This story appears in SLAM 252.
Every basketball friend group has at one point fallen victim to this conversation: name the most random NBA players you can think of. It’s a fun and endearing exercise that brings about all forms of nostalgia and historian-like knowledge. So what do Isaiah Joe, Jakob Poeltl and Julian Champagnie all have in common besides being heralded by small market fan bases? They’ve all got their own fan accounts.
Believe it or not, every single player in the NBA does.
Over the past few years, NBA Twitter has become filled with fan accounts dedicated to literally every player and organization within the League. We’re talking hundreds upon hundreds of accounts fueled by one sole purpose: amplifying the success of their chosen player or franchise.
Go ahead, go to the search bar and look up anyone from Stephen Curry to Xavier Tillman, put “Muse” at the end of their name, and you’re bound to find an account that’s posting about them on a daily basis—in some instances, several duke it out in reply threads for the “official” title. Aaron Wiggins, Josh Green, even G-League legend Andre Ingram all have accounts repping them with a passion. This shit is random, it’s weird, and it damn near doesn’t make any sense. All the while, they make memes, troll each other during matchups, are followed by All-Stars and rake in millions of impressions a week.
The collection of Muse accounts has seen legal action, led to social media careers by account holders and shaped an entire era of sports social media, for better or worse. Some folks think they’re the “downfall of NBA Twitter”, some love the added entertainment to scroll through on a nightly basis and some are completely oblivious to the supposed reason for the existence of the accounts: the statistical performance of the individual players.
Jared ebanks 