Any women's basketball team would be likely to have someone as accomplished as Diana Taurasi. She's been a WNBA MVP, a WNBA All-Star seven times, named to the All-WNBA first team nine times, and has three WNBA championships to her name just to name a few. Oh, yeah, and she's won three gold medals.
What she doesn't have a lot of, is tweets.
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After creating her account in early 2011, Taurasi has only sent out 49 tweets. Okay, so she doesn't like to tweet — Twitter isn't for everyone. But apparently, her lack of tweets were a problem. In an extensive feature by ESPN W, she says her Twitter followers were actually a topic of discussion during contract talks.
"After (Brittney Griner's) rookie season, (Griner) knew: I have to put the time in. No matter what's happening around you, no matter what you want to do with your life, social life, whatever, you make sure you take care of this because it's the only reason you're getting this other stuff. And that's where I think Twitter and Instagram and all that have people going crazy.
"F— Facebook," Taurasi adds. "I'm so glad I'm not on social; I feel so relieved. I mean, has it affected my contracts? I know for a fact that it has. I know a couple of renegotiations they were like, 'Well, we need you to get to 10,000 followers.' It's like, 'I've won f—ing three gold medals. Are we really talking about Twitter followers right now?'"
The fact that Taurasi's Twitter followers came up during contract talks is pretty astounding, and it's an interesting reveal as to what goes on behind closed doors.
Is it important for teams to have marketable players? Absolutely. But Taurasi has accomplished quite a bit in her life to the point where she doesn't need to prove herself through followers.
