Is "all-access" at NBA games a good idea?

A friend of mine said during the days leading up to Utah’s admission into the Pac-12 that he didn’t care about the accuracy of reports; all he wanted was the raw data.

“I can sort it out on my own,” he said.

Seems to me that’s a lot of work. Still, a lot of people prefer it that way.

The down side to everything being public, all the time, is that stuff gets messed up and is often unverified. For instance, the Jan. 24 NBA game between Minnesota and Houston. An Associated Press reporter named Jon Krawczynski tweeted from courtside that “Ref Bill Spooner told (Minnesota coach Kurt) Rambis he’d `get it back’ after a bad call. Then he made an even worse call on Rockets. That’s NBA officiating folks.”

Spooner sued the A.P. and this week the sides reached a settlement. Spooner agreed to drop the suit, pending removal of the tweet and a payment of $20,000 for Spooner’s litigation costs.

The settlement also included a statement that said Spooner actually said he would “get back” to Rambis after reviewing the play at halftime.

SLOAN GIVES SPOONER AN EARFUL

In any case, I have always thought publishing interesting anecdotal flavor from courtside was a nice touch. But tweeting everything, live as it happens, is a slippery slope. In this case, the writer admitted he may have misheard the exchange.

Putting everything out there, all the time, could lead to a negative sum for readers. If teams get too paranoid about what is tweeted, they could always remove the media to the farthest seat in the arena. Already many NBA teams have moved media from courtside for other reasons — so they can sell the seats at high prices.

At the same time, in this all-access world, removing the media isn’t the answer, either. Usually if a reporter can hear an exchange, so can nearby fans. And they have access to Twitter, as well. Do you remove them? Spooner sued a reporter, but can he sue a fan who tweets the same thing?

Maybe teams will end up playing the games in a vacuum, no fans or media, just hermetically sealed TV broadcasts.