he’s a “glue guy,” but sometimes he can cause things to spin off their axis. Green is fiery, and he’s not shy with his thoughts.
Kerr is skilled at managing Green’s outbursts without calming the fire that makes him so valuable. Everyone has his limits, though, and a camera during a loss to the moribund Phoenix Suns appeared to catch Kerr saying, “I’m so [blank]ing tired of Draymond’s [blank-blank].”
Cue the bored sports reporters assigned to the Warriors who are looking for something (anything!) of interest to occupy their coverage until the playoffs begin. Is Kerr having trouble with Green? Is there a rift? Are we going to see more of this? Did something else happen? What’s going on? (Please, give us something, we’re dying over here!)
Alas, both Kerr and Green tamped down the speculation. Kerr used humor, claiming that the lip readers were mistaken; instead, he professed, “What I said was I beg to differ with Draymond’s approach tonight.” Green was just as conciliatory, saying there is no air to clear between them.
Everything’s Recorded, Everything Is Filmed
However, Kerr did make an interesting observation for the purposes of this site: “It’s 2019. George Orwell was right, he just had the year wrong…. Modern life. Everything’s recorded, everything is filmed.” For sure, he is right. Anyone reading this post is certainly aware that his or her workplace is monitored in a number of different ways. Employers monitor computer use, record comings and goings with swipe badges, and install surveillance cameras on their premises. It’s a fact of life for management and employees. To use it well, any employer needs to be up-front about the measures used.
When your employees come on board, or when new measures are installed, be sure that everyone is informed in writing and signs to acknowledge awareness of the monitoring. If you are going to use video surveillance, make absolutely sure that you are complying with all applicable laws governing privacy in your jurisdiction and don’t ever, ever, ever record audio along with the video.
And for all the employees out there working under these measures, never forget Kerr’s warning about modern life and that everything is subject to recording. You just might find that your Internet search history is far more difficult to laugh off than was Kerr’s brief comment about his star player.
