Are NBA Players Role Models?

Travis Heath covers the Denver Nuggets for HOOPSWORLD. Heath is a member of the Professional Basketball Writer’s Association, and teaches psychology at Metro State College of Denver. In light of Nuggets guard J.R. Smith’s latest mishap, Heath examines whether NBA players are role models:

Young people, and some adults for that matter, form what social scientists refer to as “parasocial relationships” with professional athletes and other celebrity figures.  What this essentially means is that fans form a relationship with the persona of an athlete and not the athlete him or herself.  This persona is almost always created through the media, prior to the advent of Twitter, of course, which now provides athletes at least some choice in avoiding the media filter.  Whether it happens through traditional media or not, though, fans really believe they know these players when in truth they only know a media construction of these individuals.

Thing is, parasocial relationships can’t be avoided by professional athletes.  They are simply a byproduct of celebrity status in this culture, perhaps more now than ever given our culture’s ever expanding obsession with the lives of celebrities.  Given this reality, it’s nearly impossible for a professional athlete to avoid being held up as a role model.

Young people are taught through virtually all of the media channels surrounding them everyday (television, radio, internet, billboards, etc.) that achieving fame is an important ingredient — perhaps the most important ingredient — to achieving success in this culture.  As such, it seems quite natural they would embrace celebrity templates as role models for how to achieve such “success.”

To read the entire Heath column, click here.