Jesse Brooks stops following Bourbon Street Shots on Instagram

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Published: May 16, 2018

Even though there are no meaningful games to cover, the NBA off-season can be one of the most eventful and entertaining parts of the league. There’s the draft, NBA Summer League, and, of course, free agency.

I’m not talking about NBA free agency. I’m talking about NBA blogger free agency.

During the summer months, NBA blogs around the league attempt to upgrade their rosters in any way possible within their own unique constraints, and the free agent NBA media content contributors balance multiple priorities that often conflict with one another – money, content requirements, public visibility, and the chance to write/record for a title contending team’s website, to name a few.

With all of these factors in play, Bourbon Street Shots was able to make one critical addition before the start of the 2017-18 season – Jesse Brooks, a Louisiana native. Brooks’ first season with the BSS squad started strong, but competing “real world” commitments – managing Small Town Stories, portraying zombies in the film industry, and writing/performing Americana music – have caused conflicting opinions regarding his value in the upcoming free agency period. Bourbon Street Shots leadership has been very clear about the desire to bring Brooks back and can offer him more than any other blog, but the risks of committing a significant investment to him are also very real.

That backstory brings us to this morning, when it was discovered that Brooks stopped following the Bourbon Street Shots Instagram account. When Brooks was asked (from a curious account with zero posts and zero followers) about why he took this action, he actually responded – a surprise on its own given how infrequently Brooks replies to comments on his Instagram page – with “bc I’m an ADULT.”

The next question is obvious – does this move by Brooks signal anything regarding his future with BSS or elsewhere? The answer, obviously, is no. In any contract negotiation, both sides will take steps to gain whatever leverage they can to capture as much value as possible. Brooks knows that not only can Bourbon Street Shots pay him more money than any other blog, but that the NBA blog market is very tight this summer, so his options for a especially lucrative contract as a free agent are limited outside of New Orleans. He also knows that, despite full confidence in his own ability to bounce back to his level of production towards the beginning of last season, many other teams will not be as optimistic.

Brooks’ main point of leverage exists specifically with Bourbon Street Shots. Should he choose to leave, his former blog does not have the space to replace him with a contributor anywhere near his caliber in free agency. Therefore, any action that can be interpreted as a willingness to walk – even something as silly as un-following an account on social media – is a lever to pull. Does it actually matter to BSS? Will it impact the site’s decision-making process in any way? It is quite unlikely, and that’s without the consideration that Bourbon Street Shots GM Jason Calmes doesn’t even have an Instagram account. But it motivated fans and fellow NBA media folk to speculate about its implications, so Brooks has already achieved what he set out to do, and now BSS has to deal with all of the superficial nonsense that goes along with it.

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