As revealed on my wikinomics post that went up this morning, I’m fascinated by the different ways that the NBA, it’s teams, and it’s players are engaging with social media. My hometown team is the Toronto Raptors, and by extension I tend to follow what Chris Bosh – NBA superstar / web 2.0 fanatic – is up to online. But as I engaged in my “research” I came across a few stories about Kobe Bryant’s website. Most weren’t particularly flattering, and focused mostly on the “premium access” fee – about $25 – required for accessing the “exclusive content”. While I agree with most of the criticisms, I think a lot of organizations can learn from looking at all the differences between how Kobe and Chris represent themselves on their home pages.

As a starting point, Chris Bosh’s site seems to be focused on a mixture of promoting himself and connecting with fans. You are immediately hit with information about his new recording contract, and an invite to download his iPhone app (yes, you read that correctly). Follow through to his site and you find access to his blog, photos, tv channel, links to his presence on other social media sites, some exclusive events, and “locker nerd” (supposed to be a haven for techies and sports geeks, but it’s a dead link). You can also send him a question directly if you want. Interestingly, some Google ads are present – featured prominently at the top of the page. Most of them are Raptors related, including some peculiar ones (“talk basketball sports and more with Kapono fans” – noting Kapono wasn’t good enough to have many fans, and isn’t a Raptor anymore. Bad Google ad targeting strikes again).

In contrast, Kobe Bryant’s site seems to be focused on promoting the products he endorses. Go to the site and you’re immediately hit with a full page ad / contest from Vitamin Water. Then an (odd) congratulations to himself (note, not his team, or teammates – a congratulations to Kobe. Makes it feel far less personal than the messages from Bosh, for example). Then an ad for his Nike shoe. Anytime you open a new page, the full screen Vitamin water ad hits you again. And again. And again.

Bosh’s site seems focused on getting you to connect. Kobe’s seems to focus on getting you to pay for access. The content on Kobe’s page is mainly links to stuff he’s doing on mainstream media (Fox Business, Teen Choice Awards). Chris’ page is mainly links to new stuff he’s created for the site. Even the stuff that appears a LITTLE behind the scenes on Kobe’s home page is reprinted from the Nike Basketball site. And of course, if you want to check out the “community”, you have to pay.

There’s a lot more you could get into than that, and of course various caveats around Kobe’s (say) endorsement deals need to be considered. But overall, it’s very to say that Kobe is taking a very “old media” approach to using the Web 2.0 – big, in your face broadcast ads dominate, and the whole focus is on getting money from you directly. Bosh is taking a more open, collaborative, experimental approach – which has both good sides (cool content) and bad (frequent dead links, slightly less “professional”/ clean presentation).

Overall, I think the latter approach is far better – and not just because it’s “nicer”. Even if the underlying objective is to make money, there are a lot of different avenues to do so. Finding creative ways to get fans connected and involved (ala Bosh) creates such opportunities; making it hard for them to do so / force feeding them ads / making them pay up front limits such options in exchange for relatively minimal revenue (assuming few will bother to pay for access). In other words, if Kobe is interested in making money through his online presence, both directly and indirectly, I think he could learn a thing or two from Bosh. And if he’s not, he definitely can learn from him.

And please – spare me any jokes about what Bosh can learn from Kobe on the basketball court. Raptors fans are a long-suffering lot, so have some mercy .

Now off for another technology-free vacation – back in about a week.

In early July I published a post on the wikinomics site arguing that if you are an NBA owner looking to save money, you should consider firing your scouting staff. The reasoning was simple – there is an extraordinary network of bright people following the preparations of players for the draft. Many of them share information regularly. Over time, you start to see a general consensus emerge through all the collaboration taking place – which is highlighted by the striking similarity of many mock drafts. And lo and behold, if you watch the draft it is remarkable how similar the results are to the consensus projections. In turn, why bother paying your own staff when you can just leverage this collective intelligence instead?

Almost exactly one month later the Memphis Grizzlies are doing exactly that – they have fired their entire scouting staff.  The key point that the GM made was that in the NBA teams only make a couple of picks per year, and pretty much everyone knows who the top players are, and in what order. They didn’t exactly say they are just going to use consensus mock drafts to make their pick, but they might as well have. What else are they going to do?

So am I excited about this experiment? Well, only sort of. As I mentioned later in my original post, teams that consider firing their scouting staff should re-direct their resources to ensure that they have a great GM. While I mentioned long suffering Clippers and Timberwolves fans as those that know the importance of having a “uniquely qualified mind” in the GM spot, I really should have had the Grizzlies at the top of the list. Their front office is an ongoing and epic disaster.

For example, those that follow basketball will recognize the Grizzlies as the team that traded Pau Gasol to the Lakers for Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittenton, Aaron Mckie, Marc Gasol, and a couple of late first round picks. It was easily one of the worst trades in NBA history (the Sports Guy might have to come up with something worse than the pu-pu platter for that collection of “talent”), which did nothing for the Grizzlies and basically turned the Lakers into champions. For non-basketball fans, the trade basically amounted to swapping a perfectly good Ferrari for a couple of old pick up trucks, two gently used hyundais, and the rights to buy a couple of Chevy sedans in the future.

Since then, the Grizzlies have notably managed to act as facilitators (based on available cap space) in complicated multi-team trades that makes everyone better except them, and acquire a PF to fill Gasol’s spot (Zach Randolph) that makes about the same amount of money as Gasol, but basically nobody wants. Reasons include the fact that every team he leaves tends to get immediately better, and he’s (ahem) known for getting in trouble. Basically, very little that they do makes any sense at all.

So I’m really not sure what to think. On one hand, it will be interesting to watch the experiment play out, because I think the logic behind certain teams shedding salaries in the scouting department makes sense. On the other, the team that has adopted my strategy has what is widely seen as the worst front office in the league. This unnerves me a little bit – when the worst GM has the same idea you do, it’s somewhat unsettling. But in terms of the experiment, it concerns me more that what might be the right strategy, holding all else equal, will be blamed if the team continues to flounder due to other circumstances.

Upon reflection, there is a great analogy for this. Once upon a time the movie Snakes on a Plane decided to launch an extremely innovative social media marketing strategy. When the internet buzz didn’t translate into box office revenue, many people jumped to the blanket conclusion that social media was ineffective for putting butts in seats. But what they didn’t really adjust for was the fact that it was a bad movie – the refusal to allow critics to see the movie ahead of time being a strong data point backing this assertion. Watching it provides another strong indicator.

The Memphis Grizzlies may well be the “Snakes on a Plane” of the NBA. so if they do fail at this experiment, and I have a hunch that team is going to be a mess for many years, remember to distinguish between whether the approach was wrong, or the underlying product was just too messed up to use it effectively.