+ is great when you want to censor something that one of the players said but they refuse to delete it. Could also just straight up make everything players say go through a review queue and only approve things manually, skipping anything that could cause drama.

Not saying that this would be better/worse for the public/players, but I certainly could see why the owners/companies would want to silo the players voice into platforms they themselves own.

The NBA and NBAPA just signed a CBA through 2030, if this does happen it won't be any time soon (and I doubt it would, banning players from using a social media site is pretty far reaching).

Pragmatic, but a marketing move like that has far-reaching consequences -- both in their relationships with social media companies and the normies that look up mastodon and associate it with "hackers."

This is perfect for a company like ESPN. They have enough sports writers working for them that they could instantly create the place sports talk happens.