Bill Simmons Thinks This NBA Legend Would Have A Burner Account If Twitter Had Existed Decades Ago

The explosion of the “Kevin Durant Files” has once again raised questions about the impact of social media on the lives and careers of NBA players. For the better part of two decades (and counting), platforms like X and TikTok have given NBA fans unprecedented access to the inner thoughts of their favorite hoopers.

Here’s another question worth asking at this point: What if X (or, as some die-hards prefer, Twitter) had existed decades ago? For veteran commentator Bill Simmons, this would have been a circus, particularly when it comes to a certain personality.

“Here’s one [player] that would have definitely had a burner account,” Simmons said this week on his self-titled podcast. “There’s no question…Wilt Chamberlain.”

To fans who watched the NBA in the 60s and 70s, Wilt Chamberlain was a mountain of a man who was adept at overpowering swaths of defenders to score with ease. But, to astute historians like Simmons, the Big Dipper was also a larger-than-life personality that virtually no one could handle.

“I read all the books that he wrote and I read all the magazine profiles. He would just trash everybody, his teammates, his coaches,” Simmons recalled. “He would blame everybody else…this is why all the other players didn’t like him. He got traded twice.”

The first of the two trades in Chamberlain’s career came in 1965, when the San Francisco Warriors dealt him to the Philadelphia 76ers during All-Star Weekend. This came on the heels of a strained relationship with Warriors head coach Alex Hannum, who’d been clashing with the big man for two seasons. The second trade came in 1968, when Chamberlain was sent to the Los Angeles Lakers after also butting heads with Sixers management.

In Simmons’ mind, the fiery personality of Chamberlain would have lent itself well to a burner account on X. “He would have been like, ‘Bill Russell sucks. He has no left hand,’” Simmons speculated. “It would have been, like, dipper69.”

Perhaps it is some sort of feat that, decades before the extremely convenient ways of broadcasting one’s thoughts to the world, Chamberlain made it easy to launch in-your-face tirades against individuals who had drawn his ire. If burner accounts had existed in the 60s, perhaps Wilt the Stilt would not have needed them at all.