Xavier Booker defends himself online, details minor injury

One of the great things about social media is that for better or for worse, everyone is allowed to share their opinion. In the world of sports and social media, I absolutely love this. There’s always someone out there who knows more than me and I constantly find myself learning from others.

However, there are times when people take things to far on social media and find themselves attacking various athletes.

Now while that is not the case in this example at all; a popular sports page, Sleepers Media, was reacting to the first night of Moneyball a few weeks ago, sharing their positive and negative takeaways from the games. One of the negatives just so happened to be about Xavier Booker.

I want to be clear that nothing malicious was said at all (you’ll see that in the quotes below) but in the day and age of social media, players can defend themselves whenever they see fit. And that’s exactly what Booker did here.

Xavier Booker was a “disaster” the first night of Moneyball

When Sleepers began discussing some of the negative takeaways from Moneyball, they began with Booker, stating the following.

“According to everyone in the gym, Xavier Booker was a disaster.” They continued, “It wasn’t anything about his basketball playing, it wasn’t about his skill set, it was mentality. It was how did he approach this.“

As you can see from these quotes, nothing terrible was said about Booker at all. But at the same time you can see why he wouldn’t like this and would want to defend himself.

And that’s exactly what he did in the comments section of the YouTube video.

”First I’m playing the rotation, we had 10 people on the team. Everyone had to play, no one was pouting, no one was upset.”

Booker’s first point is 100 percent valid. Maybe some thought Booker took himself out of the game and should have played more, but Moneyball is a “just for fun” league and everyone on each roster should play about the same amount of time. So even if it Booker appears to be taking himself out of the game, it’s potentially so everyone else on his team can play as well.

Minor injury for Xavier Booker at Moneyball

Later in Booker’s same comment, he detailed a minor injury he picked up as well.

”I did one move and I had a defender attack my knee and it hyperextended back. So if I was sitting out of not running up and down the court in a ‘full sprint’ it’s because I’m not trying to injure myself more.”

This is another valid point by Booker. Even if he suffers the slightest injury, there’s no point in pushing himself at Moneyball, this event isn’t worth getting hurt over. But maybe the wiser choice would’ve been to just sit the rest of the game on the bench instead of choosing to not “full sprint” back on defense.

Regardless, I love that Booker defended himself here. Usually I’d prefer Michigan State basketball players to refrain from going back and forth with people online, but this is the offseason for crying out loud. Who cares? And if anything, it sounds like Booker will use this interaction as motivation.

Booker posted a second comment to the video, saying, “I’ll remember this vid (video) though.”

And that he did. After scoring 19 points during night one of Moneyball, he continued to improve scoring 25 then 31 points in night two and night three. Booker did not play in night four on Thursday for reasons unknown, but players skip Moneyball games all the time so there’s likely no need to panic.

Booker’s performance on nights two and three also shows that the minor injury he mentioned also doesn’t seem like a big deal either (thankfully).

We’ll see if this improved play continues into the regular season or not. I’ve never thought Booker had motor issues during the regular season, so I for one would be very surprised if that continued into the fall and winter during the regular season.