The Rockets have "dismissed" Digital Communications Manager Chad Shanks after the team's Twitter account "posted, removed and then apologized for a tweet to celebrate the end of the first-round series with the Mavericks," according to Jonathan Feigen of the HOUSTON CHRONICLE. The tweet posted Tuesday displayed an "emoticon of a pistol pointed at a horse's head, a reference to the Mavericks' mascot, along with the message, 'Shhhhh. Just close your eyes. It will all be over soon.'" Shanks yesterday on his personal Twitter account posted that he "was no longer with the organization." Shanks tweeted: "I did my best to make the account the best in the NBA by pushing the envelope, but pushed too far for some and for that I apologize." Shanks yesterday said that the Rockets "encouraged him to be edgy, but believed the tweet on Tuesday crossed the line." Shanks: "I attempted an admittedly edgy jab at the Mavericks’ expense and it did not go over well with everyone. The organization supported my efforts to make the account one of the best in the NBA by pushing the envelope, but they deemed this too far" (CHRON.com, 4/29).
TIME TO REFLECT: Shanks in a Q&A with SPORTING NEWS' Adi Joseph discussed "his own background and the pressures of being a social media manager for a pro sports team." Shanks said of the tweet that led to his dismissal, "Once we had the game (and the series) locked up with a minute or so left, I wanted to take a jab at the Mavs ... and that idea popped into my head. I meant it to just be a play on taking an old horse out to pasture that would get our fans even more pumped up and agitate Mavs fans. Obviously, things didn’t turn out that way. I didn’t think people would equate pretend violence on an emoji horse with actual violence on a real horse. That’s not what I intended, but my job was to anticipate how these things would go over, and I failed." Shanks said he realized he may be in trouble after his supervisor "texted me pretty quickly." Shanks: "He’s normally very supportive of me taking the account to subversive places and doing everything I could to give the fans engaging content, but he wasn’t so supportive on this one, so I knew something was up." Shanks said he was given a "pretty long leash by the organization who trusted my decision-making. I let them down with this one post." He added, "Even as someone who worked full-time in a highly-visible social media setting, I underestimated its power and reach. I had an idea in my head that wasn’t offensive to me but was not perceived that way by a large number of people who in turn made their thoughts known and ultimately influenced me losing my job" (SPORTINGNEWS.com, 4/29).
CALL THE FUN POLICE: ESPN's Dan Le Batard said he thought the initial tweet was "hugely fun, so of course the Rockets have to apologize for it.” ESPN’s Bomani Jones noted the Mavericks "apparently hit them with one of those lame ‘stay-classy’ replies, and the Rockets wound up apologizing." He said he did not care that much about the story, but asked, "If the Mavericks weren’t called the Mavericks and they were called the Bulldogs and that was a picture of a pistol pointing at an adorable little pooch, I'm curious to know how that would have gone over” (“Highly Questionable,” ESPN2, 4/29).
