NBA Should Blow Whistle on Tweeting ... and Plenty of Other Stuff, Too

If you're old school, it's pretty easy: NBA players shouldn't be texting or twittering or making calls or going on-line during halftime.

Then again, if you're old school, you think the in-game interviews with head coaches are gratuitous, the pre-halftime and postgame interviews with players offer little to nothing, the live miking of coaches is intrusive and the mere notion of cameras in the locker room at halftime is an affront.

There's no doubt that Milwaukee's Charlie Villanueva and Phoenix's Shaquille O'Neal twittering during halftime took in-game access to another level. But we should have seen it coming.

What Villanueva and O'Neal did is little more than the logical extension of a league that already overexposes itself -- to the detriment of the game. If the NBA wanted to reach out to its core fan base -- "basketball purists and lovers" -- it would take this opportunity to roll back the unnecessary and excessive access it provides while the game is going on.

Former coach Jeff Van Gundy got it right during Sunday's Heat-Pistons game when addressing the subject of Villanueva and O'Neal.

"We never want to give the impression that we're not serious about our job," Van Gundy said. "I have no idea if it impacts the game, it just looks bad."

Van Gundy's right. It does look bad. Fact is, all those needless in-game media intrusions and distractions claw at the integrity of the game.

If it's wrong for players to text at halftime, then it's wrong that a head coach has to step away from his team between quarters of a game with playoff implications to address television viewers.

And what exactly are we learning from these? Which coach can make the best quip about Craig Sager's wardrobe? C'mon.

If Villanueva can't bang out a quick post at intermission about having to "step up," then by all means TV viewers shouldn't be getting coach Phil Jackson giving a plausibly live halftime speech to his Lakers.

If players and coaches are running around with live microphones attached to their uniforms while they're actually playing, why can't Shaq send a tweet at halftime to his subscribers?

The integrity of the NBA game took a hit a few years back when all this started, with commissioner David Stern and the league allowing unprecedented media access during games.

It was bad form then and it's bad form now. Games can always stand by themselves, and the league should know that.

Let's get back to the game being about the game.