Athletes turn to Twitter to get their message out

When Shaquille O'Neal wanted to set up a Twitter account after someone had impersonated him on the social media network, it was Kathleen Hessert who guided him.

The media strategist warned of one other thing.

"Twitter is immediate and without filters," Hessert said. "There will be an athlete or coach who posts immediately in anger or in haste and gets himself in trouble. That will happen."

Kevin Love, meet Kathleen Hessert.

Love, the former UCLA Bruin who just finished his rookie season with the Minnesota Timberwolves, tweeted the following late Tuesday night, L.A. time:

"Today is a sad day. Kevin McHale will NOT be back as head coach."

This, Love soon learned, was news.

It was all so innocent. McHale had texted Love to tell him before word leaked out.

And Love turned to Twitter. Oops.

In a later tweet, Love almost sounded red-faced: "P.S. I am not a breaking news guy. I had no idea no one knew."

The Timberwolves, who called a news conference Wednesday to confirm it all, were cool about it.

"I don't want Kevin to feel badly about that," Minnesota vice president of basketball David Kahn said. "We live in a very different world than all of us grew up in. I don't think it's a big deal."

Twitter is working to be a big deal, though.

It already attracts millions of people who tweet, or write, 140 (or fewer) characters of insightful or inane nuggets that pop up on millions of cellphones and laptops.

And Twitter has turned the sports world inside out with the suddenness of a Kobe Bryant backdoor pass. We know instantly what athletes are thinking, what owners are doing and how coaches are recruiting. More important, athletes use Twitter to control the message, if not the medium.

"My fans know what I'm doing," said Lance Armstrong, one of the first big-name athletes to embrace Twitter. "And doping control guys know where to find me. I'm not hiding."

When Armstrong went Twitterless for 12 hours in January, wise Australian journalists figured out he was on a plane to Australia for the Tour Down Under and several met the flight in Sydney.

"That's pretty good," he said.

At last month's Giro d'Italia, the world's most famous cyclist quit talking to the media one week into the three-week race. Instead, he sent out a dozen or more tweets each day, many with video interviews with fellow riders.